Does anyone have any information regarding the maintenance requirements and reliability of this vehicle.
I'm in the market for a second car, commuter vehicle (too much gas $ and abuse on my Tundra) and am interested in this car. I'm wondering a few things:
Does this engine have hydraulic valves or is it mechanical requiring adjustment?
Is this engine new or does it have some history in another Toyota vehicle?
Is it uncommon to get these cars in stick? I only see automatics at dealerships.
Thanks in advance to any information anyone may have!
This is basically the same engine that was used in the Echo for years, and which is currently used in the Scion xA and xB. I am not aware of any issues with the engine; some people find that the mass airflow sensor cruds up with a lot of mileage, but you can clean that rather easily. Valve clearance is done with shims, but they hold their clearances extremely well, as do most engines with that system. It has a timing chain rather than a belt, which is expected to last longer than a belt.
I think you're seeing a lot of automatics at the dealerships because that's what a lot of people buy, and of course the dealer makes a couple of bucks more on an automatic. My wife's Yaris is an automatic, and the gas mileage is right up there (it only has 3000 miles on it, but it gets ~34 mpg commuting in western PA, which is hilly and has a lot of stop signs). Of course, if you really enjoy shifting (I do), that is another consideration, but I'm no longer convinced that the manual transmission always gives better gas mileage.
Thank you very much for your time and valuable response. I agree with your gas mileage philosophy, I know I've seen at least one compact car that got slightly better mileage with an automatic over stick. I just miss driving stick and figure it might make a long commute more entertaining.
I checked out the link above your post and it has some great info. It appears that this engine uses variable size buckets for mechanical valve lash as opposed to shim under bucket which I believe my Tundra has, and is very common on motorcycles. I haven't had my Tundra checked yet, and I dread the day I get that done. I do hope these modern mechanical means of valve lash do hold up for most of the life of the engine, of course considering no heavy abuse and good oil change practices.
I've never looked into the exact arrangement of the valve shims (or variable-size buckets) on my Echo, since it's five and a half years old and has 15,000 miles on it (so it's extremely unlikely I'll ever have sufficient mileage to be looking at valve clearances). But I've measured and adjusted (by swapping shims or buckets) clearances on a number of cars and motorcycles, and although it's more pleasant if it just has shims (since you can normally just use a special tool to depress the bucket and then pop the shim out rather than removing the cam), I don't find either to be a terrible job, just time-consuming. Either system holds valve clearance much more reliably than one that uses screw-type adjusters. Currently I maintain two vehicles with around 100,000 miles with shim-type systems (my wife's Sienna and my friend's Tundra) and neither has shown any evidence whatever of drift in the valve clearances. I have not checked clearances on either one, because both start easily, idle well, have good power, good gas mileage, and no abnormal noises from the valvetrain.
I think that valves are pretty much a non-issue for the Yaris. These are tremendously practical cars, and very comfortable for me (6' 1" and a history of lower back problems). My wife really isn't all that interested in cars, and about once a week she exclaims how much she likes hers. She's never done that with any of her other cars.
Yaris maintenance and reliability...
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