This is my first car. I love Toyota's, my dad has a '81 Toyota pickup with the 22R engine that with only a replaced head gasket and machined top motor, has ran nearing 1 million miles.
It's the 4 door sedan, more or less, but I believe the AE82 clears that up.
It has a 4ALC motor, and it's the 3 speed automatic. It *was* a rent a car at some point through it it's life.
Anyways, here we go:
Buy it in January 2010
Month or so later, first day ever attending college, drive it to to school, get over a decent incline - look down at the heat gauge, it's pegged THROUGH the rough. I smash the throttle to keep it going at ~60MPH. Get off nearest exit, check basic stuff. Ends up the head gasket is blown. Replace / get resurfaced after a few weeks.
A month or two later, the transmission explodes. Buy a rebuilt transmission(automatic) and get it installed.
Fast forward a year, yay - time to get smog. Mechanic tells me it's never going to be able to have a new carb, blah blah blah, somehow he manages to replace the heater element in my car, dick with it and get it to pass smog.
All of this happened within ~6000mi of driving. I really, really picked the bad one out of the bunch. Odometer currently reads 198k, but I've a feeling this is a lie.
Now we're here.
current problems:
-Rough time starting up after it's been running for more than 30 minutes.
-Looses power after running for a certain amount of time, say, 30 minutes, a extremely noticeable decline in acceleration.
-I can literally smash the pedal to the ground, and it won't start accelerating at all until a certain revolution(no Tachometer).
-It now makes a weird creeking sound emanating from the left wheel when turning right, this sound originally alarmed me to discover that a CV joint was blown out - I replaced these. It still makes the noise.
-Literally gutless.
-Replaced alternator(my alternator died, as well.), CHARGE light stays on now(expecting a corroded wire somewhere that is grounding out.)
-Only gets ~20 miles per gallon, more so less. Around the area I live, to transit to school and back, there is a humongous grade and I must SMASH the pedal to the floor to get up this hill at ~65 if I'm LUCKY. During this process, the horrible transmission goes from 2nd to 3rd, back, and forth, and back, and forth, which is just HORRIBLE on the engine and everything else I am assuming.
-It is gutless.
Now, here's why I come to you.
I have already invested 3000 dollars into this car, which does not include the original standing price of 1100.
I am in deep, there is no way that I will ever receive more than 1100$ for this car. I do not want to ever, ever, buy a used car again unless it is from someone I know is the original owner and the car has less than 100000 miles. Period.
I do have some money, and I would like this car to be able to get me around. If I want to drive from California to Vegas, I want to do this without worrying about massive problems.
I also would absolutely LOVE some form of acceleration, this car is absolutely gutless. 0-60 in somewhere around 15-20 seconds. This is simply ridiculous. This is with the pedal completely to the ground. I can manually shift the gears from 1-3, and it makes little difference.
Now, here are the options I'm considering:
Buying a new motor, I mean, FLAWLESS, completely good motor.
and, converting it to a manual transmission.
This will allow me to have the satisfaction of being able to drive at least 150000 miles without any type of massive fear. I want to be able to go on road trips and such. I want to be able to enjoy my car.
After I do something like this, and replace motor/transmission and convert to manual, I'm going to redo the entire interior which will be pretty cheap, make it nice and smell good, all that, and I'll have a car.
What I have now, is unfortunately not a car. It is a ticking time bomb.
What are your recommendations?
Thanks in advance
The Camry
The Hardtop
Linear Mode
