Here’s My Idiotic Plan To Drive A Broken 240,000-Mile $500 Toyota Minivan 1000 Miles To Save My Ailing Coworker

I just bought a one-way Southwest flight from LA to St. Louis. Luckily, it comes with two check-in bags, because I’ve got a ton of tools I need to bring with me, as the trip’s purpose is to revive a dead 2005 Toyota Sienna Minivan that I bought for $500. I have exactly one day to turn it from “immobile, been sitting for years” to “ready to drive 1000 miles,” and my plan isn’t great. Hear me out.

The truth is, I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with the minivan that a reader named Dave sold me for $500. When I visited him, he showed me that the struts are broken (like this), but as the vehicle has been sitting, there’s no telling what else might be wrong. I do know that it was his trusty all-wheel family drive minivan for years, but is no longer needed, so it just sits on the side of the road, awaiting a blogger to finally pick it up after over a year of promises.

Well, the time has come for me to finally save this van and bring it to my coworker, Jason, who has suffered far too many automotive mishaps, and is in desperate need of a car that just works — you know, a Toyota (the fact that it has 240,000 miles and cost $500 doesn’t change anything, right?).

A week from Monday, I’m off with my tools to St. Louis, where a bunch of parts that I’ve ordered from eBay will await me. Here are those parts:

Now, do I necessarily need control arms and sway bar links and tie rods? No, but I will say that the odds of only the struts being bad are pretty damn low, and I’d like to have replacement parts on hand, just in case.

I may have actually gone a bit overboard with front-end replacement parts, but I do think having a set of front wheel bearings on hand is a smart idea, so I snagged those as well. And I know, I know, many folks will say “damn, those are some cheap eBay parts,” and it’s true, but if I’m honest, I’ve had good luck with eBay front-end kits, especially for cars that aren’t driven a ton. Plus, those two purchases added up to almost the cost of the van, so they weren’t that cheap.

Above you can see my planned route. It’s 811 miles to VA, where The Autopian will be doing some exclusive testing on a secret test track, and another 110 or so miles to Jason in Chapel Hill. I look forward to hooning the all-wheel drive minivan around that track, but most importantly, to getting Jason a car he can depend on: a Toyota.

Will it live up to the hype? Will it solve Jason’s seemingly-unending automotive woes — the broken Ford F-150 flywheel, the seized beetle engine, the overheating VW Tiguan, the janky battery’d Changli, the MacGuyver’d Yugo? Will this minivan be the salvation he deserves, allowing him to stress less so that his recently-burst heart can truly heal?

We’ll find out soon. Hopefully I still remember how to wrench on rustbuckets.