Build Thread - 2000 Toyota Camry LE

[XVTer]

I figured I would start a thread for my newish commuter car so that I can have a place to keep track of what I have done; these first few posts will get you up to speed of where I've come over the past few months. It's brown on brown and is the plainest car I have ever driven, but fits the bill perfectly.

Here are the specs:
2000 Toyota Camry LE
2.2L 4-cyl 5S-FE Engine
Automatic Transmission
190,000 Miles

I sold my old Ranger and ended up buying a 98 Volvo V70XC which I fixed up for a commuter, but ended up selling that as well. I still have my 2008 Silverado which does its duty for weekend camping trips, hauling loads/tools for work and towing trailers. Most of the time, I only need to have a suitcase-sized tool box with me, so a commuter car gets used 90% of the time.

In October, my in-laws got a new car, so my wife and I bought this beaut’ off of them for short money since the suspension was worn out, the exhaust was rotting apart, and it needed a tune-up as it would randomly stall and had a bit of a hesitation under full throttle.

Since they still had it inspected/registered/insured in their name, I was able to spend a couple months working on it in order to get it to where it would pass MA state inspection and emissions.

Prior to doing any other work, I went ahead and changed the oil/filter, drained/filled the transmission fluid, power steering fluid, differential fluid and flushed the brake fluid. Most of the fluids didn’t really look like they had been changed in a while. As with all of my other cars, I went ahead and bought the Haynes manual for it as well.

After that, the first order of business was to fix the exhaust. I went to Lou’s Custom Exhaust in Portsmouth, NH and had them bend up pipe from the catalytic converter to the muffler which included a new resonator. This was actually cheaper than purchasing the pre-fabbed piping and I was able to have them tuck the exhaust piping up closer to the body than the stock exhaust was. For some reason, Camry’s of this vintage always have the exhaust pipe hanging really low.

Exhaust Pipe:


Duplicolor Header Paint:



Second order of business was to fix the rear suspension. Upon inspection, the rear control links (lateral links) had worn bushings and allowed a lot of play in the way the rear suspension tracked. It also caused a bad alignment and premature tire wear. Since I plan on keeping this car for a few years and was going to have to disassemble the rear suspension anyway, I decided I may as well replace all of the links. Once I started taking things apart, I realized that the coil springs on both sides were broken and, since the struts weren’t in great shape either, I opted to get all new strut assemblies which included springs, shocks, mounts, and brackets.











Finally, prior to trying to pass inspection, I picked up some new NGK plug wires and NGK Laser Platinum spark plugs (OEM Recommended). I then removed the worn all-season tires/wheels and installed the dedicated snow tires/wheels which are in great condition.




I was then able to get the car titled and registered in our name and it passed inspection with flying colors (on the second try, the first try I failed due to a cracked Gas Cap seal).

[XVTer]

Driving home from getting the inspection, the car stalled on the highway. Luckily, I was able to coast to where there was a break-down lane. I scanned for codes with my Scangauge II and it showed an old code for a Crankshaft Position Sensor Circuit Malfunction, but didn’t have any active codes. I tried cranking the engine and got nothing. Since I still had the old spark plugs in the trunk, I hooked one up to the wires and noticed that I didn’t have any spark, which was puzzling – must be an electrical issue. I gave the car a few minutes and it started back up. There is a Toyota dealership between my house and work, so I stopped in there on my way and had them take a quick look at it. The service tech looked under the hood and said that it is probably due to the coil pack since there appeared to be a little oil leaking from the valve cover gasket down that side of the engine. I asked him to quote for the repairs and, needless to say, decided I could fix it much cheaper myself. I stopped by AutoZone and picked up a new valve cover gasket along with the spark plug tube seals. They didn’t have any coil packs in stock, so I ordered them online when I got the car home. (The way these 4cyl Camry motors work is that they have two coil packs, each for two cylinders; each pack fires for each of the cylinders, so one spark is wasted on each cylinder for every cycle.) I drove my truck for a few days and spent the next weekend fixing the Camry. Since I had the valve cover off anyway, I decided to clean it up a bit; I also installed a new PCV valve and grommet. I sanded it down and hit it with a few coats of Duplicolor Graphite Wheel Paint which I had left over from painting a set of wheels from my Volvo. I replaced the seals and installed the new coil packs. At the same time, I decided to run a can of AMSOIL power foam through the intake since the cars idle isn’t very stable. Here is the finished product, which I think turned out pretty well:




Driving to work on Monday, everything seemed to be running well, until I was almost at work and let off the throttle for a red light. The car stalled and – you guessed it – no spark again. Giving it a few minutes, it started back up and I was able to make it to work. On the way home, I stopped at the Toyota dealership and let them know that they misdiagnosed the problem. Since I had paid them for the previous diagnosis, they said that they would do it again for free. They came back and said that the car would need a new ECM (Engine Control Module) as there seemed to be a miscommunication between the crank sensor and the module. The price for a new one was around $1000, so I decided to once again try to do the work myself. I found one on eBay which had the same part numbers and was guaranteed for around $100. I received it a couple days later and installed it that night. I drove the Camry to work the next day to only have the same problem occur in almost the same exact spot. As before, I was able to make it to work, but on the way home, the car stalled 4 times. Luckily it was Friday and the weather forecast didn’t have snow so I spent Saturday going through all of the troubleshooting steps in the Haynes Manual. I found out that the Coolant Temperature sensor was reading out of spec, so I replaced that. I also found that at some point, someone had cut the wiring harness going to the Crankshaft Position Sensor, and the wires had been twisted and electrical taped. I took this apart and ran new shielded wiring to the sensor. The previous cut was right beside the alternator so I am under the assumption that the heat from the motor as well as the interference from the magnetic field of the alternator probably was giving me my intermittent issues.



