94 camry v4 is having bad mpg

[aoe_mp]

i have been driving my 1994 camry v4 with 15 mpg. at first i thought it was the pcv valve cause i saw it was leaking. so i changed pcv valve hose, valve, and the pcv valve grommet. the valve was doing fine. the hose was just old. grommet was not in one piece and that was it leak.

the mpg is still not getting any better after i finish all that.

inspection result HC 0.04, CO 2.4, NOx 0.32.

[LynchburgCSI]

Originally Posted by aoe_mp

i have been driving my 1994 camry v4 with 15 mpg. at first i thought it was the pcv valve cause i saw it was leaking. so i changed pcv valve hose, valve, and the pcv valve grommet. the valve was doing fine. the hose was just old. grommet was not in one piece and that was it leak.

the mpg is still not getting any better after i finish all that.

inspection result HC 0.04, CO 2.4, NOx 0.32.

pet peeve of mine: no such thing at a V4 engine. It's an inline 4... I4.



Maybe it's time to look into cleaning out the throttle body (seafoam)?

[ASG14]

^ Saab Sonet, V4.

As Lynch said, try seafoam. Some people who have run it through the vacuum line have gained 2x the mpg.

[Oldcar95]

Try the changing the air filter, spark plugs, dist cap, dist rotor and spark plug wires. Also clean the throttle body. Take a look at your air pressure in your tires. A timing belt change could be due, check when the last time it was done. You may want to do a flush of the ATF. Your brakes could be hanging up but look at the brakes if the rest does not help. Also look at your driving style, hard take offs and fast stops will lower MPG.
Let us know what you have done, we may have other ideas. I have 1995 4 cyl with 214000, MPG in the summer was 32 (80% highway) pure city was 26 MPG. Those are numbers to shoot for.
There are self help tutorials at the start of the Gen3/4 section you may like to look at.

[LynchburgCSI]

Originally Posted by ASG14

^ Saab Sonet, V4.

As Lynch said, try seafoam. Some people who have run it through the vacuum line have gained 2x the mpg.

Eff you, Adam...stupid Saab.

[LynchburgCSI]

Originally Posted by Oldcar95

Try the changing the air filter, spark plugs, dist cap, dist rotor and spark plug wires. Also clean the throttle body. Take a look at your air pressure in your tires. A timing belt change could be due, check when the last time it was done. You may want to do a flush of the ATF. Your brakes could be hanging up but look at the brakes if the rest does not help. Also look at your driving style, hard take offs and fast stops will lower MPG.
Let us know what you have done, we may have other ideas. I have 1995 4 cyl with 214000, MPG in the summer was 32 (80% highway) pure city was 26 MPG. Those are numbers to shoot for.
There are self help tutorials at the start of the Gen3/4 section you may like to look at.

^ seafoam and spark plugs first. in that order.

[hill8570]

Originally Posted by aoe_mp

i have been driving my 1994 camry v4 with 15 mpg. at first i thought it was the pcv valve cause i saw it was leaking. so i changed pcv valve hose, valve, and the pcv valve grommet. the valve was doing fine. the hose was just old. grommet was not in one piece and that was it leak.

the mpg is still not getting any better after i finish all that.

inspection result HC 0.04, CO 2.4, NOx 0.32.

inspection @ idle? Hope you meant HC 2.4 (ppm) CO 0.04 (%), not the other way around. Otherwise, you got issues...

What kind of driving pattern are you doing when you get this mileage? How are you determining mileage?

Any other symptoms other than the poor mileage (black smoke from exhaust, funny idle, e.g., much higher or lower than ~775rpm, poor acceleration, temperature gauge much higher / lower than middle of the range, etc.)?

[aoe_mp]

it says on my inspection receipt

emissions HC CO NOx
test limits 0.80 15.0 2.00
test results 0.04 2.4 0.32

its 99000 milesage.


it does have a couple symptoms. 1) poor acceleration, 2) funny idle like shaking, but once its running it doesn't shake.

my camry only run up to 300 miles whenever i have a full tank.

[aoe_mp]

intake hose was crack.
search on ebay.
even tho the item sku# same as what the stupid camry book says, but from the picture on ebay showed those 2 small little holes at left and right side are in different locations.
anyway, ordered intake hose from ebay.
took old one out, putted new one in.
if facing the engine, because the holes located in different locations. the left hose was not long enough to connect to intake hose.
had to get an extra hose to extend it and connect it to intake hose.

job done

[sintox]

I hope you good people don't mind I jump in with related questions:
I saw PartSource selling a small tube called "dielectric grease".

Can I smear that stuff on the distrib. rotor tip where it makes contacts with the 4 contacts (going to the 4 ignition wires) ?
Will it improve or worsen the "electrical contact" ?

My warm idle is right at the 1000 (or 999) mark. I wonder how to bring it down.

It could very well be unrelated but it seems happen a few weeks after I hooked the black-wire (tach signal) (on the Diag.terminal-box) to my remote-starter.

[aoe_mp]

i never heard of seafoam before, so i did my homework for seafoam. it looks like a good stuff, but there is a leak back of my engine. plus, my engine is old and do has small leaking. i was thinking if the carbons are out, the engine would leak more. so i asked a friend about my camry. he recommanded me to stop the leak first. i am not 100% sure where the leak is coming from, but i do see dry oil at back of the engine. so i went online to do some more homework. and this is what i found:

" There are two possible causes for this oil leak at the rear of the engine, one is that the engine oil pan may be leaking or the engine rear main oil seal,I would recommend having an flourescent dye added to the engine oil to pinpoint the leak, a rear engine main seal replacement is very expensive( the transmission has to be removed) I would also recommend having an expert technician visually check it after adding the dye, the leak is located using an infrared light. "


is it the right way to do it? and about how much money is going to cost?

[djb2]

Dielectric grease insulates. It's usually used to keep water from electrical connections. You might use it around the spark plug boots and on electrical connectors.

Nothing good will come from putting it on the rotor or distributor cap internal posts. While it's a high temperature grease, the very high heat from the sparks will break it down into conductive carbon that will coat the inside of the cap. Some designs recommend a tiny dab where the rotor makes contact with a metal center contact, but grease shouldn't be applied to a carbon center contact.

Fluorescent dye in the oil is used with a UV light, not infrared. UV LED flashlights are now cheap on FleaBay. Cheap UV LEDs are at the edge of visible violet, but their directionality makes up for not being the deep "black" UV from a tube light.

The idle speed is computer controlled, not mechanically controlled.

[carsrus]

Originally Posted by aoe_mp

i never heard of seafoam before, so i did my homework for seafoam. it looks like a good stuff, but there is a leak back of my engine. plus, my engine is old and do has small leaking. i was thinking if the carbons are out, the engine would leak more. so i asked a friend about my camry. he recommanded me to stop the leak first. i am not 100% sure where the leak is coming from, but i do see dry oil at back of the engine. so i went online to do some more homework. and this is what i found:

" There are two possible causes for this oil leak at the rear of the engine, one is that the engine oil pan may be leaking or the engine rear main oil seal,I would recommend having an flourescent dye added to the engine oil to pinpoint the leak, a rear engine main seal replacement is very expensive( the transmission has to be removed) I would also recommend having an expert technician visually check it after adding the dye, the leak is located using an infrared light. "


Check your valve cover gasket and distributor o ring gasket for leak. There both easy to do with the diy's on this site and are realllly cheap.

The oil pan is underneath so it woudlent leak at the top. If the backside of your block is wet with oil its probably the valve cover, distributor o ring or both.


is it the right way to do it? and about how much money is going to cost?