Hellp,
I'm having problems with my 1993 Toyota Corolla LE, and I'm hoping for some advice from any Toyota sauvey mechanics. I'll list the problems in list order so they're easier to follow. Thanks for the belp.
Start-up trouble: No, it's not the battery, I just had it replaced. Most likely not the starter as it does try to start but is not always able to turnover. Sometimes tapping the gas at the right time after turning the ignition will get it going. This problem does not happen everytime I try to start the car, but on enough occasions to make it quite annoying. I've noticed to that it may happen more on warm/hot days.
Idle issues: This may or may not be related to the start-up trouble since I notice this too seems to happen more on hot days. When I'm at a stoplight, the car will sometimes start to idle really low likes it's going to die and then come back up again. Once it gets going, it will do this repeatedly until I step on the gas. It's never actually died, but the whole car trembles like it's going to. Refering to the issue above, when the car is having problem starting, usually once I'm able to get it started the idle is pretty week at first. It's leading me to believe these two problems may somehow be related....
Buring oil: I'm fairly certain the car is burning oil; I get a think white/bluish cloud of smoke on a lot of mornings. The mechanics at Toyota told me several months ago my engine was burning oil and they could fix it for me by replacing half of my engine for $7000. I said, no thanks, I'd rather just buy a new car for that much! I took it to another place and they told me that it's most likely the valve seals, but there'd be no way to tell for certain until they were able to get in there and see, and just cracking open the engine would run me about $2000. My questions is, how likely is it that it could be the seals? What else could it be? I have issues with paying $2000 for them to open the issue only to tell me it's someting more severe than seals and will cost me much more to fix. I wouldn't be able to continue with the repairs yet I will have been out the $2000 it cost me just for them to tell me that. I do regular oil changes every 3500 miles. I notice that the car runs low on oil, and I generally have to refill before I'm scheduled for a change.
Smell: This is probably related to the oil situation, but I just want to be certain. My car smells incredibly toxic, like gasoline or oil, whenever it's strained. Mainly, for example, going up steep inclines or speeding up on the freeway. For instance, I have this one hill I have to drive up everyday near my school, and I notice that when I get to work a few minutes later and park-up, the car just reaks. I'd like to keep my car, which means I'd like to fix my car. I'm an environmentally-friendly person, I hate putting toxins in the air, but I'm a student right now, and buying a new car is probably going to be at least a year off for me. Hopefully someone out there will have some helpful information to shed light on my problems. Unfortunately, I haven't come across any knowledgeable mechanics that have been able to fix the problems thus far, and I've been to quite a few.
Rough estimates on prices would be an awesome help too! That way I know whether I'm getting ripped off or not.
Thank you.