The Eight Seaters Story | Toyota Alphard

Guest Post From A Reader

2011-07-03T01:12:00.001+08:00

This is the first guest post from a reader. He shared with me his joy of how he managed to use the information I posted in this blog to help him to find his giant. I have edited some contents to protect the identity of the reader.

Dear Nighto Chan

Hi there! I’m Azlan from Tronoh, Perak!

My family and I would like to record my utmost appreciation to you as you’re my numero uno source of information when we decided to purchase the Giant!

We’ve take possession of the Giant recently on 28 June 2011. As you can see from the smiling face of my wife lovely wife, we’re definitely going to enjoy the Giant.

Over here is a picture of me together with the owner of the shop and my second youngest children.

I bought the Giant from Ah Bee from K. S. Used Car at Jalan Pasir Puteh, Ipoh.

My son and I posing beside the Giant in front of the shop before driving off to our home in Tronoh.

The Giant is a 2006 2.4L NFL Alphard V, first registered at Nagoya with a registration number “NAGOYA 399 ME 3019” in June 2006 with a serial number of ANH10-xxxxxxxx.

It is a DBA-ANH10W Model with a 2AZ engine with 8 seats. According to the Export Certificate issued by the Japanese Authority, it has clocked 98,100 km as at 21 June 2009 The funny thing is that the current trip meter clocked about 35,484 km, as at 14 June 2011.

The Giant reached in January 2011 with an AP from Sarawak.

Before confirming the purchase of the Giant, it was inspected by my respected and trusted mechanic Ah Foh at Tronoh.

The following pictures are taken during the inspection of the Giant by my mechanic. After checking Ah Foh recommended that the Giant to be fitted with a set of new tires for all four of them.

The right hand side of the Giant.

The left-hand side of the Giant.

The HU is not original and the Giant is not fitted with sonar sensor.

The Giant has only “Power Door Off” switch, though it has multi function steering.

The Giant has only “Left Power Door” switch.

My Giant Dash Board.

The rear end of my Giant.

That’s all from us at Tronoh.

Please feel free to share any tips and advice to us from time to time.

Nevertheless up till today, I’m not quite sure what is the exact model of my Giant either AXS or AXL. (Edit. I think this is an AX model based on the spec listed)

Another thing is that could you please direct me on how to change the middle seat so that they can face the third row seat.

Thank you once again for keeping the blog alive.

Best regards

Azlan
Tronoh, Perak

Burn a Playable DVD and Play on the HU

2011-04-07T01:49:00.000+08:00

I was driving home today and was stucked in a jam so I fiddle with the HU. I usually listen to the songs I had in the HDD while driving. But today it suddenly occurs to me that I can probably use the DVD player to (at least) listen to some of the video recordings related to my work. Even if I can't watch the video I can still listen to the audio. Since I usually get stuck in a jam on the way to work and going home, maybe I should find a way to do that.

A reader has previously asked me the same question too. He burned some video files and try to play it on the giant's HU DVD player and couldn't get it to work. He tried multiple formats like VCD, DVD, MP4, AVI, RMVB etc but none seems to work.

So when I reached home I set out to do some online research to understand what format is supported by the giant HU's DVD player. I had a look in the manual and found that it does support DVD Video. So I read up a bit about DVD Video on the Internet trying to see if I can find some program that can do this easily. Well it seems someone already have found a simple way to convert videos into a playable DVD.

Instead of showing you steps-by-steps here I think it is easier for you to check out this page.

I choose NTSC format instead of PAL as that's the default format the giant HU DVD player support.

So I took some vidoe files I collected in my PC and drag them into the DVD Flick software. As mentioned in that post, the authoring of the DVD does take times. I tried to squeezed as much videos as I can into a 4.7GB single layer DVD disc and it took almost two hours for the authoring to complete! Also the program is very CPU intensive and it hover around the 100% utilization mark on my C2D E6750 2.66Mhz machine.

I chose to create an ISO file instead of burning it directly to the DVD. This allowed me to walk away from the PC during the authoring and when it is done I just burn the ISO file into a DVD.
After I burn the video files into a DVD+R with my favourite ISO tool, PowerISO, I tried it on my giant and it seems to play the DVD fine.

The DVD Flick software let you choose a pre-define menu page.

It also allow you the choose each video as a menu item. However doing it with the touch screen on the HU is quite a chore. I just decided to let it run on it own since my main aim is to listen to the audio only.

The DVDFlick program mentioned in the original article is for Windows platform only. If you have a Mac, try this page instead.

Have fun burning your own playable DVD.
Cheers

More on Bluetooth Function

2011-01-23T01:31:00.000+08:00

I haven’t been using the Bluetooth function on the HU for a while. As I have recently gotten an Android phone (HTC Desire), I thought I would pair with the HU so that I can use the hands-free function again while I drive.

However when I tried to add a new device on the Bluetooth screen that button is gray-out. I was thinking is that something wrong with my Bluetooth function? After fiddling with the Bluetooth options for a while then only I realized the hands-free function can only be paired with a maximum of 5 Bluetooth-enabled phones. I have previously been testing and showing the Bluetooth function to other AOC members so I have maxed out the pairing.

I deleted all the old phones entry from the Bluetooth option screen and I can now add my Android phone. I also tried pairing my wife’s iPhone 4 with the HU without any problem. I was thinking how would the HU know which phone to pair with if both my wife and I turn on the Bluetooth function in our phone at the same time. Well the HU keep track of the last paired and connected Bluetooth phone. The next time when that same phone is found, it will be paired and connected. So if you find that you Bluetooth is not pairing with you own phone for whatever reason, you might have change the preference the last time you fiddle with the Bluetooth screen.

Given that the iPhone can pair with the HU, then the next question is whether an iPad can be paired with the HU and be use to control the HU function. Theoretically I don’t think it work. However I don’t have an iPad so I would need to “borrow” one to try it out.

An interesting discovery I had is that both the Android and iPhone can be paired with the HU but they can’t be paired with each other. Both are based on Bluetooth 2.1 with Enhanced Data Rate technology but somehow during the authentication, the passkey entry screen is not prompted so there is no way for the pairing to complete.

I met an old friend at the driving range last Friday and we also tried to pair his Samsung Galaxy S with my HTC Desire. Still we can’t get the pairing to work. I have been doing a bit of research and I think there are many other HTC Desire owners are also having the same problem. I haven’t found an answer to this problem yet. I guess I will have to wait for the next firmware update from HTC to see if this problem is resolved.

The Calendar Time In the NFL HU

2011-01-17T13:36:00.001+08:00

I was fiddling with HU today and going through the calendar function to see what else can I use it for. Then I noticed the time displayed on the calendar screen is one hour ahead of the time displayed on my time clock.

As I scrolled through the HU screen, I just can’t find anywhere to configure the time for the HU. Then it occurred to me that the HU is probably are getting it time through some kind of sync over the air. The only way for the HU to sync with outside is through the GPS function. Even as I go through the GPS option screens I still can’t find any place to set the time.

It took me quite a while to figure out that the HU might be getting it time from the hidden GPS function in the diagnostic menu. Just as I thought I can see that there is a button to set the date and time in the hidden GPS function.

When you press the Set Date Time button, it will show you the following screen. From here you can set the date and time accordingly.

However I didn’t set it to the local time yet as I was wondering if the GPS is continuously syncing with some satellites to get the date and time. Is this how the HU is able to announce the day and date every time you start the car for the first time in any day? The time in the HU calendar function is actually the current Japan time which is one hour ahead of our time. I believed if I were to start the car after 11pm every night here, the HU might actually announce the next day. I will have to try this out to see if this is the case.

I will also need to spend some time researching on how GPS work before I can confirm if the GPS actually work in the giant.

Some Seats Configurations For Storage Space

2011-01-16T23:37:00.001+08:00

One of my reader commented that he think the storage space on the giant is really limited. Given that this giant is more of a people carrier there is really not much space is reserved for storage. If you have a large luggage and the giant is full with passenger than it would be a challenge to find some space for that luggage.

One option is to create a large space between the rear seats, so that all the passengers will sit facing each other while the center space is reserved for the luggage. If you don’t have any passenger than you can always move the rear seats to create enough space for your luggage.

With all the seats upright and push all the way to the back, there are still about less than a feet of space behind the 3rd row seats for you to put some small objects (as shown below).

If you push the third row seats a bit to the front, you might be able to create enough space to put two pieces of luggage upright (as shown below).

In fact with this configuration, you can stack four full size golf bags for a full flight.

If you have some large luggage that requires more space, then you can push the 3rd row seats all the way to the front.

This allows you to put more luggage or other large-sized objects.

Of course, you can also lift the 3rd row seats up to create more space. I have previously covered this in this post.

If you want even a longer space to put in some long object, you can lower the backrests of the 3rd row seats.

The middle row seats backrest can be push to the front to provide more space to hold a long object. However the middle row seat backrests will be at a slightly higher position then the rear seats flatbed. If you really wanted a flat space, you can also tilt the backrest of the middle row seats to lie flat as shown below.

You’ll need to remove the head rests of the middle row seats in order for you to be able to lower the backrests completely.
Ultimately, you can create a totally flat surface for all the seats (as shown below).

I snipped this photo from the Toyota Alphard brochure I downloaded previously. I was too lazy to do this on my giant!

This configuration should allow you to put any large, long, and flat object (like a cushion etc) inside the car. In this all flat configuration, it does allow you to rest lying flat if you can’t find a hotel while on the go!

Season Greeting from EightSeatersBlogspot.com

2010-12-24T21:45:00.001+08:00

Every morning when I start the giant, it will greet me with a sweet Japanese voice announcing what day is it. It will say “今は十二月ニ十三日木てす” which means “Today is Thursday, December 23rd". The greeting always put a smile on me as it signal a new day has begin and remind me which day is it.

I didn’t drive the giant this morning so I was pleasantly surprise when it greeted me just now at 9:30p, with the message“メリキリムス今は十二月ニ十四日金てす” which means “Merry Christmas, today is Friday, December 24th". It seems the Japanese engineer who programs the greeting message has included seasonal greeting into their software. I have no way of knowing if it will say the same message early in the morning today but it seems the program has detected that the time is close to Chritmas so it added the seasonal greeting.

I didn’t notice this before so I wasn’t aware it was in there at all. I’ll keep an eye out next week for the greeting of a new year.

In the spirit of festivity in Malaysia, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my reader “Merry Chritmas” and “Happy New Year”. May the new year bring you bundle of joys, good health and good luck. May all you wishes to “dress” up you giant come through.

Cheers

Update: Yes, the car greeted me with the Japanese version of Happy New Year when I drove the car on Jan 1, 2011. 明けましておめでとうございます.

My Regular Workshop

2010-12-22T02:23:00.019+08:00

I have been getting quite a lot of queries from my reader on the location of my regular workshop. Instead of replying to each individual email, I will post the location of the workshop in this blog so that the reader can find it themselves.

The workshop is located in Kampung Sungai Kayu Ara, Petaling Jaya. To get there, you drive along Lebuhraya Sprint heading towards the Damansara toll. Just before the toll, there is a ramp on the left that leads to Bandar Utama. Keep left and follow the road leading to that ramp. After you pass the BHP petrol station, on the left is a used car dealer called Petra Motor. When you see the Petra Motor signboard, immediately turn in to a slip road parallel to the main road. Go up the slip road and you’ll see a row of shops on your left.

The workshop I regularly visited is called Pusat Servis Kereta Hup Seng. They occupied the last two shop lots. If you are not familiar with that area, the Google Earth coordinate are latitude 3° 7'59.07"N and longitude 101°36'30.23"E. Or click this link to see the location in Google Map.

This is the entrance to the row of shops.

Just becareful as you pass through the tight entrance.

This is the view of the shop lots.

This is the workshop that I send my giant for service.

Yes, that white car on the hoist is my giant!

Hup Seng is an old fashion workshop that service all sort of vehicles. The owner is called Wong and he has been operating from this workshop for a long time. Beside his regular customers, he also provide pre-delivery maintenance service for imported used cars for another used car dealer. He is very familiar with servicing of imported used cars, including Toyota Alphard.

I am not promoting this workshop nor do I have any business relationship with the owner. I am just their regular customer for the last 15 years so they do allow me to bring my own spare parts and they charge me a nominal sum for services. If you do no want to source for your own spare parts, you can get from the workshop.

As usual, I want to put the disclaimer here. Readers who are interested to send their car to this workshop do so at their own risk.

If you need to contact them, call 03-77291029.

My Fuel Consumption After Service and Battery Change

2010-12-07T01:43:00.013+08:00

As I was preparing to return to my home base after my six months assignment, I decided to drive my giant to the kiasu land so that I can bring back all my stuffs in one go. Since I have left the giant at home while I was away, I decided to send it for service before my journey.

The last service was done around March this year so it is high time to service again. I bought my own engine oil (Penzoil 5W-30 semi-synthetic) and oil filter (friom Wing Hin) and did the service at my regular workshop. All in it cost me RM112 only.

Also I decided to change the battery as I think it is getting weak due to the fact that it has not been recharged regularly as the car has not been driven that often.

The original battery came with the car probably has been used since it left the factory. I think the battery can still last quite a bit. However, since I am going on a long journey and driving in kiasu land I think it is safer to have a new battery and for the peace of mind.

I was pleasantly surprised with the mileage that I got from these two changes for this journey. I drove down to kiasu land, drove around the city for 3 days and then head back to KL. I was able to get 585km with a full tank of RON 95 petrol. That’s gave me approximately fuel consumption of 11km/litre. It seems the new engine oil and the new battery help to achieve such good fuel consumption.

I did another full tank refill at Pagoh, drove back to KL and then drove around the city and managed to clocked 530km. This is equivalent to approximately 9.0km/litre. I expect it to be lower due to the congested route I had to go through to my new office in PJ. I hope that I can continue to maintain this kind of fuel consumption and I will continue to monitor it regularly.

If your giant fuel consumption is deteriorating recently maybe it is time for you to look at these two items.

How To Move The Middle Seat Forward

2010-12-04T23:41:00.000+08:00

It was a pleasant surprised to receive a call from a reader who resides in Indonesia while I was driving to KL. Since I was driving in the middle of the city, it was not convenient to speak to him over the phone. Anyway he contacted me via email to find out how the passengers at the 3rd row seat of an 8 seaters get out of the car if the passengers in the 2nd row do not give them a helping hand to move the middle row seats forward.

It is truly an interesting question but I guess I understand his situation. I regularly bring my family out in my giant and I can see those sitting at the 3rd row struggled to push the middle single-seat to the front in order for them to get out. I have to constantly remind them to use the lever at the back of the middle seat!

At the back of the middle seat, there is a black coloured lever that does the job as shown below.

Those at the 3rd row seat just need to push the lever down and this will release the middle seat from the seat rail. It also lowered the back rest of the middle seat to give the 3rd row passenger more space to move out. When the back rest is lowered, you will find it not easy to push the middle seat to the front as the backrest does't give you much to hold. The best way is to use your leg to push the lever down and push the lever to move the middle seat to the front.

If you leave the lever in the unlock position, meaning with the backrest lowered, the middle seat is actually not locked to the seat rail. If you were to brake hard or accelerate hard from standstill, the middle seats will move along the seat rail. This could be the reason why you heard those loud banging sounds from the middle seat when you brake hard or accelerate hard!

I haven't heard from my reader if he has some issue with the lever not functioning and it need to be fixed. If you are in the same situation, remember the black coloured lever at the back of the middle seat.

I Am Back - Hopefully More Blog Posts On The Giant

2010-11-30T17:01:00.000+08:00

I got a few emails from my reader asking me why I haven't been blogging for quite some times. I do ask myself the same questions many times over and I guess I know very well why.

Procastination!
I guess that no excuse but looking back I know I have procastinated because I always think I will get to it later. Later as in when I get back to my car I will be able to complete my post so I'll work on it later. It drag on and eventually I have a vacuum period of few months without any posts.
In fact it is almost 4 months since I last posted.
I was on assignment to the kiasu land for six months so I left my giant at home. While I was there I constantly thought of writing something about the giant. However since I was without my car I just can't seems to complete my writing everytime I started. The reason being I always like to confirm my writing by showing the features/functions of the giant or I like to take a photo shoot of the subject that I am writing about. However since I was away i couldn't do this so I thought I postpone it until I get back to my giant.
Even the few times when I came back to town, there are many other things that took my attention away that I didn't manage to look at my giant and completed the posts. So it just keep dragging on this way until now I am finally back for good.
From the various comments I recently I also needs to review some of my posts to see how I can improve on them. One questions I keep getting query on is the door lock programming. I have been forwarding the same reply I sent to one of my reader to a few others that asking about the samething. I'll have to review that blog post to see if I can make it clearer and hopefully the readers will get a better understanding on how to do it properly.
I will work on my blog posts more often again.

Where Do You Get An Indicative Price?

2010-07-30T00:09:00.000+08:00

Lately I have received many queries from my reader on what is the right price of the model they are looking for? I actually don’t have the price information but I do have a way to find out. I normally will call up my dealer to ask for specific model price but I also refer to the Star Classified on the latest market price.

In this post, I will show you how I find out the indicative price of a particular Toyota Alphard model.

You can either read The Star newspaper classified page or start with The Star homepage (http://www.thestar.com.my). I then click on the Classified link at the top left of the page, enter Toyota Alphard into the search box, select Cars For Sale from the drop down list and then click Search.

Usually I will get two to three pages of listing from the search results. I will then scan through the listings starting with the latest entries to get a feel of the prices. I normally discard those lists that have a price that is too good to be true or those that don’t list down their prices at all.

In the list shown above, the 4th entry has a starting price of RM150K which is rather on the low side and compare to the one listed above it.

Given the fact that the Approved Permit used can only be used for car below 5 years, the oldest model that they advertise will be from year 2005. Since 2005 is also the year when the new facelift model was introduced, therefore you should check the listing to see if it includes the wording “new facelift” or NFL. In the above photo, the first entry shows that it is NFL model with quite a high specification but the dealer choose not to include the price. A NFL model typically carries a higher premium than a PFL model. Check this post to see the difference between PFL and NFL model.

The other reason for the price difference between two 2005 NFL models advertised by two different dealers could due to the effect of exchange rate. Depending when that dealer brought in the car, they may be paying a higher duty due to the higher Japanese Yen exchange rate at that time.

In the above list, you can see that there is a difference of RM16K between the price of a ’05 NFL in the 1st entry and the 4th entry (see red arrows). Even though the later entry has a slightly better spec I don’t think it worth the price difference so I can only think it is due to the exchange rate effect.

I also normally like to refer to the listings of dealers who give prices of the model from different year so that you get an overview of the price range. In the photo above, both the 1st and 4th entry gave indicative price from year 2005 to year 2007 and I typically use these as a reference.

From what I have observed, the price different between each year is about RM10K or more. If you have the budget, consider getting a later model as they normally have slightly more feature than older mode. For example, AS model from 2006 or later have a camera on the underside of the left side mirror while the 2005 AS do not have this feature.

Let say you scan the list and you find the model that you are interested in and the price is within you budget, I would suggest you to call up the dealers to enquire if the unit is still available. Since the ads are not removed from the Star Classified until after the expiry date of that ad, that car may not be available when you see the ad after several days since it listed.

Let say that unit is still available, you should ask the dealer some basic questions like the year of manufacture, model, colour, specific feature etc just to confirm that it is indeed the car you wanted. Check out this post on what options should you choose for your Alphard.

If you are satisfied that the model you want is available from that dealer, take a trip to visit them to check out the car in person. Verify the year of manufacturing by referring or check the model code to confirm the specification.

Make sure that the giant has all the features listed in the ad. Also check out some of the features like LCD, Radio, DVD player, multi-function steering, front/rear camera etc are working. Start the engine to see if it is in good running condition. Open the engine bay to check the condition of the engine, the rubbers, hoses, etc.

Of course take a test drive of the car to test the power delivery as well as the suspension. Listen while you are on the move to hear if there is any knocking sounds from the suspension or rattling sounds the rear seats.

If you are happy with the car, try to bargain with the dealer for lower price. I normally start with RM10K less from the asking price as a starting point for the price negotiation. Do note that the method I listed above only show you the price of Toyota Alphard on sales in the central region. I heard that most dealers in East Malaysia especially Kuching offer cheaper price. However I am not familiar with their offering so I can’t recommend any.

I like to use the Star Classified because it is easy to use and I can copy the details for reference. Also the listing in the Star Classified usually include contact number that you can call immediately as you scan through.

If you like to see photo of the giants, you can also use MotorTrader to find the indicative prices. Similarly you can also refer to mudah.com to find the list of Toyota Alphard for sale. Both sites allow you to refer your search by year as well.

Happy hunting for your giant.

Folding The 3rd Row Seats

2010-06-28T23:33:00.000+08:00

One of my reader asked me on this post how to fold the 3rd row seats. In this post I will show you how to do it if you have not tried it before.

You might want to create a large space between your rear seats so that you have more room to work on this.

First of all you need to find the marker for the 3rd row seat. Only when the 3rd row seat is in this position, it can be lifted up from the rail. I have tried but somehow my old digital camera couldn't get me a clear picture of the marker as shown below.

Maybe because of the beige colour and the reflection from the side wall from the flash light such that the marker doesn't come out clear. However, you should be able to find it right in front the edge of your 3rd row seat. I have circled it in the above photo.

Slide your 3rd row seat so that the front edge of the seat is level with the marker.

Now pull the level on the side of the 3rd row seat (as shown below) to lower the backrest so that it is flush with the seat.

Here is a view from the rear of the car when the 3rd row seats are in flat position when the backrests are lowered.

Now pull the level that lock (as shown) the 3rd row seats to the rail on the floor to release the seats.

Once the seat is released from the rail, you can lift it up as shown below.

Finally under the seat, there is a velco strap that you can hook your seats to the roof-hook as shown below.

Give this a try if you want to fold your 3rd row seats.

Hope this help

Creating a Large Space Between The Seats

2010-06-03T22:27:00.000+08:00

I have a reader asking me if it is possible to turn the middle row seats in a 7-seater giant (Toyota Alphard). However I don’t think this is possible as this feature is only available on the 8-seaters.

