The Grandma Special, 1997 Camry.

Found this low mileage 4cyl Camry on craigslist and bought it within 3 hours.
My wife wants to get out of her car payments so this will have to do it.

1997, Family owned, 96K miles, new tires, battery less than a year old. $2600.
Only issue I have had so far was a couple heater hoses leaking and losing all of it's coolant. I also found out the air intake tube was damaged. So, for an extra $150 in parts I have an 8/10 camry that should last another hundred thousand miles or so.

I had a 99 V6 model (the blue one in the last picture) that I got back in 2017 for $1200. That one required a bit more work but that's when I fell in love with these old Camrys. They ride so smooth and require little maintenance. They drive well and the v6 really had great acceleration and would hold 90MPH without batting an eyelash. After some life changing events that blue car ended up in the hands of my sister. It has 180K and still going strong.

 

Good score!! My mom still has hers..cant remember how many miles but still drives strong.

 

That can go a million without a blink should you care for it and take great care.

My wife had a '94 that she got with 200k plus I drove it after we had been married for some time and put another 150k before it had to go....

Super car, hell of a deal.

Wish I had found it 1st!

 

Guy that works for me has one with 425K on it! He has beat it to hell but it still runs great.

 

Got right at 200k on my 99 Maxima. These older cars were built to last. I religiously change the oil every 3k miles. It amazes me still because the paint still shines, the black leather interior has no tears, sunroof and power windows all work with no leaks, original trans with no work done to it and since it’s life have replaced the O2 sensors twice, replaced tires, brakes plugs and wires and that’s it. Wish the newer Maximas were this dependable but from what I hear they aren’t.

Great find OP!

 

Currently have 95 with 235k , previously had a 94 with 250k when I let her go. Just like roaches, they will not die!

 

Those are solid cars. Good motors and transmissions, and low on electrical problems.

 

Yep. New enough to have good EFI tech and OBD2 diagnostics. Old enough to not have a bunch of stupid nanny’s and electrical BS.

 

My father in law drives a similar vintage he got when his dad died a few years back that only had like 20k miles on it. Thing is great to drive and I think it will put up with his negligence in vehicle maintenance for some time to come

 

Sounds about right. Same for the 07+ dark grey. Lol

 

Today I changed the spark plugs, transmission fluid+fliter, and differential fluid.
Pretty easy job all in all. The plugs are very easy to access. Took maybe 10 mins compared to 2 hours on the Tundra.

The trans fluid was pretty dirty but not burnt.
The diff fluid looked great.

One mistake: I accidentally over filled transmission. I had backed it off of the ramps, let it cool, and then checked the level. It was over by about a quart. So I pulled it back on the ramps and started draining some fluid out. What spooked me was the color of the ATF that was draining out. It was dark and looked very old. Strange. I'm guessing there may have been some old fluid in the cooler/ cooler lines that mixed in with the new fluid and discolored it.
I think I may do another drain and fill at the next oil change.



My little helper

 

Awe! My little helper is my 8 yr old daughter my son is in no way interested in mechanical things.

 

If his car has the V6 it would be a good idea to let him know the V6 is known to have sludge problems. If he wants to keep it running well then full synthetic oil and low intervals would be ideal.

I could not have asked for a cooler daughter! She always wants to help daddy work on the truck.
Start em young!

 

Yeah cant go wrong with a camry... I bought my 2011 new and currently have 290k on it, original brakes lasted 200k, other than that ive done only maint and nothing has failed yet knock on wood haha. Yeah its boring, yeah its not good looking but so reliable and cheap to own.

When this one dies Im getting another one.

 

Boring for sure but I love em. I don’t know why but it’s just easy to hop in and go.

 

Don't tell Cam Newton about the Grand Ma special.

 

I don’t have any pictures but my wife was complaining the the brakes were squealing. I was anticipating getting in there and seeing wrecked pads and rotors but everything looked okay and the pads looked brand new.
I couldn’t tell why it was squealing so I took the rotors to have them re-surfaced and cleaned up the calipers. Lubed em up in a couple strategic places and got it all back together. It was a great time to flush the brake system so my wife helped me do that before I put the car back down on the ground.
Good as new!
Can’t beat a cheap and easy fix

 

A couple says ago I noticed it was losing coolant slowly. It appeared to be coming from the same area as before (under the throttle body near the heater hoses). I dug in today and found one of the lines to the IACV was loose even though it felt like the clamps were as tight as possible.
So I removed the clamps and replaced them with a smaller size. Snugged them up and it looks like we’re back in business. Gotta love an easy fix!

