As some of you may recall, my first post was on here a few months ago, when I discovered my engine problem was the complete loss of compression on #3 cylinder.
I'm an electrician by trade, and a rather mechanically included person all around, but I had no experience with auto engine repair, such has dealing with a bad valve. With some help of a friend and his well equipped and heated shop, I was able to tear my motor down and find the problem. A burnt exhaust valve!
Since I had the engine torn down this far, I decided to fix the many oil leaks it had. The main seal, cam seal, oil pump gasket & seal, and distributor seals had all been leaking oil. The oil pump gasket was the big problem, it had deteriorated to the point that I was loosing a quart oil in with a tank of gas.
Since the water pump is driven by the timing belt, it too was replaced. I had the timing belt and components replaced a few months ago, and it seemed good, with no oil on the belt despite all of the leaks.
Once everything was back together, the car was running great despite a few leaks I had to go back and fix. The second time around the engine was running, but had no power. I was one notch off on the timing. Fixed that, and all that was left was to adjust the ignition timing. I got the distributor set to as close to 10 BTDC that I could. Car runs great with decent power. Plan on driving it a bit, then changing the oil again soon.
Anyways, thanks to everyone who replied to my post! Hopefully I kept another 91 Camry on the road. The total cost: around $520 in parts, with some labor to the machine shop that rebuilt the head.
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