3rd & 4th Generation (1992–1996 & 1997–2001)Toyota Camry Discussion for years: 1992-1996 & 1997-2001
Topics of discussion range from fuel economy, safety, modifications, performance all involving America's favorite family car, the Toyota Camry.
Oh No! Oil puddling in two cylinders of V6--happened suddenly under moderate power
2000 Camry, 1MZ-FE six cylinder, 90,000 miles. I gave it an oil change a few days ago, nothing unusual. Old oil maybe a bit dirty, but I run Castrol Syntec 0w30 so it's good oil.
So I was pulling out of a driveway and speeding up to cross three lanes of traffic and make a quick U-turn. It was wet and the tires were slipping a bit but nothing crazy. All of a sudden the car started vibrating like I had popped a tire or something. It was weird.
Anyway I continued on my u-turn, swerved a bit, tires & suspension seemed fine, so the vibration seemed then more like a miss. But it was definitely more than one cylinder. So I headed straight home, maybe 1 mile away.
I was being optimistic--pulled the timing belt cover--maybe slipped a tooth? Nope. Checked the motor mounts, nothing crazy.
Pulled all three front spark plugs. Left two (passenger side) were soaked with oil. Looking down the holes, leftmost one had a serious puddle of oil in it, middle one wet but could still see tip of piston. Driver's side plug dry.
So of course my biggest fear is a hole in a piston or broken ring. But how would the oil migrate to the next cylinder over (through the intake/exhaust?)?
Other source of oil is valve guide, but that's not usually sudden. Also seems like waaaay too much oil for that. Unless it's puddling up in the head.
The only other thing I can think of is a head gasket.
I am about to go examine the manuals for the gen4 and 1MZ-FE, but I wanted to run it by you guys first. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before--sudden catastrophic failure resulting in lots of oil in the combustion chambers. It went from running fine to missing on two cylinders in an instant.
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Green Camry R.I.P.
Black Camry R.I.P.
0w oil is a bit light, I use 10w and I think the 1mz calls for 10w as well. My bet is your spark plug tube gaskets are leaking and when you went to pull the plugs the oil seeped into the combustion chamber and onto the plug. If oil were leaking into the combustion chamber like that you would be smoking a lot.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tony the Tiger
I mod my Camry because I am too cheap to go out and buy a real sports car
1992 Camry XLE v6: p&p + 3angle, CAI, y pipe, K-Sport coilovers, 5-speed swap
1996 Eagle Talon TSI AWD: IPT 3700 restall, DSMlink v3, HKS exhaust, ETS street fmic kit
0w oil is a bit light, I use 10w and I think the 1mz calls for 10w as well. My bet is your spark plug tube gaskets are leaking and when you went to pull the plugs the oil seeped into the combustion chamber and onto the plug. If oil were leaking into the combustion chamber like that you would be smoking a lot.
I appreciate your input.
The engine calls for 5w30 with 10w30 allowed at higher operating temperatures. The first (w) number can never be too low. I highly recommend this page for anyone who has any oil-related concerns:
It is time to dispel the notion that 0W-30 oil is too thin when our manual calls for 10W-30. A 0W-30 is always the better choice, always. The 0W-30 is not thinner. It is the same thickness as the 10W-30 at operating temperatures. The difference is when you turn your engine off for the night. Both oils thicken over the evening and night. They both had a thickness, a viscosity of 10 when you got home and turned your engine off. That was the perfect thickness for engine operation.
As cooling occurs and you wake up ready to go back to work the next day the oils have gotten too thick for your engine to lubricate properly. It is 75 F outside this morning. One oil thickened to a viscosity of say 90. The other thickened to a viscosity of 40. Both are too thick in the morning at startup. But 40 is better than 90. Your engine wants the oil to have a thickness of 10 to work properly. You are better off starting with the viscosity of 40 than the honey - like oil with a viscosity of 90.
I repeat: More confusion occurs because people think in terms of the oil thinning when it gets hot. They think this thinning with heat is the problem with motor oil. It would be more correct to think that oil thickens when it cools to room temperature and THIS is the problem. In fact this is the problem.
