Valve Seals 2000 Toyota Camry
Question:
Just purchased (July) 2000 Toyota Camry from Toyota dealer. The 3 mo.
warranty doesn’t cover valve seals. Car has 130,000 miles, runs well, very happy with it otherwise. When it starts there is some smoke, doesn’t do it once car has run a minute even with start stops for errands. Smoke is white to perhaps slightly blue.
Doesn’t appear to be using oil and no drips under car. I won’t put enough
mileage on the car to get to 200,000 by the time I retire in 5 years and
buy a new car but I do want to take care of it.
AAA said 1,500 to replace seals. Toyota dealer said 1,100 to replace
seals. The used car dealership consultant said there is no big problem and
not to worry about it that I’d be spending money needlessly as long as there
is no big oil consumption going on I’m okay. He said he’s sure no oil will
have to be added between changes.
What is your opinion? Should I have repair done or just watch how much oil
it uses?
Thanks!
Miranda
Answer:
I would keep checking the oil level, and live with it. You may wear out your spark plugs a little sooner, but not a real big deal. Besides the annoying smoke at cold startup, you are not doing any real damage to your car. You may want to look at your owners manual and change your oil to the highest viscosity recommend. So if your car manual says the range is 5W-30 to 10W-30 I would make sure the next time you get an oil change they put in 10W-30. The higher the number, the lower the viscosity (thicker oil) Running a thicker oil in the engine will allow less oil to seep down past the valve seals. I would stay away from oil treatments which advertise to reduce oil consumption, they never seem to do any good, and sometimes do bad things to your engine.
Kevin
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Posted: 28th August 2006 | Author: Kevin Schappell | Category: Engine, Oil & Lubrication
One Response to “Valve Seals 2000 Toyota Camry”
Miranda,
I purchased a 98 Camry about three years ago with 38K miles. It too had the same kind of smoke you describe at startup.
Some Googling lead me to bobistheoilguy.com (BITOG). At that site I learned about a product called AutoRX. I’m very dubious of snakeoil but AutoRX is the real deal.
Check out bobistheoilguy.com for a lot of discussions on this product (and lots of talk about oil in general) and AutoRX at http://www.auto-rx.com/.
Cheers,
Jim