SOLVED! Post 2853 Leaking Injectors, Dealer Techs Rock! Extended Cranking after Engine Swap 3.4L 5vz

Eric is not going for the Yaris/Versa/Fit idea. He pointed out what it could be like to be in an accident on the interstate. Point taken.

Been drinking myself. Not going to tackle any sort of serious thoughts or decisions right now Just had to stop by and say hi to everyone

 

and that corolla was black

 

And that data brought to you by the big three automakers who make their biggest profits off pickups now....with better body integrity and more inclusive airbags, small cars are doing much better. The biggest hazard are impaired drivers and actually right now, you are more likely to die from a firearm than in an automobile mishap.

Big cars, big profits.

Howard

 

Yeah, I believe that they are safer than they look. But I still don't really want one, and he doesn't either. Just too small.

Not when there's big rig drivers like @Mod in my neck of the woods!! JK, I'm sure Mod is a great driver

Was an idea worth trying on for size for a moment, but nope.

Doesn't fit very well.

 

Checking in. What's going on in here? How's the taco running?

Just had a variety of Deschutes last night, thinking of Oregon. Pinedrops IPA was my favorite, think something was funky with the Hop Henge.

 

TW, wish us luck.

We are headed out into the wide, very scary world of car shopping.

All day.

Possibly even all weekend.

I am scared. Very scared. You know how when you talk to car salesman, you would rather be doing this and this and this instead of this ? That's how I'm going to feel ALL DAY. And possibly ALL WEEKEND. Please send your best wishes our way today.

The mission is to hit every Honda and Toyota dealer in the area, and test drive every Corolla and Civic that is less than $12K and less than some obnoxious amount of miles/years old. Even letting go of my color thing, time to get practical, we need a 2nd set of wheels and sooner rather than later. I really did give the "buying new" approach some thought, and am glad I considered it. But it's just not what we wanna do. Whether right or wrong, we really DO have a hefty amount of "brand loyalty" (shocker, right? ) to Toyota and Honda. Because we've been driving their vehicles for many, many years and have liked them (most of the time! ) Speaking from a 17 yr experience with one tough little car, I can say Civ's are reliable, affordable, super efficient little cars. Even if they are more flawed nowadays, surely everyone at Honda didn't go totally ignorant and start producing pure crap. And a brand new Corolla or Civ is just more $ than we want to spend on a commuter. If we do our research and have even just a bit more luck than what we typically have with vehicles, we should be able to find a decent used Corolla or Civ that will become our new reliable companion for the next 387 years or so.

And as much as I want to find ways to justify a 2nd Taco or a Runner, two gas guzzlers just don't make sense for what our needs are right now, today. Would love to have a 2nd Taco waiting to step in when needed (and enjoy in the meantime too!) but we just can't justify the gas difference, and especially if prices get crazy again. Still toying with the Outback idea since they do well on gas considering their size, and offer some features we'd like having. But I don't really know enough about them yet to make a good decision. I know we see a lot of them for sale just shy of 100K miles, so I'm guessing they must offer a 100K mile warranty on them when purchased new, then people trade them in just before it expires? Or is it that people expect them to fall apart at that many miles? I just haven't heard much one way or the other as far as their typical lifespan. And in general, I imagine they'd be more expensive to repair/maintain than a Civ/Corolla, right? More features, more parts, more $, right?

Hmm. Wonder if we should try to hit some Subaru dealers today too. Yesirree, gonna be a long day.

 

Mmm, Deschutes is good stuff! Did the brewery tour a few years ago, and got some great pics of each of us embracing the giant vats of beer My fave is Red Chair. No, wait, it's Jubelale. No, Black Butte Porter. Hmmm, no, for sure it's Obsidian Stout. Great beer!!

Taco is running good (knock on wood!) and Civic is not. Civic is dead and it's time to replace her, see above post for details. I am ready for a nice long stretch of being problem free with vehicles.

How are you doing Tenbeers?

 

at the risk of starting something here............................. and since there will be no civic bon fire .................................

Eric can probably get the civic back to "usable" condition by just replacing the brake master cylinder. I haven't priced civic parts but its probably only around $20-$30 and then he just needs to bleed the brake lines. so figure an hours work and maybe $40 can fix it. it can then be usable again so you can drive it to work or the store and to the donation place rather then have to get it towed away.

that way its got brakes again and can be used until you select your next vehicle to replace it with.

when a brake pedal goes to the floor like that 99% of the time it has to be a bad master cylinder, unless there was a puddle of brake fluid that leaked out somewhere, if that's the case then don't waste time (of money) on it.

yes that's right, I actually agree with Eric on fixing the civic (but the brakes only, nothing else)

 

This ^^^

A little invested in the Civic would go a long way!
Lets say fix oil leaks, replace the front seats, fix the oil leaks, less than $1000, and "Old Reliable" is back on the road.
Gives you time to save for a replacement, and leaves you extra cash for the Taco, or whatever...

