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Wishing all Auto Lanka members a very Happy New Year 2025! Let’s hope 2025 will be an even better year for car enthusiasts and bring lots of good things along! I’m planning to add many new features to AL this year and will update you all soon. A big thanks to our Top Contributors, Senior Members, Moderators, and all Members for their valuable contributions and for keeping the forum alive and vibrant throughout the year. A special shout-out to @iRage,@matroska and @Gummybr who hold the top positions in the 2024 forum rankings! Your valuable advice and great content are truly assets to Autolanka Forums. Also special thanks go to @Hyaenidae and the rest of the active members for their valuable help in combating the ever-increasing spammers! Once again, wishing you all a fantastic New Year filled with joy, success, and exciting car adventures! Let’s make 2025 a memorable year for the Auto Lanka community. Stay safe, stay passionate and see you on the forums! Cheers, -Madz-

Hi guys So after 07 long years i have decided to part with my trusty Audi A5, and move on after 130K solid kilometers (bought with 250Km on the clock), I have to say it gave me no major headaches other than replacement of the A/C Compressor. So starting a new chapter with my new Merc E200 2023, hope it gives me the same satisfaction as the Audi. So far the experience is good without the spirited engine of the Audi.

Hellooo, I arrived at AutoLanka as a wee late teens lad with a Starlet, I grew into the reliable and loving arms of a Camry and now in my mid 20s, I seek excitement (in the guise of financial ruin), so what better time to grab an old German lady to treat me (or punish me, might be a kink); Introducing Beatrice; She is a 2010 MFD, 2011 Registered C180 Kompressor specced in Obsidian Black Metallic, specced with some standard options such as Cruise Control and some non-standards like the AMG seats. She is just shy of 100k kms and has 2 extensive files of records since the first owner, I am the fourth. Just finished doing it's service at Merc Labs (when did doing a service cost a 100k?!), will be replacing the pulley related components this Wednesday I still have the Camry around (sitting at 240k kms) which will be picked up by its new owner in the coming few days and I'll do a proper send off post when that happens!

Greetings Gentlemen, been a while, still at it!

Since the last update, the van has been out and running. It drives like an absolute dream. Soft as a pillow and smooth as butter. The recon power steering pump really did wonders. One finger movement. No more noises or creaking. The ride really changed for the best. It’s unbelievable how good getting the suspension overhaul did! Starts right up and drives anywhere in style. Absolutely no issues in the mechanical side that needs repair. I will replace the diesel pump and injectors in about 10k kms because I’m crazy. Funny how good something becomes if you take care of it! The brakes were going hard on the way home from the garage. Turned out it was a rusted brake vacuum line. I asked the garage to check everything and they said they did,but missed this!? Rating on Nandana Motors/SL Chop Shop-7/10 The work they perform is good,but God are they slow af. Unresponsive at times. And you have to keep mentioning repairs or they forget. So like most places in SL. But still probably the best in Kandy. To their credit, the work they perform is excellent. They are just too busy. Thats their issue. Also they are very very expensive. If you can wait and if you are ok spending more to make your ride a minter, then it’s sorta worth it. Next up is the full re-wiring. Already bought a harness. 25k for it. 2k for the badges Saw this beauty the other day. 1st Delica I’ve seen in person in the yeehaw land! Also managed to cop some rare MMC Magnum 400 fogs with the super ultra rare covers. Works good but a lick of paint would really bring it up! Factory option ✅ (25k) after she came home- no crash bar life- Mitsubishi deff designed this with the crash bar in mind- straight out the workshop-

Bl**dy h*** ! DON"T ! Get it off your mind ! Just don't !!

COngratulations ! Beatrice sounds like an old lady in her 60s. Is there something we should know about you

Chinese do that all the time though

lol I recall mentioning it once to my wife while driving the Civic; got the AC issues the very next day. It’s alive! Should resort to having a little chat with the car on a daily now to keep it going. It can’t complain though as I got a complete detailing job done the day before - took it to the spa! Think I’ll keep the Civic a while longer… and maybe check out the cost of the 1.5L conversion 😀.

