Is this car worth the gamble?

Elkins45

Elkins45

Joined
May 7, 2018
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Location
Northern KY
A local guy has a 2008 Scion xD (1.8L 2ar-fe engine) with 201k miles for sale. It starts and idles fine but dies whenever you put it in D or R, but not N. He’s thrown a ton of parts at it to try and cure a misfire code in one cylinder with no luck. He also said his mechanic told him the compression was low on at least one cylinder. I pulled the oil cap off while it was running and there was quite a bit of blowback, making me wonder if the rings aren’t gummed up. If so, this might be a possible candidate for rejuvenation with a piston soak.

He’s asking $1200. I would probably offer $800 and maybe settle on $1000. I figure it’s worth a few hundred to the scrapyard if my gamble doesn’t pay off. Or I could maybe use it as a learning tool to remove and try to rebuild the engine. The body and underside are remarkably good for a 2008 car because it spent most of its time in Georgia.

Would you take the gamble for $1k?
 
No way would I take the chance. I'm not sure the cylinder misfire is related to the engine dying when a transmission gear is applied, I think he's barking up the wrong tree.

I would get a scanner with someone knowledgeable operating it on it before I would even test the waters negotiating with the guy. Find out whether it's a transmission issue (very likely) or engine issue. No piston soak is going to solve this.

Even with a non-firing cylinder, a drop into (D) shouldn't kill it-- you could test that by revving up the engine and dropping it into (D), the 3 cylinders with power should keep it alive. Too many possibilities (especially expensive transmission problems) to even consider this.

Around here, that car would fetch $200-300 scrap value at most.
 
I'd pay at most $200 over junk value. If it was a more valuable car with this big of a risk, it might be worth the gamble but there is too small a payoff for too large a gamble. It's a small high mileage car car that doesn't run.
 
Call the local vehicle junk yard / scrap yard and see what they offer, both if they pick it up, or if you have it brought to them. And know your cost to get it to them.

Add maybe add hundred to that to sweeten the deal ( the amount your willing to risk). + tax and plate if you have to have that before you try to fix it.

Those engines can score the side of the cylinder wall when the rings clog. So, maybe it's only rings and if so maybe you can free them up / maybe not. And maybe the cylinder walls is scored and the engine can not be saved even with new rings.

I'm thinking the chance of getting it to run with just chemical soaks are slim. And with 201 K the rest of it is a money pit.
 
Offer him $800, drive it for a year (or more if you're lucky). When it dies, pull the tag, throw the keys in the seat and call the scrap yard.
 
I'd find a 1.8 and do a swap. LUV my XD! Wish mine was an auto but the 5-speed keeps me young!
 
If it's a standard it could be in two gears at once. I had a 76 Plimoth Volare with a manual 3 on the colum and a few times that original shifter would mechanically mess up and put it in two gears at once. The engine would stall if you let the clutch out. Two minutes under the car and it was good to go again. It only happened a few times in the years I had it as a manual trany. I changed it to an auto after a few years.
 
What's a used transmission worth and can you swap it yourself? I suspect you could get a similar car with a healthy drivetrain that needs a lot of brake work or something easier to fix?
Back when I didn't work on cars, we let a couple go with good drivetrains, that needed $800 in brake work, which was really $300 in parts.
 
If it misfires and there is a cylinder with low compression, then the cylinder walls are likely scored. Gummed up ring will not cause a misfire and very low compression.

You’re way over your head even with damage assessment because you’re assuming a best case scenario, that is a mechanic in a can will fix this car.
When buying junkers like this, you assume the worst.
 
Toyota transmissions run the gambit from non repairable overpriced garbage to cheap and abundant.

I’ve had to swap to a different transmission or even a manual to justify a transmission repair on “other” vehicles.

Are you intimately familiar with that exact model and year? These days it’s rarely worth a repairable unless you have a stack of parts at home
 
Sounds like an obvious transmission issue likely torque converter/valvebody being the culprit. If it was dying when being put in gear from supposedly being down on power from being supposedly down a cyl you could easily verify that by giving it another 500 or so rpm as you put it in gear. Better yet just raise the driving wheels up and better still take the tires off so there's no mass on top of there being no weight on them so you could check to see what happens if you put it in gear with just the rotors free spinning. His "mechanic" sounds stupid no offense. I'd at least bring a pump jack, jack stands, and an impact to quickly check what it does without tires. Google search the symptoms of that transmission model when it dies when being put in gear. It's likely used in the yaris and other models. If the trans hopefully doesn't die with the rotors free spinning take the liberty of giving it gas to see how if shifts through all the gears on the jack stands though be gentle giving it gas. You don't want to possibly shake it off so make sure the tires are underneath the car good. Remember to secure the rotors with the lug nuts before doing that. Might need two on each stud total of 4 for each rotor.
 
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I decided to pass. As others have said, I could likely find a similarly priced car with easily repaired issues like brakes.
 
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