Topic: My Vehicular History Thread by DKaz

[Fobroader]

Beige Rage...love it.

[Arthur Dent]

Nice buy.

Pretty much anything V6 and fwd is not great to do rear spark plugs on. Minivans are likely the worst however.

[Fobroader]

Nice buy.

Pretty much anything V6 and fwd is not great to do rear spark plugs on. Minivans are likely the worst however.

I don't know....ever seen the rear plugs on a Taurus SHO with a V8 or the GMs Bonneville with the LS engine  Those are truly the devils creation.

[dkaz]

Highlander's rear plugs are deeply buried too.  I'll have the tech do them when the timing belt is done.

Oh timing belts, glad I don't have to worry about that for 100k.

that van is in great shape! congrats...love seeing an older vehicle in such great shape.

Me too, I felt like he passed the torch so it's my responsibility in a couple of years to send him photos of his baby still in pristine condition. This is the van I wouldn't mind putting money into painting to get rid of all the paint chips on the hood for example. I'm going to polish/sealant/wax it this Saturday.

Beige Rage...love it.

Nice buy.

Pretty much anything V6 and fwd is not great to do rear spark plugs on. Minivans are likely the worst however.

Thanks! Did your Caravans have the same thing? My Odyssey was that bad, they could be accessed without playing hand acrobatics or having to remove anything. The Sienna will require both.

[Arthur Dent]

I think the Caravans were do-able without too much pain. I changed plugs on one of them - I can't recall any horrors so it can't have been too bad. The 3.3L pushrod motors are pretty compact.

I remember our Nissan Quest being horrible for the back plugs however. Have to take off intake, fuel rail, etc.

[lebowski]

Great find Dkaz - many happy miles 

[Trainman]

Well the Japanese manufacturers can't quite take credit for it. The Odyssey which was released in 1999 was actually longer at 5110mm (201.1") in length compared to 5080mm (200") for my Sienna, although my Sienna is wider at 1965mm (77.4") vs. 1920mm (75.6"). But the original big minivans can be traced back to the 1994 Ford Windstar (5110mm [201.1"] x 1915mm [75.4"]) and 1996 Dodge Grand Caravan (5070mm [199.6"] x 1951mm [76.8"]).

Where the massiveness may come from is the fact the Sienna massively increased the cabin volume, heavily encroaching into the engine bay. Yea, I'll figure out how to do the back spark plugs when the time comes. Like my old 99 Sienna, the engine is angled towards the back. But with a turning circle of 11.2m (36.8 ft), this Sienna is way more manoeuvrable than my old Sienna's 12.2m (40 ft) turning circle despite the 99 being smaller (4915mm [193.5"] x 1865mm [73.4"])

Looking very good!  BTW, if you push it hard the handling gets much better.  Just saying!

Yup, I was surprised that my wife took to our '04 so well since she just hated driving the F250.  She just shrugged when I pointed them both out in the garage as being essentially the same length and width.

I'll try on my own. Which F250 do you have? I find it hard to believe.

My company issued F250 was one of the first years they had the Super Duty label, but still with the classic body.  It was 213" long and 77" wide, so pretty close to the Sienna.

I was amazed at the maneuverability of the Sienna, it was a dream to drive in close quarters considering its size.

We would probably still have it if it wasn't for its size (we did not need all that room and now living in a bigger community where the parking stalls are pretty small); lack of a roof rack (and none after market available at the time except the OEM one at over $2,000 installed) and the fact we were planning on giving vehicles to our kids as presents for their entry into university.

You should be very happy with this!

[dkaz]

My company issued F250 was one of the first years they had the Super Duty label, but still with the classic body.  It was 213" long and 77" wide, so pretty close to the Sienna.

I was amazed at the maneuverability of the Sienna, it was a dream to drive in close quarters considering its size.

We would probably still have it if it wasn't for its size (we did not need all that room and now living in a bigger community where the parking stalls are pretty small); lack of a roof rack (and none after market available at the time except the OEM one at over $2,000 installed) and the fact we were planning on giving vehicles to our kids as presents for their entry into university.

You should be very happy with this!

That's an extra 13" in length. Not insignificant but not terrible. What was the turning circle though? The older Sienna's had a 40 foot turning radius and made the van seem way bigger than it actually was. That was one thing I hated about it. The 04 Sienna with the sizeable drop in turning radius is heaps more manoeuvrable despite being longer and wider.

Another related story -- my wife thought she wanted a pickup truck til she spent a week in a Tacoma. 221" long with something like a 42 to 44 foot turning radius. She wants nothing to do with pickup trucks now.

I'm definitely happy I found an LE at this price!

[dkaz]

Neat find in the owner's manual pouch. I think $4-5k more expensive than the 03 Sienna LE and on par with the 2004 Honda Odyssey EX. It's really too bad Toyota would not equip LEs with automatic climate control until 2013, then in 2016 onwards, every trim level came standard with tri zone automatic climate. Luckily it seems like an easy retrofit.

[Brig]

Neat!   

"Frosted Mink Pearl"   

[dkaz]

Neat!   

"Frosted Mink Pearl"   

  This is why we have a lot of beige Toyotas on the road.