The original Japanese manual do have some illustration on how to turn the middle row seats but if you don’t read Japanese, you may struggle trying to understand what the manual is trying to illustrate. In this post I will show you how to turn the middle row seats to face the rear row seats.

In the photo below it shows that the left middle seat has been slide forward slightly and the back rest is folded.

Only in this position will the middle seat turn. Turn the middle left seat clockwise as shown below

until it is facing the rear seat as shown below.

Finally you lift the back rest up and then slide the seat all the way to the front.

Do the same for the right middle seat but this time turn it anti-clockwise.

When middles seats are turned 180-degrees, you will now have a very large space between the seats.

This arrangement is very handy as it allow parents to reach the young children without having to climb over the middle seats.

Unfortunately, in the new generation Alphard/Vellfire, this feature has been removed. I wish they maintain that feature in the new generation Alphard/Vellfire as I think this is very useful. I am hoping that when I upgrade to the new Alphard in many years later I can still have this feature but looks like I have to settle with what I have at the moment.

Hope this help.

Leaving the Giant Behind… Temporary

2010-05-31T23:28:00.000+08:00

I took up a new position with a company recently and have been rather busy with my new work. Since this company is headquartered in Singapore I am fortunately (or reluctantly) posted to Singapore for 6 months. This gave me the opportunity to learn more about their products and services with the aim to bring the solution to the Malaysian marketplace.

I always has the impression any Singapore company is well-prepared and efficiency in all aspects of their organization, including onboarding a new employee. However I have to change my perception as due to some unknown reason they were not able to provide me with a notebook so I was practically without Internet access for the last 3 weeks. I did tried one of those Internet café over here for an hour only because I needed to go online to look for a place to stay. Another reason I had to change my view is because after visiting a customer here I was kind of amazed that they are not that advanced after all as I imagine. I will write about this in future.

I did go back to Kuala Lumpur twice during that three weeks but I was just too busy running around for errands so I didn’t really have the times to update the blog. Today I finally got my laptop and I also borrowed a broadband dongle from my colleague and able to get online to this neglected blog.

It didn’t occur to me that I would be without Internet access for more than 3 weeks. In this day of Internet age and in nation like Singapore where broadband is much advanced it is hard to imagine that anyone cannot get access to the Internet. However due to my work schedule (too late to visit an Internet café) and also without the proper tool (a laptop) I was completely cut off from the Internet for such a long time.

I am glad there are still visitors to my blog during my absent and some have left comments for me. I have approved all the comments and hopefully I have answered all the questions posted.

For the last 3 weeks I have been taking public transportation to work. I really admire how efficient is the public transportation in this island. You can get to most destinations by bus or via MRT. Also I find that I don’t need to wait long for the next bus or MRT because they are so frequent and on time. In fact there is a bus every 4 minutes that passed by where I stay! Since the last time I was here, they now added the Circle MRT Line on top of the North-South Line, East-West Line and North-East Line so you can take MRT to more destinations now.

Occasionally I do take the LRT and monorail back in Kuala Lumpur and I must say that they are just not as convenient compare to taking the buses and MRT in the island because they are so accessible. Many destinations in Kuala Lumpur are just not easily accessible by bus or LRT that I go there with the giant (Toyota Alphard) instead.

So when I was back to Kuala Lumpur last week, it felt a little odd to drive the giant to get to a location that doesn’t even have a bus plying that road. I do think that I am rather pampered with the giant as it become a habit for us who own a car to drive out most of the time than to think of taking a public transport. I have not have so much walking since I last did a climb to Gunung Tahan 20 years ago. It just goes to show that we are so used to driving that we sometime forgot that there are other means to get to a destination!

Now that I am away the giant is now temporary left behind in Kuala Lumpur. I will try to go back home every fortnightly to see my family and to take the giant out for a spin.

I will try to update this blog with some posts more often whenever I have the spare time here.

People and Process Make the Different

2010-04-20T23:00:00.000+08:00

I work in the IT line so one of the value propositions when proposing a new technology to a customer is that it should improve the productivity of the employees. With improved productivity it will bring about better service level to the end customer.

Of course introduction of new technology also require a supporting streamline process and the acceptance of the employee to achieve this objective. Therefore the return on investment in the new technology is determined by the people and processes supporting these technologies.

I received an SMS from my insurance company – Allianz - that the insurance of my other car will expire in a week time. Well it is good that they use technology to send reminder than using snail mail.

So I call ahead an hour before I reach their office making sure they have plenty of time to prepare. In fact the lady who picks up my call even asked for my car registration number and said she will prepare the quotation for me.

When I got into their office and ask for that lady, the first she asked me again is “Sir, what is your car registration number?” Well it looks like she has not done anything at all. Off she goes back to print the quotation and gave me a copy to check.

Once I agreed on the amount to be insured for this year, I gave them my credit card to be swiped for the amount and then started waiting for her to prepare the cover policy. Well it seems there is still separation of duty for this whole transaction to be completed.

She swiped the credit card but the processing of the credit is at another floor. She come back to me after 10 minutes and gave me the credit card without the credit slip. I then waited for another 20 minutes and there is still no sign of her.

I stood up and look around the office and found her answering phone calls. I signal her that I am in a hurry and she told me that the cover note is being processed. It looks like someone else in the department is doing the cover note and not her. So another 10 minutes delay before the cover note is ready.

When she passed me the cover note, I asked for the credit card slip and she told me that she needs to go to the 10th floor to collect it. Well by the time she comes back with the slip, it is already one hour since I walked in to the office. So does technology help? Hell no.

The way the process is put in place by this company to service their customer is absolutely ineffective. They don’t have a dedicated service counter and they still emphasized separation of duty so even with the use of technology there is no automation at all.

As I walked out of the office, I saw this expat who seems like a senior officer of the company and told him that the transaction took one hour to complete. He turned around and asked the lady what happened but I didn’t stay around to find out if he did anything. I am curious if he or any of his officers will bother to call me to find out if my complaint is valid.

3 years ago when I renewed my insurance there was a service counter so the process of renewing the insurance is very smooth. Everything is done with a counter staff and within 20 minutes (excluding waiting time), I will have my cover note and walk out of the office.

Two years ago Allianz took over the insurance business of that company and they decided not to have a counter. Even then last year experience of renewing my insurance with them was not so bad. That lady who served me was able to give me everything within 30 minutes. I don’t know why they are going backward this year and took one hour to complete just one transaction.

I also recently renewed the insurance of my giant but it was with another insurance company. The experience was totally different. All I did was walked into their counter, ask to renew the insurance. The officer gave me a payment slip and asked me to pay at another counter. After that I just wait for 5 minutes and the officer passed me the cover note and I am out of that place. All in less than 25 minutes time.

Anyway, after I got my cover note, I drove to the Public Bank branch where I got my car loan and asked to renew my road tax. The officer took down my car registration number, double check with the system on my details, wrote me a bank in slip, ask me to pay at the counter down stair. I pay at the designated counter without having to queue and the whole exercise took less than 8 minutes!

It is obvious that this bank has all the process in place and the right people to provide the services to their end customer. The technology is transparent in the service provided and it works because they have the right people and a streamline process to support it. That’s why I have been their customer for the last 10 years.

More Accidents Waiting To Happen?

2010-04-10T00:13:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I just posted about drivers jumping red light at the traffic junction outside the condo where I stay, and tonight, there was an accident at that traffic junction.

When I reached the traffic junction, I saw a red MyVi collided with a small van. I have no idea how this could happen as the MyVi was out of position from normal traffic flow.

Well I was curious so after I parked my car, I walked out to the scene of the accident as a large group of people already gathered there.

I asked one of the guy who was already there before me what happen and it seems the small car hit a tree and then slammed into side of the van. The impact has crumpled the front of the small car and debris were lying everywhere.

All I can hear is that a group more than 10 Chinese national arguing over who should pay for the damage and it seems they couldn't agree to the terms of settlement. The whole road leading out of to the main road was blocked by the cars and people talking in the middle of the road.

A tow truck was already at the scene waiting for the drivers to decide what to do. Because of the accident, the traffic junctions had jammed up because of curious passer-by slowing down to look at the scene.

I have no idea if the accident is due to the small car jumping the red light and swayed right too much, lost control and hit the tree and then hit the van that is passing by or due to other reason.

As there is no police on the scene so the owners continue to try to settle on their own. In the 10 minutes that I was there I didn't get much from arguments from those involved so I just walked home and thinking how many more such accidents waiting to happen in that traffic junction.

Why Do These Drivers Jump The Traffic Light Everyday?

2010-04-09T02:24:00.000+08:00

I was in Penang three weeks ago and also was in Singapore last week and not once I saw anyone jump the red light. However when I am back to my own home, I am just embarrassed to see that drivers jumping the red light is a common scene in my own home town.

I don’t know what has happen to these Kuala Lumpur drivers but it seems a lot has started to take the law into their own hand. Maybe it is probably their attitude of “no one will catch me” so I don’t have to follow the law. It could be because their lives are so hectic that they don’t even have times to wait for that red light.

When I was in Penang I covered the entire east side of the island from north to south. Not once in any of the traffic lights that I have waited did I see anyone jumping the red light. Some areas like Batu Ferringi and Batu Maung has light traffics and every one waited for the light to turn green.

While I was in Singapore, I drove to Tao Payoh area to meet a friend and then went into the city and no one is breaking the law. Even as I was leaving the island using the Ayer Rajah Expressway I see that drivers are queuing to go into each traffic interchange and no one jump the queue like what I see in Kuala Lumpur.

On a daily basis coming back to my house I see so many drivers don’t even bother with the red light and just drive on. Of course there are many that obediently abide by the law and waited for the light to turn green before they drive on but there are just too many that don’t bothered. What is sad is that some of these drivers who jumped the red lights are residents of the condo that I am staying in.

I just got my first entry level DSLR which is supposedly has many features that used to be available only in the pro-level camera. So I thought why not try it on these drivers and see if I can capture a clear image with it. Here are some cars that I caught jumping the red light in the 10 minutes span that I was there.

Since this DLSR also boost a full HD video capability, let try to record a video and see how does it performs in capturing the images of cars jumping red lights. Well it comes out very well on my PC and I hope after conversion to FLV format it is as clear as well.

I have no doubt that these drivers will never dare to jump the red light in the city centre. They know the risks of doing that. However in this particular traffic junction, there is one section that has no through traffic. These drivers are just so impatient that they think they can risk their life and jump the red light instead of waiting for a clear signal.

Another factor is probably that since someone is doing it, why not me. Therefore it becomes a habit for them to just do it every day because they are used to it. On a daily basis, I see men, women, student of the nearby medical university, lorry drivers, school bus driver i all sort of cars are breaking the law.

I don’t expect the authority to come to this part of the town so I don’t think this will deter those drivers from continue to do it daily. Maybe the authority should consider programming the traffic lights so that the section that has not through traffic will turn green in a shorter time. I can see that drivers are impatient because it takes too long for the lights to turn green when there is no traffic coming from that section.

With more condo coming up in this area, I think this traffic junction is going to become very busy very soon so I wonder if these drivers will continue to jump the red light anymore.

Want To Upgrade The Rims and Tyres of Your Toyota Alphard

2010-04-07T23:38:00.000+08:00

Once an owner found his giant (Toyota Alphard), one of the most common upgrade the owner looking for is what size of rims and tyres to upgrade to. I got this question quite often from my readers too.

This is the standard rim for AX/MZ/MZ/MZG. It is shod with 205/65/R16 tyres.

The PFL AS and MS has 17-inch rim with 225/55/R17 tyres. This is the PFL 17-inch rim.

The NFL AS and MS is also shod with 17-inch rim but it has a cleaner design as shown below.

I have tested both the 16-inch and 17-inch fitted on the giant and I feel there is much different in the ride quality. The 17-inch will feel slightly heavier because the rims and tyres are both heavier than the 16-inch set up. Also the extra 20mm contact patch on the 17-inch will give more rolling resistance so it will take a little bit more effort to get the tyres moving but not a lot.

If you want to upsize the rim, then the next option could be 18, 19 or even 20-inch. The correct tyre profile for each should be 235/50/R18, 245/45/R18 and 255/35/R20. Of course, the bigger the rim, the unsprung weight will be higher. Also lower profile tyres will have harder side wall so the ride quality suffer as it will be harsher compared to the stock set up.

There are many rims available in the market that fits the giant. You can choose either the Made-In-Japan rim which is more expensive than those made in Taiwan OEM rim. Just make sure that the rim has a PCD of 114.3.

Another commonly asked question is should the owner choose staggered rim set up. If you own a 2WD model, then it doesn’t really do you much good since it is a front wheel drive car so you are not getting much traction from the real wheels at all. For 4WD model, the traction switches between 2WD and 4WD so there is not much functional advantage in having larger rims and tyres at the rear.

Also beware that offset of the wheel mount is not very deep so if you are using staggered rim, the rear tyre should not be too wide. Otherwise, if it goes beyond the wheel arch, you will not be able to lower your car at all. One AOC member shod his rear rim with 275/50/R18 and it does look very cool with the tyres sticking out if view from the back of the car, but he can’t lower his car at all as the wheel arch will hit the tyres.

One interesting question that comes to me is what’s the biggest rim size that can fit into the giant? Well an owner I know of fitted a 22-inch rim with 30 series tyres. It look so cool with this set up but it also cost a ton of money to own it. He drives his giant daily and he hasn't complain about harsh ride at all.

Behind the Glory of A Sport Personality

2010-04-02T15:46:00.000+08:00

I was reading this article on the Sun and it mentioned that “The cynic should give Malayssians a chance. Embrace the brave, the visionaries, the dreamers and the innovators. Embrace positive energy”.

This is truly a wakeup call for many Malaysia. We need to stop thinking that heroes only come from abroad. We also need to start treating our heroes just like another ordinary person that has done something extra ordinary.

I know this is not a post on Toyota Alphard but it is just a way to share my thoughts after finding more about the true behind the glory of a sport personality.

When I was fixing my car at Dynasty last week, I had the pleasure of meeting up with his elder brother Joe Lee. Joe explained to me the concept of CWD and what products will be offered through CWD. They have plans to bring this brand to an international level with Dato’ Lee being the ambassador of this brand.

As our chat turn to the game of badminton, I understand better now how their family feel about Dato’ Lee involvement in this sport. While we acknowledged the fact that Dato’ Lee recently has won 4 super series badminton events in a row and then captured the All England just this month, a lot of people still don’t understand the pains that Dato’ Lee has to go through to get to this level.

During his low point in his badminton career, especially when he lost the Olympic gold medal match, a lot of people is writing him off or think that he has not put in his best effort, he prove them wrong and come up even stronger in 2010.

Despite all the glory, there is the other side of the story that probably no one will be able to see or feel other than their family members. For example, Joe was commenting that after Dato’ Lee won the All England event the family didn’t even get a chance to have dinner with Dato’ Lee until 4 days later. He was so busy attending all those celebration with the VIPs that he didn’t even has time to see the family.

The other sad part of being a sport personality is that people tend to “treat” him differently. Joe was relating how Dato’ Lee felt when the two of them were shopping at a mall, even as Dato’ Lee are checking out some clothing, the sales girl behind was commenting why Dato’ Lee has to check out the clothing before he buy. That pissed off Dato’ Lee and he left without buying anything. I wouldn’t blame him if he decides to buy his clothing while he is in oversea.

Also with his recent success, he cannot have his personal life just like any one of us. He can’t go anywhere without being recognized and crowded by curious bystanders. He can’t even go out to his favourite food stall to have a quiet meal. He has to ask his brother to pack it for him and eat alone in the hostel.

Currently the biggest challenge Dato’ Lee has is finding a sparring partner for his ongoing training. There are hardly any capable player in the BAM squad at the moment that can spar with Dato’ Lee and pushes him harder while he prepared for the next major event.

Also on the mental side, being the number one rank player in the world, he is the lone fighter out there in every tournament. Instead of having a team mate who is equally capable to spread the load of taking on players from other country, Dato’ Lee will have to do it alone. His preparation will include watching videos of all his potential opponents. This will put a lot of stress and mental fatigue on him to go through this in every tournament. No forgetting physical strain he has to go through to defeat his opponent to capture each super series title is even harder to bear.

I can now feel how much strength you need to have to be successful at this level in any sport. If you don’t have the mental and physical strength, a lot of people who can’t take the stress would have walk away.

For now, Dato’ Lee is our country hope in every tournament that he participate in. He just can’t quit and walk away when the country glory is upon his shoulder.

Coming back to the CWD brand, with such a person standing behind the CWD brand, I have confident that the Toyota MPV owners will be assure of the quality and the reputation of a true sportman.

Chong Wei Dynasty - Will This Brand Benefit the Toyota Alphard Owners?

2010-04-01T01:00:00.000+08:00

If you have been flipping through the Motor Trader magazine or other local motorsport magazine lately, you might have noticed recently there are quite a few advertisements on this new brand called Chong Wei Dynasty.

I went to Dynasty yesterday to rectify some problem and saw the above poster in the shop. While waiting for my car to be fixed, I sat down and chat with the shop keeper to find out more about this brand.

Chong Wei Dynasty is the brand child of Dato' Lee Chong Wei and Danny, the owner of Dynasty Auto Parts Sdn Bhd. Beginning of this year, Dato’ Lee Chong Wei joined force with Dynasty to offer their own brand of accessories (initially) for Toyota MPVs and it will be sold through Dynasty outlets, currently in Sunway only. However there are already plan to have few more outlets coming up by this year, notably one will be set up in Cheras while another will be launched in Penang very soon.

Chong Wei Dynasty currently offers tinting and bodykits for Toyota Alphard and Toyota Estima owners. It will also offer accessories such as front/rear camera, original head unit, home theatre system, front and rear light clusters, side mirror and etc.

In the pipeline is a customized headrest similar to those found in the 2nd generation Alphard but it will comes with a monitor to cater for both Toyota Alphard and Toyota Estima.

Dato’ Lee Chong Wei used to own a 1st generation Toyota Alphard. He was a regular customer of Dynasty for several years and recently he has upgraded to a Vellfire. He also has other cars but his passion with Alphard has given him a strong desire to be involved in the auto accessories industry hence the idea of joining force with Dynasty to launch the Chong Wei Dynasty (CWD) brand.

To cater for the needs of more Toyota MPV owner, CWD will be offering a 0% interest payment plan with selected bank for the purchase of CWD products. This will probably make it more affordable and attract a lot more potential buyers from Toyota MPV owners.

I am just another customer of Dynasty and I have no affiliation with either Dynasty Auto Parts Sdn Bhd or Chong Wei Dynasty.

I consider Dynasty as a more capable accessories shop then many other as they have the right tools and trained personnel to work on my giant. I have been with them for a year now and they have cater to my needs.

In my chat with the shop keeper I discovered that it is unfortunate but a risk of doing business dealing with Toyota parts! The unfortunate part is that Toyota Japan has such a high regards to the quality of their parts that they only offer 3 days warranty to their buyers. Buyer like Dynasty have to order the parts, imported it back to Malaysia and by the time the parts arrived, it is already more than 45 days. So for every part that Dynasty offers, they carry the risk of void warranty! It is understandable now why Dynasty pricing is slightly higher as they carry the risk of void warranty while their pricing includes warranty support.

With that in mind, it is clear that with the launching of CWD brand and some parts being sourced locally, this will reduce the overall price hence benefitting the local Toyota MPV owners.

A Casual Trip Around Penang Island With My Toyota Alphard

2010-03-30T22:22:00.000+08:00

After the AOC Northern TT, I stay back two more days in Penang and took the opportunity to travel around the island. I stay in a hotel in Tanjung Bungah which has a nice view to the sea.

The beach in front of the hotel

Nice sunset view

The next day, I took a slow drive up to Batu Ferringi and Teluk Bahang to check out some of the hotels and beaches there.

A nice stretch of beach in Teluk Bahang

After that I head south to check out Queensbay Mall. I have heard about this new shopping mall from TV quite often and always wonder how it look like. Well I finally get to step inside the mall and look around some of the shops. It gave me an impression that it is similar to our Mid Valley Mall in KL.

From the open car park outside the mall, it has a nice view of the Penang Bridge as well as Pulau Jerejak.

The bridge is too far. The right patch of land is Pulau Jerejak

After lunch, I head further south toward Batu Maung again looking for a fishing village to buy some seafood. The timing was just right when I reach the village as the fishermen just got back from sea with their catches.

The entrance to the fishing village

The signboard on the left in the photo above is the same restaurant where the AOC Northern TT was held the night before. The right signboard shows the way to a small fishing village about 50meter away.

I bought a kilo of big prawn for RM36 only which is rather cheap compared to what you can get in KL. I only bought the prawn as I wasn't sure what fish to buy as they have so many variety.

One kilo of big prawn, yummy

After that I head back north to visit USM. It has been more than 23 years since I left this university so a lot has changed. Some of the old hostel that I had stayed before are no longer in their former form. Most of the old wooden long houses are now replaced with multi-story building.

Driving around the campus in the giant feel a bit odd compare to those time when I ride around in a 80cc motorbike!

I went up to the Chancellery Rock to try to catch a glimpse of the Penang Bridge and Pulau Jerejak.

The Chancellory hasn't changed much

This spot used to be the favourite place for undergraduates to come here to catch a view of the open sea as well as looking out to the majestic Penang Bridge then. However that view is no longer visible anymore. Right in front of the campus now stands the Penang Twin Tower which block off most of the middle section of the bridge.

The Penang Twin Tower!

To the right, there used to be a clear view of Pulau Jerajak but now that view is blocked by condominiums that sprung up recently.

After I have spent some time checking out various schools building in the campus, just as I did 23 years ago, I passed the small roundabout at the top of the slope heading toward the main gate.

The sculpture that greet all newcomers.

In the middle of the roundabout is a stone-made sculpture that has two sides with different carving. The front section facing the entrance is rough which signify that those who are entering the university is still unpolished. The rear section which you'll see as your drive out is smooth to indicate that (hopefully) you have learned wisely and bring with you your newfound knowledge and ready to go out to face the world. With that I bid farewell to USM again.

