Trip home from buying a 1994 Toyota Camry
 

*Note this is before learning hypermiling tricks on this site!*

My dad was on a big kick of buying a lot of 1992-1995 Toyota Camrys (about 12 total bought in around a year including parts cars etc lol). Anyway, we drover there in my Mom's 1995 Camry @ 70-75 mph there (probably ~28mpg) to get the prized jewel:a 1994 Camry from the U.P. in Michigan with around 170k miles on it, the most rusted one we bought (very little rust lol) for $400. The Craigslisting told about the key not working (was stolen in the past and the lock pin was changed) and the front strut was so bad on the passenger's side that it was litterly hitting the hood. My dad fixed box of them issues on site and planned to drive it home. Well he quickly found out the OTHER strut was just about as bad and he didn't feel safe diving it over 60mph so we drove the experess way for ~300 miles at around 60mph with minum stops and good traffic. When he hit over 300 miles and it wasn't past 1/2 a tank he thought the guage was broken and stopped to fill it up. Of course it was working fine, didn't take only around 8 gal or so to fill it and guessimated around 35mpg. Of course I was a lead foot and only got around 31 mpg in the 95.

Long story short, that was the best we have seen with these cars are were amazed! I have been looking around for a while on different ways to mod cars to get them MPG up, and over a year or so I finally hit this site and seeing amazing stories.

The trip above was about a year ago, and we were not trying to save gas in a major way, only the idea of try to keep the RPM gauge under 3k. New rule for me is under 2.5k and hoping to get near 35mpg with no mods, and hopefully 40mpg with a few small mods similar to the work here:

showthread.php/azs-96-camry-wagon-build-up-thread-13406.html

and here

showthread.php/getting-frustrated-lack-prior-aero-modded-camrys-13185-4.html

Planned mods are:

• Turn bottom part of bumper purely into an air dam
• Possibly extend air dam down a little (under body pannel would remove this need?)
• Possible upper raitor grill block or partial block depending on cooling needs
• Possible over sized tires (my winters have flat spots from hiting a deer @ 70mph and slamming the breaks on just prior and freezing)
• Some sort of hubcap mod to make moon capes that don't look so odd (I like the factory ones) Maybe some clear plastic :)
• Under body Pannel - Factory it isn't bad, mainly needs an under engine pan and rear end pan and match it to the rear bumper (big scoop lol)
• Cone filter and delete air box (or mod airbox to make it breath better)
• Convert ALL lights on car to LED - Project started out from house lighting at night for very little cost, <3 leds the light the entire room to walk though for a mear 7ma at 13.8v (acorss 4 leds + resister) with a total draw per room being around 100mw.
• Hypermiling in the flat lands of Michigan

Always open for suggestions, I just don't want to be driving the rocket ship to work. Also going to read more up on truck areo modding for my new business I started - Recycling E-Waste since NO ONE does it for the public in my area.

Sorry for the long winded post.

What motor
I had a 97 Lexus Es300 with the 1 mz 3.0 and auto.
I got 29-33mpg driving at 80 everywhere. Hit 38mpg on a trip to Ohio doing 45-55mpg Well around town it would dip to about 24 mpg.

But noticed a drop when the plastic under the bumper flew off. Apparently they stock snaps come loose at around 30 minutes of 130+ driving. It was about a 2-3 mpg drop. Then about another 1mpg hit when I took the stock 15s off and Put on 5 spoke is300 17's.

All Camrys we have owned had the 2.2L gas auto setup. I was getting around 26-28 mpg in the summer always driving 5mph over, 75-80 on the express ways, and having the shift points at about 3000 rpm (including lower gears). Funny thing is, according to the link below, the camry is around 300 pounds lighter, but share a lot of front end parts.

1992-1996 Toyota Camry: Full Review - Consumer Guide Automotive

I think the areo on the camry can be in proved quite a lot vs the 97 Lexus Es300 photos I found on google. The back window looks to be a steeper of an angle and the trunk seems taller. The front end looks to me like it would be harder to push in the wind too.

Funny thing is, according to fueleconomy.gov the average mpg for the camry is better (22) and the lexus is at 19. Only way I was able to get 22mpg in my camry is in winter and not knowing all of my tires were around 25-27psi and driving "normal".

I never got 22mpg. Even when I would auto cross or hit up the 1/8 mile. Wasn't fast but was consistent. 10.2 in the 1/8 th.

