My 12-year-old Toyota Corolla Altis gets suspension upgrades

The cars today are nowhere as well-engineered and built as this damn Corolla. It is difficult to find fault with it.

BHPian Vid6639 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

12 years and almost 1 lakh kms.

Well, it's been a long time since I've given an update on the Altis. Some friendly mods ended up sowing seeds of #YOLO (You only live once) in my head and in the last 18 months I ended up with 2 more cars in the garage.

This meant 2 things, I was in 2 minds about selling the Altis and secondly, the running was a lot lesser. The last service was done in December 2019, just 3 months before the COVID lockdown and now in Dec 2021 the odo had just crossed 5000 km. The odo stands at 95K km now.

I had 2 complaints with the car:

• Front suspension was squeaking and felt like something was worn out.
• Clutch pedal had some noise when engaging the clutch.

Initially, I thought I would look for an outside workshop and not take it to Toyota like it has been going for 12 years. I checked around a few places for suspension parts for the Corolla thinking I would be able to get a lower cost and good quality.

Hunting around and checking with known folks I realised there is one good quality vendor which is TRW but out of stock everywhere. Gabriel was much lower in costs than OEM for front struts. This did not give me confidence. The lower arm is available OEM from 12K but you get a Chinese brand Semyong for much cheaper like 4-5K each side vs 12K.

In the end, I decided with low running, may as well just stick to the dealer. I took the car to Ravindu and was happy to see my usual service guys are still around unlike other brands which have had a change of staff due to COVID.

The final conclusion was the lower arm was still fine. I wanted to change it as the rubber bushes were 12 years old now. The gripe is that you can't change the rubber bushes alone but need to change the entire lower arm since the bushes are fused into it. But being a Toyota they apparently don't really go bad.

So the shocks were the ones that had worn out and the rubber ring between the shock and spring was completely worn out as well.

Other than that the clutch master cylinder shaft was greased.

The car was returned with full service including all filters, air filter, oil filter, cabin filter.

The final bill was Rs. 24K which had 7.5K for each strut, labour for fixing the struts, some 1K for the rubber ring and full service + taxes totalling 24K.

Since the rear shocks were changed 3 years back, there is no brake and suspension work required for the next 3 years given the lower running. These are anyways the only 2 parts in the car that need work due to our roads. Nothing else wears out in a Corolla. lol.

I was in 2 minds whether to keep or sell the Corolla. But seeing as to how reliable and low cost it is to maintain it is working perfectly as a chauffeur-driven car for everyone at home as well as any visitors. It will hardly fetch much being 12+ years and almost 1L km discontinued model so really no point in selling it.

The cars today are nowhere as well-engineered and built as this damn Corolla. It is difficult to find fault with it. So I am back to keeping 4 cars at home. lol.

A few pics of the service.

Up on the ramp for the service:

The offending rubber ring that had worn off causing a terrible squeaking sound in the cabin. Was duly replaced:

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