Surprise in the head

[toyomania]

Have a 94 Camry 4cyl that was running rough. It turned out that there was no compression in the #3 cylinder. Pulled the cylinder head to find one of the exhaust valve seats was completely gone and had smashed the piston and head! Has anyone else encountered this same problem? I took the head to a machine shop and they said that they would have to mill off too much material and I needed a used/new head. I figure that the top piston ring is smashed between the lands and the car will start to use oil in the future, so I'm going to part it out. The car only had 108,000 miles. This is starting to change my optomistic view on the newer Toyota products if the engines give out this early. The car had regular service and maintenance!

[Creeps228]

you just had a bad exprience, im going on to 106k miles, my car is still running fine. You just cant say things about toyotas like that, many people here on TN have many more miles than me and they havent experienced any problems

[Curry]

Both my camrys are in top condition... well the other one is dead since i picked it clean. But that had 250k and my project turbo cam has 121K (hopefully more left after the turbo goes in). Our 4runner is also doing great with around 40k on it. (bought brand new)

Don't let one bad experience change your mind!

[Venom_5]

132k miles and no engine problems!

[but everything else is goin to shit ... but thats because it lived in FL with my mother & grandmother from 1995 to 2003 ... which gave it a bit of wear ... but now its mine and i take care of that baby!]

[Toysrme]

Well something was wrong with it.
Why would you part it out? Go buy a used engine out of a junkyard for like $110-140, put it in & sell the car, or continue to drive it.
Honestly what do you think an old Camry is worth parted out? Not too much. Plus you're left with doing all the work over along period of time, and the shell of the car.

[toyomania]

My plan was to sell the entire car to someone that needs the transmission or other parts. I don't have a lot of money into it, and the time/labor to replace the entire engine/transmission is more than I want to spend to fix it up. I agree that this would be a good car for someone that has the time to invest in it, but that's not me. I'm going to run an ad in some of the local online sites here and see if there is any interest.
As far as Toyotas go, I had a 82 Supra that I had 175K on the odometer that had no issues except for standard mainenace items. The only reason it didn't make it over 200k was that it was stolen. It didn't burn any oil and ran like a top. I was surprised when this happened, maybe this was a fluke.

[aussie_gen1]

Did you own it from new? Maybe the previous owner over-reved it or something.
Not sure how a valve seat could break, maybe it's just one of those things...

[ToyCam187]

Sorry to hear, throw in a new used engine.
It should run a bit more.
I have 124,000 and the v6 is still purring

[ASG14]

My old '92 5SFE was sold with 190k beat to crap, lack of care, no maintmence miles. It still ran good when sold.

My current '96 1MZ has 99k miles, and is driven harder then an F1 car on raceday.

Previous owner likely did something.

[Dragon877]

my 94 4 cyl has 153k and runs quiet like a new car sorry to hear bout your bad experience though...so you gonna buy yourself another car now?