 

they are good cars to work on or start your youngster to work on cars

 

Yep. Very very simple.

 

Decided to take a stab at restoring the headlights.
Only got the right side done tonight but it came out really well. I started wet sanding with 1000, then 1500, 2000, and finally 2500. Buffed it out with an applicator pad on my cordless drill and maguires polish/ wax. Finally hit it with a couple light coats of clear.
I probably should have waited until tomorrow morning to spray the clear coat on but oh well. I can always wet sand it down if it looks too uneven.

This was after all the wet sanding and 1 pass with the buffer.

After clear coat.

Will finish up tomorrow and then after I feel confident enough I’ll give it a shot on my Tundra.

 

Alright I got the left headlight sanded and prepped for wax and clear coat. The right side clear coat looks great.

I found yet another damn coolant hose leaking so I’m almost finished replacing it. Then I need to buff the left headlight and spray it with clear.
I’m very happy with the results of the lights and glad I jumped in head first to do it.
I’m actually considering doing headlight restoration as a side gig once I heal up from my back injury. I will need more practice and more appropriate tools but it would be cool to make some cash on the side. Diapers are expensive.



She’s definitely a 10 footer.

 

Took a trip to my parents place today so I took the Camry and let my wife use the Tundra to get to work.
I wanted to stretch it’s legs, triple check for any other coolant leaks, and see how well the lights work.
Lights worked awesome! For 22 year old headlights I can’t complain.

Round trip was all highway doing 80 mph the whole way. 112 miles total and I only burned 4.1 gallons of gas. 27 freakin MPG doing 80mph.

 

2800 miles into ownership....

I checked the oil a couple weeks ago because she likes to drip some. It was half a quart low. Last Friday I noticed a huge oil puddle in the driveway.
I traced it to the camshaft oil seal. To get to it the timing belt has to be removed. Generally these seals are replaced when the timing belt gets replaced but some people decline or don’t care to add it in to the TB service. Looks like that was the case here. The belt looks almost brand new. $10 seal. 6 hours of labor. It would have only been 4 hours of labor but somehow I was 5* out of time after putting the belt back on and letting the tensioner go. Got that handled and buttoned everything back up. I will test drive it tomorrow and if all looks well I will pass the keys back to my wife.



Camshaft about 1* before TDC. The crank was also that far off so everything was okay.


Perfect TDC.

 

It’s actually been 3400 miles since we got it. She’s now just over 100k.

 

Well it wasn’t the cam seal causing the big oil leak. It was the front main.
Pulled the engine/ trans yesterday.
I’ll replace the front main and the idler pulley seal then re-seal the oil pan and put it all back together.

All of this started after running the car really hard (I was being chased on the freeway by a raging idiot). I can only imagine that the high rpm did a number on the 22 year old rubber seals.

 

So I was going to ask you if that cam seal did the trick but I see now that it didn't. Reason I ask is, I have a 1998 Camry LE 4 cyl (IN BLACK!) that is also leaking oil like yours. I'm not going to be yanking the motor out of mine as it's got 222,987 miles on it, we'll just keep topping it off and plugging along!

These cars are amazing, i'm still getting 28-30mpg highway after all these years and miles. I'll be getting another Camry after this one finally meets her maker (not anytime soon I hope!).

 

I got a '94 Camry with 270k on the clock...great find

 

HA. Yeah, I wish it was just the cam seal.
It turns out it was the oil pump seal. When I removed it there was a portion of the seal stuck to the housing. That's where it had broken and was leaking through the break.
My theory was that the synthetic oil I used cleaned out the gunk from that break and it started dripping. Months later after hitting the rev limiter it caused the seal to move ever so slightly and it started gushing. I bet the seal went bad/ dry because the car had such low miles.
I could have left the engine in but really didn't feel like messing around. Doing the cam seal was lame enough. Didn't want to do the front main and oil pan with the engine in the car.
I did replace the timing belt at the same time. So that car should be good for another couple hundred thousand miles. Wife took off so the car isn't my problem anymore.