Went and picked up my new to me Corolla from MD1032.
The car was purchased purely for a daily driver good mpg reliable car for my new job requiring travel.
Will post some pictures as soon as the new parts come.
New to the this forum but have a few build threads out there for my other rides.
Ive got a good 500-600 miles on the car since purchase and have owned it a week. I like this car a lot, turn key and go type of car.
So far ive installed fron WeatherTech digital floor mats, and 4 new Firestone Winterforce tires. I promise pics to come, we have been getting blasted with hevy wet snow the past few days.
Ive only noticed a few things with the car. First the heat doesnt feel very warm to me. My truck seems to cook you out, the little Corolla just isnt that warm to me. Might try a replacement t-stat. The temp gauge rarely hits half way at most. The other thing that im not used to is the electric loads on the car dimming the headlights at night when you shift, might upgrade the alternator when it craps out.
Im going to be getting a new radio for the car for Christmas. Its going to be a Nav, bluetooth, back-up camera one from pumkin cool. Also working on getting some Weather Tech vent visors as i have a fetish with the windows being down when i drive. I am also keeping an eye out for an gentex mirror for the auto dim/compass function in the junkyard. Tint and automatic start were also things passing through my mind...
Its a little tough going from a 11' FX4 loaded to something like this, but its the price im willing to pay to avoid 15 MPG's all the time.
One thing about this car, and every other car I've owned with a <2.0 Liter engine, they take forever to warm up. I would say in that car it took about 15 minutes of driving on a cold day for it to get up to temperature, which was actually slightly better than my previous car (6th gen Civic). Once it's warm, the needle should stay here and not move any lower:
...and the heat should be really hot. If neither of those things are true, I would say bad thermostat, or partially plugged heater core, respectively. I never had problems with the thermostat sticking open, however, I did have a problem with the cooling system (which I fixed) right after I got the car where a bad repair shop mixed green coolant with my existing coolant in my car which was dexcool at the time (I have no idea why that was in there to this date). Believe it or not this disaster pretty much "banned" me from repair shops and into DIY repairs for life because what happens when you do this is that the organic acids and silicates crash out and leave sediment and sludge in your cooling system. I researched and found out this was a common problem in GM cars since they all use Dexcool. I ended up purchasing this Prestone "Heavy Duty" cleaner can from a GM dealership, which is specifically designed to dissolve this stuff, followed the instructions, which to my surprise worked, and also exposed a leak in the radiator, which I then replaced. Then I backflushed the heater core because the heat became weak probably from knocking stuff loose during the flush (buncha gunk came out), and from that day on (probably from ~165k to when I sold it, ~225k), I had excellent heat in that car...once it was at operating temperature, that is. At one point I considered modifying the front end with cardboard to help it heat up faster but never bothered.
One thing I learned in the Civic, don't get an aftermarket T-stat if you're going to replace it. The aftermarket ones don't always have the same tolerances and some of them don't close all the way when cold (this forced me to replace the T-stat twice on my Civic).
Bought aftermarket seat heater after girlfriend and niece liked them. Plugs into cigar lighter, 45W IIRC, nice for short trips. I bought first one at Summit racing as they're local.
If you do search, cold city users sometimes use pipe insulation to block off some of radiator airflow from grille. Last year I sandwiched some cardboard between evaporator and radiator to accomplish same.
Not to troll, but do search or Wiki on HOAT vs OAT. IME, Zerex G-05 and equivalent NAPA are the only way to go. On new car that specifies it, Peak or DexCool OK, when cars get old and systems aren't so well sealed.....
Of course, there are varieties of Toyota coolant that work fine, too. Again, search.
I have a 2002 Focus, so it just called for the plain-green IAT antifreeze. I've been using Prestone Yellow (Wal-Mart - for all types of cars and radiators) which I thought was the same, but it looks like it is probably HOAT.
I'm not that concerned with the Focus and the newer cars that we own, I'll probably buy the official dealer antifreeze, but the thread says nothing bad should happen if you mix them, but then says it's a good idea not to mix them ... (????)
The coolant in it looks good and is to level. Started my new job this week so the miles are going up!
Got to look and see when the last oild service was. Checked it the other day and it didnt look bad, was right to full too.
I filled the car the other day and it seemed to idle a little rough right after that. However hasnt done it since.
Great cheap transportation though!
Averaging 33 mpgs at the moment.
WeatherTech floor mats fit pretty well. Wish they went up a little further behind the pedals up the fire wall, as when you clutch some mud/water can drip to carpet. The form of the passenger mat doesn't quite meat the contour of the pillar by the floor and door frame.
Got 4 new Firestone WinterForce tires for the winter months. Looking for another set of rims and some Goodyear Eagle tires for summer. We are going to get a forecasted foot of snow over the next 2 days, will see how it goes.
Didn't get to test the car in the sow today. Drove the Escape, had about 10'' of heavy wet snow in the driveway with a berm at the road of almost 2 feet. Would have gotten stuck in the driveway before making it to the road.
Took the car into Valvoline where my brother works for its first oil change at 4700 miles. Car doesn't leak a drop of anything he says, very clean underneath. I am extremely happy with the car so far, MD1032 did an excellent job with maintenance and keeping the car clean. Very impressed.
Brakes all checked out great with plenty of pad left, nice newer struts, spankin' clean air filter, If we could only get lucky enough to have more people take care of their cars like this.
Picked up a set of Dura-Blade wipers off eBay for $11 and change, figured worth a gamble. So far they wipe good and clean.
Had plans of doing the radio swap, but the Transmission went in the escape, so that was a $2K pill, so all our extra funds are wiped. We need to get rid of that thing. Id way rather drive the Corolla than the Escape too.
Beginning to start my search for summer rims and tires. I want to keep the rim light and decent looking for least cost. As well as a cheap set of summer tires rated for 50K miles.
Been throwing around Celica rims, Prius rims and plain stock S rims. However all of these are tough to find, and when you do they seem to fetch $400+!
For that price I can buy aftermarket. I like anthracite and think it will go with the car well.