The Twins

I’ve had my RAV4 for around 4 years. I got it mid-2021, and it has been the best car I’ve ever purchased. It is my get-anywhere and haul-anything machine. My go-anywhere buggy. Despite its small size, I haul engines, transmissions, large packages, and more. It really is bigger on the inside. Here are a few examples:

I could go on and on about this car, but that’s not the point of this. Esen, my beautiful ladyfriend, expressed interest in getting one, after getting a little tired of her BRZ. Now, mine is not normal by any stretch, so I didn’t think it was fair for her to drive this one to compare. These are not common, so it’d be hard for her to find one to test drive. She’d have to know she wanted it before we went to get one, likely out of state. For some reason they seem to be localized in SoCal and Colorado. Either way, my friend Jack has one locally in the Phoenix area, and he gave us the go-ahead to test drive his. Shout-out to Jack, he made this happen. His is a very similar spec to mine, 1996, 2 door, manual, 4wd, slicktop, but all original. 3S-FE power. She ended up liking it, so we started looking for one for her. I knew we’d have to travel for it, so we looked far and wide. Nothing was popping up locally around either of us, in AZ or TX. She was okay with a 2WD, but wanted a manual and hardtop for sure.

To my surprise, I found one in Arizona. Tucson, specifically. A bit of a drive, about 2 hours from Phoenix, but much closer than San Diego or Denver. After a little back and forth with the seller, getting details, I went down to check it out. Shout-out to my dad for driving me down and making a day trip out of it.

Some minor haggling with the seller, and we got it! This one is fully loaded. Manual, 4WD, power locks, power mirrors, power windows, fender flares, a CLOCK, and to top it off, dual sunroof. It has seen better days, but everything important is there. It’s basically rust free, despite coming from South Dakota, the paint is faded, the driver door only opens from the outside, there are a few leaks, and there’s a check engine light. Code is for a cam sensor, so it should be pretty easy to fix. But it drives great, the suspension is in good shape, the AC works (after a recharge, so there’s another leak), and it seems there aren’t any major missing parts. It made the whole drive back to Phoenix with no issues.

Step 1 after getting it home was to give it a good clean. I degreased the whole engine bay and underside of the car, to get a fresh view of any leaks. The two most obvious being the transmission cooler lines and the power steering. Both are a bit of a task to get to, so that’s for later. I need her small arms to get in there. As for actually fixing things, first thing to do was the door. That was pretty easy, the cable had a bit of corrosion on it that prevented it from fully extending. Cleaned that up, lubed it up, and the door works fine again. In fixing this, I broke the exterior handle. There’s a plastic clip that holds the rod to the latch, so I just had to replace that. No big deal.

Next up I wanted to try my hand at polishing the paint. These came with clearcoat, not just single stage paint. The sun has eaten through the clearcoat on this car. Most of the fading you see is all the way down to the base coat. I’ve never really detailed a car, especially one in this rough of shape. I tried my best to sand out and blend the fading clearcoat, then polish the entire thing top to bottom. Surprisingly, it came out really nice and as long as it’s not in direct sunlight, you can’t really tell. It’s way better than it was before. After a coat of wax, this looks at least 10 years younger and well maintained. She’ll just have to keep up on a waxing regimen so the fading doesn’t come back quickly.

Side note, it’s really hard to see on camera, but this thing used to have factory RAV4 line decals. The paint is slightly less sunburned behind where they would’ve been. I’ve tried to enhance the image as best I can, but you may just have to take my word for it. So that’s what it looked like in the past, and someone took that from us. Also, according to the fender, they used to deliver… something. No idea what, and I didn’t find any other branding on this car. “WE DELIVER!” entirely disappeared after sanding and polishing.

The only part I did not polish were the sunroofs. They have definitely been repainted before, and they have a raised crack pattern across both of them. I probably could have got these looking sharp again, but I had a different idea. My thought was to do no sanding, paint them white, and then sand, so the cracked blue pattern would come through a white background.

That turned out a lot better in my head. I was expecting a more stark contrast. Now they just look extra faded and unfinished, in my opinion. With a bit more sanding, these might turn out better. Oh well, worst case we just strip these down completely and repaint them. I suggested she paint some patterns on these, that could be something cool to change the style every so often. She is very creative, so I’m sure she would come up with something cool.

With aesthetic issues out of the way, the first major issue was the cam position sensor. P0340, malfunctioning camshaft position sensor. On this car the cam sensor is part of the distributor. I know from MR2 experience that that is a common leak point, and hot oil will often drip down the wiring harness and erode the wire sheaths, eventually shorting or breaking. I assumed that was going on here, and started digging in. I figured this wouldn’t be difficult, the car still drove just fine. The crankshaft sensor worked fine, so the lack of cam sensor just means the injectors are being batch fired instead of sequentially. The airbox is about the only thing that has to come out to access the distributor. Also, the 3S-FE runs on speed density, so it does not need an AFM or MAF sensor plugged in. Either way, airbox out, get to the distributor. I expected to have to repair some wires. Turns out, the distributor was unplugged. I did a quick inspection and didn’t see any issues. I cleaned the connector with some contact cleaner, let it dry, plugged it back in, and the code went away. The engine runs even better than before, and the fix was easier than expected.

The next major mechanical issue to fix is the transmission cooler. Typically, there are a couple lines that go from the transmission to in front of the radiator. Somewhat unusual to have on a manual transmission, but Toyota seems to have put it on most if not all of their AWD/4WD cars. I believe this is because they expect the center differential to heat up significantly.

Pictured is actually my own RAV4, not hers. I didn’t get a picture of hers before we fixed it. Coincidentally, mine had leaked from the same spot. Towards the top left of this picture you will see a fitting which had a slight leak. Hers was much more significant. It would paint the bottom of the car with gear oil. Not ideal, since that is supposed to stay in the transmission. Now, it may have been possible to fix these, but I don’t have the tools for that, and I don’t think that it is really necessary. What I did on mine, and what we repeated on hers, was getting a cooler loop from an E153 and installing it here. The E250F uses the same oil pump and associated fittings as any other wide diff E series. This part may have came off of a Camry, and MR2, or something else. I don’t know for sure. Either way, easy install, and that one is fixed.

The last major mechanical issue to resolve was the leaking power steering. We chose to not do anything with that. A car without power steering fluid will still drive. A manual transmission without fluid would grenade itself.

As a final middle finger, the battery decided to entirely stop working despite being only a year old. I think the PO had put a random battery in from another car just so it would start and run. Granted, I had the car in my possession for about a month before this happened. One last trip to Walmart, and it was ready to drive home.

Due to timing, I wasn’t able to drive with her, but her dad flew in to drive together. It only ended up having two major issues. The first was not an issue with this specific RAV4, but RAV4s in general. Speed limits in Texas go up to 80mph, and these just do not go 80mph very well. Not quite Jeep death wobble, but uncomfortable. And with the short gears from the 4WD transmission, you’d be screaming a bit over 4000rpm. The second issue was an actual issue with this car that I’m a little surprised we didn’t notice. The passenger floor started filling up with water.

This, of course, is right where the evaporator core is. It was filling up with water because the condensate drain was missing entirely. Not plugged, just not present. Easy fix, a small section of hose from a parts store and it was good to go. In hindsight, it was not an issue here because Phoenix has such low humidity that it was not taking any humidity out of the air. Once they got deeper into Texas, with much more humidity, that’s when this problem arose.

Besides that, this little tank made it the entire 1000 mile trek home. Now she can register and drive it there. Much better and more exciting than her BRZ, if you ask me.
(Side note: if you want a 2024 BRZ with only a few thousand miles on it in central Texas, contact me)