Trolling for Cressida

Alhamdulillah, I finally bought a car: a 1985 Toyota Cressida XL with the 21R model engine at 1972 cc's and four cylinders. The XL's are the lower-end Cressidas without power windows, sunroofs, automatic transmission, etc. In fact, I'm glad I don't have all these power options, as they require repeated maintenance in older cars.

It took a long time to choose the car. Basically, I didn't want a generic car without character. Also, I had to carefully consider what I would be able to resell here in Jordan so that I didn't end up with a bunch of money tied up in a car that will never sell. The problem is that the price for petrol is high and increasing in Jordan, so Jordanians don't want big engines. As a North American, I like big, powerful engines, so the 2.0 L range seemed like a reasonable comprise, though many Jordanians consider that a good engine size for an SUV.

Back in 1996, I bought a 1985 Toyota Cressida GL with all the luxury options. It had a 2.8 L engine with six inline cylinders. It was an absolute beast. I drove with it from Vancouver to Milwaukee, then down to Orlando, then back up to Waterloo, Canada, while carrying four people and pulling a trailer. Then, after moving to California and transporting it there, I drove it several times up and down I-5 between Silicon Valley and Vancouver. Once a Florida state trooper stopped me for speeding and when he looked at the registration, he quickly looked over at the car and said, "That's a 1985?" I made two major mistakes with the car: first, when it started knocking, I didn't examine the issue, so the engine failed. Second, when the engine did fail, I should have just borrowed a couple thousand dollars and had the engine replaced rather than writing it off and spilling my blood month-after-month on a zero-percent, zero-down financed Grand Caravan, which ended up sucking me dry and for which I didn't get much value back when I sold it. Someone smart probably replaced the engine in that old Cressida and it's probably still being driven around California today.

Regardless of how North Americans consider driving stick shift a manly thing, I never learned it in North America. I quickly realized that if I limited myself to automatic cars, I would not be able to purchase or drive 90% of cars in Jordan. I was always concerned that, in the case of an emergency, I might only have a stick shift at my disposable. Thus, I took two lessons in driving stick from an instructor. He then advised me to buy myself a car and he'd give me lessons on it. When I finally did buy my current stick shift Cressida, it was January 22 and there was snow on the ground. It was great fun driving home from the DMV in Marka in the slush and traffic with my wife next to me. There is a saying that saints (Ar. awliya) are those who cause you to remember Allah. I realized then that my driving was a saint, as my wife was praying the whole time I was driving. So what if the car stalled in the middle of an intersection, rolled back into other cars behind me when stopped on a hill, jerked and surged forward? I wasn't going to let some silly obstacles stop me from owning a good, cheap car. Once I got home, I called the driving instructor and asked him for some more lessons. He said he was far away from K-Town these days and would send me another instructor's phone number. He never did, so I just decided I'd teach myself. I learned some good techniques for dealing with hills, engine stalls, and gentle acceleration from the Internet. Alhamdulillah, I drive a lot better now.

The first day I bought the car, I was so excited that I wanted any reason to drive it, even though it was snowy and slushy. I offered to drive a co-worker home with her husband. Of course, now that I owned a car and didn't have to wait for taxis, I could go out in sandals in the snow. It was a short walk from my door to the car and I'd turn on the heat in the car as soon as I got in. During the drive, the car stalled. We tried to start it a couple times by pushing it and playing with the clutch and gas. It worked for a short time and then just failed. Of course, pushing the car in snow and slush while wearing sandals wasn't exactly easy. I finally got a neighbour to come by and jump start the car. I drove it home and he started to examine it one bit at a time. He finally found that the carbon brushes in the alternator needed replacing.

The next weekend, I took the car for a number of tune-ups. After a long day of driving the car, I had it detailed. I paid the detailer an extra JD to ensure he did a good job. It appears that detailing in his mind did not include emptying the ashtray from the former owners. After detailing, I drove the car and it stalled. I kept driving it short distances and it would repeatedly stall. After standing in the rain for a couple hours with my neighbour, he got it running again. It wasn't clear exactly what the problem was, though. Exactly one week later, the same problem occurred, but disappeared by morning and I drove the car to work. However, when it was time to drive the car home, it failed to start again. I called a friend to see if he knew any good car electricians. He came by, called the electrician, and explained the problem. The electrician told him to connect the positive terminal of the battery to the positive terminal of the coil. Upon attempting this, something started smoking, so he immediately removed the connection. "Maybe that's the negative", he said. He tried the other coil terminal. No smoke. So far, so good. I started the car smoothly. He removed the connection and the car stopped. He re-attached the connection, I started the car, and drove it to the car electrician. At the shop, the electrician told me that I had a security device in the form of some wires under the driver's floor mat that could be connected or disconnected so that the car would or wouldn't start at will. I told him to go ahead and remove the device. Alhamdulillah, that solved the problem.

Recently, Jordan outlawed leaded gasoline. There are now two grades of unleaded: 90 and 95 octane. I tried both, but my car feels a lot heavier with them. It still accelerates to the desired speed, but much more slowly than with leaded. Another problem that I had even when I was running on leaded is that the car starts to kick when it reaches around 3000 RPM. Ideally, I shouldn't drive it that high, but it is occasionally useful to rev up. It didn't have this problem when I first bought it.