Ok this is an odd one but some of you may need this. My youngest killed her battery numerous times by leaving the dome light on, so I revised the dome light to use keyed power instead of constant power. That way when she takes out her keys and leaves the car the dome light goes off. No more dead bat...

Update: Last week the car drove from Kansas City to Thunder Bay in Canada and back, about 1700 miles round trip. I'm happy to say there was no discernable oil usage. Very happy with that. If you are considering this type of repair though do not use anything but a Toyota or a FelPro head gasket. The ...

Ok here's an update after a fair bit of use. No perceptible oil usage going on, at all. Very nice! Power is still much better. I did replace the one coil that had a crack in it, and the one injector that sounded different than the others. Short term fuel trims are consistently below 2.76 or so max, ...

After pulling the VVT solenoid and then inspecting the gasket on the filter plug below it, I decided that the filter plug gasket was fine. And the o-ring on the VVT solenoid was hard as a rock and stuck in place in the groove. I eventually had to cut it to get it out. I did some measuring of the gro...

So after doing some hunting for part numbers, I found that these were what I'd need: G191732010, VVT Solenoid O-Ring 9043014009, VVT Filter Plug Gasket Also note that the o-ring listed above fits the crankshaft position sensor, so if you are ordering you may as well get two and do both at the same t...

Customer states the check engine light is now on, so I pulled the codes and got: P0420 - Catalyst System Efficiency Below threshold (Bank 1) P0440 - Evaporative Emission Control System P0442 - Evaporative Emission Control System Leak Detected (small leak) So I was kind of expecting the P0420 to pop ...

I wonder how many of the oil burning Vibes are AWD, as the close proximity of the pre-cat to the engine is a recipe for problems seen on alot of cars of this era. That may be one reason why we see a fair number of oil burning issues, even though the oil holes were supposed to be fixed from 2004-up. ...

Here's something that might be a simple way to check your timing chain system. We can probably make some conclusions about the condition of the chain and guides just by looking at the wear pattern on the plunger of the tensioner. Here’s mine for example. My chain is just slightly below the spec for ...

Well it's all buttoned up and running again. It idles smoother, the valve train is quieter, and there's definitely more power though the rings haven't completely seated yet. I still need to replace the coils, though only one has a crack, they all measure about 30k ohms. After a week I'll change the ...

Well there is some wear in the chain vibration damper guide tensioner thingy, but it's only 0.032" from what I can measure. It would have to go quite a bit deeper for the rollers to contact the plastic I think. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/uek-8SRSoaSNmYAhv7cPslY6bberWEOmJ2GPqDVqSqZ4Bp2nZB...

So here's the little piece of of the chain tensioner that dropped down into the cover. It looks like it may have had tabs on both sides to hold it in place originally, but I just gooed it back on with some black RTV after a thorough degreasing. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ylbgdODtJdZD_GliP6KQ4...

Ok, the pistons are finally back in the block, the rod bolts torqued, and the oil pan back on: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/jvQANsHTK5d31Yp8ISddjntOoLxnd18BSF5S0joewpbOY34cYlaUqm-AEbiBImgnrea6AkgoFOwS27debwFIgO_Ub_nc7k77crfs4LoS7fviszuh9f5z735qUX2Ueuku-9UCtQqWMhY=w1920-h1080 The head went back ...

After further inspection I'm pretty confident that the pre-cat was mostly plugged: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/51ZEn_rTh5xe-y9MmPNvZGBT2iKqkMOdQ3wg7U56nAORk2MQnmEwwhz1Ur9fgU-AXaMVDITGGNjjPp5ArrWGmoUwObUqLJKWQzKbtn9aecqxA1sOYkUxYQ5R4SGV9-zHqkzwfeJ6lrU=w1920-h1080 And I certainly didn't expect t...

But on a more positive note, I did get the cylinder head all finished up. Pulling the old valve guide seals was difficult. The exhaust side seals fell apart when I grabbed them with a vise-grip, and then I used a pick to pull off the remaining rubber from the guide. But on the intake side the only w...

Grrrr... I hadn't seen this before. Stupid Kwikee-Lube dumb-dumbs. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ParfegLo5bS4qTYaGRsoU26lWqFZku_vGtnW3w6I7ep1_WgSS0Hmt9rkA5TImAl-z7HB_mDeEL6qfogiyK03LLFm5MGerpFEOAChvm2LKeXBhPPX7qX4dyxCu1YIWGt4AQwLI36YRnQ=w1920-h1080 They jam the oil fill nozzle into the valve cov...

If you are on the hunt for an AWD subframe there is one on a 2005 AWD Vibe at the Muncie U-Pull yard (on the West side of the Kansas City metro) as of 05/01/21. It looks to be in really good shape, I have more pics if you are interested. I'm just too busy with other stuff to take the time to pull it...

Sure - here's the view from under the car. There's a bolted in crossmember there that holds the front engine mount, and I just pulled the 4 bolts for it and pushed it over toward the trans a bit to get better access to the rod bolts. The oil pan is shaped such that it would come out without moving t...

Well, I didn't get much done tonight. I did spend about an hour and a half cleaning the head though, using a bottle of Dollar Store "Awesome" cleaner, a toothbrush, and a cheapie electric pressure washer. It turned out much better than I expected. Next step will be to change out the valve ...

I left the exhaust manifold on the head as the nuts are hard to get at. But now that it's on the bench, I can get a really good look at it and remove it from the head. My daughter had always complained that this little car was pretty slow, though I didn't think it too bad, but after getting a good l...

I'm not sure, but it wouldn't surprise me. It seems like many had this issue to some degree, including Honda, Chevy LS, etc.

I'm working on a 2003 AWD with just 105k miles, but the oil consumption is up to about 1 qt every 400-600 miles. It's my daughter's car, and she's in Canada for a few weeks so I decided to tear it down and do the oil consumption fix based on the writeups on ToyotaNation, keeping the engine in the ca...

Well as it turns out there's no way but the hard way for this one. You have to unbolt the steering rack and drop the suspension k-member to get the clearance to get the mount out. Also disconnect the sway bar end links first so the sway bar doesn't hold up the k-member. Not a fun way to spend a Satu...

It seems to be captive between the steering rack and the k-member. I'm just not figuring out how to get the (removed) out of there.

Lots of videos on replacing the mount for a FWD version, but the AWD is quite a bit different. Thanks in advance!