 

Oh you guys. You are so bad. Look at you two.......... . You're killin me.

OK, I do not want this to turn into a quest to fix the Civ, but I will give you some info on the brakes situation. He randomly noticed recently that the master cylinder fluid level was at the minimum line. So he checked the brakes on all 4 wheels ~2-3 weeks ago, and all pads were fine and reinstalled, and no leaks anywhere. The fluid was filthy, so he replaced that, and bled the system. Then this pedal to the floor thing happened a couple days ago. Fluid level on master cylinder was not any lower than how he left it a couple weeks ago. Seems to me like it could be an expensive, PITA problem to fix. So that would mean we'd need to fix:

Brakes problem
Multiple engine oil leaks
Nearly bald tires
Both CV boots trashed
A tie rod boot
Compliance bushings
Alignment
Rattling Cat Convertor, assuming the Honda tech was right about that being the noise (Eric still thinks it could be something more serious)
Crumbling duct taped driver's seat (only recently covered by a seat cover)
No A/C
Broken sunroof
Intermittent wiper setting hasn't worked for years - really fun to have only super slow or super fast in Oregon, a state that has drizzle/light showers 75% of the time (you wouldn't believe what we spend on RainX! )
No drink holder, since my now 12 year old dog ate it when she was a puppy.
Paint is bad. Very bad.
2 doors. I have dealt with 2 doors for 17 years, when all 17 years I wished I had 4.
Least favorite color. For 17 years.
225+K miles, 22 yrs old = what will break next, and will it be tomorrow or the next day? Oh yeah, and remember how old & high in miles our other vehicle is? Not a very secure feeling to have 2 that are this old/high in miles. Stresses me out. We NEED something newer.
And most of all? I need a break from spending all of our free time figuring out how to fix vehicle problems!!! It gets stressful. I want to spend more time enjoying vehicles and less time worrying about them.

 

X's 2!!

 

Great. I see everyone agrees with my current approach. Sweet!!

Here we go. Agree with it or not, could you guys please wish us some luck? It's a brutal world out there in the land of car sales

 

I really want to see pics of the interior, especially the part the dog ate.

 

not at all, and I know where his fluid went too.

tell him to look under the dash and feel the brake rod and it will have brake fluid on it. when the internal seals go bad its very common to leak fluid through the back where the rod goes through the firewall. you may not even see fluid on the rod but it will be easy to tell if fluid is dripping down the firewall and getting under the carpet "unseen" and unnoticed. when the seals go out in the master cylinder its like pistons with no rings, you lose all compression so the pedal goes straight to the floor.

screw fixing anything else, and I agree you need to dump the turd, but replacing the master cylinder makes it usable and drivable again for not much money. the question is, do you only need one vehicle or would having two be worth spending a little to achieve? oh I checked and a civic MC is like $70 so just get one from salvage yard like these so your not spending any money on the civic, they all charge $25 shipping on top of cost of part and they ones seen here out of ohio that tested ok, are perfect for you but double check if you need one with or without ABS brakes because I didn't know which you have. http://www.car-part.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?userSearch=int&userPID=1000&userLocation=All+States&userIMS=&userInterchange=BEDA>&userSide=&userDate=1998&userDate2=1998&dbModel=30.6.1.1&userModel=Honda Civic&dbPart=541.1&userPart=Master Cylinder&sessionID=200000000000000000824323352&userPreference=grade&userZip=70068&userLat=30.1499&userLong=-90.4621&userIntSelect=380913&userUID=0&userBroker=&iKey=&userPage=12

in case eric never did it before this shows how easy they are to change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECRpO02nkyg

 

OK, the brief summary from today is:

A) Most (but not all) car salesman are um, unpleasant to deal with. One Honda salesman had a puppet. Not kidding. He had a blue furry puppet on one hand (in 95 degree weather) that he said he had to wear for some reason. It was creepy I will say though, we got lots of amusement out of some of the crap we encountered today

B) Some Toyota dealers (but not all) are completely laughable at the way they price their inventory. And send completely clueless sales staff out to greet serious customers on top of the ridiculous pricing. One showed us a '96 Toyota truck that had 280K miles, and was filthy and banged up like crazy. He said it would be priced at ~$13-14K.

