This is my first Toyota. I had an amazingly good experience with buying this car (a different thread in itself) and I'm hoping to get many years of trouble free use out of it. A little bit about the car's background first before I ask some questions:
The car was sold to me by the original owner (an older lady and retired bank manager who had just bought a brand new Corolla) who kept, and kept organized, every invoice for any service done on the car. From 04/30/00, when she bought it, until Dec. '08, all the work (except tires) was done at Toyota; later she had oil changes etc done at Crappy tire and Meineke. According to her paperwork she changed it faithfully twice a year, every 3,000 - 5,000 miles. Toyota also did coolant and transmission flushes over that period as per their regular service schedule. Aside from the usual wear and tear items (brakes, left struts, exhaust work) its pretty much still factory.
The car had 96,000 km on it when I bought it almost a month ago today, and I'm just about to pass the 100,000 mark over the weekend (4,000 km in one month has been mainly due to my love of the car and taking it out for long drives). The only issues I've encountered so far have been pretty minor, but I'll post them here:
1. The car would never cold start for me on the first turn of the key. It typically took 2 tries, and then would sometimes stall after that. The idle at those times would start high, then the rpm would drop very low and become rough before the stall and after restart, until it warned for a couple minutes. Its been a very cool spring where I live so far, so ambient temps were in the range of 0-5 degrees Celsius. It may be a coincidence, but I did an oil change with Castrol Gtx 5w30 and a Honeywell "Defense" oil filter the day before yesterday, and when I started it yesterday it started fine on the first attempt and there was no stall after a quick 30 second warm up (ambient temp was about 5C).
Prior to the oil change I changed the air filter at 98,000 km with a new Fram filter and put a bottle of STP fuel injector cleaner into a fillup at the same time (just because I noticed it was on sale when I was buying the air filter and figured why not try it). I also topped up the coolant (which was just below the low mark) with distilled/deionized water (I'm going to drain and refill the coolant late in the fall, so I'm not concerned with diluting the antifreeze in the meantime).
From reading these forums, I suspect I'll also replace the original irridium plugs with new ones of the same brand and type before the summer's over, and clean the MAF sensor while I'm at it. The Serpentine belt was replaced by Toyota at about 40,000 kms and I had the tensioner replaced when the car was inspected.
The transmission fluid was drained and refilled by Toyota at 79,812 km and I'm wondering when I should drain and replace it again (Toyota's service schedule says I should do it now, but I think its an unnecessary expense this soon). Anyone have any thoughts on a more real world interval for that?
I'd appreciate any feedback from other members on anything else I could or should do to keep this car purring as long as possible (it was factory undercoated so there is no rust and the original owner really took good care of it). As an aside, its an oil burner but I haven't had it long enough to measure how much it burns, and this seems to be common (and to me, minor) issue on the 8th gen corollas. My milage also isn't also doesn't seem as good as many others here are getting, but I think that's a combination of the worn out tires (cheap Motomaster SE's that are on their last season), the terrain here (all hills and valleys), and my being too heavy on the pedal (my highway cruise speed is 75-80 mph and I've had a few runs where I've pushed it up to just over 100 mph). After reading some articles on hypermiling, I've begun to modify my driving habits and plan to work out the mpg I'm getting soon.
