Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

im with every one that said corollas im a mechanic work on them all the time never have major dramas just minor one sometimes

i owed 1990 corolla first car me and my brother drove it for 150xxx never change oil coolant nothing lol and it did many of good rollback skids great cars and cheap

  • Replies 81
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I'm a fan of corollas and camrys for reliability and being generally decent cars, but I'm a bit picky. The gf is still on her L's (ie really inexperienced) so I'm very keen on a car with abs and airbags, and the camrys and corollas in the price range with those are very few. We commute between Sydney and Newcastle regularly due to families and friends, work and uni being all over the place, so she'll no doubt be doing long stints early on on her P's.

A bit pedantic, but I remember what a tool I was on my P's in the parents camry. I also needed the abs in my r34 to avoid some fools on the road in pouring rain last week, which was a really keen reminder of why they're so useful.

What's your opinion on magnas mate? The 1996-2003 ones actually have a better ancap rating than the more recent ones (random), that's beside the point tho.

Also after your opinion mad: how's it on fuel? Did you run it on e10?

Are the spark plugs as much of a pain to change as people say? I'm guessing oil is plain old 20w50?

Thanks, appreciate it

Edited by Galois

couple of my mates had magnas with the 3.5 v6 (one auto 'sports" and one manual 'vrx')

think they used to average between 10-12 and about 8 on the highway

if your gonna get a corolla aim for one from 2002 onwards

my mum drives an 03 one, had it from brand new and not a problem with it yet (touch wood)

manual ones will be about $8k now, great cars but the auto is a bit gutless at speed

I'm a fan of corollas and camrys for reliability and being generally decent cars, but I'm a bit picky. The gf is still on her L's (ie really inexperienced) so I'm very keen on a car with abs and airbags, and the camrys and corollas in the price range with those are very few. We commute between Sydney and Newcastle regularly due to families and friends, work and uni being all over the place, so she'll no doubt be doing long stints early on on her P's.

A bit pedantic, but I remember what a tool I was on my P's in the parents camry. I also needed the abs in my r34 to avoid some fools on the road in pouring rain last week, which was a really keen reminder of why they're so useful.

What's your opinion on magnas mate? The 1996-2003 ones actually have a better ancap rating than the more recent ones (random), that's beside the point tho.

Also after your opinion mad: how's it on fuel? Did you run it on e10?

Are the spark plugs as much of a pain to change as people say? I'm guessing oil is plain old 20w50?

Thanks, appreciate it

ran the second one on e10 with no problems. as far as fuel economy goes, depends on how you drive. when i went to the drags (about a 550km round trip) i averaged under 10L/100kms (was about 9.4 i think). could get about 8.9 on trips if i drive sensibly and sat on the speed limit. even just 5km/h over on the highway would bump it up a bit. round town was a different story. if i took it sensibly then it was usually mid 12's to low 13's, if i fanged it then it was in the 15's to 16's. i should point out though that most of my driving is short trips (generally all less than 5kms), so even driving like a grandma i'll still get worse economy than someone who drives further because by the time i get to where i'm going the car is only just starting to come off cold start enrichment.

as for the spark plugs, the rears are platinums or idiriums and generally only need to be changed at the 100,000km service or something like that (might be 50,000kms, can't remember). the plenum isn't that hard to take off to do the rear plugs. i was able to take the plenum off and change both rocker cover gaskets in under 3 hours, which involved a bit of dicking around. i think that just to do the plugs would probably only take an hour, probably less.

for oil you can use whatever you want really. i think the recommended oil weight is similar to that of a skyline (and most other modern cars) of 7.5w30. so you can use 5w30 or 10w40 or anything like that.

couple of my mates had magnas with the 3.5 v6 (one auto 'sports" and one manual 'vrx')

think they used to average between 10-12 and about 8 on the highway

if your gonna get a corolla aim for one from 2002 onwards

my mum drives an 03 one, had it from brand new and not a problem with it yet (touch wood)

manual ones will be about $8k now, great cars but the auto is a bit gutless at speed

my sister has an 06 corolla and it's an auto and i'm pleasantly suprised with how well it goes. my mother has a 2000 model corolla manual and it's a nice car as well. i prefer the missus SSS to drive than both of them though. ride is much better, as are the seats, as is the performance.

  • 1 month later...