The grill was closed off. And the bumper had three 1 inch openings between the fog.
The rear glass I think was the same.

It was one of those car that if I got the highway rating it was a bad tank. Now I had a 07 Camry se (2.4)that rarely got its highway rating when trying to hypermile it.
Hell look at yoder in my fuel log. He was rated for 20 highwAy. But rarly saw that low.

Funny little trip. Went from charleston wv to canton oh and back a touch over 400 miles. A-c set to auto and cruise at 80 mph fOr most of trip. I drove up we picked up a 02 protege 5 filled the Mazda up and drove back filled both cars up in charleston. The protege 5 got 29mpg and the lex got 30 mpg with its six.

I think the under body will net u the biggest gain.

I agree the underside will be a huge boost in MPG, I would expect some front end mods will help a good deal too. The mid section of the underside of the car isn't too bad of what I remember from parting one of the cars my dad bought down to the shell. Back bumper is a huge scoop so that will need to be fixed with the belly pan some time.

Good cars!

This one is really great. Like it. Gr8 deal..

ThankYou

I guess since we have owned so many I should point out the common problems with them.

Differential fluid on auto transmissions is RARELY checked since it isn't common to have 2 places to check the trans fluid. Just about every car we bought was low or basically out (mine had ~2oz in it). If this isn't fixed in time, the transmission will start to skip gears as they wear out and a lot of people will try to sell the car saying they think it is the axes going bad. Couple of the ones we looked at could go forward if driven easy, but couldn't back up.

Clucking or shaking on bumps/braking in the rear end - Between the struts being bad (over 200k miles on origs) and the bushings in the arms that hold the wheel bearings like to wear out. One of the cars we bought the person stopped driving due to "brake problems" which was just bad arms in the back. 350k miles and runs great yet :).

Oil leaks - That is how I got my car I drive now with 300k miles. Front main seal, cam seal, oil pump seal were all leaking. This caused the timing belt to go as well and they had it fixed and after that it had no power and sold the oil leaker with no power for $650 which had a new $600 exhaust pipe from manifold back (installed price). Well the guy that worked on the car didn't know how to install the timing belt..... 35 degrees OFF and it ran and drove well enough to make over 200 mile trip home with it (weak on up hills).

Bad engines - Bought a couple of these for transmissions and body parts. Basically every one we came across failed due to driving error. The engine leaked oil and the owner kepted driving it when it ran out. One that comes to mind had the oil pan off and told us stright up the lower end was shot from it. We moved it around the yard a few times WITH NO OIL and it still will start up. Replacement engine is going into it now from a totaled car (t-boned).

Rust - Ok I better add this in, they do have a couple of spots where they commonly rust... only a couple spot though. Number one is anywhere that there has been body damage, which is kind of a given. Second is inside the rear wells at the back side. It does become a hole pretty quick (mine is about 3-4 inches around). That is about it for real rust, around the fenders is the next place they will start to rust, but it isn't very common unless they are in really bad conditions like the UP in Michigan where they dump tons and tons of more salt then my area of Michigan.

That is about every problem we came across. They seem to hold up really well in wrecks too. the T-boned car was hit while pulling out in front of a F350 truck going 55mph and we was able to barely dolly it home with the rear wheel rubbing and sitting about 40 degrees off :D. When we got it home, it drove around the yard fine except the air leaks and the rear tire hitting the body. Even in the mangled doors, both window motors worked, rear one shaked like crazy from being bent so bad.

Great car. Boring, but functional! I am amazed at what I've been able to pull out of the car in a short time.

This post is about a year old :).

I do still own several camrys, so I can probably post some photos + total miles. The 382k one is starting to rust from sitting near a swampy area of the property :(. A 1990 grand am sat in the same area for a few years and was rusted out so bad it had to be scrapped lol.

If you want to see photos of my daily driver, view the link in my sig for my corolla. The photos are fairly old, but are pretty accurate to it\'s current state.


@Cosmo

My dad was hypermiling his 97 camry with no scan gauge and around 50% city and 50% country driving. He was getting around 32-35 with no actual mods besides max sidewall presure in the tires. He drove ~48mph in the country, and ~58mph on the express way, and in town he does EOCing when possible/safe. I drove my mom\'s 97 camry once to work with the scan gauge... WORLD of difference compaired to my camry, the thing is such a gas hog lol. I think I pulled something like 30mpg out of it :( vs my corolla getting ~42mpg at the time with the same route.