Kicking around with old cars might often mean you get the big picture right, but there’s some small item that either stays broken, makes an irritating noise, or acts up just when you really didn’t need it to. Take my Toyota Corolla, for example: it’s largely pretty good as a daily driver, and the functioning 4WD on it means it’s really handy in the winter.
Over the few years that I’ve had it, I’ve had some welding done to it, made sure it has good tires and working brakes, and despite some parts availability issues, I’ve managed to source rear wheel bearings for it. Being 4WD and thus relatively rare means a lot of the stuff from the firewall back needs to be ordered from Japan after perusing endless parts schematics late at night. However, there’s one thing on it I’ve neglected to put right other than spray brake cleaner on it, and it’s the hood latch.
The hood latch that sometimes doesn’t latch. The hood latch whose cable leaves the pull flap in the dash just a little bit out. The hood latch that sometimes needs repeated slams to secure the hood. The poison to kill Kuzco. Kuzco’s poison.
For example, I drove for six hours last night and got to my destination around 11 PM. I parked the car in the underground garage, and as a last thing, I thought I’d check the dipstick. And the hood wouldn’t close. I must’ve slammed it shut dozens and dozens of times, from various heights, and it always popped open, time after time. I propped some garbage from the trunk against the pull flap in the dash to try to keep it in line so it would perhaps let it latch. I fiddled with the cable, and I fiddled with the latch in the slam panel until my hands were black, and I sprayed it with some WD40 adjacent product someone had left next to their bicycle (sorry!).
At half past 11, I thought there had been enough slamming the hood shut extremely loudly, locked the car, and left it as is. The good thing is that I specifically drove the car south to eventually get the entire exhaust system replaced and as I’m writing this, I’m sitting in the train back north and leaving the car in the garage, having notified my brother to not to drive it until he’s managed to secure the hood so it doesn’t fly open like on Timo Mäkinen’s rally Mini on the Ouninpohja special stage at the 1967 1000 Lakes Rally.
I also didn’t bother checking the oil on the road, which means I didn’t end up swearing at the latch at a random service station with half of my journey still to finish. The engine doesn’t really burn oil, which on a 275k km, 2000 Toyota 74-FE means I sometimes top it up between 10k km change intervals but don’t need to pour it down its throat all the time.
And yet, it’s the smallest, the slightest thing on the car. It’s a cable (part number 53630-12500) that pulls the latch open (latch assy part number 53510-12670) and releases the hood (hood part number 53301-12860), it’s a latch that keeps it shut as I’m barreling down the road (highway number E12). It’s again full of grime, but I’m unsure if it’s the spring on the latch that’s let go (part number 90467-09043) or if the cable’s stretched. Earlier, moving the flap (part number 53611-22010-B2 for charcoal dashboard) between both its positions has convinced the latch enough to close, but for reasons unknown to me last night at 11PM to 11.30, it kept bouncing the hood back open.
Googling the problem makes me think it’s a common annoyance with Corollas, and it’s actually the one issue a friend mentioned about his similar-age, E11 generation hatchback. As well as fixing whatever’s wrong with it, I wouldn’t mind getting the hood look a bit more secure, as I can see it flapping slightly at highway speeds. I’ve never had it slam in my face while driving, with any of my cars, so I guess I’ve been lucky. None of my other cars have had this specific issue this irritating, though.
Top graphic images: Antii Kautonen; Toyota; iOS
What’s worked well for me on sticky hood latches is moving the mechanism back and forth under the hood with a screw driver while I spray it with wd-40.
But if it’s the cable that’s sticky you can lubricate that too. The trick on motorcycle throttle cable is to use a tube with a needle to get some oil under the sheath and between wicking and gravity (since the handlebar is the highest point in the system) it will eventually loosen up a old crust cable. Handle for an old bike were replacements are hard to find.
The current hugely annoying thing is the driver’s power window on my Equinox. The mirror likes to move itself when you start the car sometimes. Apparently this is a very common issue on the ones with seat memory. It has a seat position for getting in/out of the car more easily, and that trigger seems to be problem. But it doesn’t move the mirror to the position you have set there, it just moves it randomly. Turning off the in/out seat position setting has fixed it for now, but people online have said that doesn’t fix it forever. Apparently it’s a computer issue that people have gotten fixed under warranty and comes back again after a couple years.
Latest generation Discovery Sport. The car one day all of a sudden stopped beeping when locking with the key fob. No setting to be found in the car, dealer couldn’t figure out why and kept on updating the infotainment software and replacing the head unit – holding the car for over a month at one point. Just gave up and used as is until lease end. Tiny issue, but annoying when you want to confirm the car is locked from a distance.
HVAC fan speed setting 3 on my 2014 f-150 produce an absoutely hideous chittering squeaklike sound. 4 probably also makes it but it’s so goddamn loud you wouldn’t know anyway.
I’ve learned to live at 2 and 4.
Tried to install a DrawTite hitch on my 2007 Honda Pilot, sometime in 2012.
