Many of the people who participated in old threads seem not to be here anymore, but still, here are some follow-ups.
Dash lights. -- A couple weeks ago I was driving near sundown and I turned on to a street vaulted by trees. My dash lights (speedometer, etc.) turned on quickly, but it was another 5 or 10 seconds before the lights for the 4 gauges over the radio turned on. The next day, this happened somewhere else and this time it took 10 extra *minutes* before the lights over the radio turned on. Clearly, there's another sensor, somewhere, but nothing I've seen says where it is or even that it exists. (There are two senosors on the dash, one for the dash lights and one to increase AC output on very sunny days. Blacking them out with 3 layers of electrical tape and 3 layers of a black t-shirt made the dash lights go on, but not the lights over the radio. 2005 Toyota Solara (and other years too.))
Why I don't use my parking brakes -- I figured that out. I learned to drive in Indianapolis which is 98% flat. The lot we lived on was 100% flat and so was every place I parked. Then I moved to Chicago which is also very flat including every place I parked. Old habits die hard.
Raisin Grape-Nuts no longer sold -- someone recommended mixing my own raisins in regular Grape-nuts. I didn't like that because the raisins clump and it's a pain to separate them. But I saw some "Golden" raisins the other day, bought them, and they weren't clumped. I don't know if this is typical. Also they were smaller than the black raisins, but I'm fairly confident this will work.
Before you open the raisins the first time, push them around in the bag to break up the clumps by bending and squeezing and shaking the bag until the clumps are mostly broken up.
I keep my headlights on all the time, so the dash lights are on all the time as well. I miss the automatic headlight feature that my 2004 Toyota Matrix had.
I used parking brakes when I had a stick shift.
How hard is it to bust up a few raisins with your fingers?
The next step in "safety" is supposedly making the car monitor the driver somehow. How it will sort out relaxed drivers on country roads vs. nervous ones in the city might be an interesting problem. I guess it's going to be some sort of sensor on the mirror. There was talk a few years ago of making the driver pass an on board breathalyzer but that idea has seemed to fade.
I try to buy old cars that were expensive models. Most of the time the cars are 7 years old when I buy them, but this one was 11 years old.
I dont' drive that much anymore so it should last, but I met the guy I bought it from when I went to private "tag and title" office to sell my previous car (for $1000), and he was amazed when I told him I'd driven to Florida and back with the car he sold me. He seemed to think I was too shy to drive to Florida.
Anyhow, expensive models also tend to have leather seats, and I wish they had cloth seats. They aren't hot in the summer or cold in the winter, and if the car is freezing and you put your knee on cloth seats, they don't crack or rip. And when it rains on them, it's no big deal.
I forget if I can keep my dash lights on - probably not -- but I know there's nothign I can do to get the lights over the radio to go on.
Lately I've had an appointment at 8:20 AM 3 days a week, and the sun is in my eyes and the traffic is heavy and I want to see the time and if I'm going to be late, and sometimes the Distance to Empty, and I can't. I could if the light was on.
It is nice that I don't have to think about it. It has daytime running lights.
Whenever I rented a car I always got a stick shift, to save money and to get practice drving one, and I probably used the hand brake then, but the difference in price got down to a dollar a day so it's too much effort to save a dollar.
Very tedious and sticky.
Bob's idea is very good and I will try it, but I wonder if they will re-clump within a few days when I'm not looking. Raisins are very sneaky, as one can tell from tv ads.
I try to buy cars that have useful features. I bought my 2004 Highlander in 2008 or 2009. It's fairly basic.
I don't think we have private tag and title offices here. But I'm inclined to buy from dealers and trade in my old beater, so there's probably a lot that happens that I don't know about.
I think my Matrix had that. Or it could have been the Corolla that I had before the Matrix. It's been a long time, and I don't really care that much about cars.
I've only rented a car once, and it was on my employer's nickel. I didn't seem to be able to rent a stick shift car, and it drove me crazy.
Yet I manage to do it every day.
Keep them in a jar and shake the jar before you dispense any raisins.
