Thursday, Feb 26, 2004 at 22:10
Hi Joe,
Reading here and your post on 120scool I get the impression that while Toyota are producing a great product from the factory, it is the dealer fit items (air con, bullbar etc) that cause the problems.
That is a real shame. You hear stories of the 1st year appentice being given the job of fitting accessories and completely botching the job. I have recently read about:
- a
snorkel fit where grommets were left off in drilled holes where the
snorkel fits onto the air intake. What is the point of fitting a
snorkel if water can get in here?
- cargo barrier fitted where the holes drilled for the brackets resulted in the drill impacting on the external skin requiring a sand and respray of the turret.
There was a long discussion of 120scool about local air-con fitting on GXL prados.
This may be apprentice problems where there is lack of supervision or guidance from the experienced personnel or it may be just the fact that the job was done late on a friday by a guy with 10 years service who is part the point of caring because he is not getting paid as much as the service manager who has never actually done any REAL mechanical work and has no credibility on the
shop floor. It may just be the dealer trying to minimise costs and get the maximum number of jobs thru the
shop every day.
My point is that we should not have to take pot luck with dealer
services. I am quite sure that every vehicle leaves the Toyo factory in exactly the same state. It is what your local dealer does to it that determines if you are going to have a ripper vehicle or you are going to spend your life on the phone bitchin' and moanin'.
I will be trying to get the best performance I can from my dealer when my vehicle is delivered soon with a dealer fit bar and air-con. But how will I really know? I can't stand next to the guys in the
shop and make sure they do a good job. Toyota (and other makers) take note, you may spend millions on quality assurance programs on the factory floor and use precision techniques and robots but that is not going to help if the guy at the local dealer leaves a spanner in the engine bay that gets sucked into the fanbelt! (another recent post).
StevenLPlaydoe GXL TD Manual
It's on order, Delivery in April '04.
This
pic will have to do till then. Can't wait!!!
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