Dude...it is a wagon. Why on earth would a hatchback want to race a wagon. That is like a young dude challenging a pregnant lady with a 3-year-old hanging off of her arm to a 100m race (before finding out the lady can run).

Ended up with a Y11 AD wagon for the workhorse assignments. Sadly it's time to let the starlet go...

Hey Guys, Sorry for the downtime over the past two days! We’ve been migrating servers and upgrading the site. You might still experience occasional outages as we fine-tune things. Thanks for your patience! 🙌

The owner of the car was a traditional Sri Lankan - cheap, lazy and ignorant. He was kind enough to not empty the fuel tank, so I was able to make my way to a fuel station and top up the car. A few ghosts had to leave the fuel tank as it had not been filled fully since Chandika was president. The next port of call was the service station. Here we emptied the dark tarry engine oil and put in some fresh (hopefully real) Toyota oil. We next replaced the oil, air, and other filters). After that it was off to the garage to do the suspension and brakes. I can't remember exactly what was done (have to look at the paperwork) but all 4 struts, front CV joints and a lot of odds and ends were replaced. The brakes were overhauled and front rotors (is that the correct term?) polished. I forgot to get the wheel bearings replaced so there's a continuous hum. Need to do that. Total, I think it was 150-200k

Last year, I decided to purchase a second vehicle for travelling around Sri Lanka, as well as regular use. I set a modest (by Sri Lankan standards) budget of LKR 3m + 10%++ for restoration. In this price range, I had a choice between Indian and Japanese vehicles I ruled out the Indian ones, because I wasn't satisfied with build quality and comfort in this price range. I could have got an Alto but I don't consider them safe (too small). This left a few Japanese and Korean vehicles. I steered clear of the Korean ones, not for any bad reason, but because I simply don't understand them. I suspect there may have been some excellent vehicles by Hyundai/Kia. Among Japanese vehicles, I steered clear of Mitsubishi as I have seen rust issues with these cars (older ones). One of the most important things for me was the availability of spares and body parts, as well as the simplicity of the vehicle. I shortlisted the following vehicles: - Toyota corolla - AE100/110, Carina, Camry, Corona etc. - Toyota Station Wagon (90s-2000s) mostly the van variants. - Nissan FB14/15 and N16s - Cefiro/Bluebird/etc I decided not to go with a Carina/Corona simply because I couldn't find a good example, also, being rarer cars, I figured out the body parts may not be available (internals are mostly shared so I didn't foresee major issues there). With Nissans, the FB14s I saw were mostly salvage grade, I saw a few decent fb15s but most had absurd prices in the 3.5-4.5m range. I looked at quite a few N16s but they were either wrecked or the owners wanted high prices. To expand on pricing, I preferred to buy a simple corolla Vs one of the more exotic cars, as I believe these are simpler to maintain. I saw a few corolla vans (wagons) but these were in poor condition. The ae100s I saw were in poor condition. I finally found an ae110 and selected it, as I felt it was in reparable condition. I'll provide more updates on the car here soon. I want to sincerely thank a number of people in this community for their mind help and advice. In particular, @iRage and @matroska

Guys, I was able to purchase the car. Unsurprisingly there's a lot of work to do, but that's fine. I've sorted out the suspension issues, I'm now working on engine issues. Need to get a tuneup done and to check all the sensors, etc. it seems some of the pulleys are misaligned and belts are frayed, so I want to sort that out asap Can someone recommend me a good place to do a tuneup and also some of the engine work needed (e110, 5a engine) - I basically need a place with technical knowledge and patience to do a reasonable job. I'll separately post a thread on the learnings and resources so it can help anyone (hopefully) Edit: I also need to check on the gearbox. At the least, a fluid change and service perhaps? It seems it doesn't downshift easily, but this could be a perception on my part (engine performance etc) which may be OK after a tune-up

Not even that i have seen few advertisements in FB market place with below market prices. However when inquired i get the feeling that they are not genuine sales. I believe there is a racket to bring the current market prices down by a certain segment. In a country where majority do not pay or underpay their taxes there is no way the government can afford to reduce taxes on spending. This is the only way we can recover taxes. Only victims in this process is very few people who actually pay taxes majority being middle class salaried who end up paying taxes up to 36% on their salary and when they save that get taxed too. If ever there is to be justice they should not allow anyone to bring down a vehicle who has not paid their taxes for the last five years. Better still may be imposed a license system based on taxes paid.

