Sal

November 20, 2025, I bought a car. A 2004 Toyota Sequoia SR5 4WD.

And this is a major change for me. I drive a Prius. Drove a Prius. And not just a Prius. A series of Prii. (Yes, that’s the plural.) Most recently, a 2020 Prius Prime XLE.

There’s a series on the Prius coming, one day, but simply put, I bought it at a different time in life than the present. Gas was expensive, electricity was cheap, and my employer at the time had free chargers in the parking lot. Fast forward to 2025, and I’m at a different employer, gas has been floating at around $2.25 a gallon for two years or better, and data centers mean my electricity has tripled in price over the last six months. Add to it that I had a payment, and the motivation was simple: get rid of this thing that’s costing me close to $700 a month between payment and insurance, and just buy something cheap. So that’s what I did.

I came out of the car clean. Sad to see it gone, because it was a really nice car, but immediately satisfied with the choice when the payment was gone. And from there, the new car hunt started.

The hunt.

Me being me, I turned to something familiar: scraping Marketplace and Facebook to try to find a beat-up old Prius. 2005 to 2009, preferably toward the latter, with a dead HV battery. I knew how to replace cells, balance the pack, get them back on the road, and the only things that really go wrong with them are the batteries, and the ABS accumulators. (That accumulator costs damn-near two grand, so it’s the actual death knell for the vehicle.) I’ve done it before, I’d do it again.

But the market was tight. High asks, for increasingly-aging cars, and I couldn’t find one that fit the mold. So I went simpler. “Toyota. Minimum year: 2000.” Bingo.

Eastern Ohio. 45 minutes or so from where I grew up. “2004 Toyota Sequoia 4WD. 240,000 miles. $600 OBO.”

Okay. I could do with an older Toyota truck.

“Right frame rail replaced 2022 from rust.”

Okay good. The rust issues have been tracked, mitigated, repaired.

“Sitting for about two years… broken timing belt.”

Huh.

2UZ-FE

In 1997, Toyota started manufacturing a new small-block 4.7L V8 engine to debut in the 1998 Land Cruiser. A cast iron block with aluminum heads, the 2UZ-FE was purpose-built for the new American-market trucks they had on the way. The Land Cruiser, 4Runner, Tundra, and Sequoia got the engine, with the latter two debuting with it. Starting late in 2004, a second variant of the 2UZ was released with variable valve timing.

That distinction matters, because prior to VVT, the engine wasn’t interference. That is to say, the valves and pistons wouldn’t clash if timing went off. After the change, that goes out the window.

This Sequoia, left in a field for a year and a half as I’d later find out, was ignored and neglected because the owner was certain it would need the valves replaced and a full rebuild. If it had been parked yesterday, all it actually needed was a belt. Problem is, what else had happened over the year in place?

Nevertheless, I’m an idiot. And after some brief conversation and a quick $550, I had a title and a set of keys.

Moving it

So the thing about a car that’s been sitting, especially one that is dead, is that you can’t just drive it out. Nobody wants you working on your car in their hay field. And because it’s in a hay field, mice really enjoy munching the wires and making nests in every nook and cranny they can find. Not exactly optimal.

So you tow it! Well, it might have only been 45 minutes from my childhood home, but it was better than two hours from where I live now. And forking over $600 to have it towed really defeats the purpose of a cheap car. Which means being frugal.

Ever see those flat tow kits that RV drivers use to pull their Wrangler behind them on vacation? There are two versions of those. The nice ones, and the Harbor Freight ones. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

$60 got the bracket, and I spent an hour pulling the bumper and installing it on the front frame member. A rented F-250 Super Duty, and I was on my way.

Don’t do this. Very bad.

The Sequoia weighs close to 6,000 pounds. The rating on the tow bar is 5,000. The only reason I still followed through with the plan was because the truck I was towing with was rated for 11,000 pounds, and I had extra chain connected between the two vehicles in case of catastrophic failure. Nevertheless, only about $200 later between bracket, rental, and gas, and I had a Sequoia sitting in front of the house. Onto fixing it.

The Repair

Around the same time as the purchase, I broke my ankle. Fun fact: getting up and down from under a vehicle, as well as standing at it, for hours on a broken ankle isn’t a great time. So I was slow on the repair.

It also entered December. I was in for a treat.

Tearing down the engine wasn’t bad. The bumper was still off from the flat tow. Radiator fan, shroud, radiator out. Serpentine belt, AC compressor, alternator, power steering pump. Timing cover, timing cov… frick. Broken bolt. Okay. Anyway, timing cover. Drill, extractor… frick. broken extractor. Drill, tap, thread adapter. Keep going.

It took a few hours to get the old belt out. And it was very dead indeed. Getting the cams and crankshaft into position took two minutes at most. Awesome. I’m flying. Put on the new belt… the new belt… the new flipping belt.

Okay. I’m not getting it on there alone.

