2006 Toyota Matrix 4 door

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Kira

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Just a quick question;
Honest service station owner near me is selling a well maintained 96,000 mile Matrix in black.
New cat back and top quality front brakes lead the "good news parade".
Also replaced were headlight assys (badly hazed) and a new CHMSL (third rear light-dealer only at $240).
AC up to snuff. Essentially new tires.
Real pretty-$5,400 takes it.

Like I said, good family shop.

Hmmmm.......
 
These are excellent cars that go forever. They are quite literally a hatchback corolla. Same car for the most part. I love ours. Incredible rear leg room for its size (easily seats 4 adults comfortably) and the hard plastic on the back of the rear seats means you basically have a pickup truck when they are folded flat. All in all a top notch vehicle. Feel free to ask any questions about mine.
 
Is yours an AWD? This one is. I'm told the AWD system is a little more forgiving of unmatched tires.

I was so blown away by the cleanliness of the engine bay, I forgot to look for the familiar Toyota red coolant.

The mechanic said he had to search for a replacement exhaust as he didn't want to go to the dealership for that.

Do they have a good CVT or is it the early Jatco?
 
Originally Posted By: Kira
Is yours an AWD? This one is. I'm told the AWD system is a little more forgiving of unmatched tires.

I was so blown away by the cleanliness of the engine bay, I forgot to look for the familiar Toyota red coolant.

The mechanic said he had to search for a replacement exhaust as he didn't want to go to the dealership for that.

Do they have a good CVT or is it the early Jatco?


No cvt. It's a 4 speed auto. Mine is AWD and it's very good actually. No problem in deep Colorado snow before I moved to the DC area. The AWD system is perfectly reliable. Change then transfer case and rear diff gl5 every 30k miles (20 min job for both) and you are good.
 
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Why would a 96K mile car need a new exhaust and Cat? Rust?

if so check for other areas of rust as well.
 
Originally Posted By: danez_yoda
Why would a 96K mile car need a new exhaust and Cat? Rust?

if so check for other areas of rust as well.


Rear muffler section is connected to mid pipe with a type of v band clamp that is prone to rusting. It's common to see this area welded back together with a sleeve or more correctly replaced on cars without any other rust. Also, OP stated the cat back was replaced, NOT the cat itself.
 
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Originally Posted By: danez_yoda
Why would a 96K mile car need a new exhaust and Cat? Rust?

if so check for other areas of rust as well.


There's an exhaust gasket right in front of the cat that is a weak point and a common repair. A few bucks and it's fixed. I had a shop charge me $50 to fix it.

Why is a service station selling it? Maybe because it came in for an exhaust repair and the owner quoted a high price to fix it. When it only needed a $50 repair. Seems kind of shady. I have an 05 Matrix XR fwd and would probably avoid the AWD version because of the added complexity.

One muffler shop said I needed a new cat and quoted $1200 or so. The shop had excellent reviews on yelp along with the one above that did the $50 repair.
 
Originally Posted By: SatinSilver
Originally Posted By: danez_yoda
Why would a 96K mile car need a new exhaust and Cat? Rust?

if so check for other areas of rust as well.


There's an exhaust gasket right in front of the cat that is a weak point and a common repair. A few bucks and it's fixed. I had a shop charge me $50 to fix it.

Why is a service station selling it? Maybe because it came in for an exhaust repair and the owner quoted a high price to fix it. When it only needed a $50 repair. Seems kind of shady. I have an 05 Matrix XR fwd and would probably avoid the AWD version because of the added complexity.


I have an AWD xr 2006 and there isn't much added complexity. The system is dead reliable with no real issues ever cropping up. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another AWD model. It's also extremely simple to service if needed.
 
Odd. Never heard of that happening and mine is rock steady at 130k miles. I guess there will always be one bad one here and there for every car.
 
96,5XX miles on "mine". Oddly (coincidentally) enough, the car I'm looking at "went to school" in New Brunswick for a while. Mine has alloys. The Craiglisted one above has steelies.

That brings up another question: Are the wheels the same as Corollas of the same era? It'd sure make locating a set for snow tires easier.

I see the car has separate COPs and that they are not expensive at all. Always go to RockAuto when looking at a car.....you learn some basic stuff real fast.
 
The Matrix with steelies are usually 16" but many of the ones with alloy wheels were 17". Corollas came with 15" wheels but they can be used on the Matrix. A guy on here bought 15" wheels for his Matrix and was happy with them. Tires would be 195/65R15 instead of the 205/55R16.
 
Good choice but test drive it to ensure engine/trans is good quality. I drove a few used matrixes and they felt rough..cant explain why...i ended up buying the corolla instead but have no regrets...low maintenance solid vehicle thus far.
 
The 1.8, for some reason, is a somewhat coarse sounding engine compared to other Toyotas (like my xB, for example). Doesn't mean it's a bad motor, but we've had 4 in the extended family ('03 Vibe, '06 Matrix, '07 Matrix, '07 Corolla) and all of them sound a little rough at low RPM, even the Matrixes (Matrices?) when new.
 
Yea,they never made a 2 door Matrix/Vibe (which would amount to a 2 door Corolla wagon...the last of which were Vegas and Pintos).
 
Originally Posted By: Kira
Also, somebody told me the transmission is "on the rear axle" ? Is that true?
No. Sounds like you're talking about a Rear Transaxle, like seen in Corvettes for about 14 years now. And Porsche 924's etc. A few, but really not common, especially in econobox designs like the Corolla/Matrix/Vibe. ... Somebody probably saw the half-shafts back there on an AWD model and their imagination went wild.

X03PN_VB37L.jpg


This is Matrix, but really looks like bad driving, no fault of the car. EXCEPT, modern Stability Control anti-skid may have prevented it. I prefer modern Stability Control systems.
 
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