1999 Camry Oil Pan and Valve Cover Gasket Replacement

[stephenson]

1999 Camry 2.2

Car has 124K – bought it with 100K about four years ago. Records indicated moderate care, but couldn’t tell much about oil changes. Immediately did full fluids changes – oil, trans, coolant. Synthetics for oil and trans.

We watched a small oil leak develop about two years ago, but since it is son’s car and not driven much as he is at school, we waited to look further into it. It initially appeared to be near the rear edge of the passenger side pan so we figured it was the pan gasket, but since so small didn’t do anything about it. We examined the valve cover gasket area and didn’t see much, but it is hard to examine effectively due to the angle and intake manifold.

Had time recently to look into it further – examined the pan area, again, and it just didn’t seem to be coming from there … looked carefully up towards the intake manifold – oil appeared to be hanging on the ends of some bolts, that were just below the valve cover gasket area. So, back up to the valve cover.
Pulled the valve cover and found: spark plugs likely original, gasket extremely brittle – with cracks running all the way through – possible culprit, and incredible amounts of gunk/sludge on the head and cam attaching caps and bolts (the only other time I had seen this much gunk was on a straight 6 Jeep engine that appeared to have never had the oil changed).

So, after reading lots of posts relating same observations and what was done, we carefully scraped the gunk off of everything in the head (using small straight slot screw driver and holding shop vac to suction gunk – took about an hour, then covered rest of engine and blew the top of the head and cam areas out with compressed air with a narrow wand), then replaced the valve cover gasket and plug tube seals, cleaned the plugs (they looked good, otherwise, with no gunk or oil on them – good color, too – plus they were $12 apiece in dual tip platinum), used RTV in the right spots, and put back together.

Next step was to pull pan, even though I didn’t think this was the leak issue. I was concerned about gunk/sludge being there, as well. Removed the two piece metal support bracket at the apex of the curved lead pipe just in front of the flex coupling, then further back removed the support bracket with rubber suspension, then the three downpipe to exhaust manifold nuts (what really happened was that I rushed the process by not giving the PB Blaster enough TIME to work and instead of removing the three nuts, I removed two nuts and one nut/stud combination … at this point I should have simply reinstalled in reserve order, but I, instead, removed the nut from the stud in a vice, screwing up the threads on both ends – so, got another 10mm X 1.25 pitch stud), then the two bolts facing toward the engine on the stiffener plate (the plate rotates far enough out the way on the bolt to clear plan).

Then, pull the exhaust pipe towards the driver side and tie back out of the way. One last thing to remove was the foam rubber separator between engine and transmission – this was a weird item I had not encountered on other manufacturer vehicles – not sure why it’s there, but there has to be a reason – resonance, vibration, ???

Drained the oil, then removed the pan bolts (and two nuts on the positioning studs) and carefully separated the pan from the block. The pan looked better than the valve area, but still not nearly as clean as I would have expected after running M1 in it for four years.

Decided to use a gasket (I know this is an arguable decision) and RTV’d both sides and reinstalled. Note: I recommend dry running this part several times – without the RTV in place – it’s a tight fit with about three different motions required. It you remove the third of the three stiffener bolts and the bracket itself, it would probably make it easier – I probably would do this if I had to do it over.

Following the logic of several folks on TN, decided to use cheap oil (non-syn and change quickly to help get the leftover gunk out of the system, and change it a couple of times, so filled back up (used same filter since will be changing it in a few hundred miles).

End state: engine appears to run smoother (probably due to cleaning plugs), and don’t see any oil leaks. I think we do have a power steering fluid leak (appears to be dark brown and different smell). This is different than the initial leak since it very tiny, whereas other lead was much greater in volume.

We’re gonna change oil soon – will update.

Tried to add photos, but don't think I am allowed to do so.

[Kenny_McCormic]

Perhaps a full blown seafoam treatment is in order?

[stephenson]

Hi Kenny,

I was gonna post some photos for context, but doesn't look like I have photo attachment privs.

Re Seafoam, while I have read literally hundreds of posts re Seafoam, I'm not yet convinced that it is a reasonable thing to do ... it doesn't sound like it hurts anything, but not sure I'm convinced of the technical merit. I may just not fully understand how it does what some claim it does.

I'll do some more reading and educate myself!

Thanks!