15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

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MostMint
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15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by MostMint »

After the last track day I realized Rachel and Kurt need more practice with a stick shift. They learned on the Saturn but that is not practical for regular use. This is the car I selected for that.

The car is a 2015 Toyota Corolla S. It was made in Canada in June 2015 and has 5715 miles on it. I paid $5k for it + tax.

It was sold by a dealership in VA and resided in MD originally. The next step in its journey was to be repossessed by Toyota Finance after it was wrecked. I think the car got hit in the left by a van or SUV (maybe went too wide in a right turn) which punted it into a sign post in RR door and the sign came down on the roof. You can see it was a 4x4 white post. Car was from Maryland have no idea what sign posts are like in neighborhoods there. The specifics of why it was not repaired are not known to me.

The car has considerable damage which has created this opportunity. None of it affects the structural integrity of the car.

* Rear axle beam is bent giving way too much negative camber on LR. Tire was rubbing inside wheel well near strut. Axle beam Is unique to S model and not easy to find in junkyards yet, new is $1100 and used like $750 - so we will be fixing it. Two words: Kurt welding.
* LR hub has some free play from the impact.
* There is a slicing hole in the roof about a foot long over RR passenger seat. The guy tried to cover the hole but failed so water leaked in and carpet was wet - like there were puddles on the floor.
* The roof is pushed down some where the slice is over RR seat.
* There is body damage on LR door and some damage to door jam on wheel side or LR door.
* RR door also has damage that blocks window from going down and the rocker panel below has some damage.
* The headliner also took damage from the roof slice
* There is a minor dent on the LF fender.
* There are a couple minor marks on the bottom of front bumper cover where it may have hit a curb.
* The LR wheel has some cosmetic damage.
* Not sure the radio antenna might have taken a hit in roof damage.

All the doors work.

Activity so far:
* I pulled the rear seat bottom and lifted rear carpet and removed grommets to let out water. Drained a lot out that way. Propped up the carpet to help with drying. Also removed kick panels in the front to lifts the carpet and drain water out. Lots of parts removed interior looks quite disheveled at the moment.
* Removed rear axle beam to work on straightening it. Most of the problem is the LR wheel has way to much camber now and it hits the iner fender. Tried a couple things to straighten but still had -6 degrees negative camber and I need to get to -1. To do this I cut the support braces for the LR wheel and repositioned the mount where it needed to go, then made some plates 1/4" thick and had Kurt weld them back together. Camber now appears in acceptable range and while it has about 1/4" toe in this should be fine.
* Rachel cleaned up a lot of the mess from people getting in and out on a wet gravel lot and removing countless wax # s written on the windows.
* Fred32v loaned me his porta-power and I used it to move the front of the LR fender much closer to its original location
* LR hub was purchased and is on the axle. Moog part is the exact same part as the OE part - stampings and all are identical. I needed this to be straight to get all my measurements right.

Here is the listing from the seller (while it lasts): http://bestrex.com/2015-Toyota-Corolla/ ... tails.aspx
[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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MostMint
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by MostMint »

Here are some of the dealer pics:
BRCorolla1.jpg
BRCorolla3.jpg
BRCorolla5.jpg
BRCorolla6.jpg
[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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Basement Paul
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by Basement Paul »

Tell Kurt to learn about stich welding on sheet metal. That will help reduce warpage when trying to go across that long stretch of very thin metal. Or you could just rivet a patch of galvanized sheet metal across it like the Poor Man's Blazer.

-BP
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MostMint
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by MostMint »

The roof was put back into a reasonable shape and the gash was welded shut
The edge of the roof line was another challenge. I was able to use the porta-power to fix the rest of the roof line, and move this part way back into place but this last section was in a channel and behind the side curtain air bag. My option there was to have Kurt weld some nails to the exterior metal and use a slide hammer to raise the material- then grind off the nails. It worked. (do not have pics of this handy)
I bought a rattle can of 1F9 custom mixed at the local NAPA store, and a can of clear and put some paint on the repair
I also got a 2 ounce ouch up for the other exposed areas
Spent a fair amount of time priming then touching up all these spots
The repaired axle was reinstalled
It took about a week to get the carpet all dried out
Turns out the window on the RR would not open more than 1", so I opened up the door and moved the sheet metal around in there to make it more presentable and clear the track for the window
The new LR hub was purchased and installed

At this point the car was ready to drive so I started taking it to work. It took a while to learn the nuances of the controls including the clutch and shifter of this six speed. It is a lot more subtle than the Saturn.

Took it to Firestone store for an alignment check. The only thing I want to address is the LR is toed in 0.75 degrees which I will address with shims.

