Hello fellow tC Lovers!

945 Views 8 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Vado, 5 mo ago

caden.j.arthur

Discussion Starter · 10 mo ago

Hi Everyone! I'm Caden and I have had a 1st Gen 2005 Scion tC since 2019.

I bought the car before I even had a drivers license and it is my first car. I bought it from an immigration defense attorney who received it as payment from a client on a case. I paid $600 it was in pretty rough shape and had multiple check engine codes. I ended up replacing the catalytic converter with a cheap replacement and all of the emissions based codes disappeared.

After I did basic maintenance to it and took it on the highway, I lost all power to the wheels on an exit ramp and it had to be towed home. I took the transmission off to find the flex plate completely sheared from the crank. A cheap replacement was found on eBay and I replaced it in the driveway. The car still had a growling sound while driving around town, so I eventually replaced the front drivers side wheel bearing and the noise went away.

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I then took the car for inspections and got my license!

After 6 months of driving it I decided I wanted to make it louder, so I bought the Borla S-Type exhaust for under $400. This also resulted in me resealing the entire exhaust so the car would be louder. (Will definitely make a post reviewing it.)

After another year of driving it, I decided it was time to do a transmission swap. I was getting bored of driving the automatic. There was a great guide on another forum and I am fortunate enough to be near 4 junkyards that had parts for a manual transmission swap. (Will make a guide with more photos and video about this)

Motor vehicle Automotive tire Hood Automotive design Car

Once the transmission was swapped I had no check engine codes and the car ran great. I then decided I wanted a new color, so I did some sanding and took it to Maaco. The results speak for themselves!

If you read the whole thing thanks! I've definitely learned a lot about the car over the three years I've owned it and hope to help other with their problems.

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MetalMatty

· #2 · 10 mo ago

That's awesome! How much was the Maaco paint job? It looks great in the photo.

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caden.j.arthur

Discussion Starter · #3 · 10 mo ago

I bought a rotary sander from home depot for $50 and did the heavy sanding myself (800 grit dry sanding). It took me around 4 hours to sand the car.

The paint alone was $699 for the urethane special. $300 for light sanding, $300 for the highest tier sealant, because a lot of bare metal was exposed when I sanded it, and $100 for the color change fee. All in it was like $1470 and it took them about 5 days to do the whole car. I opted to not paint the jambs as they quoted over $2000 for the door jambs and the hatch.

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MetalMatty

· #4 · 10 mo ago

caden.j.arthur said:
I bought a rotary sander from home depot for $50 and did the heavy sanding myself (800 grit dry sanding). It took me around 4 hours to sand the car.

The paint alone was $699 for the urethane special. $300 for light sanding, $300 for the highest tier sealant, because a lot of bare metal was exposed when I sanded it, and $100 for the color change fee. All in it was like $1470 and it took them about 5 days to do the whole car. I opted to not paint the jambs as they quoted over $2000 for the door jambs and the hatch.

Wow! That looks great for $1500 plus four hours of your own labor. How does it look up close? In light, etc?

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caden.j.arthur

Discussion Starter · #5 · 10 mo ago

MetalMatty said:
Wow! That looks great for $1500 plus four hours of your own labor. How does it look up close? In light, etc?

In light it looks great. The reflectivity starts to disappear once I'm closer than about 4 feet to it. I am yet to buff and polish it, but there is a small amount of orange peel on all surfaces. I'm waiting a month for the paint to fully cure before I polish it, but may not have the time because the engine died 2 days ago so I'm going to rebuild it with future forced induction in mind.

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MetalMatty

· #6 · 10 mo ago

caden.j.arthur said:
In light it looks great. The reflectivity starts to disappear once I'm closer than about 4 feet to it. I am yet to buff and polish it, but there is a small amount of orange peel on all surfaces. I'm waiting a month for the paint to fully cure before I polish it, but may not have the time because the engine died 2 days ago so I'm going to rebuild it with future forced induction in mind.

My god you've had pretty rough luck with that thing lol what happened to pop the motor?

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caden.j.arthur

Discussion Starter · #7 · 10 mo ago

I finished the auto to manual swap 3 weeks ago and did an oil change with it. Gave the engine around 5 quarts and didn't think about it. 500 miles later I was going 75 in 5th gear on the freeway and lost power to the engine. After towing it an hour back to my home, I found that the engine had no oil in it and there were no signs of oil leakage. So the car with oil burning issues burnt 5 quarts in 500 miles. The engine is busted and it seems that cylinder 4 is the main leaker. I poured oil down each of the plug holes and then turned over the motor without spark plugs oil was spitting oil out of all cylinders except cylinder 4. Guessing rings are busted, and there may be permanent damage to the 4th cylinder. I working on getting the head off of the motor while its still in the engine bay in order to determine whether the block is salvageable. I bought the car with learning how to repair cars in mind, so getting into an engine rebuild is definitely a good learning experience.

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FredTC

· #8 · 9 mo ago

Nice project! Welcome!

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Vado

· #9 · 5 mo ago

caden.j.arthur said:
I finished the auto to manual swap 3 weeks ago and did an oil change with it. Gave the engine around 5 quarts and didn't think about it. 500 miles later I was going 75 in 5th gear on the freeway and lost power to the engine. After towing it an hour back to my home, I found that the engine had no oil in it and there were no signs of oil leakage. So the car with oil burning issues burnt 5 quarts in 500 miles. The engine is busted and it seems that cylinder 4 is the main leaker. I poured oil down each of the plug holes and then turned over the motor without spark plugs oil was spitting oil out of all cylinders except cylinder 4. Guessing rings are busted, and there may be permanent damage to the 4th cylinder. I working on getting the head off of the motor while its still in the engine bay in order to determine whether the block is salvageable. I bought the car with learning how to repair cars in mind, so getting into an engine rebuild is definitely a good learning experience.

That sucks, I do know, however, if you are looking to do forced induction in the future you should probably put in lower compressions pistons with better rings and also upgrade the bearings, I have heard that those two are the main weak links in the internals so you should be good to at least 300hp+. (Don't quote me on that) Just thinking that if you are going to be rebuilding it might as well get those both out of the way.

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