r/toyotacorolla

A couple weeks ago someone decided to blow through a red light and they hit my poor rolla ☹️ luckily no one was seriously injured, but it still just sucks

i kept her so clean and it wasn’t even at 80k miles yet. and not even a month ago i spent like over $500 doing a bunch of preventative maintenance. spark plugs and coils, all fluid changes, pcv valve, and throttle body clean. I wanted to have this baby for years and see how long it would last. Wanted to keep her going so long my kids kid could have it as a first car lol.

good news is his insurance found him fully liable and i’m working with a law firm so i should get a good payout because i also had a passenger. the other guy has court date for running the red and negligence driving. the most annoying part is the guy didn’t even seem sorry at all. he was very passive aggressive about the whole thing and it really got under my skin.

Just got a 24 Corolla LE and her name is Celeste! I’d love some helpful maintenance advice (besides oil changes) that y’all recommend so I can take care of her and make her last as long as possible! 💙

Looking to buy my first car. The photo isn’t up to date, but after negotiating, the OTD price will be $32,420. What do you guys think? I’m based in NY, so not sure if this is a fair price or not.

EDIT: UPDATE AT BOTTOM

I've been looking for a cheap car for a long time and finally had the opportunity to buy a 1998 Toyota Corolla for $1000. Because of the price, the seller quickly had a lot of offers to buy. I was first in the 'first come first serve' line, and if I asked him if I could take it to a mechanic first, he would have just sold it to whoever was next in line. So I had to buy it without knowing the issues it came with.

The only thing I knew when buying was that it was missing the catalytic converter (which has been stolen), but it had a replacement in the backseat that just required installation. I also knew that it drove and all the buttons I could think of trying worked (I was able to test it), but because I had bought it last minute at 11pm, it was dark and I couldn't see any obvious problems.

The next day I discovered the cosmetic/minor issues: the headliner was missing (not the whole thing, just the fabric covering the foam - idk how I missed that when driving the car initially), the gas tank cover popped off completely when I pressed the button to open it, and there are some dents in the car and a LOT of rust.

Then I went to the mechanic. He said other than the catalytic converter, there are two issues. One, the shocks desperately need to be replaced, and two, the motor is leaking a lot of oil all over the bottom of the car (but not onto the floor).

He said that for an $1000 car, it is not worth finding the source of the oil leak and repairing it, and that as long as I refill the engine oil when I need to (which will likely be often-ish), it'll be fine.

To replace the shocks and install the catalytic converter he said it will be $1200, making this a $2200 car.

Adding on that I will probably want to detail the car (the interior is very dirty, headliner fabric is missing, and exterior could use some love), which I'd roughly estimate to be like $250.

Here's the thing, I bought an $1000 car for a reason. I don't have a million dollars to spend on a car and insurance is very expensive where I'm from so I can't constantly be doing expensive maintenance. Should I accept the loss of $1000, not repair the car, and look for something with less issues for a similar cost to the repairs ill have to do now and possibly monthly if this car fails on me?

What's the chance of this car failing on me post-repairs? I don't want to spend money fixing it and have it break down on me in 4 months.

Should I skip the detailing, just get the interior a basic cleaning and glue some fabric to the top, and ignore the outside appearance of the car?

For driving context, I'll for sure be driving at least 12 miles a day for work (a lot of starting and stopping, city driving), and then maybe four days a month a 60 mile drive (on that note, can I even risk highway driving?)

Please tell me what you think, I don't know much about this car and have no idea if it'll last me or if it's worth repairs. Sorry for not having any images of the mechanical issues.

EDIT: 120k miles

EDIT: I did not expect my post to get this much attention, thanks for all the advice, I really appreciate it. I don't know anything about cars so thank you for all being friendly! I did end up replacing the shocks as they were messing with the wheels and it was difficult to steer. I drove it for a proper drive for the first time today (10 miles) and it drove great! I'm glad I took the risk. I've learned how to check and refill the oil, and I'm going to keep an eye on things to learn its issues and how to deal with them a bit better. I'm already emotionally attached to this piece of scrap metal😆❤️

40k miles and 2 "minor" accidents in the rear and the dealership laughed at me for asking 22k otd, am I wrong?

While I was at work yesterday my wife told me the car would barely drive and had 3 warnings and went into limp mode. The messages were: Drive Start Control Malfunction Brake Override Malfunction Pre Collision Malfunction Has anyone seen this before or know common causes? At first I figured maybe the battery was low or failing since it came out of nowhere. Then when I went to pull the battery I found a damaged wire harness with at least one broken wire. I have not traced it out yet so I do not know what it goes to, but I am wondering if that could be the cause. I bought the car used from Toyota. I changed the oil back in October and do not remember seeing that harness damage then. It honestly looks like possible rodent damage. I know this is a long shot without more info and I will have to dig into it more when I get home. Just wanted to see if anyone has run into this exact combo of warnings or if that damaged harness sounds like a likely cause.

Can someone knowledgeable please and tell me what to do? My goal is to have a black exhaust I tried getting exhaust tip covers on Amazon. They didn’t fit but even if they did, I think they’re too close together. What are my options and what should I do? Thanks

Car has been making this noise for a while, it comes and goes, took to a Toyota dealership, they charged money to investigate but didn't fix it.

Anyone has had this before?

Hello everyone,

My car shipped recently - Corolla 2026. As most cars do, it shipped with higher than recc tyre pressure.

So I went to a gas station to lower the pressure down to manufacturer specs.

This immediately triggered a “tyre punctured warning” - Extreme Severity - on both my dash and the MyToyota app.

Then, I went ahead and performed a full reset of the TPWS from the car settings, drove 20 mins over a speed of 40kmh and sure enough, the pressure readings normalized and the warning in the car dash went away on its own.

However, this erroneous warning never did go away from within the app itself. Two days have passed already - I drove the car multiple times, over 100 km, logged out and back in to the app, refreshed, performed another TPWS reset, drove long enough for it to recalibrate again, waited for another car data upload - all to no avail. The app still says that I have 1 warning light, although everything is perfectly fine in the car… There are no messages, no warnings, no issues and everything is as it should.

Seems that I have reached a point where absolutely nothing I could ever think of doing would end up triggering a clean state reset/cloud overwrite. So I am completely stuck.

I could not find any post or info anywhere online, nor did ChatGPT provide any clear or useful insights towards how this situation could be resolved. Seems like a very peculiar/fringe case.

Is anyone able to help me out here, please?

Thanks a lot for your time.

I’m a fairly new car owner so I’ve never dealt with this before… The rubber part on my windshield wiper partially came off. Is there a way to fix it without replacing the wiper?