Engine woes
 

I bought a used FRS about 5 months ago and have had nothing but problems with it. It had 17k miles on it when purchased and now has 20k miles. I brought it in the dealer to get a bad idle fix only to find out that I had a misfire and was losing compression in cylinder 2. The dealer then told me that my car had a pretty big history of warranty repairs that was done at a Toyota dealer up in Virginia. After calling corporate, the dealership agreed to repair the engine. After 2 months and new valvetrain my car is finally running "smoothly". However, it continues to give me problems with the back cam plate leaking oil on my exhaust manifold. It is the third time the dealer has replaced that plate. What should I do? I was thinking of just selling it and getting another one. I am getting sick of not having a car that I can depend on. I am worried that problems will arise again later down the road :( Are there any lemon laws that cover used vehicles? Thanks guys.

A quote that might be helpful from here:

http://www.ncdoj.gov/Consumer/Automo...Lemon-Law.aspx

For your state


Your car may be covered by the Lemon Law if all of the following have happened:

• The problem occurs in some part of the vehicle that is covered by the manufacturer's warranty and you are within the warranty period. It does not need to be something that keeps you from being able to drive the car. For example, faulty air conditioning or peeling paint could be considered defects under the Lemon Law.
• You tell the manufacturer about the problem in writing and give them a reasonable period, but not more than 15 days, to fix it.
• The manufacturer makes “a reasonable number of attempts” to fix the vehicle. This means that the car has been repaired for the same problem four or more times, or that it has been out of service a cumulative total of 20 or more business days during a 12 month period of the warranty.
• The manufacturers’ efforts to fix the vehicle fail. Under the law, they must either replace your car or buy it back. You get to decide between a comparable new car and a refund.

Also about the cam plate it is an extremely common problem, and is common on the manual cars as the seal on the plate from the factory is shit, RaceSeng sells a high quality replacement plate with a much better seal that nips the issue in the ass.

If it's just the camplate leaking, you can buy a aftermarket one, that will be far better than the oem ;)

http://www.ft86speedfactory.com/engi...36ca4678285c20

Lemonade..

I know about the cam plate. I even showed the tech guys the aftermarket solution. They agreed on installing it for free but they couldn't warranty it. Knowing my luck, if anything major were to happen again they could put the blame on the aftermarket piece. Toyota said they're going to use the sealer that Subaru uses ( I'm pretty sure they're the same). I am more worried about anything else major happening. The car has been in the dealer shop for around 4 months between the old owner and I.

I'd be willing to bet it's not the hardware but rather the lack of surface prep before installing the new gasket. They can teach the importance of degreasing the mating surfaces but they can't force the mechanic to give a fuck about it.

The devil's in the details.

This. There's no reason they shouldn't have been able to get the cam plate leak fixed by now.

Find out what the lemon law covers in your state regarding used cars since you bought it used. In my state, warrantied or not, used cars are not protected by the lemon law.

In the state of North Carolina, used cars are not affected by the lemon law. This would make sense considering that problems could have been sourced by the previous owner. However, I am going to try to ask for an extended warranty for peace of mind. I love the car and Hot Lava is a hard color to come by. It is just annoying since I bought the car to replace my unreliable supercharged Mustang haha.