Hey all!
I already posted a "brief" intro in the New Camry thread, but figured I'd properly introduce myself here.
I picked up my new '11 Camry a week ago today and am loving it so far. It's a SE in Magnetic Gray with the I4. As I mentioned in the previous thread, it is bone stock at this point and likely to remain that way for the most part. The only "mods" I'm really considering are tinting the windows and possibly some winter/summer wheels (depends on whether I want to keep the stock 17's as summer wheels) and tires once the tires that came on it wear out. Although, given the way I've been driving it so far that isn't likely to happen anytime soon
. I've been trying to take it quite easy on the car so far as this is my first new car and I'd like to break it in properly. Although, I haven't been able to resist punching it every once in awhile while merging onto the highway or just wanting to hear/feel it accelerate. I've only gotten it near 6k once so far though - of course I just broke 300 miles on it today.
I had to lease the car as the wife wanted to stick to approximately the same payments we were making on my previous car and given the unexpectedness with which we had to get rid of that one I really had no down payment on the Camry. So I'm not even sure what mods I could get away with on a lease even if I were interested in doing some. I figure the ones listed above would be easy enough to take off if for some reason I decide not to buy the car when my lease is up. I could probably do an intake as well since that is easy enough to put on/remove, but not sure I even want to go that far with it at this point. One of the reasons I bought the Camry was to have something that is hopefully rock solid reliable and doesn't need much if anything done besides oil changes and basic maintenance. Obviously, the I4 isn't going to be winning any dray races anytime soon, but I'm getting to the age where I don't necessarily want to race at every red light I run into
and at least it looks fast even if it isn't
. Or at least looks darn good for a totally stock car IMHO.
For anyone interested, my previous ride was an 03 Altima 2.5S. It wasn't a bad car until it sucked a butterfly valve screw into the engine about a year ago. Luckily, I had purchased an extended warranty on it; although, I had to fight with the warranty company to cover it because the not-mechanic/not very good customer service guy at the stealership told the warranty company it was part of the throttle body which wasn't covered. It was in fact a part of the intake manifold, but I had to basically send them diagrams since the idiot at the stealership called it the wrong thing - thanks to car forums for that one or I would have been out uber-bucks. Although they "fixed" the problem, they didn't replace or really even rebuild the engine which was really needed at that point so I've been fighting with the stealership about an increasingly bad oil consumption problem and exhaust leak for the past year and finally decided to get rid of the car before it turned a 100k and dropped even further in value. Plus, they still weren't willing to take responsibility for the problem and fix it properly, and my extended warranty ran out at 100K. Unfortunately, I still owed money on the car so the trade-in for that basically covered what I owed on it
.
Quick tangent - what Japanese designed car doesn't even make it 100K without major engine problems these days or really even 10-15 years ago? I figured I was dumping my last 'major problems around or right beyond 100K' car when I got rid of the Dodge I had before the Altima and that Dodge is still on the road albeit being used by my cousin who's father is a mechanic. I didn't baby the Altima when it came to driving habits, but I did all routine maintenance and always used true synthetic oil up until it started burning about a quart ever 500 miles or so. Also, these problems may not have been helped by my driving habits, but feel free to search the problems if you're interested, I wasn't the only one having this happen.
So anyway, I'm looking forward to mostly lurking on TN, providing some useful (or at least funny
) comments when possible, and gaining some info on this car in case I have to fight any warranty claims in the future
.
Sorry for posting a autobiography!
Let us know all about yourself and your car. Break the ice in here.
1993 Toyota Corolla
to Toyota Nation. That was a very detailed introduction! 
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