On the way back to the hotel, I drop by at Ghee Hiang to buy some Penang biscuits (tau sar pneah and hneoh pneah) as souvenier for the relatives.

I spent the night meeting up with my former univeristy mates before I left for KL the next day.

Clear traffic on Penang Bridge toward Butterworth

Traffic on the way back to KL is smooth but slow as there are a lot of traffics. As this is the week before All Soul Day, a lot of people took the opportunity to go back to their home town to pay respect to their ancestors. That's why the traffic over the weekend in Penang was very bad.

I am not sure when I will visit Penang again but I thoroughly enjoy this trip.

A Trip To The North To Join AOC Northern TT

2010-03-30T02:58:00.000+08:00

Last Friday, the AOC members organized their TTs at three different locations simultaneously. The northern group has scheduled their TT long time ago and when the central and southern groups found out, they also decided to hold their TT at the same time.

The idea was to hold the TT at each location and then each location will provide live updates via Internet. However I guess it didn’t work out that way since the TT location for the northern group was not ideal for Internet access. Updates were done via mobile phone so there is no live images beam across locations.

I was informed of the TT at the last minute hence I was undecided whether to attend or not. Then I found out that one member of the central group is heading up north to join the northern group TT. That’s gave me an idea that I should make a trip up north too. Besides joining the northern group TT, I also want to take this opportunity to visit Penang as I haven’t been there for quite a while.

I graduated from USM so it is probably a good time for me to go back to the campus and check out the place to see how has it progress since I left there 23 years ago. Also I wanted to meet up with some of my university mates from Penang that I have not met for many years. So good enough reason to take a long drive!

This is also a good time to give my giant another long distance run as the last one I did was 7 months ago. I left Kuala Lumpur city at around 2:45pm and the drive up north was rather casual. The original plan was to meet up with another AOC member at Ipoh and then convoy together from there. However due to last minute changes I didn’t stop by at Ipoh. Instead I stopped at Sg. Perak R&R area to wait for two other AOC members, one from KL and another from Cameron Highland.

The 3 giants then convoy together the rest of the journey to Penang Island.

Crossing the Penang Bridge

The traffic on a Friday afternoon is pretty smooth and we arrive at Penang around 6pm and had to bear with the after work hour traffic before we reach our hotel respectively.

Before Hitting the After Work Jam

Once we have freshen up, we meet up again at E-Gate with the rest of the AOC members coming from other locations before we convoy to our final destination.

Checkpoint Behind E-Gate

The convoy took off from E-Gate heading toward a restaurant in Batu Maung. As we had to wait for everyone to depart together, it was rather late when we reach our final destination.

Where We Had Our Dinner

This TT is slightly different from the other I have attended as we have a sit-down dinner instead of a teh tarik session. We only have 11 giants in our convoy but we had 40 attendees sharing the foods in 4 tables.

Two Of The Tables With Food Ready

This is slightly different from other TT as the family members of the AOC members are more involved in this TT compared to others.

AOC Memebr Enjoying Their Foods

Also it is commendable that some non-AOC members actually took the trouble to join us at the very last minute at the invite of one of the AOC members. One of them was in Muar in the morning and after he fetch his family, drove all the way up to Penang. Another was visiting Sg. Petani and drop by last minute to join the TT.

It was nice to see all the family members enjoyed the TT and have their share of fun along the way.

After the dinner, the group convoyed back to an open car park at E-Gate and start to have a group photo session and the customary showing off each other cars and sharing of technical information.

Line Up For Photo Shoot

As it is getting late, those with family have to leave early while other proceeds to Padang Kota Lama for the real teh tarik session. However the nearby stalls at Esplanade are closing at 1am so the group only spent a short time there before we all call it a day.

All in all, it was a good TT as we have very good turn out from the members and their family. Not only the AOC members get to enjoy this outing, their family members also can share their passion during the TT.

I think this is a good sign that the TT for AOC members are more family oriented and I believed more and more members will bring their family to such future events.

Having done a northern TT, I am wondering if I will be doing a southern one in future.

Late Reminder From Your IES Alarm

2010-03-26T14:20:00.002+08:00

Yesterday after I reached my brother house with my giant, as usual I pressed the remote to lock the car. However the alarm system beep 8 times instead of the normal 3 beeps. I checked around the car and make sure that all doors are closed and tried again, still it keep beeping 8 times.

Since it is already late in the day so I left it as it is since the doors are locked and the alarm is armed. I just don't know what is going on at that time.

The next morning I decided to call the installer and only to find out that this is a indication that the SIM card is not functioning. That remind me that I have to renew my pre-paid SIM card. I bought one of those 360-days pre-paid validity SIM card last year and I thought it is not due yet.

Well today I went to Maxis to check on the status of the SIM card and apparently it expired two days ago. So SIM card is no longer functioning hence the alarm system is "smart" enough to warn the owner.

However since that pre-paid SIM card is already expired, there is no way to renew it and the only option is to buy a new SIM card. Also the alarm module is concealed inside the dashboard I have no way of replacing the SIM card mysef.

I sent the car to the installer shop to get the SIM card replaced and now everything is back to normal.

I know some of you have been asking me about the IES alarm. I thought I want to share this with you in case you are also using pre-paid SIM card. Remember to top-up your pre-paid SIM card regularly or use a post-paid SIM card.

I spoke to the installer enquiring about the price of the IES GSM alarm and it seems the price that my installer got for me is much cheaper than the suggested reselling price given by the official dealer. Also the IES alarm with the suffix M that I am using now is no longer available. It is replace with a MS model now which carry a higher price than previous model.

Just for comparison sake, the dealer quoted me the RM2,600 for the IES GM60MS model. You can get it cheaper if you go to other accessories shop to install it.

Hope this help.

Update. A reader reminded me that the manual for IES GSM alarm does provide explanation on the 8 beeps reminder. It stated that "1. No GSM coverage this could imply: No network coverage, Sim Card not functioning properly, among others."

I guess I hasn't been reading the manual since the day I install the alarm!

Should I Keep the Forum Alive?

2010-03-24T01:18:00.000+08:00

The original idea of setting up the AlphardOwnerClub.com forum was to provide an alternative to those members who wanted to have their own forum as they move away from AlphardAsiaClub.com forum. Also the domain was acquire in anticipation of the setting up of an official Alphard Owner Club and this domain will be used for that registration, hence becoming the official website for that club.

However since the inception of this forum, things has change quite a bit hence it is time to review if there is a need to keep this forum alive. Currently it is kept alive as an information source as it is felt that some of the discussions and reference information might still be relevant to those who want to learn more about Toyota Alphard.

However since the last major meeting among the members from various regions in October last year, it was agreed that all active Toyota Alphard owners will participate only in one forum which is the AlphardAsiaClub.com forum. Since the domain registration for AlphardOwnerClub.com is still active therefore it is decided that it should be kept open until such time when the official Alphard Owner Club is registered and then a decision will be made on the existence of this forum.

However, lately there has been a lot of registration of new members from the western world that has no presence of Toyota Alphard in their own country. Most of the IP addresses shown that they are coming from UK, USA, Canada, and Russia.

I think most of these registration are done by the so call "robots" that go out to search for forum and try to do an automatic registration. The idea is that once they are registered, they can either spam the forum with whatever they have to offer or try to trick members to click on certain link that will cause some malicious codes to be executed and infect their PC.

Luckily the Alphard Owner Club forum is set to required activation before anyone can participate in the forum. Therefore those registrations can be safely rejected and remove from the forum.

However the frequency of new registration is getting higher and higher each week so clearning up these new registration become a chore. I am thinking of temporary shutting down this forum for now. If you are registered in this forum, please take note that this forum will no longer be active from April Fool day.

If you have any other questions on this forun, you can post a comment here or send me an email at askds@live.com

Why Do You Choose Toyota Alphard

2010-03-21T11:04:00.011+08:00

I had a discussion with another giant owner and we go were sharing why we love our giant.

We summarized that the two main factors why we fall in love with Toyota Alphard because:

We like the style of Alphard, the spacious, comfortable interior and the abundance features.

From anywhere, any place or anytime you see Alphard from far or near, you'll see the sharp edge and muscular look of the Alphard from the front or the 3/4 view.
There are plenty of space inside the Alphard. You can stretch your leg straight anywhere inside the Alphard, be it in the front, the middle seats or the rear seats. You normally expect this kind of spaciouness in a limosine and now find it in the Alphard.

The seats in the Alphard are comfortable. You can slide the middle seat along it track to accommodate whatever space size you need. Unfortunately the 2nd generation Alphard has do away with this sliding middle seat feature.
The Alphard is fitted with a long list of features that is ahead of many of it competitors (even as early as 2005). It has DVD, MP3, Mini-disk, HDD, Satellite navigation (only in Japan), bluetooth, front and rear camera, sonar sensors, cruise control (two versions), power sliding doors, roof-mounted LCD, Automated Front Lighting System (AFS), sunroof/moonroof, electric curtains, heater seats, sound theatre system etc etc.

The Alphard is easy to drive, it is rather quiet, smooth revving and bring a fresh look to the local automotive industry. Although some who are used to the soild build of the continental car tends to think the Alphard can do better in the sound proofing department.

Of course we also agreed that it is a Toyota brand. Toyota car is know to be reliable and easy to maintain. The fact that it share the same engine and mechanical components with Toyota Harrier, Camry, and Estima means that there are plenty of spare parts and venue to maintain your giant.

The low point of the Alphard is the it is not generous in fuel consumption. Of course we can't expect too much from a car that weight almost two tons. After all it is fitted with petrol engine and fuel consumption depends on how heavy is your right foot!

We think the the 3.0L 1MZ-FE has plenty of torque and horsepower to drive the Alphard. However with a maximum speed limit of 180k/h, you can't fully utilized the full power of the 1MZ-FE engine on our road. Most owner of the 3.0L model will probably be cruising at the official speed limit on highway so the 1MZ-FE power is under-utilized.

The common complain about the driveability of the Alphard is that it understeer when pressing into corner. It has soft suspension setup (for comfort) so you cannot throw the giant around corners.

The evergreen 2AZ-FE engine has been around for a long time and it has powered many generation of Camry, Estima and Harrier. It is long lasting, economical and has lower road tax. Despite it lower power rating, it can still haul the Alphard on long haul or short trip. I have take it up to Genting Highland with the incline from 20-30 degree and I don't need to use 2nd or 3rd gear at all.

It would be nice if the Alphard come fitted with a diesel model.

So what's your reason for choosing your giant?

Update Maintenance Schedule for Toyota Alphard

2010-03-20T11:49:00.001+08:00

Previously I shared with you a maintenance schedule a reader of mine gave me.

He has graciously provided an updated copy to me and I would like to share with everyone.

Click the link below to download the updated schedule.

Maintenance Schedule for Toyota Alphard

The schedule is now in Excel spreadsheet format. There are a "Status" column for each maintenance interval that you can tick off each of the maintenance item after every service.

Let me know if this maintenance schedule is helpful to you.

If any owner of 1MZ-FE has a maintenance schedule that he/she would to share with other, you can sent it to me at askds@live.com.

As I continue to learn more about the 2AZ-FE engine, I found the Haynes Repair Manual for Toyota Camry which share the same engine with our giant. If you want to learn more on how to maintain your giant, you might want to get a copy through link above.

Hope this help.

A Trip Up The Hill With Toyota Alphard

2010-03-19T22:48:00.000+08:00

For a long time I wanted to take my giant (Toyota Alphard) up to Genting Highland but never get a chance to do that.

Some AOC members have been sharing their experiences of driving their giant up the hill and some of them are not too happy with their giant capability. Some say the suspension is too soft to handle those corners and slopes while other said they felt the 2AZ-FE engine is too sluggish.

I wanted to test out these two areas with my own giant so I took a trip up the "hill".

The stretch from the Gombak toll to the foothill is an easy drive as there was not much traffic. The last stretch of the road before reaching the foothill is an uphill slope followed by S curve before entering the slip road toward hill. I didn't have any problem with this stretch as I just hang on to the throttle and let the gearbox do it job. There is no kick-down at all so there is plenty of torque from the 2AZ-FE engine to handle that stretch.

As I start the ascent, there were some light traffic so I just let off the throttle and follow the queue. Once I passed the police hut I start to tackle the corners going up the hill. I decided leave the gear in 4th and continue to use the aircon and see how the giant perform.

As I ascent I continue to lightly hold on to the pedal and let the gearbox to it job. At several places after I come out from the corner it slight upshift on it own momentarily to maintain the speed. From the first police hut until the second police beat I didn't have to kick-down manually once. I felt that there is sufficient torque to pull the car up the hill so I continue to drive at a leisure pace.

After the second police hut right at the small roundabout next to the entrance to Awana Genting Resort, I decided to switch off the aircon. With the aircon switch off, the giant now feel much lighter and I continue to drive at an leisure pace up the next stretch of road. I didn't switch to 3rd gear as I want to see how the giant perform at 4th gear. Even though this stretch of road is steeper, the giant can easily pull itself up the slope without any problem.

Even at the steepest corner, all I need is to let off the gas pedal, turn the corner and then lightly tap on the pedal to continue the journey. I didn't felt any drama at all as far as negotiating the corners are concerned.

I stop at the car park just right below the Ria Apartment to take a snapshot of the giant.

The giant might look big but against the backdrop of the car park the building behind it, it looks a bit small!

When I reached the peak, I decided not to park in any of the covered car park as I am not sure of their height. I choose to park at the open car park next to the Genting Resort Hotel just behind the theme park.

I saw a lot of Alphard and Estima at the open car park as well so these people have no problem getting their giant up the hill as well. I spend some time up on the peak looking at surrounding before I start my journey home.

The decent is very smooth as there were not much traffic at that hour. I shift the gear to the 3rd throughout the journey except the flat section in front of Gotong Jaya. I kept the speed of the giant below 60km/h on most of the stretch. With this speed, there is ample time to brake before each of those road humps and take the corners. The brake of our giant is sufficient to slowdown the car before each hump and also when you go a bit too fast, the gearbox will also momentarily upshift slightly to help to slow down the giant.

Overall I didn't find a lot of body roll when I negotiate any of the corners nor I felt there is any squatting from the suspension. I suppose it is because I am not using the stock absorbers. I have fitted a set of TRD Waydo Sportivo absorbers some time ago and it probably help to reduce the body roll. I don't know if this is the same with the stock absorbers set up. I think the wider 17-inch tyres I have also help a bit on the stability of the giant maneuvering those corners.

Even though I was driving it leisurely there is sufficient grunt from the engine to pull the giant up the hill without much drama. I believe if you have a full load of passengers, pressing the pedal harder would have no problem in taking your giant up the hill too.

Overall I don't feel any sluggishness from the 2AZ-FE engine if you can throttle the engine properly. If you are driving the 1MZ-FE then I would think it would be an no issue with your giant going up the hill.

I have driven up the hill many times with other smaller size cars and I must say the giant gave me a very comfortable ride going up the hill. As long as you are not in a rush to reach the peak, the giant can maintain it comfort level even going up the hill.

So, what is your experience driving your giant up the hill?

Maintenance Schedule for Toyota Alphard

2010-03-05T19:56:00.000+08:00

I have a reader who drive a 2.4L Toyota Alphard has come out with his own maintenance schedule. This schedule is based on the maintenance schedule published by UMW for Camry. I think it is useable since our giant share the same 2AZ-FE engine with the local Camry model. He has kindly sent me a copy so I thought I would like to share it with the rest as well.

You can get the schedule from this link.

Since I didn't purchased all the parts listed in the schedule before I cannot confirm all the parts numbers. I can only confirmed that the part numbers for oil filter (90915-YZZE2) and air filter element (17801-28010) as I have bought them personnally.

Since a reader also asked me where can he get original Toyota spare parts, I thought of listing the two that I know of in this post.

If you are looking for original Toyota spare parts for your giant, you can get it from either:

Wing Hin Auto Supplies Sdn Bhd
Wisma Wing Hin
No 27-5, Jalan Loke Yew,
55200 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 603-9221 8867 Fax: 603-9221 9217
E-mail: spareparts@winghin.com

or

ST AUTO SPARES SDN. BHD.

No. 97, Jalan Ipoh,
51200 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Tel: 603-4042-1669 Fax: 603-4042-2782
E-mail: parts@stauto.com.my
Website: http://www.stauto.com.my/

I am not related to either of these companies. I just happen to have bought original spare parts from them before and they are two of the largest Toyota spare parts dealers in Malaysia.

Hope this help

Just Serviced My Toyota Alphard

2010-03-03T16:45:00.003+08:00

I just serviced my giant (Toyota Alphard) today and I thought I want to share my experience here.

Previously I wrote about the myth of maintaining the giant and I think I have debunk that myth today. Regular maintenance of your giant doesn't has to be expensive.

As I prepared to for my regular maintenance I bought the following spare parts on my own:

1. Original Toyota Oil Filter (90915-YZZE2) - RM24
2. 4.0L of Penzoil 10W-30 mineral oil - RM48
3. Workmanship for the service - RM10

So my expenses for this service only cost me RM72!

I have been hearing from many sources that Toyota Service Cente actually uses engine oil supplied by Penzoil. I decided to give this a try this time as it meet the engine oil specification as specify in the owner manual.

I didn't change the air filter element because it is still very clean since the last change. The workshop personnel did check through the rest of the maintainence items like brake fluid, brake pad etc and they are all found to be in good order so there is no need to change/service them.

In fact I bought more than I needed this time as I just wanted to be ready. I also bought

4. 4.0L Toyota Original Automatic Transmission Oil () - RM72
5. Oil Pan Gasket for Automatic Transmission (35168-21020) - RM 26
6. Original Toyota Long Life Coolant (Red - 088891L) - RM18

However after the workshop foreman checked the automatic transmission oil, it is still pretty clean and he suggested not to change the transmission fluid this time. Also he doesn't recommend to just change the coolant as the coolant in the tank still show plenty of red colour. In fact they only recommend to change the coolant when they service the radiator and not on regular basis. So now I have some spare parts with me that I will probably use it on my other car (which incidently also can use the Toyota automatic transmission oil).

I know an owner of new generation Alphard from Singapore than come down to Kuala Lumpur regularly and his regular maintenance of his giant is also pretty similar to mine. Change the engine oil and oil filter at every 5,000km and then he is back to the island again.

Also spare parts for Toyota Alphard is not difficult to find. In fact many parts are share among different Toyota model so you can always find original Toyota parts for your giant. The oil filter that I bought with part number 90915-YZZE2 has the following Toyota engines series written on it label:

4A-G series
3S-GTE series (excl. Celica ST165)
2Y, 3Y, AZ series

If you do your maintenance regularly, it is not expensive at all for routine maintenance of your beloved giant.

Edit: Actually the workshop I used is located in Kampung Sungei Kayu Ara. I don't know why I mentioned Sungei Penchala which is in another area in PJ.

Disconnect The Battery If You Don't Plan To Drive Your Toyota Alphard For A Long Time

2010-02-24T03:24:00.001+08:00

Somehow I didn't get the chance to drive my giant (Toyota Alphard) over the Chinese New Year holiday periods. I was planning to drive the giant to visit relatives and friends as part of the CNY tradition of getting together. Somehow I just left the giant and took the other cars out all the time and didn't even remember to start the car for once in more than 7 days.

So when I try to start the giant today it just won't start. I can hear rattling sound from the engine bay but it just won't kick start the car. The immobiliser indicator on the stachometer started to flash once I pull out the key so I initially thought it has something to do with the immobiliser. However since the flashing light goes off once the key is inserted again, it is obvious that the immobiliser is working properly.

Since I ICEd my car so I have one of those volt meter display installed next to the battery. It was showing around 11.5v which is just slightly less than the required voltage to kickstart the engine. Given that the giant has a large alternator it really need all the power from the battery to start the engine. Interestingly that at this voltage the power door still can be operated (I wanted to test it to see how bad the battery was). Looks like the power door motor don't required so much juice to drive the power door.

Also the IES alarm system I installed doesn't seems to be affected. It continue to operate without any hitch. This is different from other alarm system where the alarm will make annoying buzzing sound when it detected the battery is weak. I think the reason being that this alarm comes with a battery pack that continue to power the system even though the car battery is weak.

Anyway I borrowed a jumper cable from a nearby workshop and jump-started the engine. After driving the giant for a while now the battery is re-charged and maintain a voltage above 12.5v which is sufficient to start the engine. Once the engine is started the voltage will fluctuate between 13.9v to 14.1v.

I must remind myself to frequently start the engine every other day even though I haven't been driving my giant lately. Now you know why every morning the dealers will ask their worker to start the engine of every cars they have on display in the showroom. This is to ensure that the battery are probably charged while the car is on display.

Toyota Alphard AS Prime Selection

2010-02-10T01:14:00.000+08:00

I have read about the Toyota Alphard 2.4L AS Prime Selection in many places but have never really seen once until today. My SA called me today he has one unit just arrived and I quickly grab my camera and drop by this place to take a few photo shots. In this article I will share with you what I have found in a Prime Selection.

It is a 2006 Pearl White 2.4L AS Prime Selection (Prime Selection is the trim for AS-G Alphard G while Premium Selection is the trim for AS-G Alphard V).

As usual I will check the toolbox cover and confirmed that this is a '06 model (July 2006).

This car carry the standard model code for AS which is PRPSK and I think the suffix K is for the Prime Selection.

The engine is the standard 2AZ-FE 2.4L model and surprisingly the engine compartment is very clean even though the exterior is pretty dirty as it has not been washed yet.

From the front or the rear you can't tell the diffrenent between the normal AS and AS Prime Selection. Most of the differences are in the interior.

This AS Prime Selection comes with the following features:

The panels on the dashboard and the doors are orange wood colour. Normal AS have black wood panel.

The seats are Alcantara Suede Leather. Actually they are semi-leather where the middle section of each seat are make of Alcantara materials while the side are make of Suede leather.

The AS Prime Selection comes with beige colour seats compared to the black colour seats on normal AS.