It’s snowing, bitterly cold. I can’t actually do this to the extent I want to. So I call in a favor.

My brother drives out to me, hours out of the way, to help. Two sets of hands, the entire belt goes on in a little under five minutes. I’d spent probably six hours trying and failing, but it’s amazing what another set of eyes and hands can do.

He goes home, I go inside to get some sleep, and that’s where the story grinds to a halt.

The Theft

The snowstorm meant I wasn’t working on the car for a bit. I rented a Jetta to get through a few days where I really needed a car, and took a much-needed break.

I’d locked my toolbox inside, and all the hardware was in said toolbox so I didn’t lose track of it.

No part of me imagined that someone would break in, take all the metal they could find, and leave me screwed.

And it was definitely for the scrap metal. They took the BATTERY. The sockets, the screws and bolts, the flat tow bracket I’d used to get it back to the house in the first place. But they left the power tools. Pawn shops have to check in everything they get. Scrap recyclers don’t. So those power tools couldn’t be dumped quick for cash.

The biggest slam on the brakes moment of the whole build was having all the hardware for the engine, radiator, and accessories stolen. I had extra ratchets, breaker bars, wrenches, sockets. I didn’t have extra hardware. So I pulled up the parts diagram, got a list of all the hardware I needed to finish, and put in a big order with my local dealership. $50 in screws later, and I had all I needed to finish up again. It just took an extra week or so.

Smooth sailing from here. Finished reassembling the engine, bought a new battery, and stepped away from it for a few more days. By this point, Christmas was fast approaching.

Integration Hell

There’s a concept in engineering called integration hell. Essentially, it’s the material version of the 80/20 rule. The last mile, the final push, always takes more work than getting most of the way there. And this is the wall I hit.

It wouldn’t start. New spark plugs, nope. New fuel pump relay, nope. Checked every fuse, nope. Found chewed wires under the truck from our mouse friends. Soldered and repaired them. Nope.

It would ignite starter fluid, so there was obviously spark, but it sounded starved.

So I took off the air intake hose, and the throttle valve… didn’t do anything. Oh thank God. An actual problem.

Fifteen minutes. Two bolts, two nuts. Throttle body cleaner and a rag, and it was at least able to move some. And following close to the classic “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again”, I turned the key. And it didn’t start.

But it sounded different. Again. Closer. Again. Even closer. On the fifth or sixth try, actual combustion happening now each time and the beast just not quite staying running: it roared to life.

Excitement was short-lived as smoke billowed out from the engine bay. The serpentine was falling apart. And catastrophically blew to pieces with a bang, covering me in a spray of little rubber shreds. Tomorrow’s problem.

Out came the radiator fan, and the shroud, and the scraps of belt. Testing pulleys, one after the other, terrified that it was the AC compressor. For once lucky. Just an alternator. A quick $190 at the local part store, plus $25 for a new belt, and we were in business. A couple hours later, I’d drive the truck for the first time.

And it ran great. Got up to speed, brakes worked perfectly, everything was working great!

Until I couldn’t get past 5 miles an hour.

More Integration Hell

The throttle body was shot. Getting stuck again. A quick $100 on Marketplace, and I had a good one pulled from someone’s 4Runner. Two bolts, two nuts, a go with some throttle body cleaner, and we were back on the road the next day.

Test drive time. Across town. We’re doing great!

Annnnnd the inside of the car is filled with smoke. Frick.

Rear heater core. Or the hoses running into it. Not worried about the details. Just need to bypass it and I’ll be good. A trip to the part store, a couple pieces of hose, some clamps, and we’re in business.

Oh. We’re overheating and boiling over. Thermostat is seized. New thermostat. Okay good we should be… still overheating and boiling over.

I forgot I’d removed and drained the radiator. A massive air bubble in the cooling system, but eventually with a couple more gallons of coolant and a few hours of burping it, I got the thing under control.

Unlikely Outcomes

I took it to get the VIN inspection, title, and plates. Ten miles. Enough to see if it would overheat. And it didn’t. To the hardware store. Another fifteen miles. No problems. At all.

So a bigger test. Two days after the plate, maybe thirty miles since being rebuilt.

I took it on an 1,100 mile road trip through a blizzard in upstate New York. And I’m thrilled to say, it worked flawlessly.

It’s not done. Nowhere close. The power lock doesn’t work on one door. The hatch glass regulator was removed and the window caulked shut, with a bad rust hole near the window frame and no way to use rear defrost. There’s bad body rust where the running boards attach to the vehicle and I would NOT trust anyone stepping on it. Plus the things I want to do to it over time.

But for now, a month and change after buying a neglected, rusting, mouse-infested SUV with a dead engine from a field in eastern Ohio?

It earned itself a name. Meet Sal. A 2004 Toyota Sequoia SR5 4WD with two hundred and forty one thousand miles on the dash.