Up for sale is my 2004 Pontiac Vibe GT 6-speed with 132,000 miles. It is lava burst red, but due to the AZ sun and lack of covered parking, the hood, roof, and passenger side molding are fading.
A month after I purchased it in November 2011, I installed a short ram intake (CARB compliant) which really brought the engine to life (I still have the factory air box if I ever planned to switch it back):
aFe 54-10702 Air Intake System
I checked the spark plugs shortly after purchasing and found the dealer I bought it from installed copper plugs (engineertwin2 had used Bosch+4), so I swapped them out with the recommended NGK Iridium plugs.
I did a new clutch around September of 2013 (I let my father-in-law drive it with my wife in December of 2012 and he was afraid of putting it in reverse and kept 3rd-gear launching the car, burning up the clutch enough to cause it to slip). The clutch that was replaced turned out to be a cheap Aisin brand clutch, so I'm not surprised that it wasn't the factory clutch at 93,000 miles.
Items installed, ordered from Monkey Wrench Racing:
ACT Clutch - Toyota 1ZZ 2ZZ Celica-MR2-S-Corolla-Matrix-TC2-HDSS
Toyota OEM Flywheel - 2ZZ-GE - Used Resurfaced
MWR ARP Bolt Set - Toyota 1ZZ/2ZZ/2GR Flywheel
Speed Source Shifter Cable Bushing Set - Toyota ZZ engines
Toyota OEM Rear Crankshaft (main) Seal - 2ZZ-GE
Car has been a wonderful and reliable car. Recently replaced two worn tires (Discount Tire misled me on tire rotation and they became too worn to rotate to the rear) and had to replace both CV axles and seals due to vibration on acceleration. Car now drives smooth on the highways.
User "engineertwin2" on the forums here is the original purchaser of the vehicle. He traded it in to a dealership where it saw another owner shortly. It went back to the dealership and I purchased it. I noticed the genvibe.com sticker on the roof rack, so I decided to see if I could track the original owner down (which I did). He's a really nice guy and claims to have always run Mobile 1 synthetic, which I do. I generally do Mobile 1 Synthetic every 5,000-7,500 miles (may have seen 1 or 2 regular oil changes before I purchased) and am currently running Penzoil Synchromesh Transmission Gear Oil since it is what Monkeywrench Racing recommends (much better then generic fluid, also had Redline gear oil in it before the clutch swap which felt just as good).
The car has seen a low of 24 MPG and a high of 32 MPG, with my recent tanks being around 27 MPG mixed driving. I normally hit "lift" if I'm getting onto the freeway and need to get ahead of traffic to merge. I always turn off my AC when hitting lift because I don't like to put any extra stress on the AC compressor. The AC works great and is very cold which is nice here in the summer.
It has come to the point in my life where driving a manual transmission is a chore, and with my wife not being able to drive it and my ankle becoming more sore lately, I have decided that it would just be more practical to get back into an automatic transmission vehicle that way my wife can drive it too. That being said, I am open to offers, and would consider a trade for an automatic transmission Vibe/Matrix or any practical automatic vehicle (nothing smaller than a Vibe). I will need to take some photos with my camera to show the current state of the vehicle, but I have included the link to the album of the photos I have at the moment (too dark to take any right now).
Please let me know if you have any questions on it. I'm not in a rush and am fine keeping it. It just makes more sense for our family to switch this vehicle to automatic. We have a Nissan Sentra 2.5 automatic but it is too small and uncomfortable for me to drive, and a 2006 Mountaineer which is the wife's.
Tony
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