Vintage Gold Avalon

[bwinmaine]

So I'm new here in this forum and not a paying member - yet anyway - but I am the proud new owner of a vintage 1995 Toyota Avalon, yeah the first year. How cool is that? I live in Maine so normally I'd be dealing with a rust bucket but this peach spent its life down south in Georgia and only recently moved to serve its masters who have a vacation home on an island off the Maine coast. I found her lurking online in Uncle Henry's, Maine's unbeatable classified ads service.
So my so-far unnamed baby is a gold colored XLS gold edition and sports an accumulation of over 180,000 miles already! She didn't come without problems, though, so I'm not here to brag. I'm here to beg for help!
I think I've solved the first problem, although the jury isn't in on that yet. I do most of my own work and have been doing it since I was a teen back in the 60s. There is grease under my nails as I type. The first problem was smoke under the hood, stinky hot oil smoke that was smelling up the inside of the car as well. Driving it left me smelling like I'd been out riding a snowmobile. So I dove into it this week, working outside since I don't have access to a workshop, and replaced the valve cover gaskets using NAPA gaskets, p/n VS50471R, a kit with both cover gaskets and six spark plug tube seals. The gaskets were excellent but I mangled the spark plug tube seals getting them in. It took me awhile to figure out that I could remove the old ones with a screwdriver and hammer without damaging the cover. After the old ones are out, you can bend back the little hold-down tabs to make room for the new ones, but the new ones go in very dry even with lots of lubrication.
Getting access to the rear valve cover is a major job. I took pictures, over a hundred of them, to show me how things were if I got lost reassembling the engine, which I did at the very end of the reassembly. But mainly it just involved being very patient. The job took me something like 16 hours! LOL!! I replaced the plugs too using Champion 9201 iridium plugs. I wasn't so happy with Champions but I didn't want to wait for Densos or NGKs to come in. It had three new Denso plugs in the front (left) bank and 3 old Champions in the rear (right) bank. The Densos didn't match with listings I found online, though. Go figure. The reason the rear plugs were so old is because it's such a pain in the rear to change them! Just to change the plugs you need to remove the throttle body and intake plenum along with all the fixins. The valve cover is one step deeper than that.
Anyway, that job is done. I inspected the timing belt while I was in the area. That was a NAPA replacement and appeared to be in excellent condition but the two drive belts were old and checked so I put new NAPA belts on. The engine still smokes, though. I'm bummed about that but hopeful. Hopefully it's old oil that's smoking, not new oil! I haven't found any indication that there is a leak in the new valve cover gaskets. Those are as dry as a bone now. The old ones were hard and flattened right out and leaking like crazy.
So I took it out for a test drive and put $20.00 of premium in the tank. This car is a real cruiser, that much I can tell you. I've had some good driving cars but this one leaves you feeling like Scottie has just beamed you up! You get there and don't even remember the going part. It's like the car almost drives itself.
So then I was leaving the car idling in the driveway hoping to smoke some of the accumulated oil off the engine and I started fooling around with the chinsy wood trim stuff that's glued on around the dash and heater and radio and vents and door lock and window switches. A dozen years of Georgia sunshine left those panels delaminating and shrunken and looking really bad. One tug on an especially lose piece revealed that the stuff could be removed so that's how I spent an hour or so of my evening yesterday. It comes off in layers. There's a thick plastic coating on the outside that peels off the wood sheet underneath. Then the wood prys off with some difficulty - I used a screwdriver as a pry tool but there must be a better way than that - leaving just the thick gray sticky glue that can be rubbed off like gum with your fingers. What remains is the original plastic looking the way it should look from the factory. I can't believe this cheesy glue-on wood stuff was on my Toyota!! Hahaha!!!
Anyway, now I need to figure out what to do with the headliner inside. The fabric has separated from the ceiling over the rear seat. It's still tight around the sunroof, but from there back to the rear window it's sagging down. Any clues how to fix that?
And the radio is a real mess. Only the front speakers work and I have to crank the volume control all the way up to hear them. The rears are dead completely. Also the CD stacker tray has its tongue stuck right out and is dead in the water. What I really need is to take this to a radio shop and have a whole new system put in including some good speakers in the rear window deck. It looks like the deck is manufactured all ready for speakers but none are in it. Time to dig out the credit card maybe?
So that's my baby, my vintage Gold Avalon. I know she's just a clunker but she's a fun clunker and she has a lot of life left in her. She runs like a tiger and I love the dual-range overdrive transmission. The climate control system is as easy to use as a room heater, or easier. The leather seats can twist themselves into impossible seating positions, or into comfortable ones. The trunk is huge. It has German BBR wheels with T-rated tires that are brand new and quite comfortable riding. The question is, will she go another 100,000? Will she get me across America and back reliably? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[Chris Tacoma]

Sounds like you have a name already, Uncle Henry You might want to post your questions in the Avalon section. Welcome to the forum