I agree with you on the seats. I hate the leather or simulated leather stuff. Too hot in the summer. The last car I bought had to have the leather so I could get what else I really wanted in a car. It does have heated seats but still burns my legs in the summer if I do not put down a cloth over it.
I tend to buy new cars and keep them for many years. One was 20 years old with 200,000 miles on it. Last trade was 10 years old but less than
30,000 on it. Just decided I wanted a new car and they were making good deals with 0 % finance.
They may have arisen because the state DMV always had lines an hour or more long. (Or maybe they arose for other reasons) I think they finally cleaned that up, and I know you can go online and see how long each line is at any given moment, so maybe that's all they did.
They don't have big signs, it seems none of them do, and I don't think I even know about the one 4 blocks from my hosue until I bought my current car. The seller took me there.
One time I bought a LeBaron convertible from a young woman and she had me pick it up 8 miles from where she lived. When I got there it already had the new license plate. Turns out it was owned by her boyfriend's car rental company. I don't think he really rented cars, he just came up with this idea to somehow save money.
But it was convenient that I didn't have to register it. Double but... he misspelled my name. I kept meaning to correct it, but I thought I'd have to wait in line for an hour or more. (Even now I don't think you can do this at a Tag and Title store.) Finally I lost my wallet so needed a new registration cert. so I tried but since I'd lost my driver's license too, they wouldn't reregister the car. It was like that for 7 years until I got a new car. I guess I didn't get any tickets during that time.
I only got one advertising letter addressed to the misspeelled name in those 7 years. From a used car lot iirc. I don't know how he got a hold of my name when no one else did.
Not onlly is the price difference much less, but they are harder to get. When I was shopping for this car, I went to see a red Ford Mustang, tricked out a little bit, years old but in perfect condition. The ad said 4-speed or 5-speed, but I'm so foolish I thought that referred to an automatic transmission . I told the owner I wouldn't buy it, but he was still happy to drive me for the test drive. And the point of all this is he had a 16-year old son who didn't want the car. I'm not a jock or a ladies man or anything but if I had a car like that and my teenage son didn't want it, I'd be upset. I'd wonder what was wrong with him. But I didn't say a bad word to the owner.
Wow. You'd be a great woman to have in my combat batallion.
I doubt that will work but I'll try it too. You have not found that black raisins are very sticky, and won't come apart just by shaking?
When I had black vinyl seats, I learned to hover over the seat for 10 seconds to give them time to cool off. Or my legs got burned. Maybe or maybe not, this was only when the top was down and the sun shining bright.
If I live to be 96, I should need 2 or 3 more cars. I have no alternative plans.
We tend to buy used cars that are in great shape ... and I have enough experience to determine the shape . Last one was this Toyota
4Runner IIRC 6 or 7 years ago . It's had a few problems , but nothing that I didn't expect - except the spark plug that blew out* - for a car with 250k when we bought it . We did recently replace the motor* ... at
348,000 miles . Other issues are what one expects with a high mileage car , wheel bearings , ball joints , a starter , brakes . * The spark plug had been cross-threaded at some time in the past , I installed a threaded insert . That was also the cylinder that had a crack in the head . I can't help but think the two are connected . All things considered we spend way way less on maintaining this car than we'd be paying on another . And that includes the cost of the "new" motor . And Big Brother can't track this one .
Earlier this year, I saw a TikTok video that talked about how the little boxes of raisins had a high chance of being infested with small bugs. Those are the raisins that my wife buys, so I took a look. 5 out of 5 boxes had bugs. I figured it has always been the case, so we still eat/ate them. No problems.
Let me start with the disclaimers. I don't remember what you've already done. I don't know if any of this will be helpful.
In my experience, Toyotas seem to have a built-in diagnostic mode that exercises most of the sensors and gauges/lights. Have you tried that? Google seems to think you'd access your 2005 Solara diagnostic mode like this:
With ignition Off, press and hold the Auto and Recirc buttons
Turn Ignition ON, release the Auto and Recirc buttons.
If those were the right buttons, you should see and hear the various systems run through their internal tests. When they finish, you should see the code(s) that relate to any failed tests. I'm guessing the results would be shown on the radio display, but I don't know your vehicle.
