I Bought A $600 Toyota Corolla From 1992...

I just paid 600 Australian dollars for a 1992 Toyota Corolla CSI Seica. This thing was sold as not working and I would have to apparently get it towed but what do you know, the first time I cranked it over it started and it ran fine. So let's take a look at this cheap old car. The RAA guy who towed the car back to their house said it needed a crankshaft position sensor and after checking all the fluid levels it started totally fine. Honestly it was running pretty smoothly but the engine bay was incredibly oily and dirty. I was now $600 poorer and I carefully drove the car home and I didn't stop the engine until I made it there just in case for some reason it wasn't going to start again. I crossed my fingers and hoped it would start again. I'm so glad that I didn't need to get it towed and that the engine was seemingly running fine. Clearly this car did need a lot of TLC and perhaps some bug spray. This car does have some maintenance and service history. Originally being sold at Ike Age Toyota here in Adelaide. Surprisingly that location is still a Toyota dealer 32 years later and this car was first registered in May of 1992 and came optioned with air conditioning. Yes that was not standard 32 years ago. This car had had a recent oil change and wasn't due by distance but I have no idea when the timing belt was last changed. To check that we have to lift up the valve cover to get the timing cover off. The bolts holding it on were super loose and clearly it's leaking some oil from here. A new valve cover gasket is definitely in order for later in the video. Someone has also dropped one of the engine mount bolts down further into the engine bay which was actually stopping the timing belt cover from coming off and thankfully I was able to simply reach in and save it from falling down further. With all the screws removed I gently lifted up on the top of the engine which reveals the timing belt. A very important part of the engine, one you'd really hate to have fail as you're driving and thankfully it looks to be in good shape with no cracking at all. It has plenty of life left in it and it's great to see since it's pain to do yourself or very expensive if you want a mechanic to do it for you. And now that I knew the timing belt wasn't imminently going to fail it was time to fill up the tank while fuel was cheap. I also made sure that the tires had adequate air pressure. Thankfully they are basically almost new only being replaced a few thousand kilometers ago this year and a basic cleaning was a good place to start. The paint had years worth of grime that could hopefully be cleaned up. The engine is going to need a lot more cleaning that's for sure and I did spray off some of the oil but clearly it's going to need to be hit with some heavy duty degreaser. The bodywork came up looking a lot better but there are still many areas that need further attention. A lot of work is still to be done and for a car that's done 314,000 kilometers over the last 32 years the interior isn't horrible but it was being driven by a smoker at some point so the smell is honestly quite bad. We're going to need a little more than a few air fresheners I think. The previous owner clearly liked dogs can you tell? And don't get me wrong I like dogs as well but I think I'll remove these later in the video. Now I've been shopping for some parts that I think this car is in need of with a few items to hopefully help with the minor leaking and after sitting for a few days it seemed to have leaked a small amount of engine oil and maybe some power steering fluid and when I bought the car it was a bit low on power steering fluid so I simply topped it off before driving it home and I'll be taking a chance and trying some new fluid that has some stop leak in it. An easy way to replace a good portion of the fluid is to simply pump it out through the reservoir. I managed to get around 160 milliliters on my first go and I'll simply pour in a similar amount of the new stuff which will hopefully stop the minor leak and using a funnel definitely makes this far less messy that's for sure. Now that it's at an acceptable level time will tell if it stays this way. Next I inspected the radiator the coolant levels are fine and it's nice and green so no need to change that right now. The engine oil is slightly low but still on the dipstick it's likely dropped due to some leaking and I will change the oil later in the video but for now I'll just chuck in some engine stop leak. There's enough of this stuff to treat six liters so I'll still have plenty for after the proper oil change and next up is a new air filter. The old one is definitely due to be replaced and even has a spider egg sac yeah that's nice and in fact there was a whole lot of spider egg sacs near the air intake hose imagine hundreds of tiny spiders crawling around in there and I figured it was also worth vacuuming out the old debris from the airbox and with a fair amount of fiddling the new filter could be clipped back into place. At some point I'll have to go through with a more powerful vacuum perhaps one with a wider nozzle for all these leaves and another bit of maintenance to attend to is the brake fluid it's definitely due for changing yeah it's pretty black it should be far clearer and while ideally you're supposed to bleed the whole system without getting air into the brake lines I figured I'd replace some of the fluid simply by sucking it out I then filled the reservoir back up with new 4-dot brake fluid to complete the rest of the maintenance I decided to take the car to my parents place and making videos like this wouldn't be possible without today's sponsor EcoFlow and their new Delta Pro 3 portable power station. 