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
My BMW E85 doesn’t have ABS and traction control because I’ve been too lazy to get the new module I put in re-flashed to the car. That was nearly 10 years ago when I did the work and after road trips, autocross and open track days it hasn’t bothered me at all so I just put tape over all the dash lights. The annoying thing is the harsh beep that reminds me every time I start the car.
My daily driver 5th gen Camaro is nearly flawless and has attended car shows as big as inside the main hall of the Beijing exhibition center- onto separate occasions! However, one rear tire has a small leak. About once a month I need to fill it up and neither myself or any of the shops I go to can find out what is the actual issue.
I had a leak like that. Turned out the problem was the valve stem.
That was my first guess too but after putting soapy water on it as staring for a few minutes there was no obvious leak. They think there could be some fibers or hair caught in the bead and I don’t want to spend money to have the tire reseated. Just need to pump it up every few weeks. Good thing that car still has functioning TPMS unlike Z4s which failed and I never fixed.
It lacks the proper transmission.
How do you have a Nissan without the Jatco Xtronic CVT? Were they even thinking of efficiency? Of power delivery? Of refinement? Evidently not…
2022 Honda Odyssey. Annoyances in no particular order:
Perhaps that’s why we just got rid of it for a new Hyundai Santa Fe.
All I got is one of my seat belt buckles in the back goes down between the seats when I lower them or flip them up, and it’s a pain to fish it out. I’m happy that’s the worst of it. 2015 Fit EX.
The rear window washer on our 2013 Fiat 500 refuses to deliver fluid despite verifying the pump works and all the accessible connections are good. I don’t even get a diagnostic puddle.
Also when it’s below freezing the TPMS throws an error, and it will cost $250 to replace the sensors
When driving down The Five from SF to LA, I would usually stop to fill the fuel tank (and empty the other tank) somewhere bleak in Kern County – @ 10-25 miles before the Grapevine.
Inevitably, by the time I would pass the last exits before the Grapevine, the Mercedes would suddenly flash a “Fuel Reserve – Fill Now” warning, with the fuel gauge, warning lights and Miles-To-Empty reading bone-dry.
The first time this occurred I freaked out a bit – wondering if I’d hit something and looking behind me to see if there was a trail of fuel leaking out behind me while slowing and fervently looking for a place to turn the car around to return to the big truck stops at the base of the Grapevine.
But there was no trail – and no leak. The car kept running smoothly like nothing had happened – so I pressed on. A few miles up the grade, and suddenly the fuel readings all returned to normal – like nothing had happened.
After I returning home to LA I did a search, and learned that this was a known fault with the W209 CLKs. Something to do with the configuration of the saddle tanks and sensors under the rear seat and hitting an uphill slope at high speeds – EMF interference in the southern San Joaquin Valley – or possibly Aliens…
And while this always happened on The Five heading south – it never happened anywhere else. Not going up into the Cascades, or over the Mayacamas, or anywhere else.
And after leaving CA, it has never happened since.
Aliens, definitely aliens
Between Bakersfield and Castaic?
Definitely aliens. Next time you’re in Gorman, keep an eye out.
When I lived in Newhall I heard rumors you know?
The 996 generation of the Porsche 911 moved — during its production — from a mechanical hood release to an electronic one. Mine is the changeover year, and is electronic. Now, as the cars get older, these electronic releases have started to fail. You don’t know it’s going to happen until it happens, and even then, it’s a ‘graceful degradation’: it will pop open and then it won’t work again for a few hours. You may not notice this failing for months or years if you’re not opening the trunk at the start and the end on many short trips.
In my case, it reared it’s head when we put a friend’s purse in the trunk of my car and couldn’t get it back out as soon as we’d wanted. We very quickly learned of the emergency release in the front passenger wheel well, but didn’t get to the point of actually using it as the release decided to work again before we jacked up the car at my house (the car’s jack being in the stuck trunk…) and pulled the wheel.
My window goes all the way up, then all the way back down again, unless you flick its bean juuuust right so as to nudge it into place. It’s fucking annoying, especially when it gets cold, and the traffic gets gnarly at the same time.
Had something like that in a previous car after getting its window motor replaced. Auto down worked fine. Auto up worked until it got to the top, but then it immediately nudged itself down about an inch. You had to pull the toggle enough to make it go up but not enough to click into auto up.
Super annoying.