But enough about oil. The oil got into the combustion chamber independently of the spark plug tubes. The engine does indeed smoke, and whatever happened happened in an instant while driving under moderate power.
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Green Camry R.I.P.
Black Camry R.I.P.
What he's trying to say is if you drove about a mile after the major hesitation occured, you would've noticed your engine billowing out copious amounts of blue smoke all the way home, but you didn't mention that in your first post, so we assume the oil got in the chamber after you pulled out the plug.
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Restoring '65 Chevy Impala Super Sport w/ 327-300 small block, Edelbrock carb/intake and T-5 tranny that will probably blow up.
Black '98 Camry LE 4Cyl Auto, 188 000Kms and counting
Black '98 Camry CE 4Cyl Auto, 295 000Kms and counting - SOLD
Interesting about the oil, yeah I'm one of those guys that just pours in whatever the manufacturer calls for
Well if it happened in a hard turn you could have run your oil pickup dry, but I would think you'd have a nice rod knock if that were the case.
Blowby isn't going to pool oil in the cylinders, it has to be coming from the head... Just gonna have to keep on with the diagnosis, a compression check is definitely in order.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tony the Tiger
I mod my Camry because I am too cheap to go out and buy a real sports car
1992 Camry XLE v6: p&p + 3angle, CAI, y pipe, K-Sport coilovers, 5-speed swap
1996 Eagle Talon TSI AWD: IPT 3700 restall, DSMlink v3, HKS exhaust, ETS street fmic kit
What he's trying to say is if you drove about a mile after the major hesitation occured, you would've noticed your engine billowing out copious amounts of blue smoke all the way home, but you didn't mention that in your first post, so we assume the oil got in the chamber after you pulled out the plug.
Well I didn't notice it driving home. I was not paying attention to that, I was basically listening to the engine and trying to figure out what the vibration was.
Once I got it home and had a friend start it up I noticed the smoke.
Also, being a synthetic, it has a much much higher flash point, so there's going to be MUCH less smoke then if I had dino oil in there. Plus the smoke is white and doesn't have that "burning oil" smell, thus some of the optimism, but I stuck a thin ratchet extension into the chamber and it's oil alright.
There is a knocking in the engine, to me it wasn't distinguishable from the normal sounds a missing engine makes, but I think I am being overly optimistic.
I'll have to do a compression test tomorrow. I am pretty much grasping for straws as far as hoping it's not a problem in the reciprocating assembly.
Anyone know how much a new 1MZ-FE goes for?
I think it's time to go car shopping.
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Green Camry R.I.P.
Black Camry R.I.P.
Blowby isn't going to pool oil in the cylinders, it has to be coming from the head.
Even with a broken piston ring?
As I said, it's two adjacent cylinders, so I am holding out hope for a failed head gasket but to me that's far fetched when there's no sign of coolant leakage. Plus the suddenness makes me think a ring broke, or a piston got damaged.
The other thing is, how would one distinguish between a broken piston/ring and a blown head gasket with a compression test?
I'm thinking about starting the engine with those two spark plugs out just for the hell of watching oil spray everywhere and perhaps to help diagnosis.
Argh.
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Green Camry R.I.P.
Black Camry R.I.P.
Plus the smoke is white and doesn't have that "burning oil" smell...
White smoke usually indicates coolant is getting into your combusion chamber, so I'd agree with your guess that it might be a head gasket. The fact that it's two adjacent cylinders strengthens that as a possibility. The coolant leak could be small enough it would take a while for the coolant overflow reservoir to show a loss. Also, it seems unlikely to me that two cylinders would suffer a broken ring or burnt piston at the same time.
Were the plugs fouled much? In my experience, coolant fouling shows up as white crusty stuff. But that usually takes a while to build up enough to be evident. Since your problem just happened, you might not see that.
I suspect the oil in your spark plug wells is unrelated to the miss-firing cylinders.
Just my 2 cents.
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1992 Camry LE, V6 (3VZ-FE), ABS brakes, 326k miles, dark emerald pearl, owned since new.
