My daughter recently became motivated to finish learning to drive, and wants to get her own car. This particular one came up in conversation, when she was talking with a friend of hers, the mom has an old car that's been parked for about a year, which she just wants gone: the mentioned 2008 Toyota Yaris with manual transmission.
She wants $1,000 for it. Absolutely unheard of if all is okay. It's a 5-door hatchback, and has around 230,000 km (144,000 miles), body in good shape for the year, minor rusting. Interior looks excellent. She bought it second hand, used it as her daily commuter, then wanted to get a new car. She apparently tried justifying the new car, asking her mechanic how much life is left on the Yaris, to which he said you'd literally have to beat on it for a long time before it would die. She got her new car anyway, and has had this in the driveway, not moving it at all for nearly a year.
Issue that she's disclosed is there seems to be a parasitic draw, not an issue if started and driven daily, but if left to sit for 3+ days, it will need a boost.
We had a look last week, and boosted it to start it up, but coulnd't take it anywhere as the registration recently expired. After the boost, the RPMs at idle seemed a bit low (500), and then eventually it quit. Boosting again and starting, RPMs seemed to be normal, around 800 to 900 at idle.
We returned this afternoon to drive it after she re-registered it for this purpose. Except things didn't go quite so smoothly.
Low-ish idle RPM again.
I took the parking brake off, and put it into first, but the shifter felt like it didn't actually go all the way in. Not sure if this was just an oddity of this car, I slowly let out the clutch and revved, but it seemed like I wasn't in gear at all. No clutch bite. I tried a few times, still no luck. Then it stalled, while in neutral if I remember it right. I also got the sense the car was "stuck", and thinking that's what it was, we all tried pushing it. No luck.
I figured the brakes weren't releasing, and thought we could try again with my daughter and her friend's mom pushing while I tried to get it moving. No luck in first. But doing a second gear start got the car free. So we thought we would try a text drive, and maybe have luck with first after getting it moving.
We made it down the alley, to an intersection with another alley, I tried first, but no luck, but nearly stalled, not with a gear engaged at all. I revved it up a bit to keep from stalling, tried to get it going in first, and with the mom pushing to help, it seemed like it barely grabbed first, though I couldn't feel it in the clutch at all.
We circled around, with me keeping it in second the rest of the way and I decided to abort the test drive and bring it back. Reverse was okay into the driveway.
We could hear the brakes chirping as we drove, likely they rusted in place.
I know we are going to be dealing with at the least, a new battery, tracing a parasitic draw, new rear shoes, and probably drums as well. This stuff isn't too bad. But my concern is the difficulty with first. Could this be something caused by sitting idle so long? Synchros gone for first? Or is this some common issue on these transmissions?
Don't want to pass up on it if this is a steal, but I don't want to buy it if it's a money pit.
Still need to do the rest of the due diligence anyway (CarFax/lien search), and I need a mechanical inspection report in order to get the insurance company to cover it due to the age.
Thoughts?
. Gas mileage averaged 38 m.p.g..