If it’s a new-ish car with auto-close and open, after replacing the motor you probably need to get the BCM to re-learn the top and bottom positions. On VAG cars all you do is run the window all the way up, then all the way down, holding the button, but I know there are cars that need some OBD diagnostics routine/fiddling to set the new limits.
These kind of things never happen when it doesn’t matter. “The projector died in the middle of the game!” Of course it did.
Back in college my 2nd gen Dodge Dakota had a series of what I referred to as $5/8 hour problems. It was always something where the parts cost was basically non existent, but the it took a lot of labor to fix and since I was a college student I wasn’t going to pay someone else to do it.
Pretty sure I’m missing some but
1. radiator bypass hose leak. 4 inch long piece of hose, but buried under the A/C compressor and alternator.
2. clogged fuel pump filter. Immersion fuel pump so I had to drop and relift the tank. Probably would have been quicker to remove the bed if I had thought of that.
3. Engine freeze plug that started leaking coolant. It was up above some of the front suspension and seized into place so it was an absolute pain to remove
Also same truck had multiple years in a row of the A/C system dying in mid summer. I’d procrastinate on fixing it till it started to warm up in the spring (because I was going to suffer more in the Texas heat working on it than in my 10 minute commute with the windows down) only for it to crap out again 2 months later and I’d repeat the process.
3rd generation 4Runners, and my ’99 Hilux Surf alike, were available with a thermostatic digital climate control panel. It’s pretty sweet to have on a ’99, very convenient to have set and forget climate controls, except for they are notorious for developing bad solder joints that cause most of the buttons to intermittently not work. You end up never turning off the A/C because you know that it will take five minutes of repeatedly mashing the button while muttering incantations to get it to turn on again.
After my own attempt at a repair failed, I sent my climate control panel to an electronics shop to have it repaired. They did a great job and it works fine now, but I still have the learned habit. Someone else will reach to turn off the A/C and I’ll panic for a moment, almost swatting their hand away.
Maybe I just have a problem with believing things are fixed. Years ago I had an Xterra with a stuck evap canister solenoid that meant that if you bought more than a few gallons of gas, it wouldn’t start until you waited a while for gas vapor to clear out of the intake manifold. It flooded itself, basically. I don’t even own it any more, and to this day, when I buy a full tank of gas I have an inclination to let it sit for a bit before I try starting.
The windshield washer reservoir on my Honda Odyssey doesn’t hold a whole gallon of fluid, so I have to put in a portion and then carry around a partial jug. Versus my C-Max which will take a full gallon. It’s annoying.
Sticky auto trans lockout solenoid in my 2009 Element. Could not convince the dealer that it wasn’t the brake switch. Randomly I would have 5-15 minutes of enforced driving timeout before i could convince it to work. Got better as it got older.
You should have told them it was definitely the brake switch. Sometimes they’re just absolutely certain that the customer can’t know what they’re talking about.
Dude (service rep) replaced it under warranty as a favor for me. Gee thanks mister!
Broken gas tank cap that will trigger sliding left door to not open when detected. Otherwise my new-to-me-ten-year-old Sienna would the perfect.
On my Odyssey it was a faulty relay that controlled the sliding left door, that had to be replaced so the gas door could open. Had to look at wiring diagrams to figure that one out.
My Fusion loves to whine about the battery being low, and there’s no consistency to it. Sometimes, more than a week can go by with, other times it complains while actively on a Battery Tender. There’s nothing actually wrong with it of course; I suspect it’s just the monitor needs a reset, but of course no one’s willing to do that unless I buy a new battery, which I don’t currently need, and costs $360.
And for its age, my ’72 Oldsmobile has surprisingly few faults. The lock cylinder will fall out of the glove box door at the slightest bump if I leave it unlocked, so it’s just always locked. Problem
solvedignored.If you have a laptop/tablet, an OBD adaptor, and download Forscan, you can reset the BMS (any many other functions) yourself. You also want to make sure that if you charge the battery, that you connect the negative charging cable to a ground and not the negative terminal.
Something to try later, I guess
Mine’s a hybrid, but has had the same problem. After much research, I found the 12v battery had to be mated to the car. Ended up doing it through the dash diagnostics or a BMS, I don’t remember.
Mine’s also a hybrid, and I believe still the factory Ford battery. One would hope that’s correctly set up.
Hyundai Kona Horn…I’m on my 4th one since 2022. Never had a horn go bad before this car
Electronic fuel filler door release. The one on my car has become weak and takes 5-10 presses to get it to release. It isn’t a huge deal, but since a fully manual fuel filler door is all one needs, the annoyance of the situation is amplified.