Known car models with wet timing belts that are popular in Sri Lanka: Peugeot 3008 1.2L Honda Civic 10th gen 1.0L Ford Ecosport 1.0L

Saw shitbox and came smiling to talk about proper shitboxes - the ones held together by duct tape and rubber bands - Corolla Wagons and likes.... fiat fan talks about Wagon R's and Toyota Roomy's ... what a turn-down

Next up: Mars. Hopefully the AMT gearbox will hold up

Congratulations! These are nice cars, yes they maybe expensive to maintain but to offset that you need to use them rather than keep them garaged. On the servicing front if you were to do the normal service it shouldn't cost you 100k. I know they use synthetic oil and specific oil brands but not 100k. But hey you will service the car every 10,000kms or one year compared to your Camry. Some of those had trouble with balancing shaft dampers by the time they hit around 100,000kms. But people love these cars. Things to look out for - the switches with paint peeling off (window, AC switches) but those should be easy to find. On the spec that is a fairly standard spec, cruise control came standard with the automatic. And those are the Avantgarde model specific seats with leather on the sides and the fabric in the middle. The Elegance model had the full synthetic leather and the classical merc grille.

Now you know why cars like the Galant, Box Lancer, Pajero, Delica were used by temples back in the day. Most Ceres/Marinos in SL are 5A-FE and 4A-FE variants. Silver top was the common 4A-GE engine. Then at the early stage of the facelift it came with a Blacktop mated to a 5MT, which lasted for a little less than a year before the Blacktop was put together with a 6MT. So ironically the rarest Ceres/Marino is the one with a 4AGE Blacktop and 5MT. Some worthless trivia: the only E100 to have a 6MT was the Ceres/Marino and the Station Wagon. Sedan, Levin/Trueno all had switched over to the E110 series by the time the 6MT transmission was launched by Toyota.

aka...y

Just so you know...once you upgrade to 1.5L, that doesn't mean you can swap it again and make it a 2.0L (you know...Type Rs and all). It is 500cc above "mul akruthiya" unless you change the fuel type

Did the civic hear you say this? That the Premio and Allion has better driving pleasure than it? If so your Civic is probably venting out it's anger on you I think Misnad's Civic is a bit of an exception after it heard him say the Allion/Premio has better driving pleasure than it - "hell hath no fury..." and all that. Eesh... just run the Civic Like a regular jap car. Don't wanna jynx it -but mine's only been acting up in the A/C department.

I know a guy in Rathnapura that has 3 Alfa Romeo cars. Even he spends less money and more sleep than you guys! But for me the reliability winner is my 37YO Delica. They dont make them like they used to! Hows the new Vezi? Very popular locally.

Honda really pulled a sneaky there didn't they? Rather than equipping the car with actual TPMS hardware they came up with a software workaround using existing wheel speed sensors to guesstimate tire pressure! Owners be like "we've been in forests less shady than you, Honda!" 😅

Australian drivers vs Sri Lankan drivers

Dad shared this snap and looks very well kept with full service history from Toyota.