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the Delta Pro 3 offline through a variety of trusted retail stores throughout Australia use my link below to get a discount on your next EcoFlow order and to find out more and once again big thank you to EcoFlow for sponsoring this video and making it possible but the battery had actually gone flat it's a good battery though only two years old but having the car sit there for well over a week and the fact it has an immobilizer that definitely drained it I let my father test drive it and he said it drove fine nothing squeaking and it drives straight not bad for a car that's done this many kilometers our destination was a nearby coin operated car wash before beginning further work we degreased and cleaned the engine bay being sure to cover the distributor and avoid some of the sensitive parts of the engine you can usually get a discount when you buy several cans of this stuff at a time it's pretty cheap and good to have around and cleaning the engine bay will also show where the leaks might be originating from as well as making it far cleaner to work on and giving the degreaser a few minutes to soak in also helps but it's very likely that most of the oil has actually been leaking from the valve cover gasket or at least that's what I'm hoping since it's one of the easiest and least time-consuming seals to replace once sufficiently degreased we began with a low pressure engine cleaner spray setting I think this is also meant to degrease the engine and if you ever do this don't be alarmed by steam coming from your engine this is just the water evaporating due to the heat of the engine and now the satisfying high pressure spray can begin it doesn't look as if this car has ever had anything like this done to it before you can now clearly read the labels on the engine block that were previously covered in oil and all right does the car still start well thankfully we haven't ruined it and I bought these car ramps a while ago and they've been pretty useful for at-home repairs but of course a pit or a car hoist would be needed for more involved repair jobs and first we're going to drain the oil which was last done in late 2022 about 5000 kilometers ago and you'll have to wait a few minutes for it all to flow out and also be sure that the engine is warmed up prior to doing this the cheap oil filter the previous shop used proved somewhat difficult for the removal tool to get on but with some persistence my father was able to get it out and thankfully it came out with the rubber seal the filter port itself looks to be in good shape and with it all drained we got just over two liters out of the engine and we poured the old oil into an empty bottle which can be disposed of at most auto retailers replacing that is some decent quality nulon oil that was on sale when I went to autopro first I put in the rest of the bottle of engine stop leak some people say this stuff works others have pretty mixed opinions but I've really got nothing to lose by trying it next I poured in the new oil aiming for just under three liters the volume this engine is supposed to take I was pretty close but not quite yet on the mark so I added a little more and now it was right on the full line and when you start your car after an oil change make sure the oil light goes off quickly on your dashboard and thankfully it didn't crush my phone that filmed this shot of it now it's very much time to replace the leaking valve cover gasket which involves removing the ignition leads and I thought I would also replace the old spark plugs well they don't look horrible but they are really cheap especially at cost price and considering I have no record of how old they are I thought it was just better to just put some new ones in and when putting new ones in start by doing them finger tight then my father reckoned about a quarter to half a turn with the socket wrench now we can remove the valve cover starting with the small nuts on the top being gentle I managed to lift up and disconnect the remaining hoses and under the valve cover it looks pretty good honestly regular oil changes had definitely been done throughout this car's life now it's a matter of removing the old gasket and sealant around the edges honestly I think this could be the original gasket clearly someone has just added a bit of sealant of some kind to make it last a bit longer the gasket I purchased also comes with spark plug tube seals which are very important to keep oil away from the spark plugs and cylinders and be very gentle when taking the old ones out you don't want to crack or damage the surrounding metal and using a bit of seal grease is recommended to get the new ones in place and using the old one to help tap it in also works after cleaning off the old sealant and gasket we decided it was best to run a bead of new sealant before putting in the valve cover gasket this will just help it seal better and perhaps this is where most of the oil leaks were originating from then we made sure to fit the new gasket snugly into the groove but before we seat the cover back on the engine it's very important to run some sealant around these edges on both sides and carefully I sat the valve cover back on being careful not to damage anything and here's what the old rubber seal looks like compared to one of the new ones it's not surprising it was leaking from here and with a bit of sealant on the base I put the new ones on clearly most of the leakage stemmed from here so this should at the very least eliminate most of the oil loss and thankfully the engine is still running as it should the last thing to do was replace the blown headlight globe much easier to do on the driver's side without the battery in the way and most cars use the same h4 globe which makes it very easy to find a new one and now every single globe and turn signal is working as it should the car still needs a fair amount of work cosmetically and some cleaning but overall it's a pretty straight car basically no dents at all and I really love the large taillights they're in excellent condition it recently had the windows tinted which makes it much better on warmer days and given how huge the rear window is I'm very glad that it's tinted you could say a lot of heat would have come through here and I think this has the right amount of curvature it's not too boxy a really sleek design from 32 years ago all right it's time for some more cleaning and thankfully we've pretty much eliminated all the engine leaks this is the only place it's dripping from now and after leaving this jar underneath for 24 hours it literally only has a few drops of oil in it this car came with two steering wheel covers the first