bought my first Toyota today

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I bought a 91 Toyota Camry 160,000. Runs good needs no work interior is perfect outside is good for the age . Has the 2.0 with auto with electronic overdrive. What do you guys think of these idk anything about these cars. Any insight is appreciated
 
These cars are very solid and reliable, you should have no worries.

A Camry 4-cylinder of that vintage will call for 10W-30 oil, I'd try a HM one like QS Defy.
 
Those are pretty tough cars and can take some abuse.

Back in high school one of my friends got one as a trade for some Isuzu Trooper parts. We used to give that car [censored] just for the fun of it. It idled really high, so you would have to stand on the brakes or shift to N when stopped. This was a good excuse to do a neutral drop from every stop every time. There was no air filter at all, and it didn't have a straight panel on it. We would frequently kick the car, hit it with boards, whatever. One day it lost steering and started screeching...my friend popped the hood with it running and we found a hose for the power steering spraying fluid all over the engine compartment...stuck the hose back on and continued driving. I think this car was eventually towed away by the city as an abandoned vehicle. I know for sure it got the yellow tow away sticker at least once. It never broke down, but parking was scarce and people didn't like seeing it parked on the street in a nice neighborhood.

Another one of my friends managed to find an AWD 5-speed that was pretty clean. That one was a nice car at first and ran well, but became a POS after much abuse. It saw plenty of mud. One of the CV axles needed to be replaced, but I can't remember any other mechanical issues.
 
I bought one years ago for my daughter; had like 122k on it. Was on a walk in the neighborhood and saw the guy (2nd owner) had a for sale sign in the window. One of those cars a dad loves and a daughter tolerates
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Very reliable. Other than a tuneup, not much needed. Maybe a drive axle but with so many miles, so what. They aren't fancy but anvil reliable. Do the usual fluid checks including ATF.

As for oil, it doesn't matter
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Put what's on sale in it, 10w30 as I recall, but maybe 5-30 for your Missouri winters.

The PS pump eventually gave up the ghost about 145k but that's when she traded it for the Civic she still has.

Someone mentioned the high idle. It does have earlier emissions stuff. I think I put a cat on it to pass Georgia smog tests, but only a generic one; didn't need the Toyota-specific one to do the job.

Sounds like ya done good. Send pix when you can.
 
Originally Posted By: chevyboy14
An old man owned mine. He was a cool old guy and took care of it. How often should timing belt be done?


I've forgotten if they're 60k or 90k. I'd check online.

Does it indicate if it's been done, or did he know?
 
Might need a timing belt.

Otherwise that's probably the golden age. People an argue about current cars but at that point in time Toyota had a clear and obvious reliability advantage over other companies. MIT wrote a book about Toyota around that time titled the machine that changed the world that is very interesting. Nowdays all manufacturers institute lean production but not back then (the MIT researchers found Mercedes took longer for a post-production inspection than it took Lexus to build a LS400 start to finish, and the Lexus had fewer defects).
 
Great car. I had the same vintage but in a wagon/5 speed MT. I was driving a TON for work at the time, and it probably had high 2XX's when I sold it (speedo was broken). The only repair I ever made to the car was to replace a seal on the clutch slave cylinder. It did have a rear main seal leak which needed attention. Frankly, I treated the car pretty poorly and held up great. I sold it about 10 years ago, and as of last year, the car was still being driven on the regular basis. That was really the golden age for that car, IMO.


Any 5W30 that's on sale will work fine. If it's consuming any, try a HM 5W30. Since it's an auto, I'd probably change the ATF.
 
Originally Posted By: chevyboy14
An old man owned mine. He was a cool old guy and took care of it. How often should timing belt be done?


It's not an interference engine, so just do it when you have time and $$ to to it. I'm embarrassed to admit that I never changed mine.
 
chevyboy, how much did it cost?

the engine codes are pulled by jumpering TE1 and E1 on the diagnostic block under the hood in my experience with Toyotas from the 80s and early 90s.
 
As I recall that is from the era when there were about 5 different key cuts for all the Toyota's out there...

That's right: if you had 5 keys cut you could pretty much start any Toyota product!
 
I wanted to say and not to rub it in to anyone. But I didbin fact find a decent car for 1150. Less than my total amount. It has a cracked windshield that's the only thing wrong and it's not that bad If I replace it it'll cost 180 bucks
 
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