I think I told this story before, but in about 2005 I bought a 2002 Highlander for $3500 less than any other same-year Highlanders were going for. As it turned out, it was cheap because the selling dealer thought it needed a $3500 automatic climate control computer. When I got it home, I used the Internet to see how to run the built-in diagnostic, which reported that the in-cabin temperature sensor wasn't responding. I reached up under the dash to see how difficult it would be to remove and replace the sensor, but I discovered that it wasn't connected. I reconnected the sensor, ran the diagnostic again, and all was well.
Other things to try might be accessing an online wiring diagram, if you don't have physical access to such a thing.
formatting link
local library might also have resources available.
Five year plan. Hyundai and Genesis come with a full 5/60 warranty. 3 years of oil changes. So, in five years I will pay for 3 oil changes, set of tires, set of wiper blades, air and cabin filter, jug of washer fluid. The power train is 10/100 but other stuff is not.
Oh, check finance too. I was going to pay cash, but they gave me a $700 discount to finance. I paid it off in four months, paid $68 in interest and came out $632 ahead.
I was referring to the talking raisins you see in some commercials. Note that in our kitchens, they never talk when we are watching. That's why I think they are sneaky.
I wouldfigure those are only Chinese raisins. And Red Chinese, not Nationalist.
Wow. I guess I was wrong. Or somehow the Tiktok video is spreading them. I will have to look more from now on.
You don't have a little bug colony growing in your gut?
I was eager to try this and even though it's cold out this morning, I was out there. Just turning the ignition on seemed to do nothing.
But starting the car also caused all the numbers and symbols on the AC controls to flash They did that until I pressed a couple of the AC buttons and found the right one. If my AC were broken it probably would h have shown where.
But nothing else seemed to happen.
Maybe those were not the right buttons.
I have a nav screen on the radio, but it's never, for example, displayed a maintenance message like a recent poster's did.
That's great. It also shows that if you had brought a car in with that problem, they would have sincerely told you it needed a $3500 repair. Some people, including me, think dealers overcharge for repairs or do things that don't need to be done, but here they clearly thought it did have to be done.
Prompts me to tell about the current car. I only paid $3000 for it with
125,000 miles. I think the reason it was so cheap is that the check engine light was on, although he didn't even say the car was cheaper than average. I figured I can fix that, no problem. I did, but it took me 3 1/2 years. ;-) (It ran well and got good mileage while broken.) The place I'd taken it too for required safety inspection when buying it didn't even try to sell me a repair for the CEL. I think they could tell I was cheap when I hesitated to get the recommended brake discs. --- What was the problem, the wide, heavy, corrugated hose from the air cleaner to the ??? wasn't on right, leaking air in. It had been on wrong so long nothing I did could get it on right and I had to buy another one.
I have that and I've pored over it probably for 2 hours on this topic alone. I would have bought the whole shop manual for what, $300 or more, but unlike previous cars, I coulnd't find one for sale, only the electrical system manual, which I did buy. I bought the 2005 in 2017 and I guess whatever they'd printed had been sold by then.
Later I found a copy online for free from a Russian website!! That seems very strange, but it is clearly my car and it didn't come with any viruses or communists. However the Toyotal manuals for 2000 and 2005 are not like what I was used to with a '66 Pontiac, '73 Buick, '70 Ford LTD (if I had to fix my brother's car), or the '84, '88, or '95 Chrysler manuals I did buy. I don't know if the difference is because the new ones are Toyota, or they're Japanese, or times have changed and an American manual would be like the Toyota ones. Specifically, all my prior manuals actually showed how to fix the car. These Toyota manual rely for almost everything on Toyota-specific tools, the manual shows a lot of measurements you can make, a cryptic flow-chart, and almost nothing that would help me fix the car.
Thanks.
I'm sure I asked there when I first noticed the problem. Part of the problem might have been that the car was old and t he people who knew had gotten newer cars and were no longer reading that section of the forum. I thought of cheating and asking in other sections but I didn't. A lot of diy guys specialize in one part of the car, so I wonder if there is an electrical section.
I see there is a Camry & Solara Lounge, and maybe I should ask there.
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