Ahoy!
I've been searching long and hard for a basic car that meets my requirements of a small, light, cheap car for some time now, and I've stumbled across the aveo, thinking it's what I want.
I've found a few around here I think are alright- four door hatchbacks. I really want a 2-door hatchback, but apparently they just dont exist here. (I'm in the northeastern US)
The one I'm looking at apparently had the timing belt go at 60k, which seems to be a common problem. They had the engine replaced and the car is now at 73k. I'm waiting on paperwork from the replacement engine, since I currently have no idea how old it is or anything like that.
I guess my first questions are here..
1) other than the timing belt, what do you need to watch out for with these?
2) was the timing belt issue corrected? (Just a faulty batch?)- does replacing it with a better one mean it no longer breaks every 40-60k?
3) How annoying are these to work on? I've done an engine rebuild and a few swaps, but am no mechanic.
4) Does anyone know the engine code? E.G. 4age, 1mzfe, etc. I cant find much information on this other than the timing belts snap.
5)how does the car feel about sitting? Some cars handle it better than others. This is a "spare" car, to be used when my daily car (an 85) or the girls car (a 90) are off the road for whatever reason.
6) Does anyone know offhand if this thing has a neutral safety switch? I keep installing remote car starters in my cars (its so cold up here) but without a safety switch its dangerous. Fabricating them is difficult, but if this had one built in that would be fancy.
7) I read somewhere that in Korea, these had timing chains instead of belts to solve the breakage issue. Any chance there's a conversion? If you're in there doing the belt anyway...