To make a long story even longer, replacing the coolant temperature sensor and re-wiring the crank position sensor were the answer. The car went a few weeks with no issues at all. I then started to think about ways I can improve the fuel economy. I had been getting around 28MPG mixed city/highway on winter gas and my goal is for 35. The front emblem was broken so I decided to do a quick-fix for the front grille. I took an old thermal undershirt I had and stretched it over the grille. Here are the results, so far, 3 months and no issues, though I will have to see if it poses overheating problems this summer:

[XVTer]

Recently, while up at my in-law’s house in VT, we had a critter get into the car and chewed the intake piping and a few vacuum hoses. I remedied this by buying one of the cheap eBay intake systems which uses a cone filter and deletes the intake silencer. It was only $40 and has the benefit of pulling air from inside the engine compartment, effectively becoming a warm air intake. At highway speeds, my intake air temperature reads roughly 10 degrees warmer than the outside air temp sensor. I had a bunch of silicone vacuum hose laying around from previous cars, so I replaced the damaged vacuum hoses with this. I will be doing more in the future as the hoses which are on the Camry are extremely degraded and brittle.

I didn’t do any A-B-A testing of these mods, but between these and continuously monitoring my driving with the Scangauge, I have averaged 31 mpg for the past month (still running winter tires) and my best tank was 34. I have high hopes for this car in the future. I picked up some ABS sheeting and will be exploring the possibility of doing at least a partial belly pan.

Since the front suspension is pretty worn as well, I have bought new front control arms, sway-bar end-links, tie rod ends, and ball joints. Once I get a few more dollars set aside I am going to go ahead and order new strut assemblies for the front as well as sway bar bushings so, like I did with the rear suspension, I can spend a long day and replace the whole shebang.

I don't have any recent pictures, but will work on getting some over the next week or so

[Jyden]

Nice
Lots of work and parts, tbut it should go on for many years now.

[MetroMPG]

I'm not sure how your version compares to the next generation of the car, but my Dad's 2002 Camry 4-cyl automatic gets pretty impressive highway fuel economy for what it is:



http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...2-a-23818.html

Good luck with yours.

[XVTer]

Cool Chart. I guess we should have held out for one with the 2.4L

Guess I should take a few more back roads instead of taking the highway every day. Almost 50mpg at 45mph is amazing

[XVTer]

I finally got around to adding the Camry to the 'garage' and will start putting up my fuel consumption info. First entry is from yesterday at just shy of 30mpg.

[zakats]

great thread, I've got three camry's of this generation in the family so I'll keep an eye on this for inspiration.

[XVTer]

It's been a while since updating this thread, but it's only because I hadn't had a chance to work on the Camry in a while. I finally got around to replacing/upgrading the front suspension like I did the rear. My cell phone died so I don't have a lot of 'in-progress' photos, but here it sits now:




I installed new front control arms, sway bar bushings/brackets, ball joints, inner and outer tie rods, strut assemblies and also 1.5" lowering springs all the way around.

I got the full 1.5" out back but was a little depressed that i only got ~0.5" in the front. I hope that over the next few weeks the front springs will settle and break in a bit.

You may also note that there is on fuel door on the car - the one on there broke so I ordered a used one off of eBay. Unfortunately, the paint didn't quite match right so I picked up some 3M Di-Noc (Carbon-Fiber look) wrap and have wrapped in in that. I just need to locate my rivet gun in reinstall it.

While I was at it, I changed the Oil with Mobil1 Synthetic as it was on sale at Costco and went with a Bosch filter. I also got around to restoring the headlights as they've been a bit foggy lately and make it hard to see at night in the rain. I wet-sanded with 800 grit followed by a wet 1500 grit and finally hit them with the PlastiX plastic polish. Pretty happy with the results - this worked wonders on our old XC90 and worked great on the camry as well:





You may notice in the last picture that I have removed my grille block. Last week sitting in traffic in Boston the temperature started to peak (it was ~100 degrees out) so I cut it off. I will figure out a way to make this better again.

[XVTer]

Got a shade over 33mpg last week and crossed the 200,000 mile mark as well. Headed in the right direction and I think that lowering the car has helped inch it higher.

Now that I've got the car running right and the suspension isn't going to fall apart I think it's time to take it to the next level with some aero mods and better driving habits. I have a tendency to go with the speed of traffic on the highways which is right around 70-75MPH. I think that over the next couple of tanks I am going to try to take more 2-lanes to get my cruising speed down around 50-55 on the commute. Road construction has been hindering my commute as well since I drive 1/2 at highway speeds and 1/2 in stop/go traffic.