Engine says: බ්‍රෝ චෙක් එන්ජින් ලයිට් එක වැඩද බලන්න පත්තු කරේ 😜

It is my humble belief that Japanese automakers may have perfected their craft in the late 90s. None more so than Toyota themselves. I have always been a fan of Toyota and my family owned many (though I didn't personally), so when I was looking at cars I paid particular attention to this corolla (I believe it's the 8th generation JDM corolla?) I saw a few sprinter equivalents, I liked them as they included an RPM meter. Along the way, I chances upon and e110 which was (in my opinion) in passable condition. When I say passable, I mean the vehicle could be restored, Vs most other cars which I would consider in salvage/write-off status. In my nontechnical assessment, I graded the car as follows - body - passable/repairable. No major signs of visible rust or structural damage. - engine - average condition for age but serviceable -i felt a tuneup plus replacing belts, electricals etc could do. -suspension - unsurprisingly, 30 years on Sri Lankan roads meant replace everything. -interior - passable, cleanable. - transmission - functional. The next step was to take it to an inspection company. There are two, so I tossed a coin. I had my heart set on the simian variety but I landed on the other. The inspection was very interesting. I expected a 5 minute check, but they really took their time, which I appreciated. At Rs7,500 I considered this good value. The inspection confirmed my assessment. For me, the biggest relief was that the chassis appeared to be reasonable, with no major accidents (usual fender benders etc) - I consider chassis issues to be mostly unfixable. Suspension, as I suspected, was gone, so they advised replacing the basics - struts and bits, which seemed reasonable. Engine and transmission, they did a test drive and agreed with me that it was Ok, could do with a service. An understatement, as suspect the current owner hasn't serviced it in 50k km The owner has the vehicle under "open papers" registered in the previous owners name. I told them that if they transfer it to their name, I can buy it. The owner was able to do this, so I went ahead and purchased the car.

Oy ! Enough of this &()#*## ! Ko pinthura ? We are very visual creatures. Give us pics or the only way we can cope with all this is convincing ourselves that this car of yours is nothing more than a figment of your imagination

Very true. Problem we have is no one is listening to the people who know. I blame the media for not reporting facts, I blame them for becoming a mouthpiece for certain groups only. Media can play a decisive role in changing public misconceptions. Media has to be responsible for what they publish. Another reason is because of the L board people (I mean the vehicle importers) who are acting like newbies for their own good. If you had been in the industry you know what taxes are to be paid and how many times it changed in the recent years. They should know that the excise duty on vehicles is the inclusion of all the other duties except for VAT. This came about to simplify the system. Thing is on the forex, it's a fine balancing act, they have to get their act together (govt) if not it's going to be a disaster. This is where the govt should show their education and experience to come out with a proper plan. I have always said that we as a country doesn't know how to bring in more forex, they look at the easy ways only. There is no proper help given for tourism, exports to push them for better revenue and to bring the money rather than park it elsewhere. We have EPZ's but how many companies are still functioning? Yes it takes time to build trust in foreigners to come and invest, but things should be made simple for them to do business whilst the 'clean Sri Lanka' concept should push for more cleaning up of the govt closet's and coming clean from our old 'you can do anything if you give a commission' mentality. I hope and pray that this govt does it properly before they are chased out, if not we have no future of becoming a corruption free country.

A very happy new year to all Autolankans! May this year bring open roads, smooth traffic, and no fuel queues!

Here is the issue...the 3 year limit was imposed because these very same groups started bringing in junk. Countries from Kenya to Tanzania all the way to SL had this issue and SL was the first to enact this as an anti-dumping policy. You would think that with a 5 or even 7-year age limit, they would bring the actual high auction-grade cars as is. But no. They brought in the cheap junk. On the plus side these cars were just mechanically junk and not welded up death traps. Extending the age restriction would bring benefits you have stated if and only if we have strict import and registration inspections. Which we don't and have not been able to establish for 4 decades. I strongly believe that these guys are pushing for older cars just so that they can keep a higher margin for themselves. They are not going to buy the 1.6mil Allion/Premio. They are going to buy the 700k ones from the damage/parts car corner and sell it for the same price as the 1.6mil. <Sorry...after being here I have lost all respect for Sri Lankan car exporters>. True....forex leaving the country will be less as the exporters pay peanuts for these cars...but they are not saying anything about the masses paying actual lower purchase prices. All the manufacturers have Used Car dealerships. Also..hate to break it to you but you don't get that many 5- to 7-year-old Premios and Allions anymore in Japan, and the numbers are dwindling by the month. Almost all of them are gone/going to countries in Africa, Bangaladesh, etc.. Right now there are 37 Premios for sale in the whole of Japan within this age range. Also, it is about 1.6mil on average at auction (there are a few hundred newer vehicles..mostly rentals or fleet cars, it seems, and those are a bit more expensive). In contrast, a 3-5-year-old Corolla sedan 1.8 Hybrid or a slightly newer 1.2L petrol WxB and the 1.2L hatchback are the same price. So, you really are not saving that much money by going for an older Premio/Allion in good condition. You might as well buy the newer Corolla. There are models where the price between a 3-5 year old car is quite high compared to a 7 year old car...those are either large cars like the RAV4 (attracting higher import taxes) or cars like Vitzes. So we are looking again at the usual cars we have...Vitzes, Axios, etc... Which is exactly what I believe these guys are targeting anyway (you can literally buy a 7-year-old Vitz/Aqua for about 300,000 yen). Now..considering that it was these same guys who bought these cars during the early days of the ban and jacked up the prices...do you really think they are going to drastically reduce the prices (also....they are probably out of stock of used cars as well)? On the plus side, you do still get the Axio and Fielder used or brand new. Toyota has been trying to kill the model, but it keeps on selling like crazy both domestically (because that is the only remaining narrow-body sedan/wagon) and for export (the waiting list for a brand new Axio/Fielder is 6 to 8 months). The bitter truth that is hard to swallow is that cars like the Civic and Corolla have moved on and are no longer the reasonably priced entry-level cars they used to be. The segment is now taken over by cars like the Yaris,Fit, etc...

