OT: Toyota Worries

jikelly

Dirt-Old 20+Year Member
Jul 9, 2003
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So my fiancé and I have been putting quite a few miles on her 98 Toyota Camry. It is approaching 100,000 and I am wondering how many more trouble free miles are left ahead. I know that these things are claimed to be bullet proof due to the high quality standards of Japanese manufacturers, but I had a Toyota before and I know that things eventually start to ware out.

Do you know of any problems that develop with theses cars, as they get older? I am going to go through the Manuel and perform the 60,000 mile service checks and stuff on it sometime this summer. Mechanically things seem fine, but driving my old stang has made me acutely aware of noises and vibrations that could mean something is out of whack and there are some new noises and a pop in the Toyota's front suspension somewhere that I need to hunt down.

It's weird my old stang hasn't had a new dent in years, but the Toyota seems to be every truck owners favorite punching bag. The body of the car was perfect when we my Fiancé bought it a couple years ago. People seem to love to run into it with trucks in the parking lot. I don't get it because It's not like it's a small car and hard to see. Anyway, I need to replace the driver’s side fender, maybe the passenger's side door, passenger's side mirror, and have a few dents pulled out of the rear quarter panel. I kinda wish the car had a force field to protect it.
 
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is it a I4 or a V6? if it's a V6 really keep up on your oil changes. the V6's have a known sludge build up problem. the 3.0 V6's also have a problem with head gaskets down the line, it comes from the heads being over-torqued at the factory. i got this info from a toyota tech.
 
It is the same one that you rode in chepsk8. We really stay after the oil changes, and had previously been informed of the sludge problem. The Head gasket thing I haven't heard before. Boy that's a job I wouldn't look forward to.