[net.auto] Minor Toyota Camry Problems

ccs@aluxp.UUCP (shiflett c c) (01/09/85)

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I have a 1983 Toyota Camry with 35,000 mi.  In general I am quite
pleased with the car.  There are three minor problems that I
wonder if anyone has comments or solutions:
	1.  Even though the car has power steering, there is a slight
	    shimmy that comes through the steering wheel.  I have had
	    several cars with power steering, and this is the first
	    on which motion of the front wheels is fed-back to the steering
	    wheel.  I am annoyed with the slight shake in the
	    steering wheel; I don't feel anything wrong with the ride.
	    The only thing I have found to date that helps is to spin
	    balance the front wheels; that helps but does not completely
	    cure the problem.
	2.  When I brake lightly, I feel an unevenness in the braking
	    action with each revolution of the wheels, and the shimmy
	    of Item 1 is slightly worse.  This problem is essentially
	    unchanged in magnitude over 35,000 miles. When I brake hard,
	    the problem disappears.
	3.  There is a slight whistle or high pitch vibration
	    when the car is driven at a constant speed.  It
	    sounds a little like a wind whistle,
	    but either accelerating or decelerating stops the
	    noise.  I think it may be coming from the carburator (or
	    whatever the equivalent part on a fuel injected engine is called.

Incidentally, I also had a wind whistle which was coming from
the left front of the car.  The dealer could not find it after 4 tries.
I isolated the area by progressively taping more and more of the 
seams and openings with masking tape until I stopped the whistle.
Even then the dealer could not fix it and stuffed a rag in the front
around the headlight.  I recently found out from a friend that
Toyota has a recent fix (which the dealer never told me about).  It consists
of putting a piece of plastic rope in a seam between the left
front finder and the piece below it.  The
dealer now has fixed this problem.

				Curt Shiflett
				AT&T Bell Labs
				Allentown, PA.