In Vermont, with 5 years worth of salt damage – including the captured & poorly welded trailer bar nuts inside the unibody. Said nuts snapped free of the unibody with the trailer hitch bolts well and firmly stuck inside of them.
The solution to this issue was to remove the entire rear interior of the car, and then use a hole saw to create a hole in the trunk floor to access the top of the nut.
So yeah, inheriting a 1982 Coleman pop-up camper that required a hitch to go fetch it was the small but hugely annoying thing about my 2007 Pilot.
The speakers in the sliding rear doors of my ’99 Windstar had contact pads to transfer the music when the doors were closed. They were really spotty, cutting in and out often, even with electrolytic grease applied to the contact patches. I resolved it by upgrading the ‘premium’ stereo to higher wattage. No problems after that.
Edit: Okay, I can’t read these comments anymore! You are reminding me of all of the stupid stuff I lived with on my past cars. Don’t need those memories!
Ford needs its ass kicked for they crap the have put out for the last several years. I have a 2013 Taurus with the auto climate control. Almost without fault, if you own anything with that panel, it will just decide to switch off and on randomly. It will work just fine for a month and then when it gets really hot or really cold, it starts shitting out.
No warranty, no recall, just tough shit, and no new parts are even available. I sent it out for repair and am at about $450. I’m looking forward to having reliable climate control again, but not tearing apart the entire damned dash.
Locks. Looking back through my vehicle history, every single one of them has had issues with the locks at one point or another.
2005 Sunfire: Driver’s door lock would freeze in the winter and I had to open the passenger and reach through to unlock it from the inside. I accidentally took a can of compressed lock deicer through airport security once because of this.
2009 Liberty: Periodically the remote would just refuse to lock it after I got out. I had to walk back and push the button on the door when it happened, which was super annoying if it was raining. This is one of many electronic gremlins that thing had, and even a full BCM replacement didn’t fix it.
2015 Ram: The passive entry door handles always developed a problem where they would unlock at the slightest touch, which was a problem because sometimes pushing the lock button on the outside was enough to cause it to lock and then unlock. Also annoying when I washed it because if the keys were too close it would cycle the locks when water hit the handles. I had them replaced under warranty, but it came back about six months later and I just lived with it.
Edit: Just remembered that one of the Rambox locks also broke on this, which left my “secure” storage unlocked for an unknown period of time.
2001 Corvette: Came with a bad DCM that made the driver’s door not lock when you pushed the button. This was particularly a problem because at the time my only other vehicle had passive entry, so I wasn’t used to unlocking the door as I approached. Opening the driver’s door when the car thought it was locked would trip the alarm, which I did about half a dozen times before I got a new DCM installed.
2007 Prius: One of the pins in the door lock connector corroded and broke off, which left it just enough connectivity to sometimes work. I tore the door apart half a dozen times chasing that before I realized a pin was missing.
2024 Silverado: Sometimes won’t unlock on the first button press when I return to the truck. It always opens on the second press though, so less annoying than some other problems I’ve had.
So I think my conclusion after this is that I need to start a new career torture testing automotive door locks, because if there’s a problem I will encounter it.
Your Sunfire door lock problem reminds me of my first car in 2006. A ‘92 Chevrolet Beretta. The cool hidden pillar-mounted door handle on the driver’s side promptly broke shortly after I got the car and started driving. 2006-era eBay took forever to get me a new aftermarket one, so I climbed in through the passenger side for almost two weeks.
The windshield wash sprayer recently stopped working on my car. I don’t live in a terribly dirty place so it’s not a big issue, except on the occasions when I forget, hit the lever, and am reminded “oh yeah, that doesn’t work, I should do something about that”.
Hmmm. I’ve had more than one car where one or more of the door handles broke. I think my ’99 Eurovan got to the point where only the sliding door would open. Freaking annoying, not necessarily a cheap or easy fix. I had a hood latch situation too where the hood would pop, but the little lever would not extend out so you could get to it to fully release the hood for opening. I had to roll around with a very long screw driver that I could poke through the grill to hit the lever. Annoying, but not so annoying that I ever bothered to fix it.
Daily a 96 Bronco that has tons of rattles because of the wonderful 90’s ford build quality. The most annoying thing though is the drivers door panel rattle. I have replaced all of the clips and made sure all of the screws are present and tight. I think my next step is double sided tape around the perimeter. It drives me insane.
The glove box door rattles like crazy in my corolla, but only over specific shaped bumps… Easy enough to fix, just haven’t bothered to procure the little bumpers.
Let’s see…
1980 Mercedes 240D: as it got older the vacuum system got quirky – if you unlocked the wrong door the engine wouldn’t shut off. That stop button on top of the engine was brutal to hold down.
1996 Plymouth Neon: stalled repeatedly if you used premium gas.
1999 and 2004 Corollas and the 1999 Prizm: Bad hood latch on every. single. one.
