Tricks to Buying a Used Car, Part 2

Rav4s, meanwhile, continued to impress. The same years as the CR-V ('96-'99) priced out about $1,000 less per example. The only thing the Rav4 was giving up was a few horsepower. The Toyota was built well, and the interior of the Rav4 is friendly. Small enough to be cozy, with lots of smart functionality, and big enough for a six-footer.


I drove every CR-V and Rav4, studying my prey. I figured out what a good CR-V and a good Rav4 felt like. With a car that's got a lot of miles, you'll always have some slack in the engine and trans, a surplus snicker in the valvetrain, and extra feeling coming from the suspension when you enter a driveway. That wear has to feel natural. If you're motoring along and something goes "Clunk!" or you drive over an expansion joint and there's an unnatural suspension "Squeak!" or something under the hood sounds too raspy to be smooth, that's not natural. Always stop for a minute to listen.

16 trucklets and a Starbucks addiction later...
I found a 1998 Toyota Rav4 on Craigslist that looked worthy: five-speed, four doors, all-wheel drive (with the neat electronic center locker). Maintained but not babied, it had already spent lots of time in airport parking because the owner was a flight attendant, and its mileage was mostly freeway. Body condition does not always dictate mechanical condition, and on a used compact SUV, who cares? Besides having used a color wax to hide bush-rash on the doors, the owner wasn't concealing anything. It had been his father's before his, and he was not car savvy. It would've been hard to bluff me.


Small stuff is forgivable when the rest of the rig has potential, but a suspicious raspy ticking from the engine set off my radar. It sounded like a hard part, not a belt—more like a bearing or tired lifter. Methinks a bearing. Time for help.


There's always someone who knows more than you, so I took the Rav4 to a friend. Big E" owns a local Big "O" and has forgotten more about cars than I know. He heard the tick too then pulled out a crowbar to find it. With one of those cool shop tricks that will always impress, he touched the business end of the crowbar to parts of the running motor, cupping the other end to his ear. "Torched bearing in the tensioner or water pump," he said. It's nice to be right.