New to fourms a few questions

[Unreachable]

Hi all,

I looking at a black 2003 toyota corolla s loader 5 speed for like 6800 ish. It has about 195,000 km on it I'm going to look at dropping the price a bit. Anyways my real question is what is there to do mod wise to corolla`s my gf has a 2005 ce 81,000km which kinda turned me on to the type s when i saw one i know they are gas friendly. How much hp does one have i`ve driven my gf`s ce before it has good excel but it doesn`t seem to have much torque. I`m the type of guy who want`s to put a cold air intake on it an exhaust give it some hid`s rims and so on my so my real question is how much potential do they have. and what are there known problemsÉ my gf`s corrola is obviously to new to tell if they really have any problem`s

Thanks

[thebrokeenthusiast]

Since you are getting an '03 S, you have two routes you can take for power adders:

1: Intake, exhaust & headers, then the UR pulley kit (will probably give you 15-20 HP over stock)
2: Intake header, exhaust, & TRD supercharger (I seem to remember claims from Toyota of 200 HP at the crank from just the TRD S/C kit, and you could build on to that with a water/methanol injection system, intercooler, and smaller S/C pulley).

All depends on your budget, but all in all, $6500 for any 9th gen Corolla isn't bad. You could afford to spend a little extra and get the S/C kit.

[JasonA]

The 5-speed will have a lot more pickup than an automatic. If your girlfriend's car is an automatic, the 5-speed should be quite a bit faster. Car & Driver ran an '03 LE 0-60 in 8.1 seconds, and an '07 LE 0-60 in 7.9 seconds. Both were 5-speed cars. The automatics are much slower than that. You should also be able to get better mileage with the 5-speed cars also.

It has about 130 horsepower. From 2005-2008, they were labeled with 126 hp, but there was no change to the engine, just a change in the way the power is measured. All 2003-2008 engines are the same internally (except for the 2ZZ-GE engine in the XRS).

[Unreachable]

and as for common problems are they pretty reliable? so far this car has about 195,000km on it but i am not to worried becuase all i ever hear is toyota's go for quite a while just like honda's

[PhatRoyale]

If you want performance potential and mod-ability, I would suggest shopping around for an 05-06 XRS.

[JasonA]

What's more important than anything for vehicle longevity (much more so than the logo on the hood) is maintenance. You must maintain what you have. Pretty much anything can give an easy 250,000 miles if maintained well.

If I'm doing the math right, 195k kilometers is only about 120k miles. My Dodge truck has 175k miles. My former Cadillac (brother owns it now) has about 170k miles. My former Nissan truck had 192k miles when I sold it to my brother, and he just sold it with about 210k miles on it. Whatever the make, as long as it's maintained, it'll give you good service for a long time.

Ask for service records. Has the clutch ever been replaced? If it's on its last legs, that can be relatively expensive. These cars don't have timing belts (a plus) so you don't have to worry about that. You'll want to replace the transmission fluid with some quality stuff probably. I've found Redline MT-90 to be EXCELLENT for these transmission. Put some fresh engine oil in it and a new filter. Synthetic, conventional, it doesn't matter; just change it at a regular interval. All those cars I mentioned above are run on conventional oil. If synthetic oil makes you feel like more of a car guy when you buy it, go ahead, it certainly won't do any harm.

[Unreachable]

So i signed the papers for the car just waiting on approval and what not. I have a few more questions though. As i look through the forums i see so much cool Stuff I want to do to this car. Like I see those grills intakes hids making the foglights brighter and so on. Where can I find out how to do this stuff and where to buy it? Like I am kinda new to these kinda thing this is my first newer car all my other cars where old and crap and i couldn't be bothered to do mods the proper way but now I am seriously wanting to get into it and i need some guidence from you expirenced people. oh and ps if your going to mention places to buy either websites or places in ontario, canada around the gta area or the k-w area. That way I can figure this all out lol

thanks

[hunterxaz]

check out 9th gencorolla.com without the space between 9th and gen. tons of DIYs there. There are also some good ones here.

[thebrokeenthusiast]

What's wrong with modded beaters? Mine has strut bars, intake and a seat swap so far. Getting some used rims off my other car soon, too.