had it with the car. again

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a rabid Toyota fan. I'm even the kind of rabid fan that will admit when Toyota makes a stinker of a car, or something similar.

Well, in a way, our old Camry is one of the stinkers. I am so through throwing money and brain power at it, but unfortunately I'll have to continue with it until the end of next summer, probably. It doesn't have the bitchen 22R engine in it, and it's the second gen that had the ECT transmission, which in itself was a great idea, with not so great execution, apparently.

Through my brilliant powers of deduction, I've come to the conclusion that all the problems we've had with it can be traced to ONE issue. The vacuum system. Dun dun DUUUUN! Either not enough is being created or there's a leak somewhere that I haven't been able to trace down. Brakes, stalling, part of the heater problem.. all vac related. The power booster on the brakes works.. whenever. The heater vents open and close according to their own esoteric schedule. The transmission shifts at strange points, making getting onto the freeway an adventure. It starts and runs great but sometimes as soon as you put the pedal down, it poops out. That drove me bananas for a while. Because I kept thinking it was the automatic choke, but because it's fuel injected, and computer controlled with a cold-start injector, there is no automatic choke.

But, you know, otherwise it runs like a champ and gets great mileage. I hate vacuum systems as much as I hate electrical, as far as working on them goes. I'm a brakes and suspension person and would happily spend all day throwing new pads and shoes on cars and shit like that. Weirdly, I love resurfacing rotors and drums. I love to watch the lathe straighten that shit out. How clean they look once they're done. And honing cylinders. wee!

So I guess in the next couple of weeks I'll take it down to Shane and say "Fix it or shoot it, I don't care".