Other interior features are pretty standard as those in the normal AS.

It comes with twin power doors and AFS projector lights.

It has a lane monitoring system and a power boot too. However it doesn't come with adjustable suspension.

It has a standard Optiron meter and the mileage on this car is still pretty low.

The head unit is original but without theatre sound system. It also doesn't come with a roof-mounted LCD.

It has a multi-function steering and come standard with 3 cameras - front, rear and passenger side mirror.

This is the view of the 3rd camera from under the passenger side mirror. This feature is only available in the late 2006 and 2007 model.

Another nice feature that comes with this car is the bicycle rack fitted at the rear of the car. It looks like a factory fitted feature.

On the exterior, it carry the stock factory 17-inch rims but the tires are rather worn. This doesn't reflect the mileage on the car but I guess we can't really tell if this is the original tires that come with this car.

It also comes with keyless entry feature for the driver door only. I also learned how to use the keyless entry method from my SA. it is interesting to know that little black button on the door handle is not for opening the door. In fact it is designed to lock the door. It is very difficult to describe in words how to open the door using the keyless entry method. Anyway this is the same system used in the 2nd generation Alphard/Vellfire so those owners would know how.

Not sure if this is specific to the Prime Selection but the owner manual booklet bag is also make of Alcantara-like materials which look very classy.

As I explore further I even found a Pre-Delivery Inspection Sheet for this car before it left Japan.

The date on the delivery checklist is Nov 2009 which is very recent and there is no major areas that needs attention of the new owner.

The asking price for this unit is RM215k before negotiation. My SA said this will be come with a local AP.

I think this is a rare model and anyone who buy it will have a one of a kind model around. Not sure who will be the lucky owner of this car.

Feb 2010 AOC TT

2010-02-08T01:35:00.000+08:00

Last night I join the AOC's TT held in the same old place. It was like an anniversary to the very first major TT they held a year ago in the same location. Back in January last year many founding members of AOC gathered at the location and mooted the idea to form AOC. AOC stands for Alphard Owner Club and it is a gathering of owners of Toyota Alphard.

Since then many founding members have drifted away from AOC so it was nice to meet up with them again last night. I have also not sign on the AOC for almost half a year so I have not meet many of the old faces so I am glad I turn up. As usual many new AOC members also joined the TT to get to meet other members and put some nicks into faces.

From 9:00pm onward, many AOC members started coming in and by 10:30pm we filled a long tables with 16 owners chatting away enthusiatically. The topics of discussions again center around what have other done to their giant (AOC members like to call their Toyota Alphad as giant) and how is their ownership experiences. By about 11:00pm, every decided that it is the customary viewing time for each other giants. Everyone marched to the parking lot outside the cafe and gather around each other giants. Some owners showcase their modifications on the exterior while other climb inside to admire the interior of others giant.

Again I had a busy times answering some questions from newer members on certain features of their giant.

Previously I wrote that retroffiting a feature doesn't equal original was evident in one of the AOC member's giant. He asked me a question what is that "extra" button on his dashboard that he never touches before. After experiementing with the button for a while I confirm that it is the button for the front camera.

As mentioned previously accessory shop here can retrofit a front camera for those giant that doesn't come with a front camera but they can't retrofit the button onto the steering wheel to operate the front camera. This giant already has a front camera button on the steering wheel but it doesn't operate the front camera. When you push that extra button on the dashboard to "ON" position, it switch on the front camera and the front camera view appear on the head unit monitor.

The problem with this kind of retrofitting is that the button operate independent of the ignition switch. That means you can turn on the front camera even when the engine is not started. This means that the owner has to remember to switch off the front camera every time he switch off the engine. Otherwise the front camera (and the head unit monitor) will continue to operate even when the car is not running.

One interesting thing that come out of the disussion is that many owner don't know what's the use of the "AC 100V" button. I have previously highlighted what are those buttons in our giant and briefly cover this button as well.

I also had some interesting discussion with the members on the power sliding door. We experimented with one of the member giant and confirmed that once the petrol tank cover is opened the power door on the passenger side cannot be operated electrically. We can manually pull the power door open and then push it toward the back of the car and it just stop short of hitting the petrol tank cover. There is a built in "stopper" that "sense" that the petrol tank cover is opened and the door will not move any further.

Another test we did is to lower the windows on the passenger side power door. It can be operated electrically and again it will stop half way. This confirm my observation that it has built in safety feature. This feature prevent incident where young kid who stick their head out of the window from hitting the rear panel when the power door is slide open.

Another member encountered an issue with his passenger side power door not opening electrically. Since I didn't remember what's the procedure to reset the power door, I was not able to help him on the spot. I did tell him to send me an email so that I can show him the procedure.

Time passes very quickly and by midnight, many members start to leave and only a few remaining die-hard members stay back and chatted until almost 12:45am before they bid goodbye to each other.

You Can Only Record Songs But Not Extract It from the Head Unit

2010-01-30T01:34:00.001+08:00

The head unit on the NFL model has a firewire port. I have always wanted to see if I can connect to the hard disk in the head unit via a firewire interface. If it is possible I want to know if I can either copy the tracks out from the hard disk or copy songs from external storage device into the hard disk.

For a long time I have been trying to get the firewire interface to work and to recognize the hard disk controller on my notebook. However despite trying different firewire device drivers I was not able to make it work. The hard disk controller on the head unit always give a "device unknown" message. Since then I have given up on it.

A reader of mine is currently in Japan and he visited Toyota Osaka showroom with his Japanese counter-part (who act as a translator for him). They were told by the Toyota representative that it is not possible to download or upload song to the head unit through any kind of connection via computer. The firewire port in the head unit is solely for the the purpose of updating the GPS maps.

I am not convinced but I guess without knowing what kind of interface they used for the connection, there is no way to confirm this. Also I consider both songs and GPS maps as just data passing through the firewire cable. There must be another reason for the representative to give the this answer.

The obvious reason must be due to copyright infringment issue. Knowing that the Japanese is very strict with any copyright issue they don't encourage anyone to find out how the interface work hence downloaded the copyrighted songs illegally. Also in Japan, the G-Book function allowed copyrighted songs to be downloaded from the G-Book Center over-the-air by paying customers. Therefore Toyota will want to protect these copyrighted songs from being downloaded from the hard disk illegally.

The alternative for us in the oversea market is to record your favourite songs on the a CD, play it on the head unit and then the songs are recorded into the hard disk. Once the songs is recorded it can only be erased and not extracted.

Do note that the head unit in the Toyota Alphard is manufactered and tested to accept original CD cater for the Japanese domestic market only. If you are going to put a CD-R (either you buy it or burned your own), there is no gaurantee that it will work well with the original head unit. There has been cases where owner inserted non-original CD and it get stucked in the CD cartridge.

Therefore if you love Japanese songs and your giant comes with many Japanese songs then consider this as bonuses. I lost mine when I was tinkering with the head unit configuration settings! Not a biggie but I just couldn't find those nice Japaense songs anymore as I don't know their titles.

You Can't Open the Power Door When You Are Fueling

2010-01-29T01:33:00.001+08:00

I had an email from a reader saying that he has a problem with the left side power door when he was fueling the car at the petrol station.

Well this is a protection mechanism built into the power door to ensure that the power door doesn't hit the petrol tank inlet cover. When the left hand side power door is fully opened, it cover the entire petrol tank inlet cover. If the power door is allowed to operate when the cover is opened it will hit it which is something we don't want.

Therefore when the petrol tank cover is opened you cannot operate the left hand side power door either with the power door button on the dashboard or the power door button on the remote control unit. If you try to open the left hand side power door manually it will open but you need a bit of force to do that. As you start to slide it toward the rear of the car it will stop half way without hitting the petrol tank cover (smart). This is the fail-safe mechanism built into the power sliding door..

The right hand side power door is not affected when the petrol tank cover is opened.

There was another question on whether the buzzer sound of the power door opening and closing can be eliminated. Well I have been trying to find an answer to this and so far can't figure out whether this can be done. I highly doubt it but until I get an official answer I'll keep this in mind. Some people suggested to disconenct the speaker that emit the sound but I think that just counter-intuitive.

Can The Sound Proofing in the Toyota Alphard Be Improved?

2010-01-28T01:56:00.001+08:00

It has been a while I met with a fellow Toyota Alphard owner in person. I seen a lot of giants on the road around my area but it is just like another car on the road that you gave a glance but never come into contact.

The last time I met with a reader in person is to help him to look for his giant.

Last weekend I met up with anohter of my reader of this blog in a secluded place.

The place is just nice to have a private chat on our giant without anyone bothering us. The shade is just right to protect us from the hot sun.

The meeting was arrange impromptu as this reader was asking me through email what can he do to improve the sound proofing of his gaint. He recently acquired a '06 AS and he found that he can hear quite clearly a lot of noise from passing vehicle or motorbike either in low speed or high speed.

Since I don't faced such a problem I thought it would be better to meet up and then check out his AS. At least we can compare note as both of us are driving the NFL model.

Well we had a very pleasant chat on everything Alphard. Being new to his car he has a lot of questions and I tried my best to answered them. Both of us drove each other giant and we concluded that his giant sound proofing is not as good as mine.

I did check the rubbers on al the doors and they look ok to me.Other than the noisy tires that he had I couldn't find out why his giant is slightly less sound proofed than mine. After a long discussion, we concluded that one possibility if that the source of the intruding noise could be coming from the privacy glass.

His privacy glass was taken out to do the Puspakom inspection and then later was sent for tinting before refitted back to the giant. There might be some gaps that are not properly sealed that cause the external noise intruding into the interior. Still this is only our speculation and we can only ascertain if he goes back to ask his dealer to look into the fitting of the privacy glasses.

Another annoying thing he pointed out to me is that whenever the giant is going over rough patches of road, the rear seats will be making a lot of rattling noise. He think that his previous Toyota Vios has less rattling noise than his giant.

Well this is expected since the rear seats are sitting on the rail track so there is always some free movement hence the rattling noise. There is a common problem where the clips holding the base of the third row seats can come loose hence causing consistent rattling noise when the car is on the move. I sat at the back row and didn't find anything unusual. The seats on a sedan is permanently fixed to the floor so the chance of it moving and making rattling noise is very rare.

There are some shops that does special rubber lining for the doors and boot to reduce the intrusion of external noise coming into the car. However I feel that unless it is absolutely necessary no point spending the extra money just to get a little improvement.
We spent quite a bit of time checking out the features in each other giant. I let him audition my ICE setup and planted a bit of "poison" to him on ICEing his giant!

One interesting note is that this reader is really following my blog to the dots. He even show me his printout of all my blog posts that is relevant to him and binded them into a (so-called) maintenance manual. I really appreciate his patient and passion in doing that.

How To Find The Information You Need?

2010-01-14T22:29:00.000+08:00

Lately as I read and responded to private emails from my reader, I realized that some of my readers are having a bit of difficulty in finding the right information to help them with their ownership of their giant (Toyota Alphard).

As the number of blog posts increases, some of the useful posts is no longer easy to find from the index page. As in any blogging platform the latest posts will go on the first page while the older posts will not be visible unless you go through the pages or search the archive.

The archive in the blogger.com platform is display by month and only the recent month entries are expanded by default in the index page. Therefore going through the archive to find the information you need is tedious and time consuming. This is one of the drawback of a blogspot blog compared to a hosted WordPress blog. I can't complain much since blogger.com is FREE.

I have recently included category into the my index page but then the category doesn't give you the context of the posts it linked to. Clicking any of the category link will bring you to all posts categoried under it. You still have to go through each pages to read through the content to find the information you need.

Therefore I decided to create an index page for all the posts that are relevant to help my reader with their ownership experience. This index page is like an FAQ related to our giant.

Please note that the FAQ apply mostly to the NFL model which I own.

You can find the index page here.

Hope this help

One Year On With My Toyota Alphard

2010-01-11T18:11:00.003+08:00

Today is the one year anniversary of my ownership of the giant. Can't believed that time flies so fast and now the car is one year older. Mileage wise it is still pretty low as I hardly drive the car nowaday. So far I have only clocked about 10,000km for the full year in 2009!

Overall the ownership experience has been very pleasant. The giant hasn't given me any problem so far. Other than that once in a while crackling sound from the steering knuckle in the morning there is no other problem encountered so far. That is probably a testimony to the quality of Toyota car that I have heard off but never experienced it until now. It is funny that I have been a Honda fan for so long (I owned 4 Honda cars before) and none of them have given me the same ownership experience as my giant.

Other than the mis-fortune of an attempted break-in which cost me quite a bit, the maintenance of this gentle giant is very low. So far I have only done one maintenance service which cost me about RM400, I have not spend any other amount on maintenance other than the routine petrol costs. Out of the RM400, more than half of it is for the fully synthetic engine oil that I have chosen. Anyway I can't argue much about this as my ownership of my previous SUV costed me 3 times more within the same duration.

I have also installed a set of ICE into the giant for my own my passenger entertainment. However most of the time I drive the car alone and I thoroughly enjoyed the enhanced sound systems listening to my favourite CDs.

I have only driven the giant outstation twice! The first time was with the AOC members for their durian trip and the other was to Ipoh to attend a relative dinner function. This year I plan to take the giant for more outstation trips as much as I can.

I just change out the roadtax sticker this morning and then send the car to my regular accessory shop to fix the angel eyes. Yes one of the mod I did to the giant was to change the HID light bulbs in the front light cluster to projector lamps and added 4 angel eye rings (2 on each side). One of the ballast blown so the shop change it for me under warranty. This is the effect of the angel eyes when it is on.

Throuh 2009 I have really learned a lot about this car. I started this blog with the intention of just writing about my owership experience of the giant but it ended up more of technical know-how blog site for Toyota Alphard.

I have gotten a lot of queries and comments from my readers of my blog. I appreciate their times and efforts in readingmy blog. I hope my answers has help the readers in their ownership experiences. I have also received emails from reader asking for assistance to find their dream "giant". I am glad that I have managed to help a few of them in their purchase of their giants.

I know I haven't been blogging much lately as I am starting another project. I have a few technical posts that I wanted to finish up but have been postponing them for quite a while. I will try to find more time to write about the giant and will continue to respond to those who is looking for help on acquiring their own giant.

Cheers

Is the warranty of your giant good enough?

2009-12-22T01:59:00.004+08:00

I lost access to the Internet for couple of days as my PC “died”. It started with the Vista operating system partition extremely fragmented causing excessive disk activities.

When I try to defrag the Master File Table and the partition using the so called boot-time defragmentation the defrag software somehow go haywire. When the system rebooted it complained that the windows loader was missing. Yeah big time mistake.

I had another partition running Windows 7 so I booted it up and it “senses” that my Vista partition is corrupted and tried to recover all the orphaned files. During the recovery the PC suddenly shut down by itself.

Pressing the power button doesn’t power the system anymore. Initially I thought it was the power supply unit so I took it out and indeed it has some burn smell emitting from the power supply unit.

Since it comes with 5 years warranty so that’s good and I took it back to the computer store when I bought it. Unfortunately the warranty claim cannot be processed immediately as they have to send the unit back to the dealer to get a replacement. This whole process will take one month!

So I bought another power supply unit and upon fitted it the PC still doesn’t want to power up. Another hour of investigation and I finally found the culprit. It was the new graphic cards that I bought a month ago. The moment I removed the graphic card from the motherboard, the PC immediately power up.

Again I took the graphic card back to the computer store and initiated a warranty claim. As expected the same one month waiting period apply.

If you have assembled your own PC lately than you would know that the latest motherboard from Asus/Gigabytes doesn’t come with any onboard graphic adapter. Without a graphic card, you will not be able to connect the monitor to your PC. I can either wait for a month for the warranty claim to be processed or my PC remained non functional during this period.

So I bought another graphic card (ouch) and reassembled the PC. Now I am back online and but still sore with the warranty system for computer parts in this part of the world. Apparently they favoured the seller rather than the buyer.

Their current practice is that if you return the part within 7 days, they will give you a one-to-one replacement on the spot. If you come back after 7 days, then they put the liability back to the dealer. Some even charge your some small amount for the delivery fees to send the part back and forth from the dealer.

This is the standard practice for most of the computer parts dealer in Low Yat Plaza. The main the reason they do this is to reduce their risk of carrying too much inventory just to cater for warranty claim. Given that some components like motherboard and high end graphic cards carry a 3 year warranty nowadays. They don’t want to keep stock for that long so they put this responsibility squarely back to the dealer.

My reading of the many posts in computer forums that the warranty claims in other places like the United State is much fairer. Most warranty claim will be processed within a week and the owner can get their PC up and running again. Over here we are at the mercy of the computer parts dealers and will have to fork out money upfront to fix our computer.

This reminded me that when I bought my giant, I only have one month warranty from my dealer. Luckily my giant was in good shape so I don’t have to make any claim from the dealer. I understand that some dealer gave longer warranty period but I think at least they will honour the warranty claim.

The most the owner will have to do is to leave the car for a day or two and then you are back on the road again. In fact I would imagine that the warranty costs for any fault parts on the giant will be much more expensive than those computer parts. Well I think the warranty claim for our giant is fairer than the computer parts!

Retrofit Doesn't Equal Original

2009-12-17T21:42:00.003+08:00

I received several queries from my reader what are their options if the giant that they are looking at don’t have some of the minimum features I mentioned in this post.

I thought it would be a straight forward job to retrofit the missing features but I was wrong. Yes some of these features can be retrofitted locally but then it wouldn’t be the same like the original. I checked with my regular installer and it seems they are also providing the alternative solution meaning they can’t do the retrofit like those that come originally with the car.

For example if the giant that you are looking at don’t have the front camera, you can retrofit the front camera but then the installer cannot retrofit the front camera button onto the steering wheel for you. They will provide an alternative button somewhere at the dashboard in front of the steering wheel.

Similarly the installer that I frequent doesn’t have the know-how to retrofit the hands-free button onto the steering wheel. Therefore if a buyer wants to retrofit the Bluetooth function into the NFL model, he/she will have to find someone who is familiar with the wiring of the giant to do the retrofit. I have not come across anyone who can do this yet. One of my readers was quoted RM5K just to retrofit the Bluetoth function. I suspect the cost is so high because instead of retrofitting the button the installer is changing the whole steering wheel with one that comes with the button.

Another reader also highlighted that he is worried about the quality of the power door that is retrofitted locally. I don’t have experience on this but I think the worry is genuine. My understanding from my regular installer is that the retrofitting kit is fully imported from Japan. However I am not sure of the quality of the installation.

I have seen quite a lot of earlier batch giant from circa 2002-2003 doesn’t comes with any power doors. Also many dealers would like to entice their buyer with model that have twin power doors. They may retrofit the unit that don’t come the power door at the driver side to make it a twin power door model. Therefore retrofitting power door is a niche market and I believed if the installer has done enough of installation job they will get it right.

I know it is getting harder to find a unit that has all the features that you are looking for and you may be looking at the retrofitting route. As long as you have no issue with the result there are installers who can do the retrofitting job for you.

Location of Fuses in Toyota Alphard

2009-12-11T21:45:00.017+08:00

In previous post, I mentioned that one of the ways to check for problem with power door is to look at the fuse. Where are all the fuses located in our giant?

There are several fuse boxes installed in a Toyota Alphard. The main fuse boxes are located in the engine compartment. The location of the fuse boxes in the engine compartment is slight different between the 2.4L and 3.0L model. On the 2.4L 2AZ-FE engine model, it is located on the right side of the engine compartment as shown in the photo below.
On the 3.0L 1MZ-FE model, it is located in the middle section on top of the engine.

There is another smaller fuse box below the larger one as shown in the photo below.
This is for the 2.4L model. The 3.0L model has the same smaller fuse box in front of the radiator.

There are two more fuse boxes located under the dashboard, one is on the driver side as shown in the photo below.

You will have to unhook the smaller coin box from the dashboard before you can have access to the fuse location which is located deep inside the dashboard.

The other is located behind the glovebox at the passenger side.

Again you will have to unhook the lower glovebook before you can access to the fuses located next to the aircon filter box.

Now that you have located each of the fuse boxes, you’ll need to identify each of the fuses within the fuse box to ascertain which one controls which component. The following tables show the fuel name, the ampere and the description of each fuse. The diagrams before each table list the location of the fuses within the fuse box.

Main fuse box (in engine compartment)

	Fuse Name	Ampere	Description
1	SLC	7.5A	VSC
2	H-LP (RH)	15A	Headlamp high beam (RH)
3	H-LP (LH)	15A	Headlamp high beam (LH)
4	H-LP (RL)	15A	Headlamp (RH)
5	H-LP (LL)	15A	Headlamp (LH)
6	RAD NO.3	25A	Audio
7	HAZ-HORN	20A	Hazard Light, Indicator Lights, Horn
8	EFI	15A	Engine Computer
9	RAD NO.1	15A	Audio
10	ECU-B	10A	Meter, ABS, Power Window
11	SPARE	15A	Spare fuse
12	SPARE	7.5A	Spare fuse
13	ETCS	10A	Electronic Toll Collection System

Secondary fuse box (in engine compartment)

	Fuse Name	Ampere	Description
1	ABS	25A	ABS
2	ALT-S	5A	Alternator
3	DOOR NO.1	30A	Door Lock

Fuse Box at driver side

	Fuse Name	Ampere	Description
1	STOP	15A	Ingition Light
2	GAUGE	10A	Engine Computer, Power Slide Door, Clearing Sonar & Park Sonar
3	CURTAIN- RH	15A	Electric Curtain - Right Hand Side
4	CURTAIN LH& BK	25A	Electric Curtain - Left Hand Side and Rear
5	MIR HTR	10A	Mirror Heater
6	CURTAIN	5A	Electric Curtain
7	WIP	25A	Wiper
8	AC 100V	15A	Accessory Console Center
9	P/W RH	25A	Power Window
10	ODB-II	7.5A	Dignostic Connector

Fuse Box at Passenger Side

	Fuse Name	Ampere	Description
1	S/ROOF	30A	Moon-roof
2	DEF	30A	Rear window defrost
3	FOG	15A	Front Fog Light
4	DOME2	7.5A	Room Lights
5	VSC	7.5A	VSC
6	P/SEAT	30A	Power Seats (3.0L only)
7	BACK DOOR	30A	Power Boot
8	AM1	7.5A	Engine Switch
9	RR FOG	10A	Rear Fog Lamp
10	P/W LH	30A	Power Windows - LH
11	DOOR	30A	Door Lock
12	DOME	7.5A	Room Lights
13	TAIL	10A	Rear Tail lights
14	PANEL	10A	Switch illuminator, Aircon illuminator
15	ECU-IG	10A	ABS, Power Slide Door, Cruise Control
16	RR WIP	10A	Rear Wiper
17	A/C	10A	Aircon, Audio
18	DEICER	30A	Front Wiper Deicer
19	SLOPE	7.5A	-
20	SEAT HTA	10A	Seat Heater
21	INJ	15A	Engine Computer
22	UGN	10A	Engine Computer, SRS Airbag
23	MET IGN	7.5A	Meter
24	ECU ACC	10A	Shift lock, Door mirror, Audio
25	CIG	15A	Cigarette Lighter
26	P/POINT	15A	Accessory socket

Please note that the above write up cover what I know on the fuse locations for the new facelift model of 1st generation Toyota Alphard. Other model may have different fuse locations.

