1994 Ford Explorer Limited. So I bet you can guess. It blew headgaskets. I had it for like 3 months and went to start it to go to school started right up. SWEET! Go to buy coffee and put enough gas in to get to Safeway (WAY CHEAPER GAS. Like seriously 20 cents cheaper.) Try to start after putting in gas at the station and nada. Take one, two, three, four, five, SIX! Sixth times the charm starts up and we go! I floor it across the street give my mom her coffee and beat feet for Safeway. After Safeway Starts just fine. After school, starts just fine. Going to Future Soldier Training, GLORIOUS! It starts again! Coming home perfect start. Going to the bowling alley perfect start. Pull in to the parking lot, stalls. Thought it was just being a pain (It was a bit of a PoS anyways) started him back up parked it. Stayed for an hour or so, went to Walmart (maybe 1/4 mile away) stalled twice on my way to there. By then I was panicking. I kinda liked this car even if I am a Toyota guy. It was my first car. So I told my people I wasn't confident in the car anymore. We REALLY should go grab the Yukon. Get out onto the street and it starts TICKING. It was hot in the cab and 2/3 of the way home he gives up. I give it the starter and some gas and she pops back on. We push on maybe a couple hundred more feet. It gives up and this time you could tell it was DONE didn't even turn over until the next day. Opened the hood and steam came billowing out, it smelled awful too. I think he burnt up on his way to the grave. Gonna get it checked over by someone a bit more proficient than me, but I know blown head gasket. Oil in the coolant, coolant in the oil. --- Post updated --- Oh and just going to post this other one whilst I'm here, 1992 Toyota 4Runner Ugh. So this one. 3vze with 275,000 on it still actually working good. Heads do need work but she runs. However leaving the realm of engine, transmission is TRASHED my uncle who gave it to my grandma who gave it to me was a mechanic but he did not like this rig. So I get the poor thing. Starter, for starters, is gone. Solenoids are good so I had to order the unit only thankfully. Power steering, no belt, leaks like a sieve, replacement came with it though on both cases though. Gotta get some Toyota power steering fluid for it but that's fine. THE TRANSMISSION. DEAR LORD. In 2HI. Finding first is a pain but you can. 2nd is nowhere to be seen. 3rd is actually ok. 4th is somewhere else. I can't find it. 5th is ok. Reverse is a pain. 4HI. I can get 1 and 5. 4LO all except 3, and R. Clutch is TRASH. Legit garbage. This is my current car. I am fixing it (It was my grandpa's rig so I want to save it from the brink, even if it means finding a 3.4 to swap in, doing a complete run through the transmission, ripping the interior out and finding good condition cloth seats and the time and money to do it.) Probably just going to drive my mom's car until I get back from BCT (I leave July 7th). Then I'm giving it to someone I can trust and then I'm taking it to my first station.
