Help answer a few questions regarding my Corolla

[iconman]

Hey guy I'm going to change the oil in my car for the first time soon when I could afford a pairs of jack stand and a car jack. The 1992 Corolla has around 240,000 miles on it and ever since my father bought the car nine years ago, I would consider it lucky if the car got an oil change once every six months.

I believe no one ever change the spark plug gasket as well as the fuel injector hose and the PCV because they had harden to the point where it was impossible to pull them off from the cam cover and it only broke off the parts where I tried to pull it out with a pliers so that cam cover was a goner. I ended up going to a local junkyard and found the same cam cover. Funny thing was that I found a couple of the same cam covers and all but one had the same problems where the PCV and spark plug gaskets were "fused" onto the aluminum head cover. So then I got home and excitedly tried to put the new spark plug gaskets that I bought from the Toyota dealer onto the cam cover, the only way that I got them to fit was to take the rubber end of the hammer and pounded the gasket into the cam cover and in the process I accident poke a hole in the new spark plug gasket with the pliers trying to adjust them (don’t know if that will cause oil to leak into the spark plug). After that whole ordeal I pop my cam cover on and only to find out that there was a 1/4'' gap between the cam cover and the bottom half. To top that off one of the spark plug ignition coil had it end stuck onto the spark plug when I pull them off to change so now I just super glue it back onto the end of the ignition coil until I could change the whole spark plug wires set. Now the vibration in the car during idle have stop and I guess that is because the old spark plug gasket was leaking oil into the spark plug and I fixed that problem and I replaced the spark plugs with the NGK one from the auto store. I drove it around the block and park it for an hour and found no oil leak so far.

Questions:
* What oil grade and viscosity do the 92 Corolla use? Could someone check in their owner manual because the car didn't come with one? I’m guessing 5W30.

*How hard is it to replace the whole spark plug wire sets?

*Car have always use tap water for engine coolant (I know this is bad) and after I parked the car from a trip, the water would boil and spill out of the coolant reservoir and I have to constantly refill it every few day so now I am considering to drain the tap water out and fill it with the Toyota red coolant. Where is the coolant drain plug located and will the Toyota antifreeze stop this problem?

Much help appreciated.

[eage8]

- 10w30

- easy, you just pull the old ones off and put the new ones on

- it might stop the problem, it'll depend what the problem is. but that's a great place to start. The drain is on the bottom of the radiator somewhere, I forget where it is exactly.

[iconman]

Do you know if there is a free online manual for the car?

[TonkaTom]

The one thing that has helped me most is the Haynes Repair manual. Mine is for Corollas from 1984-1992, It has info on all of the engines used through those years, it has guides that will help you do any work on the car whatsoever, and it has troubleshooting info in there also. It has pictures and illustrations and everything is listed step by step. You can find it at autozone or pepboys or im pretty sure they will have it anywhere else. I forget how much it was but it is well worth it.

10 W 30 oil.

If you are going to change the wires you might as well change the distributor cap and rotor as well. Don't worry about the plugs since they are already new. Changing everything is pretty straight forward just be careful not to mess the metal boots up in the wires, and make sure you have the correct wires attached to the correct spark plugs according to your firing order.

[freakinbox]

on the 4af/4afe... I think you'd have to be retarded and extreemly talented to plug them in wrong... Since they are different sizes meaning 4 doesn't really reach anything else and so on... Not to mention the numbers are on the cap

[SCT]

Originally Posted by eage8

- 10w30

- easy, you just pull the old ones off and put the new ones on

- it might stop the problem, it'll depend what the problem is. but that's a great place to start. The drain is on the bottom of the radiator somewhere, I forget where it is exactly.

I run Mobil1 5W30 Synthetic. Love it.

And the radiator drain plug, as you're under the car looking up, should be to the right of the center subframe (of course, on the radiator, in the center).