Break Down Story Number 17
The Broken Toyota
The Toyota Celica GT4 is only the second non British car that I have owned and the first Japanese car and it is very different to what I am use to so it is not a car that I do much work on myself. I bought it in February 2016 and there has been a fair bit of work done on it in that time, some by me but mostly by mechanics. As you would expect from a Toyota it has been very reliable, but about nine months after I got it did some thing odd.
It was just before the start of the Southern Cross Gold Anniversary Rally, which was a six day rally from Sydney to Coffs Harbour. I was driving my Triumph Dolomite Sprint rally car and an old school friend, Peter Liston, would be navigating. The night before we were due to travel to Sydney for the start of the event we drove the Celica to a near by Red Rooster to buy some dinner but the Celica would not start for the return trip. We decided to leave it there and do something about it the next day, so we got a taxi home and went back the next day in one of my other cars with the plan of towing it a few hundred metres to a nearby mechanic. Before we did anything I thought I would just try it, and well, it started and has been running fine every since. As the Celica is a bit beyond me I decided to join the NRMA in case it ever stopped again. With the Triumphs I always thought that if I could not fix it then the NRMA could not fix it so I never bothered to join, until the Celica.
Five years down the track and I am driving home from a cars and coffee morning and just a few KM’s down the road the Celica just stopped, so I coasted to the side of the road. I was in Newcastle which is about an hours drive from home and I know nothing about this car. I got out and looked under the bonnet but closed it again as I did not know what I was looking at, I called the NRMA. They said it would be about a two hour wait for road side assistance or one hour for a tow truck, I did not think there was much hope of them being able to fix it so I was thinking about the tow truck until they told me the price, just under $400, so I opted for road side assistance.
Three hours later they arrived, he tried to start it but nothing, he opened up a fuel line and turned it over, petrol squirted out. He pushed on a plug connected to a black box, which turned out to be the coil, looks nothing like a coil on a Triumph, and tried it again and well, you guessed it, it started. He was not confidant that it would keep going and fully expected me to break down again in a few KM’s but ever the optimist I thought it would be all right, and it was.
I tired a cable tire around the plug so it can not move and it is still going, I have purchased a new coil but have not as yet fitted it as I don’t think that is the problem, I think it is the plug, and well, that is part of the wire ring harness and I have not been able to buy it as a individual part. Off course it could be some thing else internally and I might break down again at any time. I could take it to an Auto Electrician or a Mechanic but how to you fix a problem when there is no problem.
So ended another break down adventure
Jim Pope