On the magna front, looking at test driving some this week. Is the auto in the magnas ok? There aren't exactly heaps of manuals around. I do want to test drive both though, but any advice is always good :P

The gf is still on her L's (ie really inexperienced) so I'm very keen on a car with abs and airbags, and the camrys and corollas in the price range with those are very few. We commute between Sydney and Newcastle regularly due to families and friends, work and uni being all over the place, so she'll no doubt be doing long stints early on on her P's.

What's your opinion on magnas mate? The 1996-2003 ones actually have a better ancap rating than the more recent ones (random), that's beside the point tho.

You get a lot of safety gear in a Magna, and you can get Magnas very cheaply second-hand.

I'd compare it to the Maxima though, because they depreciate a lot too and have all the safety gear.

See howsafeisyourcar.com.au ANCAP for '06 Maxima is 4/5

Auto trans. seems to be good on both of above.

Yeah, but they don't come with abs and airbags, not much really does below 5k, apart from magnas lol. Seeing as my partner will drive it most and she's not yet on her red p's i want her in a safe car. Abs has helped me out quite a few times over the years.

My mother's '97 Maxima GV has airbags and abs. She's going to keep it, because it only has 65000kms on odo. It's worth less than $5K.

Some other elderly people might want to offload theirs. Engine is better than a Magna's

magna auto boxes are ok

my mate has a "sports" v6 with the 5 speed tiptronic

he says its starting to feel a but sloppy tho, but he's been saying that for the last few years

his has been doing him well for ages now (it was his first car and he is about 21 now) gets pretty good fuel consumption for a 3.5 v6 too

I just wrote off our diahatsu Terrios. Done 200k and never had a single problem with it. We gave it a very hard life, bush bashing, be lucky if we changed the oil every 40k - Even towed a caravan 2000 kilometers. It was unkillable (well almost)

Airbags and ABS is over-rated IMO, and reduces the selection of budget cars significantly. I'm not saying they don't work by the way, it's just how often do you crash? And when you do, how often would an airbag have helped .. now-days seatbelts prevent your head destroying the wheel providing you don't drive with your seat too far foward?

Just my 2c, lower your standards and you'll find something epic.

+1 corolla..

Airbags and ABS is over-rated IMO, and reduces the selection of budget cars significantly. I'm not saying they don't work by the way, it's just how often do you crash? And when you do, how often would an airbag have helped .. now-days seatbelts prevent your head destroying the wheel providing you don't drive with your seat too far foward?

ABS and airbags only have to save you once to be worth it. As I said above, the reason I want these is because my L plater gf will be driving the car most of the time, and she'll be doing long drives early on.

Corolla would def be the way to go if I could find a cheap and safe one.

There are heaps of 3L magnas around with abs and airbags for less than 3k.

ABS and airbags only have to save you once to be worth it. As I said above, the reason I want these is because my L plater gf will be driving the car most of the time, and she'll be doing long drives early on.

Corolla would def be the way to go if I could find a cheap and safe one.

There are heaps of 3L magnas around with abs and airbags for less than 3k.

Go the 3.5L V6 Magna. They are effortless to drive and are very happy cruising, but are equally good in stop-start.

My wife has the 4-speed tiptronic TJ and it handles the daily grind with ease (she drives 30mins highway to and from work each day).

They are very, very easy to service (I use Mobil 1 4w40 and Nulon 100% synthetic ATF) and are very reliable - although the head unit in our froze, but is very, very easy to replace.

Plugs are pretty easy to replace as Mad said. I just chucking a set of iridiums in both banks so set-and-forget for about 120,000kms or so.

Only negative is that they have considerable understeer at speed.

