Worst Parts Toyota Designed for the Celica

The lamp warning does fail and it's difficult to fix
It will also "play up" if the resistance of the bulbs is not correct - ie LED bulbs
will cause it to illuminate

It measures resistance across the bulbs, as they heat up the resistance decreases.
In your case change to higher wattage bulbs or decapitate the warning bulb

I don't regard it as a fault, it's good to know when you have a bulb out. Old age
and new style bulbs are more to blame?

 

i just replaced my head unit and had a struggle for an hour to get it all done and lined up, but would you want a thief to get your head unit out in 30 seconds flat or struggle like hell and most likely fail?

 

i agree with stig on the starter location.
also i still have no idea how to remove the pannels in the hatch to get to my rear speakers. somehow water got in my rear right speaker and i would like to replace it banghead

 

LOL, to change rear speakers - Remove rear seat, loosen (don't remove side panels), remove rear boot panel,
remove rear side panels (screws hidden under plugs, plugs hidden under speaker covers) - have fun!
ps. Try not to break the speaker covers when unclipping them
You need to re-seal the RR window as well or it will happen again

Radio - Anyone who has had a radio stolen knows that if they can't remove it in 30 secs,
it's out with the crowbar, hammers etc and the end result is you looking for a
new dash and radio

 

woooooow i feel sooo dumb. oh well thanks for informing me. hahaha

 

The window trim clips just come right of the car without reason. Yet, when you try pulling the other off, they are a PITA and the plastic clips will break.

The rubber weather trim that the window closes and rests on will sometimes leak even though you've got your window closed 99%.
The weird lump at the trunk that is the spare wheel.

How the radio is so close to the shifter.

The FWD driveline.

I think that's about it. These don't really pose a problem for me though. I rarely think about these problems, except the window leak :hehe . I think about how awesome the 4thgen is 95% of the time.

If you guys want to know ridiculous, look at BMW now. Tail light lamps go out and their plastic housings get burned, need special tools for some of the simplest jobs, faulty window regulator(door won't open because the window has blocked the door knob), faulty rear window regulator, the radio LED lights go out, windshield wiper parts just break, etc.

All this while driving my X5 lightly. Only has about 70,000 miles? My 4G has almost 220K and has experience no problems like this, except for the usual wear and tear. Now I have to go remove the rear passenger door panel and take a look to see what's keeping the window from opening and closing right :banghead . Toyota still did a very good job in their cars though. Toyota dependability :thumbsup:

 

^Benz E430 (W210). Almost 50K miles. $3K to fix tranny problem. :byodood

ST162 Celica? Lets see:

FWD
FWD
FWD
ummm... FWD
Have I mentioned FWD yet?
FWD
Driver side Power window switch. Why couldn't they have done it like a normal switch/button???
More power stock wouldn't hurt. :naughty

 

the door handle and the lock buttons...every passenger tries to pull off the lock buttons thinking it's the door handle argh!

 

Yep, it happened to me.

 

Hooray for original oem sound system!

 

I don't like the way the fans are wired, would be better if the fans were wired "live" even when the ignition is off.
I've looked at this mod and for now I'm going to fit a turbo timer even though there's no turbo.

Next time you stop, let the car stand for a few minutes and switch back on - 9/10 the fans will come on

It should be simple to move the fan power to one of the battery fuses but I havent got round to finding
the supply to the relays

My other "gripe" is the heater resistors, later models got ceramic types - should be fairly simple to
mod them to work?

 

The steeringwheel gives me the feeling am the captain on the bridge... its sow big!!
Should have been a small and sporty model instead :toetap05

So toyota, if you read this... its should be more like :tongue:

 

Any idea what that's worth? :hehe tried parking with one?

Actually I like the stock leather wheel so much I gave away the smaller MOMO I bought for it

 

door lock location when trying to remove and re-install. omg its a PITA especially if you dont want to remove the window to get to it. :cuss :banghead

 

^ I agree on that. Hard to access, and I haven't see a door handle coming out in one piece yet :S

 

While I definitely think that Toyota usually has very good design (overall - not just with the Celica) by comparison with a lot of other cars, and while I truly love my Celica (as short of a time as I have had her - I'll love and appreciate her even more in years to come), I am kind of surprised at the design of the governor valve / gear in the automatic transmission (A140L - picture below). Having the plastic gearing on it makes it too subject to wear / break down (it seems). The original owner of my Celica had it replaced at 71,000 miles by a transmission repair shop in 2004. It then went out on the second owner a few months after he bought it, at close to 103,000 miles (which was good for me as I got it for $300 as a result). It looked like the original repair was done with a junkyard part, as there were paint pen numbers on the part when I removed it a few weeks ago. I don't know if perhaps Toyota made that portion from plastic to keep from breaking / damaging something else that would be harder to get to (this was pretty easy to get to). You know, like a sacrificial anode in a hot water heater? I also don't know if anyone else here has had this happen to them with any regularity or if the previous owner drove in such a way (doubtful - records kept fastidiously) or used some fluid that made it more prone to happen. But even if I have to replace it every 70,000 miles (for $39 and two hours of my time), I will still love this car. By the way, the symptom of this part needing replacing is the car not going into higher gears - but only working in 1st and Reverse. If this is the worst I find, it's doing darned good. Knock on wood, but I have not had any leaks from windows or PS hose as a lot of folks on here have - and the heater was working fine when I was checking it out a few weeks ago. This girl doesn't leak one drop of anything either!

 

Well, your post had me going wtf!

Seems you guys got the "old" version (A140L) with that governor running on a primary shaft.
I suspect your problem is play on the primary shaft which is the hardest part of the box to work on.
There is a special spacer under/next to? the drive gear and it's a Toyota only part.

Our JDM boxes (A140E) don't have a governor - I stripped a bunch of them and they all have an electronic speed sensor instead.
The speed sensor feeds info to the box ECU (under the ashtray) and the ECU decides when to change gears.

No wonder I had no idea what you were talking about - at least it's a simple replacement, I'd do a write-up in the drivetrain section
as I see many more of this problem about to happen over there