I’ll start this with a little back story: ever since I sold my RX-7, I’ve been looking for a cheap daily driver car. Emphasis on cheap. The main purpose of the car would be to commute around, but also to specifically transport my motorcycle… so I needed something bigger. One night I had a spontaneous thought to buy a Toyota Previa because it can fit a bike inside. When it comes to vans, the Previa is the only acceptable one to me… I just think they’re cool and classy as far as vans go. Unfortunately, after doing some craigslist searching and then some googling, I found out that Manual transmission Previas are very rare. That was my other requirement, there was no way I could stand an automatic car.<\/p>\n
So, I gave up hope on a 5 Speed Previa, and started searching far and near for my next candidate, an older 4×4 Toyota. Either a pick-up or a 4runner. I scoured craigslist for weeks, and looked at a handful in person. There was always something wrong, either they were too out of shape and rusted, had very high mileage, or\u00a0way<\/em> overpriced (some of these 4×4 owners really think their 180k miles 1984 Toyota is worth 6k),\u00a0etc.<\/p>\n
I was getting tired of constantly searching for a 4×4, so yesterday evening I decided to try looking for a Previa again. The listing at the top was a ’91 Toyota Previa, and when I clicked it I was excited to find out that it was actually a 5 speed<\/strong>. I grabbed my phone and called the guy, after giving him an inquisition about the details on the car, I eventually decided to go for it. I asked him to drive down.<\/p>\n
Body wise, the car was a little bit more beat up than I imagined but I didn’t really care. It drove and handled fine. After the test drive, we heard a sound that was initially passed off as a nearby sprinkler. Upon inspecting the floor, however, it was gravely obvious that there was a big leak in one of the coolant hoses. We were able to find out the location of the leak, it was coming from a steel coolant pipe at an elbow. Despite the leak, I still decided to buy it.<\/p>\n
Some negotiating and ultimately $1250 later, I had this round thing sitting in front of my house.<\/p>\n
A bit of a rough start when your car is on a lift on the first day of ownership.<\/p>\n
I went back home, grabbed some tools, and journeyed to the local Pick ‘N Pull junkyard.<\/p>\n
Here’s a view of what it looked like underneath, that gap is where the pipe went.<\/p>\n
The price of the van was definitely cheap, fingers crossed the sum total will still be under budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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