2004 Camry 2.4L Engine Issues - Toyota Nation Forum : Toyota Car and Truck Forums

MHuitt · 08-19-2011, 08:01 PM

LONG READ, but I hope most of it is relevant.

Greetings all, I am currently in the process of repairing my mother's 2004 Camry LE with the 2AZ-FE 2.4L 4 cylinder. A couple of months ago, she was driving home from church and the serpentine belt blew (at exactly 100,000 miles,) and it took the tensioner with it. I had them both replaced. However, when the belt blew, it took the coolant temp sender with it (gauge.) Well, she was driving a week or so later, and heard a "tick, stutter, or flutter" while at consistent highway speeds. She pulled over, killed the engine and let it sit for 20 or so minutes. She then tried to start it, with no luck. The engine turns over very freely and smooth. When I arrived (more than an hour later), there was liquid all over the engine, I'm unsure if it was oil or discolored antifreeze. The head gasket and valve cover gasket were in tact, with no leaks. At the time, I reached to take the oil cap off, and it was still scorching hot.

I had it towed to my mechanic and he said the engine is scrap. There is no compression. So I let it sit. Well, I have quite a bit of free time now so I decided I'll start a take-down on the engine.

I took the valve cover off to see if the cams + timing chain were in tact, they are. All the valves are opening and closing. The cylinders are pumping air (all of them,) but until Monday I have no way to check for accurate compression.

I have an OBD-II reader, and I pulled some codes.

0117 - Engine Coolant Temp Circuit Low
0327 - Knock Sensor 1 Circuit Low Input
0353 - Ignition Coil C Primary / Secondary circuit malfunction
0354 - Ignition Coil D Primary / Secondary circuit malfunction

I can't check for spark because the battery is drained, and I left my jumper cables at work =(

At least watch the video, as I am at a dead end. Thanks for anyone's help.

You Tube

dorman68 · 08-22-2011, 06:23 AM

Sorry to hear about your troubles. A compression test is in order first, which you stated you are going to perform. If the compression is low in one or all of the cylinders I would pull the head off and have it checked by a machine shop. There could be a few things contributing to low compression; burn valves or seats, bent valves, broken piston or rings. If the valves are bent I would highly suspect your timing components as the chain may have jumped a couple of teeth because of stretching or worn chain guides. If this were my car and I had verified the low compression I would buy a good used salvage engine and save myself the headache of rebuilding the engine - but hey that's just my opinion. Hope this helps.

tbalon · 11-11-2011, 10:34 AM

Nobody noticed the temperature gage or the check engine light before all this happened?

Ok, Let's put our detective hat on and have a go at what happened. Can you check to see if the serpentine belt is routed properly? It sounds like to me that when the serpentine belt was replaced they may not have routed it properly around the water pump. This would have caused the engine to overheat. If it is routed properly then there was a major loss of coolant somewhere in the system causing the overheat condition. Either way the sound you heard was probably pre-detonation or pinging as the engine went into a lean condition as a result of the overheating. The p-codes seem to confirm this as they point to coolant temp, knocking and possible failure of the engine coils as a result of overheating.

Hopefully if this was caught as soon as it started, you may still be able to salvage the engine. You said the engine was still scorching hot even after an hour later.

If it was run too long in this condition, you may have burned the valves or rings resulting in the loss of compression as your mechanic suggested. If this is the case then I second the notion of getting a used engine and swapping it out. You may want to change out your transmission also since it probably was cooked as well.

The compression readings will tell you what you need to do. Check for spark if you are going to try to get it running again.... as the coils are probably bad and need to be replaced. I think on this engine the coils are on the spark plugs if I am not mistaken. Change all fluids oil, tranny, coolant...