Hello,
the same car from my previous post (E150, ~105k miles) rolled back into the shop again, and this time it’s not the gearbox it’s the engine.
https://youtube.com/shorts/omYrb0LRHEY
to me this sounds like the timing chain or VVT-I system went bad and according to my database this is typical for this engine (1ZR)
From my experience Corolla reliability is really not as good as most people think, I get plenty of them usually bellow 100k miles with very serious issues but this one has been especially bad with both a transmission failure and an engine failure in a matter of 5k miles.
what other cars are considered reliable but actually are total junk? (Expect for the known ones like the Honda with the 9 speed transmission constantly failing)
Which model year was this? And which of the 1ZR is this (full engine model)?
this is a 2009 with a 1ZR-FE
(If it would’ve been an FEA I’d tell the owner to junk it, the valvematic system never worth fixing on these)
The US market Corolla never had the 1ZR engine, so I can’t vouch for that over here. Plenty of Corollas here that have had long lives, especially with proper owner maintenance. Granted some years and engines are better and worse than others.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_ZR_engine#1ZR-FE
The 2ZR is quite honestly even worse. It’s basically the same engine but a 1.8L