but what if it was lady bank manager used as a second car?

..and here I was going to say Anura Malli working at Handiye Tissa's garage.

When you and Matroska are given the clues for the 1st and the last names and it was a game over for me 😂

Typed out my guess a few days back and forgot to post it xD, was still thinking that I did The Maserati MC12? Though I’m fairly sure there aren’t any in SL Used to be one of my fav cars when I played NFS Shift on my dad’s Nokia N8, brings back a lot of memories

For a while I had a Nissan AD wagon all 1.3 Liters of QG13 goodness and It was SLOW and I mean SLOW and it probably showed. I think every driver treated it like a pregnant lady with a toddler in tow - I was like "Why is everyone nice to me?" "oh wait I'm in my AD wagon"

Wonder which highway will take me to Malaysia. Hmm. 🤔

Legalizing is always a good thing. However, in a country where regulations and its practice is nothing short of a clown show you might be shooting yourself in the foot when it is not even your problem. As JC mentioned...stay away from anything that has a questionable book. To answer your questions, the best place (and frankly,should be your only place) in the RMV. Give a call and present the situation as a hypothetical scenario. Some of us can share experiences or what we believe is the regulation, but things change so much (at least in practice) that what was the case last year might not be so this year.

That is not confusing at all. Makes perfect sense.

When you have explained the fuel tank story, I can imagine the tough conversation you may have faced for haggling the price. 😂 Hope the owner's wife made the final decision price 😄 I remember once we had to wait for the owner's wife to come back from work so she make the final decision she came home and lifted the price by 10K, reminding the owner of the service they had done millions of years ago 😁 Please check the fuel light, it may have blown by the high usage 😉 Good luck with the car, I would say "restoration" If the car could speak, it would say "Thank you for saving me!" Regards, JC

It appears Sri Lanka will go bankrupt again, buying Wagon R's .

Happy new year everyone !

Happy New year guys! @Hyaenidae - that's a good use of generative AI !

Wish you all a great year ahead! Let's hope to see some new vehicles around. 😍🙂

Oh damn, the Corolla Sport only comes in the 1.8L variant now? I really wanted to buy that car.. I guess not now Also as a side note. I have a slightly different opinion to yours. I feel like cars like GP1, Vitz will not take a big hit. Instead, inflated cars like Swift (Almost 9 million) and GP5 (About 8 million) will take decent hits. Also, cars like Axio (10-15 mil), Premio (About 20 mil), Allion (About 18 mil), Vezel (10-15 mil) will take massive hits as the second-hand reconditioned cars will be on par with those prices and so provide less incentive to buy an older car for that price. But I agree, overly inflated Kei Cars such as Wagon R, Spacia and the likes will take a strong beating in terms of pricing as well. At their market price, brand new 1L options would be way more superior than their 660cc engines lol. In the end, the middle class dream of owning a car (Not a decent car, just owning a car) will not be an easy feat despite the imports I guess.