Yesterday the car got its first oil change at 6544 miles

I'm trying to track down the owner and history of the car. It was listed on many salvage websites but so far no specifics on the accident. In the onboard GPS there were two addresses - one a church and the other so far appears to be a non-address on an existing road in MD.

Kurt has driven it several times so he is learning the fine points of this six speed configuration. We took it on a 5 hour trip to PA for a robot combat competition Kurt is in and surprise it drives like a new car :) Also the car is making 37 MPG with my style of driving.
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[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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MostMint
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by MostMint »

So a couple finished pics of the car:
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I bought a set of snow tires with wheels for $350 and a set of factory hubcaps for about $120:
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The radio had not been receiving FM signal at all. I finally went after it and found the signal booster was separated from the antenna cable. After finding the replacement to be $120 I decided to try and fix it. I can opened the booster and was able to strip the cable a little and resolder the little wire.
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Kurt has been driving the car regular up to last weekend when Rachel finally got enough practice to be comfortable to take it to school. Car has 9500 miles.
[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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MostMint
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by MostMint »

Recently noticed the left rear tire having more wear. Knew it was toed in .75 degrees so this weekend I went to work fixing that. It had just a touch of positive camber too. I had shimmed the hub when I repaired it originally. With trial and error I got the toe from about 1/2 inch toed in to even.

The car has 21k on it now and doing it’s job
[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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MostMint
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by MostMint »

On a recent trip to New Jersey there was an incident where the mirror got hit. Found a color matching unit online for $115 and has Rachel but it. Put it on the car today.
BAB52B2D-7F49-4F14-8D42-2E5B750A5F22.jpeg
[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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MostMint
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by MostMint »

Over a month ago Rachel caught the front bumper cover on a rock backing out of a parking lot and tore it half off the car. She was able to snap it back on mostly to drive and bring it home. The underbody panel got separated from the bottom of the front bumper cover and the was some damage where the grill was attached - all of which I was able to fix with straightening a couple brackets and some zip ties. I forgot to get pics.

The snow tires went on also.

As of now its up to almost 29k
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[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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MostMint
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by MostMint »

With the recent swap of Kurt to driving the green Saturn, this car has come back home to live. It is now just above 40k which is still low miles for a 5 year old car.

Started yesterday swapping out the snow tires. Strangely they were rusted on so had to loosen the lugnuts and drive it in the driveway to free them up

Then I remembered the RF fog lamp was out from the incident in the prior post. The bulb was destroyed and had to remove the fog lamp from the car to get all the pieces out of it.
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Looking at the roof I noticed I had never run the buffer on the paint after I cleared the roof where the patch was - so I spent a bit of time with that. It came out better. Also took care of a couple scuffs on the passenger door trim.

Then I decided to start cleaning the interior. Kurt said "I cleaned it out" which really meant "I cleaned out most stuff larger than a golf ball". Started with pulling the mats and banging them together to get the heavy stuff out, then a dose of shop vac to the entire interior and cleaning all the pine needles from the trunk jam. Found welding tips, hacksaw blade, empty shotgun shells, cheez-its, french fries, lots of change, parking ticket, other misc.

Went after the stains on the seats but not too effective. Going to try again today now empowered with ideas from Youtube. Also needs toe in fixed and a good wash.
[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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MostMint
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by MostMint »

Last weekend got the car washed, the toe in corrected and the steering wheel is straight. Cleaned the hard interior surfaces and a little finish vacuum work

I did notice there are a few tiny dots of rust on the trunklid. These do not appear to be a byproduct of this car's prior accident. going to look around and see if other Corollas have the same issue
[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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GMJohnny
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by GMJohnny »

If there are tiny dots of rust on top of the paint, it could be "mill cheese" as the
guys at work call it. It's the stuff that flies around a steel mill and adheres to the
surface and makes rust dots. Perhaps you got them from Kurt's workplace?

GM
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Re: 15 Corolla S - Mostmint #38

Post by MostMint »

Car now has 51720 miles. Regular maintenance - oil change - had the car up on jacks so I took the opportunity to remove the tow hook underneath in the center. This is at least a lb of weight carrying around for nothing. Last year some time I removed the floor mats, owners manual and the trunk mat (still has the factory "carpet" underneath - this netted about 15 lbs of weight off for free.

Also I decided to improve the factory intake - it has a big loop in it to quiet the intake sound, and it's picking up air from just inside the engine compartment. I removed half the loop and now it gets air from the cavity behind the front bumper.

I also recently learned that TRD offers lowering springs for this car. Not this year - maybe once the race cars are in order I'll consider it.

I cut this off right where my thumb is
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And I had a curious cat doing some inspections
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[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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