Sons First Car is 2009 Toyota Rav4

So what started off as a "good deal" turned out to be a money pit like everything I purchase.

The vehicle is a 2009 Toyota Rav4 with only a 131k miles which is far less than anyone else had for less than $5000

It appeared pretty clean car with some imperfections like minor scratches and some small dents in body but no rust anywhere.

Tires are an offbrand with decent tread.

Not licensed so only able to drive around subdivision and not get it up to speed which is where it all fell apart.

First stop was the dealership to have them do an inspection and opened pandoras box. Quote to fix found issues was over $8000 (most expensive fix is probably the rear differential seals leaking like crazy)

Paid a little of $5300 for other stuff and not everything....

Brought it home and ordered a driveshaft from 1aauto which was $1000 cheaper than dealership was charging (not including labor). Installed driveshaft and the manual and every website said torque the front bolts to 26ftlbs which snapped the bolts off.. stopped after two. Could not extract the snapped bolts so had to pay $80 to have it towed to Muffler Man which charged me $600 to fix that and install a muffler.

Now the check engine light comes on if car sits for more than a day and so I decided to purchase a OBDII scanner from Autozone (on sale for $128) and found its the O2 sensor even though I paid Toyota to replace it last time (which was stupid because they are so easy to change). In an effort to see if its just stuck in the ECU I took the negative battery cable off for 30minutes and put it back on to see if that fixes the reoccuring O2 P1058 error message.

TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitor Sensors).. all 4 are not connected to the ECU (issue existed before I unhooked battery). I verified tire pressure is 44psi on all four tires and yet stupid light is on. Need to figure out where the reset/relearn button is. They say its down by the OBDII port or on the dash or in the glove box.. so far haven't found it yet but thats for another day. I did check into some name brand tires and found a set of 4 balanced and installed for $300 which is a steal but his tires are fine for now.. maybe before winter.

We purchased the vehicle with one broken key with a bunch of tape to hold it together. Ordered a new cut key from Toms Key $100 and then realized its a smart key so you need the programmer otherwise the vehicle won't start. So thats another $154 with a $70 deposit... now we wait.

What's left to do...

• program a new primary and spare key

• fix leaking rear differential

• clean or replace headlights (very cloudy)

• replace headunit with carplay compatible (GPS, Spotify, etc)