Honestly that’s the worst
‘This needlessly complex thing doesn’t work more reliably than the simple thing but they went with the needlessly complex thing because reasons’
It is just like electronic door handles. We already had mechanical door handles nearly perfected, so why not reduce reliability and functionality while adding complexity?!
Honestly I’m impatient when it comes to machines that do not do their job.
In your shoes I’d just keep a crowbar in the passenger footwell and pry the gas door open if it didn’t open the first time
I just give it a good whack with my palm and try to find satisfaction from that, but at some point I will be complaining aloud while replacing the latch solenoid.
Fair enough. I must have some Jeremy Clarkson or Soviet Mechanic in my DNA
I’m an engineer, so I often have more mechanical sympathy than I do grace for my fellow humans, meaning my tolerance for failing equipment is much higher than my tolerance for stupid designs.
Probably talked about it before, but one summer my dad replaced the brake light switch on the underside of my brake pedal, and it was too sensitive. Once it reached winter the pedal would contract in the cold causing the brake lights to come on until the battery was totally dead.
Took 6 months to diagnose. For that 6 months I kept a wrench in my door and would disconnect the battery cable whenever I parked the car. The post-diagnosis solution was to just shove a brick under the pedal so it couldn’t contract.
Rear window decided to stop working when it was rolled down and raining, prompting a door disassembly to push the window back up. Probably an easy fix but I’ll be looking at it in April when the temperature stops bouncing between 60 and 20 lol.
’17 Escape. Every 4 months or so–sometimes more, sometimes less–it decides without warning to drain the battery overnight. I jump start it, and it’s good for another indeterminate number of months.
When I first bought it (used), this happened repeatedly and much more frequently, and I had it back to the dealer multiple times. They swapped out the battery twice and promised a deeper dive, but they never did it. Since it was under the very limited warranty period, I think they just didn’t feel like investing the time to chase down a very random electrical gremlin for no money.
It did get better, but it still lurks. I suspect it’s something in the infotainment system, but we may never know.
Back in the early 80s, it was cars with LED digital clocks which would drain the battery like that.
My car had a radar detector installed in it and half the buttons dont work thanks to what i assume is a massive coffee spill that also took out the radio and corrodded the cigarette lighter.
I can navigate it one direction but i cannot turn it off or go back, i need to cycle all the way through the options one way.
Im halfway considering ripping it out but regrettably it was a proper install thats routed all across the car
2024 Ford Maverick. I just want to change artists from the USB mp3 while moving. That’s it.
For the Fiata, the TMPS. It seems to use an ABS brake setup that monitors tire rotation for tire pressure. The problem with that is my winter tires are slightly larger diameter than my summer ones, so any longer distance travels, like over 100 miles in a single stretch, will cause it to trip the TPMS alarm because the distance traveled will be out of spec with what it’s programed for.
With my Mazda, it’s the radio. It’s a common issue with 2s to have the amp develop hairline cracks in the solder on a couple of resistors, causing the radio to stop any audio. When I bought it ten years ago, it wasn’t too bad, only shorting out during a brief time in spring and fall when the temperature is mild. And even then just giving the dash a whack in the right spot would bring it back to life. But it’s gotten progressively worse to the point it now only works during super hot summer days (90+) or super cold winter days (below zero). I really should get around to actually fixing it.
My Mazda CX-5 had a similar issue if I drove a lot on gravel roads. The TPMS would freak out but would calm down after driving on a paved road.
My ’02 Protege5 had a bad AC fan speed knob but I just couldn’t figure it out. The AC would cutout on I think fan settings 2 and 3. So the fan would run, but not the compressor. BUT if I turned it position 3 then sloooooowwwwwly back to position 2, there was a midpoint where all of a sudden the compressor would run again. I took the switch apart and cleaned it twice. I might have even replaced it with a junkyard one, hard to remember now. But it never was properly fixed.
The little plastic boss on the seat belt that stops the buckle from sliding all the way to the floor fell off, and now I have to open the door again and fish the buckle out from under the seat every damn time.
I made the mistake of removing the sunroof on my Fiero last year, the washers were the only rubber on the car that was bad, so they crumbled and now I have load wind noise above 50mph. I guess it covers the fuel pump noise, so that helps
Ah, the fuel pump noise. A quintessential part of Fiero ownership!
Along with the perpetually inaccurate fuel gauge