2015 Impreza: the key stuck in the ignition – had to slam the shifter into park (sometimes repeatedly) to release it.
The USB connection or the HDMI cable behind the dash that is used for apple carplay is going bad on my Chevy Volt, I tried so many USBs cables thinking it was that but if I hit a big bump on the road, the apple carplay goes away. Of course this happens when I am on a call or I look at Waze for directions, screen goes black and I lost audio since the car now is trying to connect to Bluetooth and switchs back to apple carplay till I hit the next pothole…. ugh
I have a go-to joke that the roads are so bad around here even Bluetooth skips.
It was funny enough until I hit a bump or hole so bad the head unit shut off.
In 2014 I rewired my 46 year old Bronco with a new American Autowire harness. I mis-wired the rear window so it operates backwards from the key. But that isn’t the annoying part. In 2023 the wiper switch started to misbehave, so now I have to keep my hand on it so it can operate the wipers. The annoying part? I keep forgetting to get on the phone to order a replacement.
After my first round of lifts on my BH Outback, I wheeled it up at a local offroad park and bashed the heat shields for the cats. Now they vibrate apart and rattle every few thousand miles. I’ll probably just get an exhaust wrap kit for a motorcycle and wrap ’em.
An incredibly asinine, fairly common, but nonetheless annoying thing is that the heated seats in my Lincoln MKZ (read: Ford Fusion in tupée). Allegedly, the module that controls heated seats in most Fords have 2 power wires but only 1 ground in the connector (with an unused space for a second ground). This leads to the ground burning out from tge excess power, ruining the connector and sometimes the module. Dealer wanted $1300 years ago. I could probably do it for a couple hundred max, but I’d rather just exist without it. Except now with my back issues I feel like it needs to be done yesterday.
The 2nd captain’s chairs in our ’16 Explorer suffer the same asinine design.
Better yet, the rear heated seat module (RHSM) is inside of one of the folding chairs. Meaning that the same folding and unfolding of the seat/wiring harness that leads to the seatbelt airbag going berserk and disabling the entire SRS system ALSO affects the wiring to the RHSM. The one ground wire loses connectivity and the entire system cascade fails… both seats are inop.
Brilliant.
So many, my XJ had the opposite problem, the hoods on the old Cherokee had two latches on either corner of the hood, and as that mechanism aged the passenger side latch, which was activated by a rod from the drivers side would stick shut. This of course reared its head when I went to sell it off leading to me and the potential buyer (who was an XJ aficionado) wrestling with the hood in my driveway for ten minutes to get it open. He still bought it because my price was right for the overall condition of the thing, it ran great but had some serious rust issues bubbling up after a life in the snowbelt.
With my 03 Civic, it’s a lot of little things, like the drivers door switch gave out a while ago, so the “you left your lights on idiot” buzzer doesn’t work, compounded by my 13 Si needing to have a DRL replaced (the bulb is stuck and I have to remove the bumper, which I’ve been putting off) which means I’m in the habit of turning my lights on every time I start driving. So when I drive the old car, I often forget to turn the lights off if the sun is up, and so now I keep a charged jump pack in the thing to get it started again.
The 13 Si also really needs new sway bar end links in the front, they make a terrible racket, over bumps, which are prevalent around here. We’ve got probably three more weeks until the weather finally turns nice, and it’s gonna get it’s face removed for the aforementioned DRL fix, and the end links replaced. Oh it also needs a Vtec solenoid, which is a quick job. Once the Si is sorted out the LX is gonna get ripped apart for clutch, motor mounts, top end gaskets refresh, fix the door switch, figure out why the Cruise Control doesn’t engage, it’s got a long list of things….
I might just pull the engine and trans out to do everything. It’s gonna be a fun summer!
The cruise control system had started to flake out on my ’98 Chevy C1500. I changed the brake pedal sensor, since it has independent contacts for cruise vs the brake lights (and managed to install it correctly, unlike the PO), no dice. It was pretty much non-operational by the time I sold it and that became someone else’s problem.
Its predecessor was an ’85 Caprice that also had cruise problems…on a hot day with a warm engine, it would cut out temporarily, then kick back on, over and over again.
I am having an apparently common later-in-life issue with my 2012 Infiniti G37X – the passenger rear window switch goes straight to “auto down” if I so much as look at it crooked, and it won’t come back up again until it just kind of decides to. I like to crack the sunroof and often a couple of windows for fresh air, regardless of whether I’m running the heat or the air conditioning, and I can only do this with a maximum of three windows lately. Well, so far, I have done this by mistake on two of the coldest mornings of the year.
I keep meaning to just tape a piece of popsicle stick over the switch on the driver’s door panel, before I screw around and get the window stuck open before it rains really hard – which tends to happen once in a while here in Florida.
The PARK light is intermittent. The e-brake is pretty squishy in the first place, so I’m just obsessively futzing with it at every light to make sure it’s disengaged. Gives my left hand something to do while my right is banging around the shifter in Neutral…