PS. Phew. This is the longest time I ever took to write a post because the formatting I have do for the table HTML code outside of the blogging platform.

PPS. A reader was asking where exactly is the fuse box on the passenger side. I am away at the moment so I can only attached a schematic diagram as a reference. I will take a better picture of it location when I am back.

Toyota Alphard Power Door Problem?

2009-11-28T14:33:00.006+08:00

One common problem most often reported by Toyota Alphard owner is that the power sliding door stops responding to the buttons that “tell” it to open, or that pulling the handle outward the door doesn’t slide electrically.

The step to investigate this problem involves the following sequences.

If you are handy in troubleshooting yourself, first check the fuse then check if there is power at the motor when the buttons are operated, then check for power at the buttons, then for power at the fuse. Look closely at the wires at and near the motor and the button and as far as you can follow them, look for obvious problems, loose connections, look for frays where the wires take a bend or go through a hole or are near anything moving. The problem can have many possible causes such as a poor ground, loose connection, frayed wire, bad switch, blown fuse, faulty relay, blown motor, or possibly even a problem with the mechanical aspect that opens the door.

Phew, that's a mouthful.

Well that's the steps the service personnel would have to go through. We mortal just operating the doors probably don't even know how to start.

If you do not want to handle the thorough investigation stated above, then try a reset. The power sliding door can be reset simply by disconnecting the battery, reconnect the terminal (which reset the power door), turn on the power door button and press the open/close button. If this does not fix the problem then you have to look at other area like door’s motor, cable etc. A worn battery might not deliver enough power to the driving motor so you might want to check the condition of the battery when you have a power door problem. At the minimum change to a 60Amp or higher battery, if you have other equipment like ICE that drain you battery.

If all else fail, please check with your mechanic :)

What Options Should You Choose for Toyota Alphard?

2009-11-28T14:06:00.003+08:00

In my previous post I mentioned that it is very rare to find a full spec Toyota Alphard as the number of such car is very limited, unless you opted in for a full spec MZG (of course at a premium). If you can find a high spec AS/MS typically it would have most of the important options covered in this post. If not then the potential buyers may have to opt for a lower spec giant like an AX/MX/MZ. Even then at the minimum the buyer should choose a unit that has as much option as possible so that he/she doesn’t have to fork out more money to retrofit one or more of this option later.

When I mentioned at the minimum it should have at least a single power door at the passenger side, original head unit, sonar sensor, front and rear camera, and ideally with multifunction control at the steering wheel.
Power door (or power slide door as the manual called it) is very important as it ease the opening and closing of the heavy door. Ideally you should use the button on the dashboard or the button on the remote control unit to operate the power door. If not then just pull the handle once and let the power module slide the door to open or close. One should never pull or push the door with force as it may damage the power module. If the option is there one should preferably go for twin power doors. The extra power door will comes in handy if the family has small children or elder who will have difficulty in pulling the heavy door on the driver side (assuming they have to enter from that side). Also with twin power doors, you can use the remote to open whichever side that allows convenient access as you approach the giant. I find this very useful especially when I have to park my car at the road side where one side of the door is not accessible as it is next to some bushes or side wall.

If you have bought a unit with single power door (normally on the passenger side) and you want to retrofit the power door kit into the driver side, the current price is approximately RM5,000.00. Therefore if twin power doors are important to you, choose one with twin power doors fitted to avoid this cost.

The sonar sensors help you to gauge the distant between your giant and the surrounding object. The peeping sounds, the flashing indicator and the flashing image on the HU all helps the driver to judge how safe is the distant of the car from surrounding object. I know many owners have bought their giant without the sonar sensor. It is quite expensive to retrofit the aftermarket sonar sensor hence I would recommend potential buyer to choose one that comes with sonar sensor.

The front and rear camera provide the visual aid to the driver on the “distant” of the car from objects in front or the rear. In conjunction with the sonar sensor, the driver has ample sensory and visual image of the safe distant of the car from any objects in front or the rear. Do note that the camera and the sonar sensor only can “sense” or “see” the objects in the same level of the sonar sensor/camera. It will not help in situation where there is high hanging object above the front/rear bumper. This is especially tricky as many of the basement car parks are not designed for MPV with the height like our giant. I know some owners either scratch their roof or reversed into some piping hanging from the ceiling.

The multi-steering control function on the steering allows you to operate the head unit or use the hands-free function.

Some AX/MX will come with sunroof/moonroof. This option is really a decision of the owner to consider whether it is useful in our kind of weather condition. Many will opt not to take it as many will hardly use the roof on daily basis. If you have a unit that has sunroof/moonroof, do remember to regularly clean the surrounding of the sunroof and the rail so that it is not clogged. If it is clogged water may seeps into the car from the sunroof.

On very rare occasion, some AX/MX/AS/MS/MZ will come with power boot. Again this is a convenient option if you use the boot often. With a press of the button on the dashboard or the remote control you can open the boot remotely. Again you can press these button or the button on the boot to close if electrically. Not many owners will choose to retrofit a power boot but there are accessory shops that cater for this niche. It cost upward of RM8,000.00 to retrofit the power boot.

Hope this post help you making your choice on what minimum options to go for.

Why Full Spec Toyota Alphard is Rare

2009-11-28T12:47:00.004+08:00

One of the challenges that many potential buyers of the 1st generation Toyota Alphard faced is finding a full spec model. Due to the fact that Toyota provides so many options to their buyers on top of their specification for AX/AS/MZ/MS/MZG, and the need of owners vary, not many giants will comes with full spec. Therefore when a full spec unit landed in a dealer yard it will be quickly snapped up by the buyer. The question remained what is the definition of full spec from Toyota perspective? Looking at their brochures I couldn't find one.

My definition of full spec means the giant will have the following options installed:

Twin power doors
Sunroof and moonroof
Front and rear camera
Sonar Sensor
Power boot
Original HU
Multifunction Control on the Steering Wheel
Power Curtain
Adjustable Suspension
Vehicle Stability Control/Traction Control

The above options are most likely can be found on either the AS/MS/MZG models assuming the original buyer have specified all these options. However in my search so far I found that not many AS/MS comes with sunroof/moonroof , power boot and power curtain. Some AS/MS also comes without adjustable suspension and VSC/TSC. Even without these options the AS/MS are still more expensive than the normal AX/MX because they comes with bodykit and 17-inch rims. The MZG is the flagship model so typically they will have all the above options. On top of that they will also come with front seats with heaters and leather seats all round. Most MZG also comes with the side mirror with signal indicator. Another option that is rare on the AS/MS is that some will comes with Alcantara seats. This of course will add to the price of the car.

The 5.1 theatre sound system is an option for all models but generally it can be found in most MZG. However I have come across some MZG that doesn’t come with 5.1 theatre sound system probably because the owner decided not to include it. I have also come across MZG that doesn’t have adjustable suspension. That is probably the main reason why the price differences between various MZG units. Some time there are rare occasion an AS/MS also comes with 5.1 theatre sound system. Because of this most dealers will typically add about 10K to 15K to the selling price of these units. I just saw two unit of 2005 PFL AS at my dealer yard this morning and the one come with 5.1 theatre sound system is price at RM15K more than the other unit without 5.1 theatre sound system.

There was another 2007 NFL AS that is almost full spec (without sunroof/moonroof) comes with half leather and alcantara seat but unfortunately it has been sold. This is expected as many owner still prefer the sportier AS model.

If you are looking for a full spec model you will have to be patient. You can either make a booking with your dealer so that they reserved the next available unit for you or they will inform you when the car landed in their yard immediately. Given that many dealers are not focusing on selling 2nd generation Toyota Alphard/Vellfire, the chances of finding a full spec AS/MS now is not that favourable.

You Need The English Toyota Alphard Manual?

2009-11-16T14:57:00.005+08:00

A reader sent me a query asking if I have a copy of the ENGLISH manual for the 2^nd generation Toyota Alphard. Well I know that is a nice to have but unfortunately the Toyota Alphard/Vellfire are Japan Domestic Market (JDM) models so they really cater for their own market only which means they have never thought about having an English manual for their owners. So I have politely let the reader know that I don’t have such a manual. If your dealer is really nice they will provide the original Japanese manuals to you when you buy the car from them. Some dealers I know of don’t even bother to provide these manual because they don’t think the owners will either read it or need it.

Even though I don’t speak Japanese nor do I read Japanese well I still managed to “decipher” most of the content from the Japanese manuals provided with my 1^st generation Toyota Alphard. In fact there are 3 set of manuals were provided for the NFL model as soon below. The one on the left is the owner manuals, the middle and the right are the 1^st and 2^nd volume of the HDD navigation system manuals. The Japanese really provide very detailed descriptions on how to operate each of the functions in the car as well as the HU in these 3 manuals. I got most of my information on this blog from these three manuals.

If you really want an English version of the 1^st generation Toyota Alphard, there is really a version available but you have to order it online from this publisher. However you will have to wait as these manuals are not ready in print. What happen is the publisher will collect enough of orders before they print the whole lot. My understanding is that they wait till the orders reaches 150 before they start printing. Therefore you will have to wait for quite a while. Some AOC members waited for more than 2 months before they got their copy.

So far I haven’t seen this publisher come up with the English version for the 2^nd generation Alphard/Vellfire manual. In the meantime we will have to make do with the Japanese version. I guess if any owners of the 2^nd generation Toyota Alphard/Vellfire need help on how to operate their HU, you can contact me via email to see if I can help to “decipher” the content for you!

After The Fact - Learn More Before You Buy Your Toyota Alphard

2009-11-07T01:50:00.004+08:00

It is always disheartening to meet a fellow AOC member in a TT then to find out that he has been kind of short-changed by the dealer. Last night I met a fellow AOC member who recently gotten his 2006 NFL AX-L. However his unit comes with only single power door without the original head unit and the front camera.

I don’t know if this is the latest trend but just this week I found also a few units of NFL AXs in my regular dealer come without original head unit. I know many owners have purchase their car with aftermarket head unit but in this case the car was not fitted with one at all. I consider myself lucky as my AX-L come loaded with all the features that normally not available in an AX-L. At least in all the TTs so far I have not seen another AX-L has the same spec as mine.

So what do the new owner losses when he bought the car?

Without the original head unit, he can’t make use of all the buttons on the steering wheel. He loses the hands-free function and the Bluetooth function. He loses the default reverse camera guide lines. He misses out the function to have the 30GB hard disk. He can’t play CD/DVD with the built in DVD function on the head unit. He doesn’t have the roof-mounted LCD monitor. At the end of the day he has to spent a few thousand dollars to retrofit an aftermarket head unit and other accessories just to be able to play DVD and to have the reverse camera view (but without the original guidelines). Since his unit doesn’t have the front camera, he will have to buy one if he wants the front camera view. If he wants to retrofit the other power door, that will cost him another few grand.

Therefore when I show this owner all the functions in my car that he could have gotten if he has opted for a different unit or one with the original head unit I can only imagine how unhappy for him to find out what he has missed.

I guess the new owner doesn’t know much about Toyota Alphard and probably hasn’t done much research on this subject. At least in the AOC forum I read that there are owners whose has done a lot of research and have scouted at many dealers before they commit to the unit that suits them. I think this is the way to go as there is no point in rushing to get something less at a higher price. In this case this particular owner is relying on the trustworthiness of the dealer who happened to be his friend to advise him on the best option to take. However like any dealer they just wanted to sell their car so they will take the easy way out by convincing the buyers that those features doesn't comes with the car. If the owner has done their homework then he would have not taken this car. I know this is after the fact and that the buyer should know what they are getting when they commit to buy a car. It would be nice to know that they gotten a better deal rather than to point it out to them the hard way.

I put up this blog with the hope it will help more potential buyers to learn more about this car so that they always get the best deal. If it is convenient I don’t mind meeting up with potential buyer to view the car with them so that they can make a better judgment before they commit their purchase. Send me a comment and I'll contact you if you need help.

Cheers

Door Lock and Unlock Programming

2009-11-01T14:37:00.007+08:00

I have been trying to verify that the programming of the door lock and unlock functions in my giant for quite some time. I really didn't have it work out right initially as I wasn't putting too much emphasis on it. I know from my reading of other Toyota cars that when you put the ignition to "ON" and depressed the brake it will lock all doors. That's function is available on the my other car as well. Similarly when you stop the car then shift the gear lever to "P" the driver door will unlock automatically.

I recently spent sometime looking into this again I think I have figured out how this work now.

To program the door to unlock when you shift the gear lever from any position to "P", do the following:

Shift the gear level to "P"
Press the unlock side (see photo below) of the door lock switch for five seconds and release

If this is done correctly then the doors will unlock automatically to confirm that the programming has been completed successfully.

The same procedure will also enable other doors to be unlocked if the driver door is opened within 10 seconds. Please remember to unlock and then lock the door manually after you have completed this programming.

The above procedure act like a "enable" and "disable" switch. If you feel that automatically unlock the doors when you shift the gear lever to "P" position is no a good practice from safety perspective then you can repeat the procedure again to "turn it off".

There is another mode called the "speed sensing auto lock" which enabled the function to automatically locked all doors when the car speed reach 20km/h. The procedure is as follow:

Put the gear level in any position except "P"
Press the lock side of the door lock switch for five seconds and release

I believed this will also program the doors to automatically locked when you press the brake when the ignition is in the "ON" position.

One more feature is driver door linked auto unlock. This will unlock other doors when the driver door is open within 10 seconds when the ignition is turn from "ON" to "ACC" or "LOCK" position. The procedure is as follow:

Put the gear level in any position except "P"
Press the unlock side of the door lock switch for five seconds and release

Have fun doing the programming.

Why They Keep Coming?

2009-11-01T01:55:00.004+08:00

I received an interesting email last night from an AOC member asking me what’s happening to the AOC forum. He was asking why many other former active members are no longer posting and it seems all the latest postings are non-Alphard related crabs (not literally), and the moderators are not doing their jobs properly. Well I guess I don’t really know the answer to that as my membership was removed since I wrote this post. Well I can only think that the old AOC forum is still pretty loosely organized and to quote this member comment below:

“It'd transpired to me that they had came to some sort of mutually beneficial agreement among the hypocrite, admin & the appointed moderators. Some will be benefited socially, while other seeking publicity, business or financial gain. Nevertheless, some of the crabs were good for a laugh. Never ever have i seen such a disorganized forum!”

I guess what they have done so far is to put on a new coat of paint but leave the interior untouched.

What is more interesting to me is that after some offline discussions among the members of the old and new AOC forum, the common understanding is that once the old forum ownership and administration have been fully transferred to a new team, the majority will move back to the old forum. The URL of the new forum will be redirect to the old forum. This was done about a month ago and I think it is a pretty good arrangement for the benefits of all. I don’t expect anyone to be looking at the new forum at all since then. In fact I haven’t been monitoring the new forum since early October.

Recently I had to remove the redirection so that I can access to some information. Before I knew it there is already new member registered with the new forum on the hour I removed the redirection! That keep me thinking why not keep this new forum open for a while and see if there are other will come to the new forum. Well I just checked and there are five more new members registered. And some members continue to post in the new forum as recent as last Friday.

I don’t want to know why but I guess it is the choice of those members are making to visit which forum. Is the reason why they prefer to post in the new forum because they have the same sentiment like the member who emailed me? I guess I will never know as I don't have the motivation to re-register to the old forum. For those who are registering now, do they even know that there is the existence of an old AOC forum.

I still keep in touch with many of the active members of the old and new forum and I regularly join in their TT when time permit.

I wish to highlight here that almost all active members of the new forum have since moved back to the old forum so the new forum is really inactive now. It is really up to the new team in the old forum to do a better job of house cleaning and to actively promote their existence. I know a group of active members had very grand plan for the formation of AOC but somehow the current state of the forum seems to have derail that dream.

Update: I just found out today that there is a high cost associated to the transfer of the domain. Apparently some members has to pay a big sum of money from their own pocket just to facilitate this transfer. It looks like there will also be recurring cost on a yearly basis. I find it hard to accept but it is the decision of the new team. Well this all could have been avoided at all as the new forum has a very low maintenance cost that is almost negligible.

Delete Playlists Or Tracks from HDD

2009-10-31T23:04:00.010+08:00

In my last post, I described how to initialize the content in the HDD. If you would like to delete only specific playlist or tracks from the HDD then you can do the following:

Touch the DISC button on the HU to acces to the HDD function. Once you activated the HDD function , it will automatically play the previously selected Playlist as shown in the following screen.

Touch the "PLAY LIST" button at the top right and it will bring you to this screen.
Touch the "Next Page" (次ページ) button on the screen, it will bring you to the following screen. Touch the "Delete" (削除) button to bring up the "Playlist Delete" screen.

To select the playlist to delete, just touch on the playlist to highlight it and the touch the "Delete" (削除) button. If you want to delete all playlist, touch the "Select All" (全て選択) button and then touch the "Delete All" (
全て解除) button. In either case, when prompted on the next screen, just touch "Yes" to confirm the deletion.

Similarly, to delete tracks from the HDD, do the following:

Touch the TRACK button to bring up the Track List as shown below. Touch the "Next Page" (次ページ) button on the screen to bring up the next page.

Touch the "Delete" (削除) button to bring up the "Track Delete" screen.

The operation to delete a track is the same as those for deleting playlist as described above.

Just be careful with your selection. If you accidentally deleted any of the playlist or track, then you'll have to record them again.

Initialize the Content in the HDD

2009-10-31T22:33:00.008+08:00

Previously I wrote a post on how to operate the HDD function on the new facelift model. Many Toyota Alphard owners like the fact that the HU has a 30GB hard disk so they can store their favourite songs into the hard disk. Normally the content of the hard disk is not erased when the cars are imported into here. Therefore there are a lot of Japanese songs stored in the hard disk. Many owners either don’t listen to Japanese songs or they don’t like to cluster the hard disk with songs that they don’t need. In this post, I will post instruction on how to erase the content in the hard disk.

If you want to erase the entire contents in the hard disk then here are the steps.

Start by pressing the G-Book (情報-G) button to bring up it main menu.

Touch the “Next Page” (次ページ) button to access the next page.

Touch the "Erase Personal Information" (個人情報消去) button and it will bring up the "Initialize Personal Information" (個人情報初期化) screen.

On this screen you can initialize the stored contents related to GPS location information, telephone phone book, songs recording etc. Touch the "Initialize" (初期化する) button to perform the initialization.

Touch the "Yes" (はい) button to confirmation the initialization process. It only take a few seconds to complete the initialization! Well I did it on my HU and I lost all the Japanese songs that I like! If you are not sure, then just touch the "No" (いいえ) button to back off.

In the next post, I will describe how you can delete individual playlist or track.

Toyota Vellfire in the Lime Light

2009-10-22T14:00:00.004+08:00

I was reading the headline in the Sun two days ago and saw that a Toyota Alphard is in the limelight for the wrong reason. The article was on Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) probing the allegation that the wife of the Health Ministry had received a Toyota Alphard as a birthday gift from a contractor who won a ministry tender. I am not much into politic so I am not really that interested in the motives and timing of this allegation. What interest me are the details that goes behind the allegation.

The allegation was that the wife of the Health Ministry had received a Toyota Alphard which cost RM574,884.10 in January 2009 as a birthday present from a Health Ministry construction contractor. The Sun article then reported that a check by them revealed that a Toyota Vellfire (not an Alphard) manufactured in Japan in February 2008 was imported as a used car and registered in January 2009. The reported purchase price was RM384,884.10 and the loan approved by a bank was for RM250,000.00. The report even quoted the actual engine specification and the chassis number of this car! The same article also reported in this news but the difference is in the actual selling price of the car. A check with the chassis number provided in the article confirmed that this car is manufactured in February 2008. However without the full model code I can't confirm if it is really an Alphard or a Vellfire as mentioned in my previous post.

The reason I was interested in this article was that during that same time period I was actively looking for my giant. At that time the 2nd generation Toyota Alphard and Toyota Vellfire were brought in for the first time by a few dealers to sell as a new car. As I was going in and out of the Cheras Autocity dealers' premises I saw a couple of unit of Toyota Vellfire then. Just to satisfy my interest I did asked for the price of the Toyota Vellfire 3.5 model and was quoted a price around RM570K. This is consistent with what was reported in that article. Well I guess what the reporter did not do is to find out how did the buyer managed to secure the car at 35% discount from the dealer price!

Due to the high price of these high end models there were only a handful of units were available but even then they get snapped up pretty fast by those who can afford it because of the exclusivity of owning one. Then about 3 months down the road, I heard from some of the dealers that they have stop selling these models as these model cannot be sold as new car under the Approved Permit system. Since the 2nd generation Toyota Alphard and Toyota Vellfire was only launched in May 2008 in Japan, it has not reached a minimum of one year period at that time to qualify as an imported used car. Therefore for a period of I think 3 months from April 2009 there were no dealers bringing in these models. Then in late July 2009 only some dealers started to bring in these models into the country again. By then the price of these model has started to drop as the demands pick up.