one slides off easily and one underneath not so much oh god I see why they'd covered this thing because it's absolutely filthy it'll need a good wipe down don't you just love years worth of gunk and dead skin and spraying on some protectant and wiping it off works pretty well and with a bit of patience it was looking all right now a bit sun damaged though and another frequently touched item is the gear selector which was very blackened a bit too much for my liking and the handbrake also needed some attention clearly the driver also liked to rest their arm on the door a little bit too much perhaps and the more I clean this the better it will get but for now this is definitely an improvement clearly someone had tried to glue the door strips back on at some point and I think I'm going to have to redo this one entirely honestly and the little paw prints are thankfully not baked on too much by the sun and most of the residue comes off easily with some eucalyptus oil getting underneath wasn't too hard while using this little tool and I tried to get as much of the sticky stuff off at the same time and I did get most of it off fairly easily I figured it was best to use some sticker remover on the glass to help lift off the sticker and after letting it soak in I was able to grab one edge and peel it off in one satisfying piece the last sticker proved to be a real pain as it was not coming off easily or in one piece I used sticker remover isopropyl alcohol and eventually it came off but man this was messy and a real challenge oh and there were a few things left in the center console we've got a small usb charger a usb combo cigarette lighter splitter another usb charger bluetooth combo thingy another usb charger and a charger for a dash camera the next challenge is some of the roof that was scratched likely by some low hanging branches I first cleaned the surface off with wax and grease remover and then I used some touch-up paint that I bought for this car specific shade of white this particular car uses the Toyota paint code LR found here and I painted it on using a q-tip it's not a paintbrush but it definitely does the job there were several other areas of the car that had similar scratches and I did the same thing to the edges of the doors that had wear marks these happen when you constantly brush up against the door when entering the vehicle and if I accidentally spill some of this paint onto the black rubber strip I can just go over it with a permanent marker once the paint dries the car has plenty of places to touch up and is this the best way to do it probably not but for such a cheap car this is all I could really be bothered doing honestly the badges on the rear of the car are also supposed to have silver lettering but it seems like it comes off over time with almost every example of these cars having the same problem and I didn't do a very neat job but I can just go over the silver paint with a black permanent marker once it dries and yeah I probably should have used a brush but at least you can read the lettering again the other side of the car also has a strip that needs re-gluing but we'll focus on this one for this video I gently pried up on the rubber strip I thought it might snap but actually it's surprisingly flexible now begins the long and laborious task of cleaning off the surface some of it came off relatively easy using a plastic scraping tool but other parts of the glue were basically rock hard and I couldn't scrape them off at all and I tried some cream and polish which did help somewhat and I was able to get most of it off eventually and to get the rubber strip straightened out I clamped it down for a few days periodically changing its position and flexing it around the rock hard stuff I thought I'd grind off the door wearing some safety gear of course I'm removing this as it sticks out and I need a relatively flat surface to tape the rubber strip back onto I didn't do a particularly neat job but this will be covered over anyway so who really cares and with the rubber strip straightened out as best I could I whittled off the old glue and gunk I also sanded it off until I felt it was smooth enough but what was I going to reattach it to the car with and I went to our local Bunnings and decided that this double-sided tape should hold the rubber strip on well it's actually almost the perfect width as well I lay a piece along the entire length being sure to cover as much of the back side as possible and I put some markings where I wanted to line it up then stuck the piece on it seems to hold on very well being very close to completely straight and I know I've still got the rubber strips on the other side of the car to do but man is this a big improvement on what I started with it's a far more respectable looking car now that's for sure and I think it's a good looking car that's aged very well compared to other Corollas of this vintage I think the Seica model is far nicer looking the incredibly large back window and large boot with fold-down seats means it would be great for moving stuff around it's not a particularly interesting car to drive being very basic and not at all powerful but it has a certain old-school Toyota charm to it a sense that it'll get you to your destination without any worry so there we have it the $600 Toyota Corolla the problem with cars like this is they're not particularly collectible or valuable and when they need big maintenance done something like the timing belt but if you went to go get it done somewhere else or not do it yourself that would cost more than the car is worth the problem with cars like this is they eventually just don't become economically viable I was lucky that it's actually pretty good once we'd done a few things to it and I didn't have to spend that much money I might keep it and use it again in the future maybe I'll make another video about it we will see either way I hope you've enjoyed the video I know a lot of you have been asking for another car video and well I hope I've finally delivered what you've been after big thanks to EcoFlow for making something like this possible it was a big task making this video but I had a lot of fun thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one