Hi,

Now, this may be a strange question but if someone could help that would be great. Having trouble with my van at the moment (see other post), but have a question about garage repairs.

Recently put it in to get the carb cleaned and overhauled which was all fine, but the garage said they had to spend time stripping all the seats out just to get at the engine to look at it and then time to put them back in. All this took a bit of time, over about an hour each time apparently, which obviously added to the final bill, by quite a large amount. My question then is this - is that normal? Would one normally have to strip out the seats to get at the engine and the carb? I realise that there isn't a huge amount of space to manouvre in there, but surely there is meant to be enough to do repairs? I ask because as I said the van may need to go in about a starting problem so was wondering what kind of problems can be fixed without stripping the seats out etc? And would most garages do this, or should I go to a different garage for this problem (by the way, if anyone has a recommendations for a good garage to take it into in the Melbourne inner city area, ideally near Brunswick, I would be delighted to hear it)

Thanks for any help or advice,
Lewis

On my 1977 van you have to remove the passenger seat and panel to get at the carburettor, and the drivers seat and panel if you want good access to the distributor side.

The passenger side takes 5 minutes tops to undo 4/5 bolts.

The drivers seat can be a little more involved, because toyota in their infinite wisdom attached the coil to the panel that you are removing. I have moved it for easier access.