Back in late July 2009 I think the top of the line Toyota Vellfire was still going for about RM490K and recently in my last visit to Cheras Autocity, it has drop to about RM440K. Even the lowest spec model, the 2nd generation Toyota Alphard 2.4L model, has finally dropped below the RM300K mark beginning of this month.

In fact in the last visit to Cheras Autocity, the number of 2nd generation Toyota Alphard/Vellfire on display has actually out-numbered the 1st generation Toyota Alphard. Look like the dealers are now focusing on selling higher priced model to try to catch the demands while it is still hot.

ICE Setup Photos - Part II

2009-10-18T00:49:00.007+08:00

This is the 2nd part of the photo sequence of my ICE installation process.

Step 14: Before the center console panel is removed to access to the wiring behind the HU.

Step 15: Once the panel is removed, released the two screws on each side of the HU and the HU can be detached as shown

Step 16 - Look at the cluster of wiring behind the HU. Not easy to identify which is which if you are not familiar with the wiring!

Step 17 - The default wiring will turn off the LCD when the car is on the move. Jumpered the wire on this switch to by pass this feature.

Step 18 - Connect the wires from new DVD player to the wire-clusters at the side that run to the side speakers and the rear speakers.
Step 19: Lay out all the wires that connects the DVD player, amplifier and the speakers below the console box between the two front seats

Step 20: Mount the DVD player. My original plan is to mount the player inside the tray underneath the center console. However the DVD player is too wide to fit into the tray so I decided to mounted it here instead.

Step 21: To power the DVD player, the installer tap the power from the back panel behind the center console box which provide power source to accessories like external DVD/CD player or game console.

Step 22 - Here is a close up of the power source from the back panel.

Step 23 - Mounted the Bazooka tube subwoofer behind the 3rd row seats. This arrangement allow me to remove the subwoofer (if needed) to maximize the space at the rear of the car.

Step 24 - I also installed a voltage meter next to the battery to give me reading of the voltage that is supplied to the car.

Hope these photos give those who plan to ICE their giants a sense of what is involved in such an installation.

Cheers

ICE Setup Photos - Part 1

2009-10-17T23:07:00.023+08:00

Here are the photos I took during my ICE installation process. Enjoy.
Step 1 - The driver seat is removed

Step 2 - The driver side side step is removed

Step 3 - The Amplifier is mounted below the driver seat

Step 4 - The seat bracket is reinstalled Step 5 - The driver seat is reinstalled. To access to the amplifier, just slide the driver seat to the front.

Next is to replace the door speakers and the tweeters.

Step 6 - After the door panel is removed. The main speaker is now visible.

Step 7 - The speaker is removed. Prepare to install sound damping materials on the front doors.

Step 8 - Here is a comparison between the original speaker and the new component speaker. The original speaker is make of thin paper while the new component speaker is make of aluminium die-cast and micro fiber composite cone.

Step 9 - Sound damping materials installed. I used the following sound damping materials Step 10 - The sound damping materials used on the two front doors.

Step 11 - Re-tape the original plastic cover

Step 12 - Install the new component midrange speaker

Step 13 - This photo shows the size of the original tweeter. Since the new component tweeter is too big to fit into the original location, it is mounted on each side of the dashboard as shown below.

I planned to mount the tweeter onto the pillar in future.

Step 14 - New speaker cable is ran from the new DVD player to the tweeters on the dashboard.

I will post the rest of the photos in the next post.

My ICE Setup

2009-10-17T23:04:00.002+08:00

When I started planning to improve the sound systems (the local like to call it to ICE the car) of my giant I initially was planning to bring over the ICE equipment I had in my old car. But then I was conscious of the space it would take up to mount all the equipment given the size of some of my old ICE equipment, I decided to take a different approach. I started by reviewing what I need and where potentially I can put each of the equipment before I start on acquiring them.

My priority on my ICE setup was to have audio and video capabilities coming from a single source. Since I have already have an 8-inch LCD in the HU and another 9-in roof-mounted LCD, All I need is to get a better source to replace the radio and CD/DVD functions on the HU. Given that the standard HU is fully functional I decided to take a slow approach to acquire the equipment.

On one of the trip to Singapore I managed to buy a DVD Receiver and a 5-channel amplifier at steeply discounted price. The only thing I brought along from my old car is the subwoofer.

My ICE setup includes the following:

Pioneer DEH-P4150UB DVD Receiver (bought from Singapore)
Pioneer TS-C171PRS Component Speakers (bought from the ICE installer)
Eclipse XA5000 5-channels amplifier (bought from Singapore)
Bazooka 8-inch tube subwoofer (brought over from my old car)

Overall the new sound system setup is pretty decent compared to my previous setup. The major contributing factor is the TS-C171PRS component speakers. The rich natural midrange a wide sound staging with very clear and sharp tweeter output. The smoothness and linearity of the sounds is so much better than the Eton A160 I used to have in my old car. I think there is still room for improvement as the source (DEH-P4150UB) is a DVD receiver which never be able to provide the pure sound output of a Component CD Receiver. Since I don’t really use the DVD function that often, I might replace the DVD receiver with a component CD receiver. I haven’t decided which model to go with yet but I have narrow it down to either the Pioneer DEH-P80RSII or the Alpine 9887.

In the next post I will share some photos of the installation process.

The Myths About Maintaining Toyota Alphard

2009-10-13T16:22:00.004+08:00

During the last TT I had several questions from fellow AOC members on the maintenance of our giant. They wanted to know specifically where I send my car for service and if there is any specific knowledge needed to service our giant. Well it seems that there is this myth that since Toyota Alphard is a fully imported (used) car then there might be some specific requirements to service the giant. Another myth is that since this is the flagship minivan than the quality of the car should be at par or better than those assembled locally hence there shouldn't be that much annoying noise coming from the car!

The 1st generation Toyota Alphard uses the 2AZ-FE engine on the 2.4L model and the 1MZ-FE engine on the 3.0L model. The 2AZ-FE is the same engine used in the local Toyota Camry model, 2.4L model of the 2nd generation Estima, Harrier and Ipsum. There is no 3.0L model of Toyota Camry available locally but the same 1MZ-FE is also used in the 3.0L model of the 2nd generation Estima and Harrier for a long time.

Since the local distributor of Toyota, UMW, doesn’t accept imported used car for service, which means the owners of these imported used car has to send their cars to other workshops. Actually because of this reason there is a mushrooming of workshops specialize in servicing imported used car from Japan as well.

On the higher end, there is workshop like Vision Motorsport in (Sunway and Bangsar) that carry the Tom's after market performance product and has servicing agreement with the principal which is Toyota Motorsport in Japan. They specialized in servicing and selling after market performance parts for Toyota cars. Of course their charges will be much higher as they used only original parts from Toyota or from Tom’s. They even have come up with service package for imported Toyota model like Alphard, Estima and Harrier that offer comprehensive maintenance for these cars which runs into thousands of ringgit on per annum basis.

There are also other workshops that specialized in servicing only Toyota vehicle such as Hong Lee Motors Sdn Bhd. This workshop made a name for taking the risks to start the servicing of high end Toyota model like Lexus LX470 or Lexus LS430 when it was brought into the country back in the 1990s. They also have the diagnostic equipment for Toyota model while providing reasonable maintenance charges. This attracted a long list of loyal customers who bought imported used Toyota car and find this workshop as a good source for maintenance service.

At the low end of the scale, there are many smaller workshops that provide cheaper alternative as they focus on cheaper labour charges and give the owner the options to bring their own spare parts. In fact there are AOC members who buy their own spare parts and send it to these so called “bawah pokok” (refer to workshop without a proper shop outlet) mechanic for service.

Even my own mechanic has been doing servicing for imported Toyota car for one of the used car dealer near his shop since 1990s. There is really nothing special about the 2AZ-FE and 1MZ-FE engine that required specialized knowledge to service it.

On the other hand, there is also some accessory shops that has branded themselves as a one-stop-shop. What they will do is that for those customer who buy accessories (well at some quantum) they will help to arrange to have the giant also serviced by one or two nearby workshop that they trusted.

What is important is that these workshops should follow the maintenance specification that Toyota specified in their workshop manual. For example Toyota specify that the viscosity of the engine oil for the 2AZ-FE engine should be SL 10W-30 while the viscosity of the engine oil for the 1MZ-FE engine should be SL 5W-30. Whether the owner uses mineral, semi-synthetic or fully synthetic oil is more of a maintenance interval preference rather than the quality of the oil. Similar another example would be that the quantity of engine oil required for just engine oil change for the 2.4L model is 4.1L and 4.3L if the engine oil and oil filter are changed together. The 3.0L model would require 4.5L and 4.7L respectively.

The second myth is really related to the question of “what are those sounds that come from the front or from the back when I drive my car”. The steering rack on the Toyota Alphard and Estima is known to have quality issue. In fact during my search for the giant I have spoken to some dealers and they admitted that they do stock some spare steering racks in case the buyer of these imported used car claim warranty from them. Many owners did post in the AOC forum that when they turn the steering during the start of the day they hear some squeaking sounds from the front. This is very common and from the description of those who experience it, it seems like the problem could be emanating from the steering knuckle.

The question than can this problem can be resolved all together. Yes I think it would be possible but then it would take quite a bit of time and effort for the mechanic to pin-point the root cause and fix it. My take on this is that if the steering knuckle is not really broken, don’t fix it. In fact on my car, there is this one time squeaking sound coming from the steering knuckle whenever I turn the car steering for the first time. After that the sound won’t appear anymore as I drive for the rest of the day. I come to live with it as it is not affecting my drive at all.

For those who are driving a 4WD model, one of the common complain is they can hear some squeaking sound coming from the back when they drive the car. Since 4WD model has two drive shafts at the rear, if there is any likely hood of anything generating the sound, it is most likely coming from the drive shafts. It is not easy to isolate exactly which component of the drive shafts that make this sound so again time and effort is required to really resolve this.

Would these symptom described above impede the driving performance of the car? Would things fall off the car if it is not fixed? Of course it is a resounding NO. Toyota is known for it reliability and it is inconceivable that a Toyota Alphard would suffer such a fate given than it is the flagship minivan from Toyota. A bit of sound can be a nuisance at first but should not be an alarm for concerns for the owner on everyday driving unless it has really deteriorate so bad the sounds come on consistently.

On the subject of spare parts it is interesting that even though the model like Toyota Alphard, Estima and Harrier are not imported directly by the local Toyota distributor, because of the volume of cars brought into the country by the parallel importer over the years, the local spare parts suppliers understood the supply and demand, and actually carry most of the spare parts for these models. Therefore there shouldn’t be any concerns in terms of availability of spare parts as there are several major spare parts suppliers for Toyota car in the country.

How To Tell If It Is A 2WD or 4WD Toyota Alphard?

2009-10-13T16:08:00.005+08:00

One interesting question I got asked very often when I met with fellow AOC members is “how to tell if a Toyota Alphard is a 2WD or 4WD model?”

Well from the exterior there is no indicator to tell you so. If you don’t mind bent down and look at the undercarriage, you might find the rear axle and the rear drive shafts connected to the rear wheels on a 4WD model.

The other way is to look at the model code. In this post, I have briefly mentioned that the first 5 alphanumeric of the model code will tell you whether the car is a 2WD or 4WD model. I thought it would be easy if I put up a simpler table below to help you to differentiate between a 2WD and a 4WD model.

Model Code	Engine Code	Grade	Transmission Type
MNH 10W	1MZ-FE (3.0L gasoline)	MZ/MS/MX	Front Wheel Drive
ANH 10W	2AZ-FE (2.4L gasoline)	AS/AX	Front Wheel Drive
MNH 15W	1MZ-FE (3.0L gasoline)	MZ/MS/MX	Four Wheel Drive
ANH 15W	2AZ-FE (2.4L gasoline)	AS/AX	Four Wheel Drive

As mentioned in this post, the model code is printed on the chassis plate. For pre-facelift model, it is on the left side of the engine bay. For new-facelift model, it is on the door pillar at the passenger side.

Look at the above table and if the model code is 10 then it is a 2WD model. If it is 15 then it is a 4WD model. Very straight forward to do the identification.

Being able to identify the correct year and model can really help a potential buyer in getting the right car for him/her. During the last TT as the members are going through each other car, it is unavoidable that the question of how to you determine the year of the car comes up. It is very unfortunate that one of the long time member discovered that a new member has bought a 2002 model that was advertised as 2004. That mean that member has paid more money for that car than it is worth.

I still don’t know how the AP process actually work but it is obvious that whoever approved the assignment of AP to this car didn’t check what year this car is really manufactured in, or that process doesn't have such a need. Anyway, if that person really follows my post here, then he would know right away this is 2002 car and probably reject the car because it is way over the five year periods validity of that AP. Anyway it is too late now and I don’t know if there is any way for this new member to make his claim against the dealer.

I started this blog with the intent to help those buyers who are interested in acquiring a Toyota Alphard. I really wish that those who are looking for their giant at least have a look at some of my postings related to this topic so that they don’t get into such sad situation ever.

AOC October TT

2009-10-10T20:07:00.013+08:00

Last night a total of 29 AOC members gathered at Car Park F, Bukit Jalil for an impromptu TT gathering. Impromptu in a sense that it was organized in a very short time frame and the original plan was to allow regular AOC members to meet up with one of the AOC member from Kelantan who is visiting Kuala Lumpur. Due to the last minute announcement (I only got an invite through SMS) the organizer was not expecting a big turnout. However it ended up being the largest gathering of AOC members since May 2009. A total of 28 Toyota Alphards gathered together this time exceeding the previous record of 25 cars.

From 8:45pm onward, the members started arriving and everyone sat down to chat with each other. Even though this is not planned as family event, many members brought along their spouses so while the members are having lively discussion among themselves the spouses also took the opportunity to mingle among themselves. It was encouraging to see many new AOC members join us for this gatherting. And it is nice to see some long time members who hasn't been attending recent TT turn up for the gathering.

Well since the car park is not properly lighted, the photo come out blurred as my old faithful digital camera don't work well.

Half way through the lively chat some members wanted to have a look at each other cars so everyone headed toward the cars.

The main attraction again is none other than the two “show” cars. One has the distinction of being the only Toyota Alphard in the country to have 22-inch rims. Of course he has many other nice features added such as 6 projector lamps and a collection of VIP accessories. The owner was busy answering questions like how is the ride with the 22-inch and where to get those accessories. The other is the only Toyota Alphard with a set of air suspension. Of course those lucky AOC members get to see the air suspension in action on that night. Also of interest is the lighted door step and the lighted arrow on ths side mirror of one of the member.

I was kept busy the whole time as I was interacting actively with many members. I chatted with one AOC members on various topics. I also showed one member how to operate the hands-free function, maintenance items and HDD songs maintenance. I assisted one member to confirm the exact model specification of his car. I then show another member how to recognize through the model code whether a particular car is a 2WD and 4WD. Overall I was very happy with this opportunity to be able to interact with the other AOC members since the last gathering.

Since the Car Park F is rather dark so it was not easy to take a group photo. Again the members improvise and lined up a few cars with the light switched on. That provided enough lights for those with camera to take a group photo.

After the group photo, some member starts to leave while other stay back on more chit chats and at time technical discussion and the TT officially ended around 11:50pm when the last group left the Car Park.

If you want to see more photos on this TT, please check out the AOC website.

Looking forward to bigger turn out of AOC members for such TT.

Cheers

Another Break In Incident!

2009-10-07T00:55:00.002+08:00

I was walking back from my car to the lift when I bumped into my neighbor. He was telling me that there was another attempt to steal another Toyota Alphard belongs to another resident in my condo. I then checked with the guard on duty and he was relating to me that someone has attempted to steal that giant around 5am in the morning. The thief broke the small triangle glass next to the side mirror with the intent to open the door and probably wanted to steal the car just like in my case.

However the sounds of breaking of the glass must have alerted the guard on duty and the thief ran away in a getaway car. The guard then uses his walkie-talkie to alert the guards at the condo entrance to try to block the getaway car. But then the thief is so desperate to escape that he broke the barrier and drove off the compound.

I was hoping to catch up with the owner of that Toyota Alphard to share my experience on my break-in attempt. However he had sent his giant to repair the triangle glass so we didn’t have a chance to meet up to discuss the incident.

It looks like the guard is doing his duty this time but still it puzzled me how the thief manage to drive the car into the compound. One theory now is that the thief actually knows someone in the compound and uses the excuse of visiting to come in. He will be staying with his “friend” and then make his move in the morning.

I noticed this giant is seldom used so the thief must have been eyeing it for quite some time. Since the owner of that giant has made a police report, I really hope the police will do thier work to catch the thief this time. The guard did mention that their camera has managed to capture the face of the thief when he drove pass the barrier. I hope the police will be able to track down the thief and put him behind bar.

So far two giants already been targeted by this thief in his attempt to steal. If the thief is still at large I really don’t know if he will target the other two giants in our compound. Let hopes this will never happen again.

ICE Your Toyota Alphard

2009-09-27T17:14:00.003+08:00

One of the common questions posted by many new Toyota Alphard owner is “How do I ICEed my giant”? ICE stands for In Car Entertainment and what the owner is asking for is basically how to improve the sound quality of the audio/video system that come with the car.

If your giant already comes standard with 5.1 theatre sound systems, it already has a very decent sound system. However if you wanted even better sound quality then most straightforward path to improve sound quality is to swap the stock speakers with a set of component speakers. Since the 5.1 theatre sound systems comes with 8 speakers, then you have to decide which speakers you should swap out.

A component speaker is a car audio speaker matched for optimal sound quality. Each component speaker set typically comes with two mid-bass speakers, two tweeters and two crossovers. This setup allows the pair of tweeters and mid-bass drivers to be matched with the crossover to limit the frequency range of each speaker to be accurately reproduced. Also the mid bass speakers are physically separated from the tweeter, which is very directional, so that each can be placed in an optimal position. The tweeters are usually on the dash facing the listener, while the larger mid-bass speakers can be placed where there is room, often in the lower front of the car doors. The Toyota Alphard front doors can accommodate a mid-bass speaker with size up to 6.5”. The stock tweeters in the Toyota Alphard are hidden in the door pillar. Most component speaker tweeter will not fit in the pillar so many owners will choose to mount the tweeters on the dash.

In the ICE circle, some of the branded component speaker manufacturers are DLS, Dynaudio, Eclipse, Infinity, RS Audio, Alpine and Pioneer. Again the decision to go with which component speakers will depends on one budget. The lower end component speakers from some of these manufacturer can be bought for slightly less than RM1,000.00 while the higher end one will exceed RM3,000.00. If you want to have a complete swap out, then you might even want to replace the center speaker, the rear speakers and the active subwoofer (under the seat) with something better.

If your giant doesn’t come with 5.1 theatre sound system, the number of components you need to add/swap will be bigger. The sound quality of the stock head unit is rather limited. To improve the sound quality, other than swapping in a set of component speakers, you may also want to install either a CD Receiver or a DVD Receiver depending on the type of sounds you are looking for. If you are very much into pure sounds then you might want to go with a CD Receiver. If you also want to be able to support DVD playback, then you can choose a DVD Receiver that allow you to play DVD and also CD. Also, the Receiver will have built in radio tuner which gives you a better reception for local radio station frequency. Since the component speakers are matched for the mid and higher frequency range, you will need to a subwoofer to produce the proper low frequency range. Finally you will need an amplifier with the proper power handling to drive theses speakers. That’s the reason why there is this saying that once you are into ICE, there is no end to how much you need to spend in order to fine tune the sound systems. It all depends on your budget. Another important factor is the tuning skills of your ICE installer. If they have done a good job, even a less expensive sound system will sound pretty good to most people.

In the next post, I’ll blog what I have done to the sound system in my giant.

Cousin's 80 Years Grand Birthday Celebration

2009-09-27T00:23:00.010+08:00

Last weekend I drove back to Ipoh to attend my cousin brother birthday celebration. The typical impression when one speaks about their cousin is that their age is usually close to the person talking about it. However in my clan, my brothers and sisters are born much later so in terms of age most of my cousins (in fact 10 of them) are much older than us. My family has moved to Kuala Lumpur since the 1960s but almost all my cousins remained in Ipoh. So this trip is the first time I met most of my cousin brothers and sisters in Ipoh when we attended my 5th cousin brother's 80 years grand birthday!

In Chinese tradition, whenever someone has reached the age of 80 years old, the family members will usually organized a grand birthday party (Tai Sow) for him/her. The objective is mainly to celebrate the longevity of life for reaching 80 years of age. The celebration was held in a restaurant at Pasir Pinji with 25 tables filled with family members, relatives from the clan and friends of the family.

Instead of the normal wedding decoration, the main stage was decorated with the simple wording of Longevity.

Just like the in thing in any wedding dinner where there is slideshow of the wedding photos, my cousin's family also has a slide show of the childhood and life photos of my 5th cousin brother and his family over the years. Of course most of the photos are in black and white given that he was born in the 1920s.

The foods served are also worded to add meanings to the longevity theme. A total of 8 dishes were served.
The very first dish that is a must in any grand birthday is the Sow Bao (Longevity Bun).

The rest of the dishes include four seasons, fish, chicken, prawn, vegetable, longevity noodles and sweet desserts.

You might noticed that all the serving plates used to serve the food are huge, to go along with the theme of Tai (big)

After the meal, the "Sow Sing Kong" (as we call him in Cantonese) then goes through the cake cutting, pouring of wines and then a simple "Yam Seng" cheer with the guests.

One thing I learned from this experience is that life is a long and winding road. There are many decades for one to traverse but one should cherish every moments. When you celebrate your 80 years old grand birthday later with your family and relatives, you know you have come a long way and you can look forwards to the next decade. I still have a long way to go in this winding road and I want to enjoy every moments I can.

Drove the Giant to Ipoh

2009-09-23T01:41:00.001+08:00

Over the weekend I took my giant out for a long distance drive for the very first time. The last trip was really a short stop and go type of driving so this trip gave me a real feels for the drive of this car on the highway.

