Previa Reliability

jimk314159
Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:03:13 +0000
Maintenance/Repairs

We have a '93 Toyota AWD Previa with 193K miles on it (and a rebuilt engine at ~140K after pulling a tent trailer to Banff, Canada and back). It has been a wonderful vehicle, but on our last long trip (Santa Cruz, CA to McCall, ID) the alternator quit the day before we were going to head home. It took the mechanic 4 days to find and get a replacement shipped to McCall, and we ended up driving back to CA overnight to get our daughter to school on time. My wife is now unwilling to take it anywhere except around town, and a friend of mine (who knows more about cars than I do… which does not take much told us that the transmission on these typically last 150K miles. So my question is: is there anything we can to pro-actively to make this reliable for long trips (e.g. replace the transmission even though a local mechanic checked it out and said it was fine), or should I give up on it?

8 posts - 8 participants