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The issue was with all 3.0 V6 engines, regardless of what chassis it sat in. The issue is that the rice wine engineers at Toyota used the oil for a coolant, which is a good thing as long as you recognize the limitations of the oil, which they didn't. Extreme coking was the issue but most make the effort to call it sludge. The cam bearings at the front of the engine which sit on top of the heads was cooled by oil only with no benefit of any other type of coolant in the area. Coking was the issue and the bearings would seize causing the front of the cam to break off. Toyota quietly replaced several hundred thousand engines but then decided it was the owners fault for Toyota stupidity. Short trips or any of the other claims to be the problem are just that, claims that cannot be proven. It was a bad design and Toyota, learning from the mistakes of the US makers, decided to ignore the issue....kinda like Fords multipiece spark plugs in the 3V Tritons or GMs V8 intake gaskets.
Lawyer is still cheaper than a new car if you have to go that far, and as far as a 12 year old car goes, there's no way to prove it was an issue with the engine if you don't have receipts. However, if you do have receipts proving your oil changes/repairs and you still wind up with the engine going south due to an oil/sludge issue, you can easily get the manufacturer involved. I've had repairs done on cars out of the warranty period before that were covered. All depends on how far you want to go with it, and how good a relationship you have with your service department.
Dude, I don't care if the service department is run by your own mother. No dealership is going to eat the repair of an engine in a 12-year-old car with 125,000 miles on it.
The issue was with all 3.0 V6 engines, regardless of what chassis it sat in. The issue is that the rice wine engineers at Toyota used the oil for a coolant, which is a good thing as long as you recognize the limitations of the oil, which they didn't. Extreme coking was the issue but most make the effort to call it sludge. The cam bearings at the front of the engine which sit on top of the heads was cooled by oil only with no benefit of any other type of coolant in the area. Coking was the issue and the bearings would seize causing the front of the cam to break off. Toyota quietly replaced several hundred thousand engines but then decided it was the owners fault for Toyota stupidity. Short trips or any of the other claims to be the problem are just that, claims that cannot be proven. It was a bad design and Toyota, learning from the mistakes of the US makers, decided to ignore the issue....kinda like Fords multipiece spark plugs in the 3V Tritons or GMs V8 intake gaskets.
Would the use of a good synthetic oil help in these engines?
Would the use of a good synthetic oil help in these engines?
No. I represented my brother in 2 claims for this engine against Toyota and he was using the then PAO based Mobil One and changing every 3500 miles. The failures were common to folks that idle a lot or those that drove in heavy slow traffic. The front of the head would reach temps well above the API max test temp of 304F which caused the coking.
To make one last, drive it but make sure the cooling system is in top shape and avoid idling in the summer months or any slow driving. Changing the oil or using any tricky based or additive enhanced OTC oils won't change anything. Make sure the PCV is in top shape and use ONLY Toyota parts. Folks just don't understand just how calibrated these PCV systems are and using an after market PCV that maybe allows a little more cfms per hour can make combustion temps rise considerably. Higher combustion temps =more head temps=coking.
The issue was with all 3.0 V6 engines, regardless of what chassis it sat in. The issue is that the rice wine engineers at Toyota
Let me guess, you drive a pick-up and go Chevy
The issue was idiots who didn't change the oil then complained about sludge. Well what did you think would happen? Toyota still took some of the blame.
No. I represented my brother in 2 claims for this engine against Toyota and he was using the then PAO based Mobil One and changing every 3500 miles. The failures were common to folks that idle a lot or those that drove in heavy slow traffic. The front of the head would reach temps well above the API max test temp of 304F which caused the coking.
To make one last, drive it but make sure the cooling system is in top shape and avoid idling in the summer months or any slow driving. Changing the oil or using any tricky based or additive enhanced OTC oils won't change anything. Make sure the PCV is in top shape and use ONLY Toyota parts. Folks just don't understand just how calibrated these PCV systems are and using an after market PCV that maybe allows a little more cfms per hour can make combustion temps rise considerably. Higher combustion temps =more head temps=coking.
Not to be argumentative, but would a Group V (ester) type oil help? Understandable among us anyway that more frequent oil changes won't help much if the operating conditions exceed what the oil can tolerate.
If a guy was willing to do some fabrication, maybe an engine oil cooler from some other car would help, using a rather low temp (oil) thermostat?
I guess in the Camry Solara, where the engine is transverse, it's the front cam that gives problems?
Thanks for the point about the PCV, and of course the cooling system needs to be "right". Toyota cooling systems in my experience are trouble-free if they are kept full of reasonably fresh Toy antifreeze and distilled (or at least clean and not too full of calcium compounds) water.
IF, and that's a big IF, there was an ester based oil with a good additive package available, it might make a difference. But there are none. Redline is only about 12-15% polyol ester and it has a good additive package for parts that are run in high temps via the MoTDC but it's not going to do much for the area heat that's cooking the oil. So back to square one. G Oil is the only "true" ester based oil out there but it has a fairly weak add pack. Great oil if you need to clean sludge from the system though. The type of ester used has a lot of solvency and will clean the internals slowly which is ideal versus a solvent based flush. So no, there's really no way around it. Even running a cooler thermostat doesn't help as the coolant doesn't get to this part of the engine. It's cooled by the oil only and an oil cooler doesn't do much as the heat in the metal is causing the coking, not overall oil temp. Just a bad design.
It's the front of the cam that's breaking off as the front bearing will seize. Toyota offered for a brief time engine replacements but then backed away from it as it was costing them a lot of bucks. Fortunately those engines are gone. Toyota has been the recipient of many bad designs that didn't make headline news. While the Exploder was giving Ford headaches, the Tundra was also flipping over with low pressure tires worse than the Exploder, but you didn't hear about those. Then there were the tens of thousands of Tacomas that had 100% frame failures that they bought back....for a while. It's okay to be a Toyota fan even after all of the issues. They all make bad designs. It's how they deal with the issues that makes one brand better than the other. And not ever thing they make do any of them stand behind 100%.
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