The journey to Ipoh took about slightly more than 2 hours as I was sticking to the speed limits of the highway. Also there were plenty of cars on the highway even though it was the first day of the Hari Raya festival holiday. The drive was very smooth as there was not a single start and stop situation which is very good considering that the day before there were reports of congestions on most of the highways.

Overall the power of the 2.4L engine of my giant is adequate for the journey on most stretch of the road except when going uphill. Once the car slow down due to slower traffic in front it takes a bit more revving to push the car up the hill and to maintain the speeds so not to slow down those behind me. Since I have two elder passengers in my car I don't want to push it too fast and scare them off as this is the first time they rode in my car!

I was also very happy with the performance of the Toyo Proxes C1S tyres that I recently changed. They are really quiet and have plenty of grips.

My last trip to Ipoh was almost 10 years ago so I was kind of lost my direction trying to get to my destination once I was in Ipoh city center. I have to call my sister who is staying to Ipoh to guide me to get to my destination. Once I get my orientation I find that it was really easy to drive around Ipoh.

During my two days stay I didn't really get much chance to explore the town as I was there to attend a dinner. I was hoping to try the famous Lo Wong Ngar Choi Kai (chicken with bean sprout) on the 2nd day but it was so packed that people are waiting under the hot sun to get their seats. I guess I forgot that it was the 1st day of Hari Raya and every Ipoh-born folks are probably comes back in town to sample their famous local delicacies. Since we didn't have much times so we opted for the wan tan noodle and the salted chicken at the coffee shop opposite Lo Wong.

The return trip to KL was also very smooth. I actually checked the advisory from the Plus Highway website and took their advice to start the journey at 3:00pm. Surprisingly the whole journey coming back was very smooth even though the traffic was pretty heavy and I was able to keep to the speed limit most of the time. With only a short stop in the Tapah rest area I reached KL just slightly after 5:30pm.

Body Colour of 1st Gen Toyota Alphard

2009-09-17T17:49:00.004+08:00

I have a question from a reader on what are the colour choices available for 1st Gen Alphard.

I went through the 1st Gen Alphard catalogues and have extracted the following colour chart.

For pre-facelift, there are 8 colours to choose from:

From top left to bottom right the colours are: White Mica, Silver Metallic, Black Mica, Bordeaux Mica (Maroon), Gold Metallic, Light Green Mica Metallic, Dark Blue Mica, Grey Pearl Toning.

For new facelift, there are 7 colour choices as shown below:

From top to bottom the colours are: White Mica, Grey Metallic, Silver Metallic, Black Mica, Maroon, Gold Metallic, Dark Blue Mica.

Do note that the popular colour choice are White, Silver and Black. The rest are pretty rare as most dealers would rather deal with the popular colour. If you are looking for a less popular choice then you might need to ask the dealer to specifically source one for you.

Hope this help you in making a decision which colour to go for.

Model Code for Pre-Facelift Toyota Alphard MZG

2009-09-14T00:45:00.005+08:00

I have previously writes about the model code for new-facelift Toyota Alphard MZG. During my visit to two dealers this week while helping a reader of mine to search for his MZG, I also found the model code for pre-facelift MZG.

The Alphard G MZG carries the following model codes:

MNH10-PFPQK-G for 2WD model
MNH15-PFPQK-G for 4WD model

The Alphard V MZG carries the following model codes:

MNH10-PFPQK-P for 2WD model
MNH15-PFPQK-P for 4WD model

I think with these information I am ready to compile a list of all the model codes for 1st Gen Toyota Alphard as I mentioned in my previous post.

Watch this space for the table pretty soon.

Update: I have uploaded the table here. Click the link to download it.

Searching for Toyota Alphard MZG

2009-09-12T15:36:00.002+08:00

I have a reader of my blog contacted me offline to request for some input on his search for an MZG. He was considering various options whether to go for new facelift model which carry a much higher price or look for aregistered pre-facelift MZG and use the savings to facelift the car. He read my blog and we exchanged emails on what are the best options to go for.

Yesterday we arranged to meet up at two dealers to view 3 units of MZG. The first unit was a white colour full spec 2004 MZG. It has twin power doors, sunroof+moonroof, front and rear camera, leather seats, electric curtains, theatre sound systems, roof-mounted LCD, front electric seat and heater for both the front seats, adjustable suspension. It just came out from the bonded area so it was not really in it best condition. It looks like this unit was heavily used by the owner and his passenger as both the front seats are rather worn. The middle and rear seat are still in very good condition. The nice feature of this car is that it comes with 18-inch sport rims. The only down side is that the rim caps are all missing. Also the dealer was not able to show us the smart key and the head unit was not fitted yet. The dealer is asking for about RM198K which is about the same price I surveyed back in January this year. It seems the appreciation of the Japanese Yen has kept the price of the 2004 MZG at the same level.

Next to the white MZG is a registered black colour 2006 MZG. It also has full spec and the interior looks clean and has low mileage. It comes with standard 16-inch rims and has no body kit so the previous owner has kept it stock standard. The asking price of RM245K is slightly on the high side considering that a unregistered unit is going for about RM268K or slight lower. But given that it is a full spec model, it is not a bad choice if one is desperate to get one. The only downside is that it is considered a 2nd hand unit so the bank would normally not offer high loan amount.

The 3rd unit was what this reader really keen on. He saw the advertisement in Motor Trader and has actually viewed the car the day before. We met up at another dealer to view this car and it was a surprised discovery. The reader was attracted to the fact that it was advertised as a 2005 new facelift model registered in Jan 2009. From the exterior, it looks very much like a new facelift model as it has the new light clusters. Also it has been retrofitted with MS-style body kit and MS sports rims. However when I looked inside, there is no way this is a real new facelift model. The head unit gave it away as it is the smaller sized HU from the pre-facelift model. Then a check on the toolbox cover confirmed that it is a manufactured in March 2004! The smart key is from the pre-facelift model. The model code of this car shows that it is a pre-facelift MZG. The previous owner must have done a facelift of the car (front and back) and then try to sell it off as new facelift model. When we looked at the registration card, we are surprised how did the previous owner managed to register it as a 2005 model when it is in reality a 2004 model.

With this discovery, the reader suddenly has more bullets to bargain for a much lower price. Now it is up to the dealer to decide if they want to reduce the price or the reader move on with this search.

I am happy to help out the reader with this kind of research as I felt more confident now with the knowledge I have gained in the last 9 months learning about Toyota Alphard. I am glad that I was able to help him in his search for an MZG. Hope he will find his unit pretty soon.

More On Toyota Alphard 1st Gen Model Code

2009-09-11T21:38:00.007+08:00

As I was looking for the Toyota Alphard MZG model code I saw there is prefix and suffix that I was not familiar with. So I search the web again and found that it does provide some identification information to a particular model.

For example, the model code ANH10W-PRPGK from this table shows that it is a 2.4L AX 8-seaters model. However if you look at the model code in the faceplate of the car, it is probably listed as CBA-ANH10W-PRPGK-V. This model code tells you that it is a pre-facelift 2.4L AX 8-seaters Alphard V model. If you come across the model code as DBA-ANH10W-PFPGK, without the suffix, then you know that it is a new-facelift 2.4L AX 8-seaters Alphard G model. The CBA prefix is the code for pre-facelift while the DBA prefix is the code for new-facelift for the 2.4L model.

Similarly when you see a model code of TA-MNH10W-PRPGK-V, this is code for a pre-facelift 3.0L MX 8-seaters Alphard V model. You would imagine that there should be a different prefix for the new-facelift model. Right? Unfortunately, the same TA prefix is used for 3.0L model from 2002 to 05/2007 as well! What? You might be asking why is such an inconsistency for the 3.0L model? Well I don't have an answer for that.

And then, in 06/2007 onward, the prefix for the 3.0L model suddenly changes to CBA again. So a CBA-MNH10W-PRAGK is a 3.0L MX 8-seaters Alphard G model. Note that for the MX, the model code is now changed to PRAGK while those from 04/2005 are FRAGK and PFPGK for those from 05/2002-03/2005.

As for the suffix, those Alphard G models with the side lift seat will end with “-W” instead of “-L”. I even found that the Alphard G MX/AX L-Edition has the suffix of "-S" for cars from 06/2007 onward while the Alphard V MX/AX L-Edition has the suffix of "-X". Now I know why my model code ended with an "-X".

Now the other interesting part is that the model code for the 3.0L MS 7-seaters Alphard G is FFPSK from 02/2002 - 03/2005 while the rest remain PFPSK. Again I am as confused as you why Toyota would want to make such a small change.

Luckily these inconsistencies only apply to the MX and MS model. Imagine how many codes one has to refer to if every other model also has different codes from one year to another. Phew.

For now I guess the best way for you to make references to these model codes is to print out all the old brochures from the Toyota website that I listed in this post. I wish I can show a long table with all these codes but it will take a long time for me to compile that. Watch this space.

Update: I have uploaded the table here. Click the link to download it.

Model Code for Toyota Alphard MZG

2009-09-06T22:40:00.003+08:00

When I was researching for the model code of 1st gen Toyota Alphard, I didn't see the actual model code for MZG. What is listed in that table only shows that MZG is just another variant of MZ.

During today TT with a group of AOC members, I saw the model code of two different MZG and that bring back my continue research on this subject. The reason to continue with this is due to the fact that even though both are MZG models, one car has more features and fittings that another. Because of that, I started going back to the Net and found the following.

The Alphard G MZG carry the following model codes:

MNH10-PFKAQ-G for 2WD model
MNH15-PFKAQ-G for 4WD model

The Alphard V MZG carry the following model codes:

MNH10-PFKAQ-R for 2WD model
MNH15-PFKAQ-R for 4WD model

It is also interesting to note that Alphard G MZG supplied by Toyopet seems to have fuller specification that those Alphard V MZG supplied by Netz. The Alphard V MZG that I saw today was missing the front camera and 5.1 theatre sound system which I read is supposed to be a standard feature in an MZG. At least in today research I found it it not the case. There seems to be so much more to learn about the specifications of these giants from Toyota!

The New AOC Website

2009-09-06T01:44:00.005+08:00

I was rather busy lately putting some finishing touch to the AOC website. This is my first experiment with this type of work so I was spending quite a lot of time researching on this subject and have not put up any new post on the giant. I have finally put together a simple website as I learn along the way.

The new website is now live at http://www.alphardownerclub.com/. I will continue to enhance on this website as I find time to do that. A group of AOC members plan to register AOC as a club and this website will serve as the base for this club. Let see how this will planned out.

I also have spent quite a bit of time researching on setting up a new forum for Alphard Owners Club. I have done all the ground work and have open it to a small group of Alphard Owners. So far I think we have work out all the logistic for the new forum and now we are really to open it to the rest.

If you are viewing our new AOC website, you'll see a link at the top that bring you to our new forum or you can reach us directly at http://www.alphardownerclub.com/forum.

This is for registered member only so when you get to that forum home page, you'll have to register yourself and wait for the approval email from the Administrator before you activate your registration.

Hope you'll have a fun time in this new forum.

Cheers

Updates: After almost one year and 3 months, there is still no sign that the official Alphard Owner Club of Malaysia will be up and running. Therefore, the AOC website will have no updates until such time when the AOC is officially formed.

The Real 2nd Gen Toyota Alphard

2009-08-27T23:31:00.004+08:00

My blog has been focusing on the 1st Gen Alphard as that's what I am familiar with. I wasn't planning to do any posting on 2nd Gen Alphard since I can't afford one (now) and I don't have enough information to write something on that model. The only exception so far is that a reader asked me to put together the list of model code for 2nd Gen Alphard. I have to do a bit of research at the Toyota official website to come up with that list.

Recently I did a search on Google and noticed there are a lot of people blog about the new 2nd Gen Toyota Alphard. However one thing that baffle me is that they are not posting the picture/photo of the rear 2nd Gen Toyota Alphard. As I was doing research on the model code for 2nd Gen Toyota Alphard above I l so often looked the photo of the 2nd Gen Toyota Alphard that I instancely can tell how it looks like (see photo below).

If you do a search on the keywords "Toyota Alphard" in Google, the 2nd entry posted the photo of the FT-MV concept car but called it the "New Toyota Alphard 2009". The 11th entry also posted the same photo. As I go through the pages, I saw many other blogs also posted the same photo and yet called it the "Toyota Alphard 2009".

The Toyota FT-MV Concept car was launched in 2007 at the Tokyo Auto Show. The new Toyota Alphard took a lot of the styling cues from the FT-MV concept car hence they look very similar. Paul Tan actually did a write up on the FT-MV Concept car back in 2007.

So everytime I come across a blog showing the FT-MV concept car as the new Toyota Alphard 2009, I will just smile and move on.

PS. As the days goes by, the entry in the Google search results will change so if the above link doesn't work then it might have drop off/move to another position.

How difficult could it be?

2009-08-25T19:53:00.003+08:00

I was always wondering how difficult it is to transfer a domain from one host to another host. I have done enough of research on the Net and have also confirmed with my hosting provider and it turn out that it is pretty easy. The steps are:

1. Backup the database from the old server
2. Upload the database to the new server
3. Unlock the domain
4. Transfer the domain
5. Restore the database

That it. Very simple steps and no rocket science is involved. In fact step 3, 4 and 5 are all done by the hosting company so I only need to worry about step 1 and 2.

Unfortunately my last experience trying to do a domain transfer was an unpleasant one.

The AOC domain was hosted in Singapore and the AOC owner has agreed previously to transfer the domain to the local team and host it in Kuala Lumpur. So he pass over the access to the Cpanel so to back up the database was not an issue. He wanted to be just a member and don't want to continue to administer the forum anymore. Well fine so let the local team administer it.

The most important step in the whole transfer exercise is to unlock the domain. So I send a private email to the owner and he said he will asked his staffs to looked into it. On the day when we wanted to do the transfer, the domain was still locked. So another follow up email and this time another email address was given to me. Apparently this is the email address of his brother who is the 'real' owner of this domain. So an email was sent to his brother but he never replied. So what's the last resort?

Well I met with the brother personally and he agreed on the spot that he will unlock the domain once he get back to Singapore. However two weeks go by and still nothing was done. Well as long as the 'owner' of the domain doesn't unlock it, no one can transfer that domain out of the registrar where it is registered to. Also, it is unwise to unlock a domain and leave it unlock for a long time because anyone can take control of that domain.

Further communications via the AOC forum on this matter suddenly become abusive and it turn out to be a unpleasant experience for all. Despite all the private communications, the AOC owner still can't facilitate the transfer in the most pleasant way. Maybe the owner of AOC have no means to convince his brother to unlock the domain so this transfer is definitely not going to happen. I have not dealt with anyone from that island country before and this experience told me that I need to take their promises with a grain of salt. Almost 3 months was wasted to plan and set up for the transfer.

Anyway recently it was highlighted by one of the member that the authority is monitoring the AOC forum. This has created a lot of uneasiness in many AOC forum members so many of them stop posting. As such it would be unwise for the local team to go ahead with the transfer.

We have now found a new place to share our passion about the giant (Toyota Alphard). If anyone is interested to join us, send me an email and I'll send you an invitation.

PS. Recently I came to know that the owner finally transferred the domain to another hosting company but at quite a high cost. Is this the reason why the previous transfer didn't work out. Well.

Toyota Alphard MZ/MZG Model

2009-08-20T01:24:00.007+08:00

The MZ/MZG are high specification model of the 1st Gen Toyota Alphard and both are 3.0L engine model.

The MZ has cloth seats while the MZG comes standard with leather seats. The cloth in the MZ has a slightly different texture from those cloth used in the AX and MX model. The photo below shows the cloth used in the MZ (left) compared those used on the AX/MX model (right)

The MZ model comes in either 7-seaters or 8-seaters arrangement. It has wood panel on the centre console, the left and right side of the dashboard, and the top/bottom of the steering wheel. Shown below is the interior of a PFL MZ.

The interior of a NFL MZ is shown below Again the difference between the PFL and the new NFL model are in the HU and the lighter colour of the wood panel.

Electric driver seat is a standard feature on MZ and MZG.

The MZG is the top of the range model. It has all the features of an MZ with the following additions:

Beige-colour Leather seats
Auto curtain
Cruise control
Mini-table in 2nd row on 7 seaters
Footrest (odoman) on 7 seaters
Heated Driver and Passenger Seats

Also most owners of MZG would normal specify the option of 5.1 theatre sounds system, power boot, VSC and TRC when they purchase the car. Therefore most of the MZG landed here would have the most complete specification of a Toyota Alphard. It is therefore not surprising that the MZG is the most expensive of all the Toyota Alphard model.

Toyota Alphard AS/MS Model

2009-08-20T00:58:00.008+08:00

The AS/MS is the sporty version of the 1st Gen Toyota Alphard. It is differentiated from the AX-L/MX-L in the exterior as well as the colour of the interior. The AS/MS model comes in 7-seaters arrangement only. The exterior difference was covered in this post previously.

The AS/MS have all the following features:

Head Unit with CD/MD - PFL only
Head Unit with DVD, MD, MP3, Bluetooth and 30GB Harddisk (HDD) - NFL only
Smart door lock system
Front and rear camera
Black-wood panel centre console
Black interior colour
Black colour seats
17-inch wheels
Aero bumpers and side skirt
Larger diameter tail pipe
armrest and back pocket on middle seats of 7-seaters
Round-shape front fog lamp

The AS/MS also comes in Alcantara package where the seats are fitted with Alcantara cloth. Shown below is the interior of a PFL AS/MS model.

The interior of a NFL AS/MS model is shown belowLi

The NFL model comes with a larger HU with LD display.

Since the AS/MS has a sporty exterior, a lot of buyers would like to go for this model but unfortunately the supply of these models are quite low. Hence once a unit is available in any of the dealer it will get taken very fast by those eager buyers.

In the next post, I will cover the MZ/MZG model.

Toyota Alphard AX/MX model

2009-08-20T00:24:00.009+08:00

The Toyota Alphard AX/MX edition is the most basic trim available. It comes with minimum features fitted and has beige-colour interior and beige-colour cloth seats. It is only available in 8-seaters trim only. It has orange-wood panel centre console.

Shown below is the interior of a PFL AX/MX model.

The NFL AX/MX interior is shown below

The main difference between the PFL and NFL interior are that the wood panel colour in the central console is lighter on the NFL, and the NFL comes with a large HU with DVD/HD/LCD display while the PFL model has a standard CD player fitted.

The AX-L and MX-L is considered the Luxury edition. They are available in either 7 or 8-seaters arrangement. The 7-seaters arrangement is also specifically fitted to cater for those owner who need a side lift seat (or what is called a wellcab).

The AX-L and MX-L have all the following features:

CD Player - PFL only
Head Unit with DVD, MD, MP3, Bluetooth and 30GB Harddisk (HDD) - NFL only
Roof mounted LCD - NFL only
smart door lock system
sonar sensor
Front and rear camera
Orange-wood panel centre console
Beige interior colour
Beige colour Seats
16-inch wheels
No body kit
armrest and back pocket on middle seats of 7-seaters
Tray table on the back of the middle row of 8-seaters
Left Power Sliding door (standard)

If the AX/MX has any of the above options fitted, then it is an option that the original owner has chosen when he/she purchased the car in Japan.

In the next post, I will cover the AS/MS model.

What is a Toyota Alphard AX/AS/MX/MS/MZ/MZG Model?

2009-08-19T23:46:00.006+08:00

Now that we have covered the different grade of the 1st Gen Toyota Alphard. Let look at what are those model type mean.

Let starts with the engine variant. The 1st generation Toyota Alphard is offered in either the 2.4L or 3.0L engine specification.

2.4L	3.0L
AX	MX
AX-L	MX-L
AS	MS
	MZ
	MZG

To denote whether the model is a 2.4L or 3.0L, Toyota uses the alphabet A in it model type to signify this is a 2.4L engine variant and the alphabet M for 3.0L engine variant. Next is the different edition available for each engine variant. The table below summarizes the available editions.

For each edition above, they are available in either 7-seaters or 8-seaters and 2-WD or 4-WD variant. This is the reason why it is so confusing for some buyers!

The 2nd alphabet in the table above represent the trims configurations available each of the edition. For example, the X indicates basic trims while the S indicates sport trims. The trimming is for both in the interior as well as the exterior. The 3rd alphabet L indicates that it is a Luxury version. The 3.0L has the MZ and MZG edition where the difference is in mainly the interior fittings.

From the exterior look perspective, the AX/MX/MZ are considered as the standard grade. The AS/MS has it own grade. Pricing wise, the AS/MS grade will definitely has a higher price than it sibling due to the sportier configuration.

In the next post, I will talk about the AX/MX model.

Three Grade of 1st Gen Toyota Alphard

2009-08-18T00:57:00.012+08:00

I have been comtemplating to write a post on the different grade and type of 1st gen Toyota Alphard but has been stucked because there are just so many combinations to list out based on my research on this subject. I have been putting this on hold for quite a while now as I was not really sure how to put it in a way that make sense for most potential buyers. Then I read a book on another subject and it talks about keeping it simple. So it just dawn on me that why not just write on what's relevant from a reader viewpoint.

So this is a (hopefully) the first of the many posts on the different specification on 1st Gen Toyota Alphard. This post start with the different grades available for the 1st Gen Toyota Alphard.

From the exterior perspective, there are really 3 different grades which are the standard grade, MS/AS and Hybrid.

The standard grade consists of MZ, MX and AX model. For these 3 grades, the design are boxy conventional minivan look and come with standard 16-inch rims. The photo below shows a pre-facelifted standard grade (on the left) and a face-lifted standard grade.

The MS/AS grade come with aerokit in the form of a sportier bumper and larger rim to emphasize the sportier design. The photo below shows a prefacelifted MS/AS grade (on the left) and a face-lifted MS/AS grade.
The Hybrid is very similar to the standard grade except the grille and the bumper design. Of course the Hybrid sports the Toyota Hybrid System-CVT including a 2.4-litre gasoline engine, front and rear electric motors, a continuously variable transmission (CVT), high-output hybrid battery pack and an E-Four electric four-wheel drive system. The photo below shows a pre-facelifted Hybrid grade (on the left) and a face-lifted Hybrid grade.

