Think this may have been as a consequence of going over speed bumps, I've noticed that there is some plastic hanging loose from underneath my car. It's just behind the front bumper, there are two seperate plastic panels and one of them is after coming loose and scraping off the road. Not a serious problem but the plastic thing (whatever it is) is damaged now and will need to be replaced. What I need to know is does it need to be replaced or can I just take it off and throw it away?? I've no idea what the actual purpose of it is...

Those are covers for the underneath of the body. I believe it is supposed to give your car a better aerodynamic. Some people get rid of them, some people keep them. Mine did a similar trick to yours and I had to use a cable tie to get it back in position while I sourced a replacement.

Unfortunately the bolts that hold them in place (10mm) seem to get rusty and tight so can be a bit of a pain to get out. IMO its worth the effort to keep it all good though.

That Plastic Cowling is NOT essential and you will probably pick one up in a breakers yard for €5 as not many people at all will be looking for that! It acts as a Dust Cover and is not an urgent thing but if I were you I would get a 2nd hand one as it was fitted for a reson by Toyota, try keep everything in place as it was originally IMO!!

Mine fell off (half off) while driving on the motorway towards Dublin for our meet in Carlow a while ago.

It is better to keep these under-trays rather than remove them permanently. They do allow the air to pass under the car more efficiently, keep various items dry and are also tied into various other bits around the car (splitter, inner wheel arches etc) to hold everything together.

They are easily changed as long as you can get the front of the car lifted but drilling out those bolts is near impossible as the little brackets they are lodged in aren't very strong so just bend with any force.

I gave up on a few and used a combination of cable ties and nut & bolts to get mine secured.

Thanks for all the input. Been trying to get it off for ages but the screw is well rusted into it. I reckon I'll get it replaced alright but probably not immediately as I'm attempting to finish a thesis at the moment so haven't really much time. S

Spanky you make it sound like the car will fall apart without it!?

I've also just noticed that my reverse lights are not working
Three months of trouble free motoring since I bought it and now two things at once...typical!

Did you replace your front bumper lights with leds or did you put any leds into your car? thats what caused my reverse lights not to work

Nah nothing like that, though I had thought about it. Suppose I'd better check the bulbs anyway, ya never know. Hardly very likely that two would go at the same time though...

corkmr2 wrote:

Spanky you make it sound like the car will fall apart without it!?


didn't mean to make it sound so bad, soz.

From memory the various plastic trims and bumper/splitter are all tied together, probably more to keep them sitting the right way rather than strength but I do know that the splitter/bumper and inner wheel arch need to be bolted together otherwise you get a lot of 'movement' at speed.

With the reverse lights, obviously if one goes, its a bulb, but if both go its something else.

This can be, as Dave said, by using LED sidelights etc. They have such a low wattage that they upset the overall lighting of the car (sometimes, and depends on car) You can get special little devices for use in conjunction with LEDs which simulate the full power and prevent light related issues. BMW's for example, will display on the dash that a bulb has failed and which one. They do this by sensing the current drop. If you use LED's in modern Beemers (and similar) you will constantly get light failure warnings even thought the lights are fine, hence, the invention of these tiny load banks.

The other, more likely thing, seeing as though you say you have no LED's, is the reverse sensor switch on the gear selector. They can fail. How they work is, when you select reverse, the switch is activated and creates the circuit to the reverse lights. So if the switch fails, no reverse lights.

There was another thread about this before, dshamrock put it up. Try and find it. There was a good explanation of where this switch is and how to replace it.

Diego, I did a little looking around and apparantly, the reverse light switch is on the gearbox, right on top and in the middle, next to the starter motor. Also, it is a 27mm nut. Take it off, check for any obvious damage. Might need a clean and re-seat and may work, if not, replace with a new one.

EDIT:

You can test to see if the switch is failed by having power to the lights, ie, key on IG-II and just bridge the two wires. The reverse lights should come on. If they do, you now KNOW that the switch is the problem.

This is what the switch looks like:

_KUNENA_BBCODE_HIDEIMG

_KUNENA_BBCODE_HIDEIMG

The plastic is off at last...bloody speed bumps.

Yeah a mate of mine whose a mechanic looked at it for me and its the switch in the gear selector alright. Is it the kind of thing I'd get on ebay or should I go main dealer?

Probably best to get the Toyota genuine part for that.

Corkmr2 I had the same problem with her reverse lights at the start but it went out of it. Worked away fine and didnt happen again.

Sometimes it can sort itself, like dshamrocks problem was fixed by hitting a cat!
Sometimes it's LEDs or a fuse or something else.

You say your mate isolated the issue to switch already though, so that's cool. There is a link somewhere, cant find it, that gives you all the Toyota part numbers for EVERYTHING, you just enter your chassis number. Regardless, bring your chassis number to a Toyota dealer and they should be able to find the part for you.

Or hit a cat

Interesting...I'll leave it a few days and see if it fixes itself and get the part then if not.

Cheers lads