Ohoooo man do I have some stories. Only semi-related but still a pretty good read. I work for a car auction. Part of my job is either towing or driving cars back to the auction lot that people couldn't themselves. Granted, none of these are my cars but still: 2005 Chevy Equinox - 135k - Rear brake drums seized halfway into an 80 mile trip, smoke billowing out of the rear. Literally had no brakes all of a sudden. Pulled it into a gas station and came back with a tow truck. 2006 Toyota Camry - 99k - Had been wrecked. Timing belt/chain was so far off it barely ran. Had to bungie cord the hood down. Leaves and junk that was stuck under the hood started flying up onto the windshield so I tried to turn on the wipers. The wipers locked up halfway up. I literally had to drive sticking my head out the side window. 1993 Volvo Wagon - 190k -Heater core (assuming) blew up and smoke started pouring into the cabin. Had to drive it with all the windows down and the hatch open. lol 2000 Dodge Neon - 175k - Hit a speed bump and the entire engine fell on the ground. 2004 GMC Envoy - ??? - Oil pump went out and entire engine seized up. The car itself actually seemed rather nice up until the point the engine locked up doing 75 down the freeway. I thought I had hit something in the road, the car slowed down that much. 1999 Chevy Express - 251k - Engine throw rod about a mile from the lot. Somehow, that poor engine kept putting until it got there. It never started again lol. 1999 Caddy Eldorado - 100k - Idk what happened but all of a sudden I looked back and there was an entire trail of coolant behind it. 2007 Saturn Aura - ??? - I think the rear axle was broken, every time it shifted the back end SLAMMED on the ground. 1995 BMW Wagon - This thing was actually just fine, it just had upwards of 400k miles! 1989 Jaguar XJS V12 - ??? - Really cool car but it spewed so much blue smoke I was pulled over twice on a like 30 mile trip. Here's the best one though. 1984 Nissan 350ZX Turbo - 80k - Guy had told me the car was drivable so I didn't bring a tow truck. When I got there I saw: Gray spray paint covered the outside, half of the car was bondo. Turbo had NO boost whatsoever. Had to start in 2nd gear and only had gears 2,3, and 4. Air intake was held on with duct tape. Interior was absolutely trashed. Brakes barely worked. Co-worker had dropped me off and headed back so I had no choice but to drive this hunk of junk to the lot an hour away. About 20 minutes into driving it I guess a fuel line or something gave out and dripped onto the engine. It didn't take but maybe 10 minutes before the thing had caught on fire. In terms of my own cars I had to rebuild (and weld) the camshaft on old my Taurus' Yamaha V8. My current car hasn't really given me any major issues... yet.
I had to get some parts out of a part car, that car was known as the "Cat car". The guy who owned it before it went into the junkyard had a cat that lived in the car for about a year. It had a rancid interior.
Nah. Totaled. It hit it in just a way where it damaged the cab's structural supports and I needed an entire new cab and insurance said they weren't going to fix it.
Well, Yesterday i remembered something worse that happened to my Volvo. I as a joke, pasted a "Make america great again" sticker on the rear bumper. (AS A DARN JOKE FOR GODS SAKES). Someone in pure hate broke all my windows and punctured all the tyres. They also cut the fuel and brake lines. *Extra* My family used to have a BMW. Then the engine locked up going well over the speed limit on a highway.
Well this is what happens when you get a horrible Toyota service shop, a family who don'st understand going to a different service shop and owning 3 Toyota in a area where it snows. Let me start with my handed down truck. It was a 2001 Toyota Tacoma and it suffer many "lemon" problems such as tires falling off at random and rust issues. The frist one is from my parents when they owned it. The "Service" shop said they fixed the problem of the tires falling off at random. Well on the way home you guessed it one of the tires fell off driving down the highway. (that's all I know from my parents). Oviously they fixed it right the next time. The next problem was the frame rotting away and over 1 year they changed the story from Its all good its just surface rust to its a write off frame rotting. But because they said it was all good the first time it was not qualified for repair. The same thing happened to our 2002 Toyota Tacoma. Now our Toyota corolla has had around 14 manufacture defects and most of them needed 3 services checks to fix them. Now my personal vehicle a 2015 jeep wrangler has not had any problems and the worst thing that has happen to it was one of the fog lights getting pushed outa place by some ice in a puddle.
My car right now is actually on the verge of a messed up fanbelt. When the car accelerates, it whistles and the faster it goes the louder it gets. I don't want to go very far (like, into another city) because the engine could frick up, and I'd get stranded somewhere in the middle of the highway. --- Post updated --- But I did have another car, a wagon, and I was leaving the 2012 christmas parade with my friend, and some idiot in a van cut a corner and smashed into the headlight area, and the headlight got like, pushed in, and it had a bull-bar (that got snapped) and my neighbour was pretty good at fixing stuff. We sold the car to him, in hopes he'd give it back, and we'd pay him, but then he sold it to someone else in a farm place and it got bogged in mud, and the engine stopped working. Hydrolocked or something. The engine didn't turn on and when you turn the key in the ignition place, it just clicks. Fantastic, I loved that thing.
