First car for teenager

[jscoda]

Looking for first car for my son. A mid to late '90s Camry seems to be a good bet. Especially with the 2.2L. Am looking to avoid the BHG issue and the paint/clearcoat issue too. And of course any oil issues. Which year or generation would be the most reliable for a teenager? Last Camry I had was an '89 and it was great.


89' Camry LE sold
89' Celica ST sold
97' 4Runner SR5 Gold Package
96' Lexus LS 400
04' Sequoia Limited

[BMR]

With the 2.2L engines, none of them are prone to BHG problems that I'm aware of. Same thing with the clearcoat; no years to avoid as far as I know. There was a span where there was "sludging" potential, affecting these years, per this link:

• Camry 4 cylinder from 1997-2001,
• Camry 6 cylinder from 1997-2002,
• Camry Solara 4 cylinder from 1999-2001,
• Camry Solara 6 cylinder 1999-2002,
• Sienna 6 cylinder from 1998-2002,
• Avalon 6 cylinder from 1997-2002,
• Celica 4 cylinder from 1997-1999,
• Highlander 6 cylinder from 2001-2002,
• Lexus ES 300 from 1997-2002 and
• Lexus RX 300 from 1999-2002.

[ajkalian]

There was a problem with some of the 4-cyl Camry's involving the back head bolts pulling out from the block. There is some plastic foam stuff in the back of the engine that absorbs the coolant leak until it gets bad enough to fail and then the bolt pull out of the aluminum block, and the Head Gasket blows and the engine is toast.

Seems that the threaded portion of the block doesn't have sufficient material and the head bolts pull out after a while. There are quite a few threads on it, and here's a link to just one of them. Scroll down to Message #18 for a pretty complete description of what happens.

http://www.camryforums.com/forum/gen...ge2/#post17250

Here's another one
http://www.tundrasolutions.com/forum.../t-148454.html



I thought I had some other links, but I can't find them right now. I'll post them later if I run across them.

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