Hello guys, very glad to have found this forum, so that I can post my problem and have it seen by people who seem to really have a clue about this stuff.
I ride Toyota-Avalon made in Japan, 1995 (right steering), 1MZ-FE. Its mileage is 93205 miles. I Recently, I noticed some oil around the PCV valve and on the hose, connecting it to the intake manifold. Remembering a little periodic vibration at idle rotation (with a period of about 5 seconds, really hard to notice, but still noticeable), I thought the valve had passed away. So I decided to take it out and clean. I bought a bottle of Hi-Gear carb cleaner. Then, the real pain began. First I tried to take the hose off the valve. But the hose rubber at its end got so tough, that I couldn't remove it. Then I took pliers and tried to remove the vave using them, and... the upper part of the valve was torn off... Obviously the oil and time destroyed the valve's plastic and grommet. I could see a spring and ball inside it. I got really upset about the fact, but decided, I should remove the rest of the valve, still sitting in the grommet. I took the visible part by the pliers and tried to move it from side to side to have it out, but instead the valve EXPLODED in the pliers, throwing its pieces all over the engine compartment. The spring and the ball also left in an unknown direction
. So what I had in the end, was the grommet with a part of the valve sitting in it (the way one couldn't even catch it by pliers or anything else and remove from the grommet), and the black hole - the gate to the dark depth of the valve compartment. I called myself a whole bunch of words beginning with f... The fact that pisses me off is that the plastic pieces of the valve could well have got into the engine through the hole in the valve cover. Also, I couldn't find the spring and the ball anywhere around. So, here are the questions.
1. Is it a really VERY bad thing, that some plastic pieces could get into the valve cover hole? I don't like the idea of removing the intake plenum to reach the valve cover to open it and find nothing there... Not to add buying a gasket for the cover and the plenum
. I know on some engines there is no direct access from the valve hole to the moving parts, there is some thing installed to prevent oil from being thrown out through the hole outside. What is the construction of the valve cover on 1MZ-FE in this sense?
2. Is it ok to run the engine without the valve, e.g. to put some cylindric thing into the hole and the hose and ride the car waiting for the valve to be delivered from Japan (yeah, that's the only way to get it...)
Thanks in advance for your attention and any help would be appreciated.
From Russia with love
It worked fine until I fixed it! 
Linear Mode
