The buyer listed it as an Eco Two, but the VIN checks out as a Three Touring and I can see in the pics that it has leather seats. It has 182k miles and looks to be nice condition. Buyer says "Full tune-up 3 months ago, Fresh Oil Change, New Tires installed less than 6 months ago. Fuel injector cleaner service 3 times a year. You won’t find another one that has been taken care of as well as mine." He's had it since approx 30k miles, 4 years ago, and has only had to do basic maintenance, and has made a few long drives with no problems. I asked if he'd had any issue with the heat exchanger and he said no. He has an online presence with a small tech company, so doesn't seem like a scammer. Looking up the VIN at the Toyota website, service history ends at 2022 when the owner bought it, but he says he kept it regularly serviced and has the records. It had a new radiator at 94k miles. At 24k it seems to have had an electrical issue with turn signal, flickering sound, bluetooth, and airbag light light. Before that it had a damaged fuel tank protector. Price: $8,000. Assuming it all checks out, that seems pretty good, yes? Or is that kind of mileage inviting trouble?
sounds good, but yes, it is certainly on the back nine. you could get many fairly trouble free miles, or it could wind up costing you a bundle. with toyota, the first is more likely, but with used car sellers, who knows?
They clocked over 37K miles a year; so the maintenance records are VERY important! Who did it? It would require at least quarterly oil changes - 4x a year for maintenance to be up to date and what about coolant changes? They had exhaust gas heat exchanger issues in that year. So was the radiator replacement a misdiagnosis? Road debris damage would hit the AC condenser first. IMHO; too many miles and too many questions. Recent tune-up and oil change is in-material with the mileage that's being put on it.
If it's got rear wiper it's not the Eco level. Good news then, it likely has the temp spare (something to check). Being a 2016, it may have (or have had) the leaking Exhaust Heat Recovery issues, which leaks coolant into the exhaust. Also, it's guaranteed to be missing the toggle that switches speedometer between mph and kmh, say if you travel up to Canada. There could be some "history" though. No idea what a "full tune up" entails, and between that and the thrice-yearly fuel injector cleaner seller seems a little misguided. Radiator replacement at 94k miles seems odd.
He said there have been no heat exchanger issues (I specifically asked him about it), and it didn't come up on Toyota's records. Just the radiator. I'll ask if the AC is working correctly, and how often he had the maintenance and coolant changes done. Last night he said someone was coming over to buy it, and today he lowered the price to $8,500 (he had it listed at $9k but had offered it to me for $8k. I might be able to get him down to $7.5k). I'll ask him why the other party didn't buy.
I thought the same about the radiator. I'll ask about the spare -- good point. Just looked it up and Toyota recommends the fuel injector cleaning every 15k miles.
They probably saw something that didn't line-up with what they were being told - that's if that buyer ever existed to begin with. There's a lot of shady used car sales people out there and some people putting 'lipstick on pigs' to sell cars. Looks great cosmetically, but runs like crap. A few years ago, some noob thought he got a GREAT deal on a used Prius - only to find out that the odometer was rolled back to less than half the Carfax miles shown. He was asking us how to troubleshoot an odometer issue, because it wasn't moving forward. Caveat Emptor. Good Luck.......