Edited by iamhe77

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • OK, so regardless of whether you did Step 1 - Spill Step 2 - Trans pan removal Step 3 - TCM removal we are on to the clean and refill. First, have a good look at the oil pan. While you might see dirty oil and some carbony build up (I did), what you don't want to see is any metal particles on the magnets, or sparkles in the oil (thankfully not). Give it all a good clean, particularly the magnets, and put the new gasket on if you have one (or, just cross your fingers)
    • One other thing to mention from my car before we reassemble and refill. Per that earlier diagram,   There should be 2x B length (40mm) and 6x C length (54mm). So I had incorrectly removed one extra bolt, which I assume was 40mm, but even so I have 4x B and 5x C.  Either, the factory made an assembly error (very unlikely), or someone had been in there before me. I vote for the latter because the TCM part number doesn't match my build date, I suspect the TCM was changed under warranty. This indeed led to much unbolting, rebolting, checking, measuring and swearing under the car.... In the end I left out 1x B bolt and put in a 54mm M6 bolt I already had to make sure it was all correct
    • A couple of notes about the TCM. Firstly, it is integrated into the valve body. If you need to replace the TCM for any reason you are following the procedure above The seppos say these fail all the time. I haven't seen or heard of one on here or locally, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. Finally, Ecutek are now offering tuning for the 7 speed TCM. It is basically like ECU tuning in that you have to buy a license for the computer, and then known parameters can be reset. This is all very new and at the moment they are focussing on more aggressive gear holding in sports or sports+ mode, 2 gear launches for drag racing etc. It doesn't seem to affect shift speed like you can on some transmissions. Importantly for me, by having controllable shift points you can now raise the shift point as well as the ECU rev limit, together allowing it to rev a little higher when that is useful. In manual mode, my car shifts up automatically regardless of what I do which is good (because I don't have to worry about it) but bad (because I can't choose to rev a little higher when convenient).  TCMs can only be tuned from late 2016 onwards, and mine is apparently not one of those although the car build date was August 2016 (presumably a batch of ADM cars were done together, so this will probably be the situation for most ADM cars). No idea about JDM cars, and I'm looking into importing a later model valve body I can swap in. This is the top of my TCM A couple of numbers but no part number. Amayama can't find my specific car but it does say the following for Asia-RHD (interestingly, all out of stock....): So it looks like programable TCM are probably post September 2018 for "Asia RHD". When I read my part number out from Ecutek it was 31705-75X6D which did not match Amayama for my build date (Aug-2016)
    • OK, Step 3, if you need to remove the valve body, either to replace it, the TCM, or to do a more complete drain.  First, you need to disconnect the TCM input wires, they are about half way up the transmission on the drivers side. One plug and the wires are out of the way, but there is also a spring clip that stops the socket from sliding back into the transmission. On my car the spring clip was easy to get, but the socket was really stuck in the o-ring of the transmission housing and took some.....persuasion. You can see both the plug to remove (first) and the spring clip (second) in this pic Incidentally, right next to the plug, you can see where the casting has allowance for a dispstick/filler which Nissan decided not to provide. there is a cap held on with a 6mm head bolt that you can remove to overfill it (AMS recommend a 1.5l overfill). Final step before the big mess, remove the speed sensor that is clipped to the valve body at the rear of the box.  Then removal of the Valve Body. For this the USDM Q50 workshop manual has a critical diagram: There are a billion bolts visible. Almost all of them do not need to be removed, just the 14 shown on the diagram. Even so, I both removed one extra, and didn't check which length bolt came from which location (more on that later....). Again it is worth undoing the 4 corners first, but leaving them a couple of turns in to hold the unit up....gravity is not your friend here and trans oil will be going everywhere. Once the corners are loose but still in remove all the other 10 bolts, then hold the valve body up with 1 hand while removing the final 4. Then, everything just comes free easily, or like in my case you start swearing because that plug is stuck in the casing. Done, the valve body and TCM are out
    • OK, so if you are either going for the bigger fluid change or are changing the valve body which includes the Transmission Control Module (TCM), first you should have both a new gasket 31397-1XJ0A and a torque wrench that can work down to 8Nm (very low, probably a 1/4 drive one). You can probably get by without either, but I really didn't want to pull it all apart together due to a leak. First, you now need that big oil pan. The transmission pan is 450 long x 350 wide, and it will probably leak on all sides, so get ready for a mess. There are 24x 6mm headed bolts holding the pan on. I undid the 2 rear corners, then screwed those bolts back in a couple of turns to let the pan go low at that end, then removed all the middle bolts on each side. Then, undo the front corner bolts slowly while holding the pan up, and 80% of the fluid will head out the rear. From there, remove the remaining bolts and the pan is off. You can see it is still dripping oil absolutely everywhere...it dripped all night.... I got another couple of litres when I removed the pan, and then another few when I removed the valve body - all up another 4l on top of the 3 already dropped in step 1.
×
×
  • Create New...