I have previously covered the different between pre-facelift and face-lifted model in this post. Basically the difference are in the front headlight, rear tail lamp and the grille.

Some additional notes on 1st Gen Toyota Alphard are:

- MZ/MZ/MS comes with 3.0L engine (1MZ-FE)
- AX/AS comes with 2.4L engine (2AZ-FE)

The V and G model are supply by two different dealers. Toyota Netz supply V model while ToyoPet supply G model. I have cover the different between V and G grille in this post.

In the next several posts, I will try to explore what is offered in each of these grades.

Maintenance Reminders In The HU on Toyota Alphard

2009-08-15T21:47:00.015+08:00

One of the feature provided by the G-Book Information button is the maintenance reminder. It is a very simple setup where you enter the date and mileage when you should be reminded on the next maintenance interval for a particular maintenance item. In this post, I will show you how to utilize the maintenance screen.

Start by pressing the G-Book (情報-G) button to bring up it main menu.

Touch the Maintenance (メンテナンス) button to bring up the Maintenance Settings screen. On this screen, you find the following maintenance items (from top left to bottom right of the first two rows):

Engine Oil Change (エンジンオイル交換)
Oil Filter Change (オイルフィルターを交換)
Tire Rotation (タイヤローテーション)
Tire Change (タイヤ交換)
Battery Change (バッテリー交換)
Brake Pad Change (ブレーキパッド交換)
Wiper Comb Change (ワイパーコム交換)
Coolant Water Change (冷却水交換)
Brake Fluid Change (ブレーキフルート交換)
ATF Change (ATF交換)

The last row is for you to enter the personal items which I will cover later.

To enter the reminder information, press any of the first 0 button above and you'll get a screen similar to the one shown below

If you have previously enter a maintenance reminder for that item, you should touch the Erase Setting (設定消去) button to clear the value for this maintenance item. You can also touch the Automatic Renewal (自動更新) button to automatically renew the item based on previously entered value.

Touch the Notification Date (お知らせ日) button which will bring up this screen for you to enter the date in Year/Month/Day format (Japanese format).
Touch the Complete (完了) button to return to the previous screen.

Touch the Notification Distance (お知らせ距離) button to enter the mileage when this item was changedand then lastly enter the mileage from when the next change should be made.

For some items, you'll only enter the date while other you will have to enter all 3 values.

Touch the Setting Complete (設定完了) button and it will ask you to confirm the action, touch the Yes (はい) button to confirm it.

When you touch any one of the 5 Personal Item (パーソナル項目) button, you will be brought to this screen.
On this screen, you can enter reminder value for the following personal items:

Professional Care 10 (プロケア10)
12 months inspection (12ヶ月点検)
Car Inspection (車検)
Coated Glass (ガラスコート)
High Polymer Maintenance (ハイポリマーメンテナンス) ?
Air filter change (エアフィルター交換)
Insurance Renewal (保険満了)
Driving Permit Renewal (免許証更新)
Air Cleaner (エアクリーナー)
V-belt (Vベルト)
Personal Reminder (パーソナルリマインダ)

When you touch on any of the button it will bring up the same reminder screen as the standard maintenance item shown above for you to enter the value.

Back at the Maintenance screen, remember to touch on the Do (する) button next to words Auto Reminder (自動通知) at the top right of the screen to enable the automatic reminder.

This will ensure that you'll be reminded on those item(s) that you have entered maintenance information when the mileage for that reminder has been reached. When the mileage for a particular mainteannce has been reached or the date has been reached, a message will pop-up in the LCD to remind you.

It is interesting to note that the Japanese has thought of all these for their car owners.

AOC August TT

2009-08-11T01:33:00.005+08:00

Last Saturday, AOC central region members organized another TT for new members. It was held at the restaurant in Taman Tasik Permaisuri in Cheras. That location is quite a good place for TT as they have ample parking spaces to cater for the giants (Toyota Alphard). A total of 22 AOC members turned up for this TT.

I was not planning to attend initially as I have other prior appointment. Since I have a last minute cancellation, I dropped by after 3pm to join the TT. By the time I arrived at the restaurant, quite a lot of AOC members already there. After the normal greeting to regular members and introduction of new members, everyone sat down and have a lively chat on all thing related to our giant.

Some members also went out under the hot sun to admire the giants of other members.

Many of the new members also take the opportunities to learn more about their giants from each others. Also this is a good time to make new friends and to put a face to the nick name (as they appear in the AOC forum) for those who have not met each other.

The TT ended around 6:30pm when the last group bid farewell to each other and looking forward to the next TT.

Model Code for 2nd Gen Alphard/Vellfire

2009-08-07T15:59:00.005+08:00

So far, my blog has cover only the 1st generation Toyota Alphard. This is my first post on anything related to the 2nd generation Toyota Alphard/Vellfire. After I posted the model codes for 1st gen Toyota Alphard, I have received a request from an AOC member to also put up the model codes for 2nd generation Toyota Alphard and/or Vellfire. After I did a bit of research on the Toyota official website, I managed to compile the following table:

Model Code	From	Frame	Characteristics
Alphard
GGH20W-PFTQK(L)	05/2008 -	GGH20	350G L Package V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S
GGH20W-PFTQK	05/2008 -	GGH20	350G V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S
GGH20W-PRTQK	05/2008 -	GGH20	350G V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 08S
GGH20W-PFTQK(W)	05/2008 -	GGH20	350G V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S with Side Lift Seat
GGH20W-PFTSK(C)	05/2008 -	GGH20	350S C Package V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S
GGH20W-PFTSK	05/2008 -	GGH20	350S V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S *1
GGH20W-PRTSK	05/2008 -	GGH20	350S V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 08S
GGH20W-PFTSK (W)	05/2008 -	GGH20	350S V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S with Side Lift Seat
GGH20W-PRTGK	05/2008 -	GGH20	350X V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 08S
ANH20W-PFXQK	05/2008 -	ANH20	240G V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 07S
ANH20W-PRXQK	05/2008 -	ANH20	240G V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 08S
ANH20W-PFXSK	05/2008 -	ANH20	240S V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 07S *2
ANH20W-PRXSK	05/2008 -	ANH20	240S V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 08S
ANH20W-PRXGK	05/2008 -	ANH20	240X V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 08S
ANH20W-PFXGK	05/2008 -	ANH20	240X V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 07S with Side Lift Seat
Vellfire
GGH20W-NFTSK (C)	05/2008 -	GGH20	3.5Z G Edition V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S
GGH20W-NFTSK	05/2008 -	GGH20	3.5Z V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S *3
GGH20W-NRTSK	05/2008 -	GGH20	3.5Z V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 08S
GGH20W-NFTSK(W)	05/2008 -	GGH20	3.5Z V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S with Side Lift Seat
GGH20W-NFTQK(L)	05/2008 -	GGH20	3.5V L Package V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S
GGH20W-NFTQK	05/2008 -	GGH20	3.5V V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S
GGH20W-NRTQK	05/2008 -	GGH20	3.5V V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 08S
GGH20W-NRTQK (W)	05/2008 -	GGH20	3.5V V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 07S with Side Lift Seat
GGH20W-NRTGK	05/2008 -	GGH20	3.5X V VAN 2GRFE 6SETC 08S
ANH20W-NFXSK	05/2008 -	ANH20	2.4Z V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 07S *3
ANH20W-NRXSK	05/2008 -	ANH20	2.4Z V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 08S
ANH20W-NFXQK	05/2008 -	ANH20	2.4V V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 07S
ANH20W-NRXQK	05/2008 -	ANH20	2.4V V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 08S
ANH20W-NRXGK	05/2008 -	ANH20	2.4X V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 08S
ANH20W-NFXGK	05/2008 -	ANH20	2.4X V VAN 2AZFE 7SCVTi 07S with Side Lift Seat

Similar to the model codes for 1st gen Toyota Alphard, the 1st column in the above table is the model code that you will see in a 2nd gen Alphard/Vellfire's chassis number plate. An example is shown below.
The 2nd column indicate the years in which this model was manufactured. The 3rd column indicate the frame type. ANH is the frame code for 2.4L model while GGH is the frame code for 3.5L model. The two digits after that indicates whether it is a 2WD (20) or a 4WD (25). In the table I only listed the 2WD model. Just substitute the numeral 20 with 25 for a 4WD model.

The 4th column indicates the characteristics of this car. The first set of alphabet is the model type. The Alphard will have the designation of 350 or 240 while the Vellfire will have the designation of 3.5 or 2.4. The next character Z/V/S/X is to indicates what fittings are available the model type. I will not go into details here as there are a lot of combination for each model type.

The next set of alphabet shows that it is of VAN (V) body type. The next set of code is the engine code (2AZFE for 2.4L and 2GRFE for 3.5L). The next set of alphabet shows the gear shift type (6SETC - 6 speed super ETC and 7SCVTi - 7 speed super continous variable timing) and final set of alphabet indicates whether it is a 7 seaters (07S) or 8 (08S) seaters. Some model also come fitted with side left seat to aid disable/elder to get in or out of the giant.

Note: Recently Toyota launched a few more variant of the Alphard/Vellfire. The side note in the table above indicates the following:

*1 350S “Prime Selection” Edition also share the same model code. It has Alcantara seats, and brown woodgrain for steering wheel, front door trim, shifting lever and shifting knob.

*2 240S “Limited” Edition also shared the same model code. It has special body colour (grey metallic) and special interior colour. It comes with twin power doors, original gross brown woodgrain decoration (for center cluster and folding side table).

*3 Vellfire 2.4Z and 3.5Z “Platinum Selection” shared the same model code as the 2.4Z and 3.5Z model. It is equipped with power boot, Alcantara seats, and brown woodgrain for steering wheel, front door trim, shifting lever and shifting knob.

Return visit to an almost forgotten food outlet

2009-08-07T01:47:00.011+08:00

In one of the thread in AOC forum a member was going through his list of favourite food outlets and I saw a place he mentioned that I have not been there for almost 15 years. I was surprised that this shop is still around after all these years. That place is called Hing Ket Grill House in Kampung Jawa, Klang.

The last time I was there was with a group of friends which include my wife while I was still single! This shop is famous for their grill lamb then and we always order grill lamb whenever we visited it. Back then to get to that shop, the only access road was from Federal Highway and have to pass through a single lane bridge. You'll have to wait for the cars on their other side of the bridge to pass first before you drive through. A short distance after the bridge and you'll see the shop on your right.

For some reason, the shop just didn't come up in my mind everytime we want to go for seafood in the Klang area. The mention of this outlet by that member bring it back to my memory. I wanted to revisit this place again one of this day.

Today my wife came home and out of the blue suggested that we should have seafood. I said why not we try out Hing Ket after all these years. So off we go in our giant looking for the shop. Initially I was hesitant to take the giant out since there has been quite a lot of JPJ road block lately. However given that it is almost sunset, I guess it is safe to go out with the giant today.

I wasn't sure of the location of this shop now that we are using the Kesas Highway to go there. I look up the Net and found a map that shows it location. Unfortunately that map was not correct so I have to call the shop to get better direction. When we get to the shop, the parking lot is filled with cars. We have to wait for a while for one of the customer to leave before we get to park the giant.

The shop is used to be a shack and it still hasn't change much except that the place where they grill the food is now partitioned with cement walls. Even on a weekday, there are still quite a lot of customer but not full. We ordered a grill crab, two grill sotong and a plate of "tang hun" noodle. We wanted to go for the grill lamb too but my wife saw how they burn the meats on the grill so decided not to try it this time.

The "tang hun" came first and it is alright but nothing to shout about.
The grill sotong came about 20 minutes later and we both agree that it looks good from the outside but after a first bite it was nothing special.

The sotong was just bland without any grill taste and it was on the hard side. We will not be ordering sotong again if we go back there.

Then another 25 minutes wait before the grill crab finally came. The size of the crab is a little bit disappointing as we expected a bigger crab.

Anyway, the crab meat was just nice and tasty. If not for the crab, we would think that this place don't deserve a second visit. This is what left of the crab after the meal!

The biggest let down of the whole experience is that they are slow. It took us almost two hours just to sample 3 dishes even though the outlet is not packed. We were originally thinking of adding a grill fish as well but were glad we didn't commit to it.

Will we go back again? Maybe we will give it one more try but we will definitely stick to the safe choices - grill crab and grill lamb.

PS. As for the direction to this outlet. If you are coming from Kesas Highway, take the Kampung Jawa exit (3rd tolls if you are coming from Cheras), and turn right. Go straight until you reach a small roundabout, take the 12 o'clock and go straight till you pass an Esso petrol station on your left. Look out on the left after an Indian temple. The shop is at the bend on your left. If you miss it, look out for a big mosque on your right and you can u-turn back.

What's the ruling on privacy glass?

2009-08-07T00:32:00.004+08:00

Recently several members of the AOC was given an inspection notice (Arah Periksa Kenderaan) in several road blocks set up by JPJ (our Road Transport Department) on the privacy glass in their giant (Toyota Alphard). It seems JPJ now deems that the privacy glass in our giant doesn't meet the specification for tinting.

But what is the guideline on the specification on privacy glass for imported car like the Toyota Alphard? The JPJ website doesn't has specific guideline on this and the only way to read the above ruling is listed in theis page. Unfortunately it is written in Bahasa Malaysia which translate to "all the glass at front must have vehicle light transmission (VLT) >70% while side and rear glass must have VLT > 50%". If this is the ruling apply by JPJ then I guess all Toyota Alphard imported into this country would not pass the specification. Also, without a clear guideline, they are only issuing the inspection notice rather then issuing a summon to the owner for violation.

Then the question would be if JPJ doesn't allow imported car to have privacy glass that doesn't meet the specification, why would the dealers are allow to import these vehicles into the country.

The logic goes that our Ministry of Trade International (MITI) issues permits for vehicles to be imported. Its permits specify brand, model, etc but does not go into details regarding specification for privacy glass. Then our Customs Department is only interested in whether the cars have a legal Approved Permit and determine any payable tax. With these two conditions met, the cars get into the country legally and cannot actually be stopped since they meet importation laws.

The issue starts when the cars are sent to JPJ for registration. JPJ will evaluate the cars on technical specifications which must comply with our Vehicle Construction Rules, which include permissible levels of tinting. This is where the problem starts. JPJ will find that the tinting is beyond permissible levels but because it is not a film and actually the glass itself, it cannot be changed just like that. But the importer has already sold it to the dealer and the dealer has a customer who has paid a deposit for it.

To get around this ruling, the dealers will change these dark glasses (temporarily) to clear glasses before sending the car to Puspakom for inspection. After getting the report back from Puspakom verifying that the glass has passed inspection, the dealer changed the glasses back to the original dark one before delivering to the customer. From the customer perspective, since there is an approval by Puspakom, then there shouldn't be any problem with JPJ. The recent operation by JPJ seems to indicate that they are strictly enforcing their ruling on privacy glass.

There has been many attempt by JPJ to enforce the ruling on tinting before and their efforts was stopped by the Government several times. I am wondering if this is an indication that they are going all out to target all Toyota Alphard owners.

The privacy glass on the pre-facelift model is actually darker than those on the new-facelift model. Therefore if this new "ruling" by JPJ is strictly enforced, then all pre-facelift model owners will have to change the privacy glass to clear glass. I don't know if the new-facelift model privacy glass will pass the specification but very unlikely.

Another AOC member who recently bought a 2nd generation Toyota Alphard was also "caught" in a recent operation and was also asked to change the privacy glass. I don't know how long all Alphard owners can hold out before they see the next JPJ Operation and get a notice in their hand. I am not looking forward to that day myself. In the AOC forum, many members have started a discussion on putting up community voice to the media to highlight this concern.

I heard that our Transport Minister also drive a Toyota Alphard. I wonder if he has to change his privacy glass!

Alphard Owner's Club

2009-08-04T23:32:00.011+08:00

If you own an Toyota Alphard in either Malaysia or Singapore and you are not aware the existence of a Alphard Onwers' Club in existence, head over to http://www.alphardasiaclub.com/.

Back in late December last year, a few enthusiatic Alphard Owners mooted the idea of forming an Alphard Owners Group. The objective is to have a common place for passionate Alphard owners to share their knowledge on their giants as there are not much information available on Alphard on the Net other than Japanese website.

On the 1st week of January, a dozen or so Alphard owners who used to meet at the Toyota MPV threads in the Motor Trade Online Forum met for the 1st time in a little café in Bukit Jalil. When I said passionate, I really mean it because the first gathering actually have Alphard owners coming all the way from Johor Bahru and Singapore! The group agreed to set up a dedicated forum for Alphard Owners. A fellow member from Singapore took up the challenge and offer to set up this forum on his own expenses. On January 8, 2009, the Alphard Owners' Club (AOC) online forum was officially launched. Even though the forum is called AOC, it is not an official club registered with ROC yet. There is plan to register the club eventually but at the moment, it still exist as an online forum only.

Within the first month, there is already 95 members joined the forum. The founding members that forms the online forum have been actively participating to make the forum more lively from the very beginning. There hasn't been much publicity done to promote this forum but through words of mouth, more and more Alphard owners found the forum and started becoming a member. As of the writing of this post, the forum just passed the 600 members mark after almost 7 months in existence. I believe the number of new members will continue to grow in the coming months. Hopefully we can pass the magical 1,000th member mark before the end of this year.

Currently the forum has members from all over the world. By then I mean other than majority of the members from West Malaysia and Singapore, we have members from East Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Hongkong, New Zealand, Ireland and St Lucia (West Indies/Caribbean - the one and only one Alphard on that island!). Not all members own an Alphard but we do welcome them. Maybe after they learn more about the giant, one day they will become an Alphard owner too.

Currently the online forum has many threads covering various topics including General Discussions, Technical Discussions and the Classified Section. The forum is only accessible by registered member hence general public will not be able to view any of the topics posted in the forum.

The founding members have also been very active in organizing various event trying to attract more members. Since January this year, the following major events were organized for the members:

March 14, 2009 : Day 1 - Gathering of Alphard Owners in Putrajaya; Day 2 - a Day Trip Convoy to Genting Highland
Apr 25th, 2009 : Gathering of Alphard Owners in Awan Besar Rest Area
May 9th, 2009 : Convoy to Kuala Selangor
Jun 6th, 2009 : Gathering of Alphard Owners in Bukit Jalil Golf Driving Range
July 25th, 2009 : Durian Trip to Bentong and Raub.

In between there are also many smaller TT gathering in various locations in Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Johor Bahru and Singapore for Alphard owners in those regions. This month we hope the planned TT for Brunei Alphard owners will be a successful event. The next major event is the proposed family day for Alphard owner somewhere in a beach resort down south during the next school holiday.

If you would like to become a member of this fun-fill forum head over to http://www.alphardasiaclub.com/.

Below are photos of some of the major events.

AOC Convoy in July 2009

2009-08-04T01:27:00.021+08:00

Two weeks ago, the Alphard Owner Club (AOC) group orgainized its 2nd outstation drive for the year.

AOC is curently not an official club yet but there are plans to formally register it with the Register of Societ once all the paper works are done.
Most of the members of AOC currently "meet virtually" at the online forum (http://www.alphardasiaclub.com/). In fact other those members who regularly meet up during TT, there are members who joined this drive without even met any of other members! But the spirit of AOC prevail and those who are able to make it come forward to make this event a success. Also, many bring along their family members to join in the fun.

All togther, a total 17 Toyota Alphard turn up on a sunny Saturday for the convoy. Member from as far as Penang and Johor Bahru joined the convoy as well.
All members gathered at the petrol station after the Gombak Toll as early as 9:00am for breakfast and then the briefing for the convoy.

Courtesy of Bro Tamkm54

Once all the cars has been assigned the convoy number, the convoy was led off by our organizer bro Bigphil.

The convoy depart the petrol station onto the Karak Highway heading toward the Bentong exit. Being a weekend, there was not any heavy vehicle traffic so the drive was very smooth. The group stop by at the Petronas station just before the Karak toll to pickup two members who over shoot the rendezvous point!

The group departed the highway and turn into Bentong town where we got into a bit of local traffic as we negotiate our way to drop by at one of Bentong famous ais kacang shop. It was nice to find that there is just enough parking space to cater for all 17 giants. Apparently we are not the only tourists to this shop as we there are already many others customers there enjoying the shop specialty which is the ais kacang or their own brand of ice cream.

After the group has quence their thirst, we have out first group photo.

Courtesy of Bro Tamkm54

The next item in the itenerary is the main event - Durian Feast. The group depart for Raub to one of the durian farm to feast on the King of Fruit. The route to Raub is a stretch of winding trunk roads that cut across many tiny towns. Contrary to popular belief, the trunk road is actually well paved and wide enough to accommodate the giant. I am sure many in the convoy must have enjoy driving on such roads compare to the monotonous constant speed cruising on our highway.

However the slip road to the durian farm is quite a challenge tough as it is narrow and can barely allow two cars to pass each other. After a 10 minutes of manevouring over pot holes ridden road, we finally arrived at the durian farm.

After short walk from the cars into the farm, the durians and other local fruits are already waiting for us.

Above photo courtes of bro Tamkm54

Everyone take turn to try the various variety of durians such as D2, D101, D24, Gua Musang, Bamboo legs etc.

After the durian feast, the convoy now heads to the Camang waterfall. The journey take the group back toward Bentong town and head towards Camang. Again the road leading to the Camang waterfall is narrow and winding. By the time we arrived at the waterfall the car park is already full. Apparently this waterfall is a favourite weekend hideout for many local. We have to drive out and park at the other car park at a higher ground.

The children had a great time playing in the shallow section of the stream below the waterfall.

Around 5:30pm, the group reconvene at the car park again and took one more group photo before our return journey.
Courtesy of Bro Tamkm54

We bid goodbye to each other and then the convoy make our way back to Kuala Lumpur and all giants return home safely.

For more information on AOC and it activities, logon to http://www.alphardasiaclub.com/