Corollas2019-23ToyotasTech

Search Corolland!

Out With The Older - Pics Of Newer Ride

By doubletrouble, April 4, 2014



Fianlly , after over 8 years owning the car that would not die, I sold my 93 corolla. I paid $1100 for it in 2005 and sold it for $800. The darn car would not die even at 329000 miles. I was going to sell it at 300000 , but it still got 35 MPG and only burned a quart of oil every 600-1000 miles.

I just put an axle in it , front brakes, ball joints, front tires, and a radiator in the last year. Mostly junkyard parts so maybe $100. The exhaust is getting loud again and the car was just looking worn out.

I bought its replacement last september, a 2002 Chevy Prizm LSI. Yes , i know its the oil burner from hell, but I couldn't resist . The car has 116000 , and needed a bunch of mostly minor repairs. The 23 year old that owned it lived in an apartment and drove it until the left caliper piston was jammed out of the cylinder. I did a full brake job in the apartment parking lot just to drive it home. Rotors , pads, fluid, and one caliper.

It needed tires and I found some almost new falken sincera-828's for $15 each + mounting. The oil filter would not come off. It took me a half hour with a big oil filter pliers to remove it. When i got the car it was a quart low , but the owner swore that he had not added any oil since the last quick lube change which was right at 3000 miles on the sticker.

Here are pictures of it.

http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/3326534/1

Most of the rest was spark plugs , air filter, cleaning, fluids , repair the squirter bottle and a few more things.

I have a total of $1350 in the car. So far at 300 miles on it , it does not burn any oil.

I have a check engine light just come on , and it seems to be a bank 2 oxygen senson. No big deal.

It does have some valve noise on cold startup for about 30 seconds. I am going to do an induction and system cleaning with B-G products that i have here. We will see if it helps.

Here are pictures of both cars.

I can only hope that this car gets me a few miles.

.

Nice! Yeah, pretty hard to let them go when they still work well. Sure - oil consumption issue can be problematic - but can happen to pretty much any car out there, some have much higher levels of oil consumption - but seems "worse" with Toyota products because we expect them to be bulletproof.

Looks like the Prism should be nice upgrade for you. Also looks like it got the factory alloys - those can be hard to find.

I scanned the check engine light again .This time with a friends scanner / android phone. It came up po420.

It could be anything from an exhaust leak to a dirty IAC. I took out the MAF sensor and sprayed it with MAF cleaner.

I pulled the air filter hose and sprayed some old gumout I had lying around into the throttle body and IAC hole.

The butterfly was pretty carboned up.

If the light comes on again , I will remove the IAC and clean it the right way.

The car had a slight idle variation and engine vibration at low (600 ) rpms . It did seem to get better after I cleaned it .

Most people would call it normal. I know better.

You see very few LSI prizm's . If you buy an economy car , you usually got the base model. The rims were part of the package.

Its nice having power locks, cruise , tilt, sunroof.

I have had luxury cars before and just bought the wife a 2011 sonata last week. What a nice car.

We both needed and deserved upgrades. I was getting of fixing stuff in 10 degree weather. Garage or not.

I have a '02 Corolla with 229K. Fish and I both have code P0440 for the EVAP canister on top of the fuel tank.

That code has not come up at all? If I remember correctly from my last car, a P0420 is a downstream O2.

600 is too low. Ours idle at 800- 790 when fully warmed up.

My idle was too high, bad ECT sensor.

It really idles about 650. I suspected a bad downstream sensor , but won't replace it until the code comes back .

I want to do some more B-G injector and throttle body cleaning, and get some mileage readings so I know the car is running good before I start throwing needless parts at it..

650 RPM isn't too bad. Like you mentioned, might just need to be driven out. Given its prior history - probably didn't see as much TLC as it should have. If it was me - I'd just add a can of Redline Fuel system cleaner - fresh tank of gas and run the nuts off of the car.

Fish, I am ticked off. I was losing a little brake fluid. I thought it was my caliper install because I do not crank the line connections . Of course the rear brake line was leaking and blew on my way to the post office. Limped it home to my garage.

Just ordered lines , nuts , and fluid. Did this one before on the 93 so at least I know the procedure and have a double flare set.

Also , played with my dash lights that are out. Now i find that the horn is out too. Left turn signal is clicking fast... All the fuses are good.

Any ideas? At least its spring and I don't have to do this in freezing weather.

Thanks

Doh! - yeah, brake lines can be a pain to work with. If you have the tools and time, you can bend them yourself. On my Camry - I just bought pre-bent lines to save myself time.

On the horn, double check that the contacts are good - sometimes there can be a little bit of corrosion on there and the horn will be inoperable.

Turn signal clicking too fast - could be a bad bulb on that side of the car and/or bad flasher relay.



Topic List