[5 Wheel Drive]

Wow...if you didn't post a picture of the odometer, I would have never believed it had 350000km's by see the other pics.  That was a great find!

[tortoise]

Good question.

I hate that feeling of an older vehicle owing you something on account of recent repairs.  Though conversely, I LOVE that feeling of driving a vehicle that owes you nothing.

While $2900 isn't chump change for most people it's not like there's a ton to lose if it goes belly up.

[KD]

Nice find DKaz and congrats! 

[dkaz]

That is a very good question. On this Sienna, it's in good enough condition that I'd probably bite the bullet and do it. With the Odyssey, we had the choice of doing it or walking away, and since the Odyssey didn't meet our needs anymore, we chose to walk away. Well I managed to get $250 for it. lol. I'll update the final cost of owning that vehicle later.

$2900 is about 5 or 6 lease payments on a new minivan. Because it's so clean and drives like a new minivan, I'll take that analogy and say after 6 months, it doesn't owe me anything. If the transmission goes, and that's a big if, I would say I could have a good used transmission installed with a one year warranty for about $1800, that's three and a half lease payments. I did have that option for my Odyssey at one point but that ship sailed very quickly with no other options. Good used Sienna transmissions however seem to be more widely available because frankly, they don't fail.

Obviously I want my Sienna to cost way less than lease payments. And when I look at the Truedelta stats on used Siennas, I think the odds are in my favour. 65 vehicles per 100 per year needed repairs beyond routine maintenance. 23% of those trips were engine or transmission related, 82% of those repairs cost less than $999, 16% cost $1,000 to 2,499, and 2% cost more than $2,500. Then 22% of the repairs were brakes and suspension related, 35% electrical and A/C related, and 21% miscellaneous others. Overall, repairs that cost more than $2,500 account for 1% of all repairs, $1,000 to $2,499 14%, then 85% are under $999. Looking at those stats, I can expect to put about $2,425 in repairs above and beyond routine maintenance over the next 5 years. Obviously a single $2,500+ repair will blow that away but there's about a 4% chance total over five years of that happening. My Odyssey's expected 5 year repair costs were about $2,590 but there was a whopping 20% chance over five years of a major repair over $2,500 happening, which would've happened if I opted to put in a re-manufactured engine at a cost of $3,500.

TL/DR: My Sienna should provide years of reliable low cost service.

[dkaz]

Wow...if you didn't post a picture of the odometer, I would have never believed it had 350000km's by see the other pics.  That was a great find!

Nice find DKaz and congrats! 

Thanks!

[Fobroader]

Neat!   

"Frosted Mink Pearl"   

That is hilarious, whoever in the marketing department came up with that is a genius. Thats like a dishwasher being called a cutlery sterilizing engineer.....

[Firm]

The window sticker is a cool find, I really like having that sorta stuff. Sounds like you and the family really like it, so I wouldn't hesitate to put a bit of money into it if you needed to.

We hit 1 year with the Escalade last week, if I include the purchase price, and all the money I've put into it over the last year I easily could've leased ("rented" a brand new one. But, I own it, maintenance is all up to date, I know it very well now and I know what's been done, so the costs of ownership should drop off.

[Brig]

Neat!   

"Frosted Mink Pearl"   

That is hilarious, whoever in the marketing department came up with that is a genius. Thats like a dishwasher being called a cutlery sterilizing engineer.....

I'm trying to remember which car, back in the 80s I think, whose beige colour was called Champagne.  Was it Honda or Toyota?  I remember chuckling back then, too.

[johngenx]

I'm totally down with the <$10K and <$5K car buying experience now.  Why?  Well, for one thing, as we're seeing now, it's possible to buy modern, super-reliable cars for $5K or less that have tons of life left in them.  With the cost of a new car being pretty much $400/month or more, the cost differential between a new car and these 10 year old cars is enormous.

As noted above, the $3K van is only a few months of lease or finance payments of a new one.  It was a different situation when the 300K van was a heap, but today, a lot of 300K cars/SUVs/vans are actually fantastic vehicles.  I've had people in my Highlander that thought is was 2-3 years old, not 13.  It runs, drives and works no differently than over four years ago when I bought it, and looking at it today, I'd not hesitate to buy one this age or mileage.

A friend of mine's Dad can't drive anymore, and he's selling his 2001 Lexus LS.  He wasn't a typical old guy that drove once a week - the car has over 350K on it.  But, is it used up?  Not even close.  It's like freakin' new.  The asking price is so low for the car you get I'm having a really hard time not buying it, but I just don't have any use for the car.  Is this a "once in a life-time buy?"  No - there's a surprising number of these older cars with 250-350K on them that are still great machines.

I might pine of the 1980's vintage Mercedes that were overbuilt like crazy, but for brands like Toyota/Lexus, they've been making insanely high quality automobiles all along and today, we can buy them for chump change despite them having 2, 3 or many more years of super-reliable life left in them.

Ron's been eyeing 4Runners, the most expensive used SUV in the market.  But, even with their insane resale, it's possible to find one for $6-7K that has many, many years of reliable life left.  What's a new one?  $45K and up?  Damn.

I'm so happy that most people still believe that cars are basically done for at 200K.  It means amazing used buys for guys like me.