C) Of what we saw today, the car we liked best is NOTHING like what I imagined, so maybe we are still figuring out WTF we want?????? Not sure. Basically it meets very little of our "must have" criteria but scores big in a couple of important ways - price, miles, and of course the fact that it is one of our 2 most beloved brands.

It does not have 4 doors, it has two. It's a coupe EX like the current Civ - you know, the 2 door style that I always complain about?

It's not blue or black. It's grey.

But, it IS a Civic, with reasonably low miles as far as Civics go (80K), with a decent looking Carfax history, crazy good MPG for a 10 yr old car (~30 average), and a reasonable-ish asking price of $10K. It's a Civic EX "special edition". Eric is reading about exactly what the "special edition" part means right now.

It was the only car we actually bothered to test drive today. And it's funny, because we found 3 or 4 other cars that came closer to meeting our criteria (blue or black, with 4 doors) but for some reason this car just looked kinda cool to us, not as practical and boring and identical to every other as most Civ's and Corollas. It looked a little bit "hipper" than a typical Civic or Corolla. And the interior felt like that too - all black, and just kind of sleek and more race car-ish than a typical Civic/Corolla. Didn't realize that would even appeal to us, but it did. It had that "slightly fun" factor the old Civic has, only way more so - where it handles kind of race car-ish, when you really need to hustle because you're late, and the tiny little car can weave in and out of lanes and corner so smoothly, while barely burning any fuel. And don't forget to open the sunroof and blast the tunes....................did I mention this Civ had a properly working, quiet and smoothly operating sunroof? And a decent stereo?

Sounded more race car-ish too, which is the main reason we didn't just completely lose our heads and make an offer. I don't think it's necessarily anything wrong with the car and may quite possibly be an intentional something about the "special edition," (would tuning make it sound different?) but something is definitely making the engine sound more like a race car than any Honda I've ever driven, and I want to know why before I'd consider buying it. It's a 4 cylinder engine, and we didn't see any obvious mods of any kind, anywhere on the car at all. Unfortunately, the sales dude had no clue (although he DID acknowledge it), and he also patronized me for questioning it. End rant. Anyway, he offered to have us come back on Mon or Tues evening and talk to a tech about the car, and we are considering it, pending a billion other factors....

Tenative plan is to hit more Honda & Toyota dealers tomorrow (got to roughly 1/2 of them in our area today) and see what else is out there. If we are still hot and heavy over this Civic in the AM, might bore you guys with some pics of it.

Cheers TW, thanks for reading, have a happy Saturday evening!!

PS: @koditten , I will happily provide some pics of the sad shame inside the Civ one of these days. Pretty incredible really. That car has been to hell and back at least 100 times. Just ask @MattFromIllinois !!! It died in the middle of the interstate when Matt visited from Illinois and I'd literally JUST picked him up from the airport!!! Welcome to Oregon buddy!! And guess what it was? A distributor. One of like 50 that car has eaten. By the way @MattFromIllinois , the Civ is FINALLY dying on me - what is your advice??????? Do you know anything about 2005 Civic EX Special Edition? Why does it sound like a race car? Will it be more expensive to repair than other Civ's would be ya think?

 

OK, we are watching YouTubes on this particular type of car, and we are thinking it is the "VTEC" engine that makes it sound race car-ish maybe? I want to understand this, I am super curious about it now..........

 

OK, I've been drinking heavily and I am post happy.

Uh oh.

Wanted to share that the Taco received SEVERAL nice compliments today, terrible scratches and all.

One Toyota salesman's opening line (as he saw us looking at a '01 Taco) was, "You already have a nice Tacoma, what do you want that for?" Guess how much I LOVED that guy? I actually told Eric, "That guy could sell me anything right now!"

 

did you look under the hood? it might have one of those intake mods that make it sound more race like because your hearing it sucking in air.

how many "new" cars did you look at? test drive? even consider?

 

Good question. We looked under the hood, and at the entire exhaust system under the car, and saw no obvious mods at all. I feel pretty confident that one of us would have noted it if there were mods. Although neither of us has stared at the engine bay of an '05 Civic Special Edition before, so who the fuck really knows? And when we told the salesman what we were suspicious of (mods) and looking for under the hood, he assured us everything under the hood was stock. While I'm not in love with this particular dealership in every way, so far they SEEM to be very honest. Who knows though?