1996 Avalon XLS, ABS brakes, moonroof, white, acquired w/ 139k miles, now at 257k.
2001 Yamaha FZ1, Ivan's jet kit, resprung all around, Ohlins in the rear, Race Tech cartridge emulators in the forks, 45k miles.
Since my last post I have done research that indicates that synthetic oil smokes white rather than blue.
I may not have explained myself very well so I'll go over some of the stuff again.
I probably should have mentioned this before--I am a fairly experienced mechanic--did it for a living for 3 years about 10 years ago and just do all my own stuff now. I know what coolant in the exhaust smells like and it's not coolant.
The oil is not in my spark plug wells. It is in the combustion chamber. The empty spark plug hole is simply my only view into the combustion chamber.
I must stress that when I look down the spark plug hole, there is clearly a puddle of liquid on the piston on the leftmost front cylinder. I stuck a ratchet extension down there and it's definitely oil. Nice, clean oil since it's only a few days since my last oil change.
So there is definitely lots and lots of oil in the combustion chamber. Of this there can be no doubt. Is there also coolant? Perhaps a small amount, but not enough to make the sickly sweet tailpipe smell.
The plugs are oily. Imagine if the part that sticks into the combustion chamber were dipped into oil, and then lightly spritzed with gasoline. I only add the last part cos they smell like gas, for reasons that I hope are obvious.
On the leftmost spark plug, there is enough oil that it's bridging 2 out of the 4 electrodes. On the middle cylinder, it's just wet with oil.
Sorry for not explaining myself well. After reading over my first post I see it looks like the oil is in the spark plug tubes. It's not. It's in the combustion chambers.
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Green Camry R.I.P.
Black Camry R.I.P.
Compression test wont tell you whether it's the head gasket or the pistons, just that there is little or no compression. Its starting to sound like a head gasket...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tony the Tiger
I mod my Camry because I am too cheap to go out and buy a real sports car
1992 Camry XLE v6: p&p + 3angle, CAI, y pipe, K-Sport coilovers, 5-speed swap
1996 Eagle Talon TSI AWD: IPT 3700 restall, DSMlink v3, HKS exhaust, ETS street fmic kit
The other thing is, how would one distinguish between a broken piston/ring and a blown head gasket with a compression test?
A leakdown test would tell you if/where it's losing compression. If you hear lots of air escaping from the dipstick tube when testing the two cylinders that have oil in them, then there's problem with the rings or pistons...valve stem seals wouldn't account for the amount of oil you saw in the cylinders. Testing the front three wouldn't be expensive, but you'd have to remove the plenum to test the rears.
Well I did a compression test, and for cylinder 1, the needle didn't really move. Middle cylinder, it oscillated but didn't stick (?) same for the driver's side one. I followed the gauge instructions and the last time I used it, it worked fine.
Anyway I went with the lower-tech approach. I had my friend turn over the engine while I held my hand over the spark plug holes. I could feel similarly light puffs on the right and middle cylinders, nothing on the affected cylinder.
A while later I put everything back together to see if I could get it to run and it will. Smoke BILLOWS out the exhaust and there's a stochastic rattling noise near the affected cylinder. It sounds like something is rattling around in there. Probably a piece of piston ring. I stuck a small magnet in there and I couldn't get anything.
Anyway the car runs but I am afraid it's terminal. So I might be putting it up for sale on this forum for someone to mod or whatever.
j
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Green Camry R.I.P.
Black Camry R.I.P.
Ah, thanks. That's much clearer. I didn't know synth oil burned white; good to know, thanks!
Yeah, it doesn't sound like you've got a coolant leak. Are there any oil passages thru the head gasket to deliver oil to the valve train???
Yes, the head gasket seals oil passages. I'll see if I can find a picture. There is one set between each cylinder pair, right next to the head bolt holes.
It also encompasses the big oil drain triangle back down the block.
Unfortunately the chances of breaching that seal and nothing else are, well, disappointingly low.
I wonder if my problem is related to the notorious sludge issue. I think I will have my dealer take a look at it. The engine is from the date range Toyota publishes.
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Green Camry R.I.P.
Black Camry R.I.P.
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