Hey fam. Last year I crashed my Pontiac G6 and I had a Pontiac key lanyard so I was like well it looks like I'm getting another Pontiac..... XD I'm cheap ok... Anyways my cousin is 6'11" yes that's right he is 7foot With his work boots on, he drives a huge Duramax truck as expected but for his work daily he has a 2005 Vibe Base W/ the 5 Speed manual trans. So I'm looking for a new car and I want something with a stick shift, this will be my third vehicle I'm 26 and I want to learn stick. My cousin is 7 foot and if he thinks this car is comfortable enough for a daily I guess I'll consider them. I live in Michigan so there is no shortage of GM cars either. I start looking and I find an all black 2004 Vibe GT. The brake calipers and rims are factory spec, but powder coated black. Subtle for sure but it looked good and I was sick of driving a car and so I wanted a hatchback and the price was right. So I got it. She had 215,000 miles on her and she was clapped out. So here's me the first time driving it and I'm doing ok I'm shifting at like 3000rpms... I bought it from some shade tree car lot... Admittedly not the best idea but W/E.... don't know much about the previous owner but there is no rust for 215,000 and it's clean. So I got it. There was a short ram intake however. So me, driving the car I noticed that the redline is just over 8000rpm!! I'm thinking to myself, that can't be right it's a joke... At this point I was learning that it was a Toyota power train and stuff. Didn't know what kind of gem I had. Tried to rev it out and it just hit a limiter at like 6500(car was warmed up). Was weird, because it felt like it was just starting to go, and according to my guages I still had like 1700 Rpms... After some research I decided to clean the lift screen thing. I've never been a car guy but I'm smart and idk I just wanted a new hobby. After I cleaned it and hit lift for the first time. SOLD. THIS MOTOR IS SO HAPPY. so happy, anyways I think that motor was actually tired and had a bad crank bearing or something because after about 20,000more miles it died. But alas a story of triumph! I swapped in a lower mileage 2ZZGE and it runs great! Been swapping out all the suspension parts and everything too. Not going crazy just putting new factory spec (or similar) parts on, mainly because this is my daily but I'm still learning how to do everything and I love it. So glad I got this car!!! When I had the motor out for swap I ported the factory exhaust head manifold thing too. Made it all flush instead of the lip from the raw casting but yeah that's about it. She runs good. Has a sunroof. And a single black sharpie is touch up work for the whole car now that I tinted the windows! Oh and I also put the rain guard things on the windows. It's a good looking car. It's only on stock fitment for rims and stuff but hey w/e it's all black.
Edit: final mention, the motor i got was from japan so it didnt have the pipe for the secondary air injection systems on the exhaust manifold/header. my header was kinda old and the new one was nicer plus the big gay pipe for that system was really in the way when i was trying to get it out... so i decided to run the Jap header/manifold(ported) and i deleted the entire Secondary air injection system. the smog pump that comes on the 2004 models was already removed by the previous owner. like i said i wish i knew the guy but its w/e it seems like he/she took good care of the car it was just at the end of its life before i saved her.
It's a vibe~~~