Toyota Prado Maintenance / Service

1POSTS

9 years ago

Hello,

I am based in Riyadh and driving Toyota Prado with mileage of 45k. I bought it new in 2013 and till now I was getting it scheduled service maintenance from Toyota ALJ, but on successive service of every 10K Kms now, i find it more and more expensive, the thing that troubles me are not the parts but that out of the total bill, almost 50% are the labor and service charges, which makes it quiet costly to reach around SR 3 to 5000 and this will further increase on future services.

Can anyone guide me to a good workshop here who can do this job professionally on cheaper rates (like checking everything as required and replace any parts required, though parts would be original from toyota).

Thanks

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TheLegendLeads ViP

5763POSTS

9 years ago

For my Prado, I had terrible experience with ALJ two years back. As you said and I agree that they charge top dollar. Can you imagine they did periodic maintenance and didn't bother to check the very basic things like fluid levels?

I got back my car after service and went on to a 800km drive. I was about to reach back home when I noticed that engine had heated up to 90%. It was during Eid holidays and ALJ was closed. I stopped the engine and towed my car to a trusted mechanic. Turned out the engine is running on little or no coolant fluid since long time.

My friends told that I must have checked all these things myself. If I do so, what's the point in getting a 4x expensive service? I realized that I must beef up my knowledge of periodic maintenance and get it done myself. Trust me it's not difficult at all. Tyres have to be changed every 60,000 km. All brake shoes after 40,000 km etc etc. I have kept a log of 7/8 things that need to be checked and replaced. I am happy with Petromin. They do all the checks in front of me and it's done in less than an hour.

About parts replacement, I got the brake shoes replaced聽 a few months back. Bought originals from ALJ for 560 SAR (all). As Petromin doesn't do it, I took it to a trusted mechanic who charged just 100 SAR. ALJ does that for 2,350 SAR. Doesn't make sense.