As a 2nd owner I'd obviously like to know what sort of service has already been done on this car. Do Toyota dealerships have a database they could query by the VIN and bring up all work done by them?

 

They did on my 96.

 

I tried a pretty sizable local Toyota dealerships and the guy at the service desk said he can only get service records done with them

Then I specifically asked if Toyota keeps a central database and if so does anyone have access to it? He said no!

Try another dealer?

 

When I got my 4Runner they told me I could go to any Toy dealer and they could look up my info, especially important if I needed warranty work and I was out of state.

On my past vehicles I did the maintaince work myself or took them to certain shops, never gave my records back with the cars, want to leave the new owners guessing and not thinking they could leave the oil unchanged

 

Well, I've went to another dealership. This time the one where I bought the car, just a different location.

They told me they can only get Toyota warranty service records, and maintenance done ONLY in their dealerships. They again said Toyota does not keep a central database of maintenance records.

Who's giving out the bad info here?:pat:

 

Come on guys. If not here, where should I get honest info? Surely not a car dealership

 

When I bought my 4Runner in San Diego in Feb of '03 I had no idea about the history of the vehicle.

When I got back to Phoenix, I heard about a couple recalls that my 4Runner may have been eligible for. So, I called a really cool guy at Tempe Toyota. Over the phone, he told me about the recall history. That it had the HG's replaced in Sept of 96, but they were the old design. He also told me that I was eligible for the rear coil spring recall.

He also mentioned that there was no maintenance history on the vehicle. He said that either the previous owner did not have any work done at the dealerships, or the dealerships never entered info in the database by the VIN.

So, that's what I meant.

 

have you tried tracking down the original owner? ifound the original owner of m rig (before i bought it) from a phone number on an extended warranty booklet in the dash.

 

True if the dealers were too lazy to upload the info to toyota's service database, which is usually the case.

 

I was told by a dealer that toyota does not keep nationwide records. I believe him. This system can work in our favor though, because if one dealer won't fix something under warranty then we can always go to another dealer. If there were a nationwide system then all the dealers will know the first dealer denied the warranty claim.

They do, however, have recall info on a nationwide database. For example, the headgasket campaign.

 

Excellent, we getting consistency now

So my best bet now is to ask the previous owner, who very conviently left several years of insurance cards in the glove compartment

Maybe a gift basket will even net me the maintenence log book