**98 camry blue smoke**

valve guides. =========== answering your question was easy. what to do about it is less simple. Most mechanics will tell you to replace the valve guide seals. Some people will tell you that blue smoke means you have engine sludge which is a larger problem, but if the symptom is only on cold start, I call it valve guide seals. To my mind, the Toyota design for dual overhead cams is actually quite brilliant. There are four valves per cylinder. In the early days, adding those extra valves were roughly the equivalent of turbo charging the engine in terms of power increase over two valves. Plus the valves are smaller and lighter so they can rev higher, and the lower reciprocating mass means less wear on the valve train. Because the camshaft is operating directly over the valves, no rocker arms are required, and the force is directly vertical, so valve guide wear is minimal since there is no "rocking" motion. However, there is a puddle of oil on top of the heads directly over the valves, so when they sit over night, a small amount can seep past the valve guide seals, hence you see the blue cloud of smoke on cold start. Some people say just ignore it since you're not burning any significant amount of oil and the repair can be expensive. The best way to do the repair is to force compressed air into the cylinders to hold the valves closed so the seals can be replaced without removing the head. The down side to the puff of smoke on cold start is that it tends to foul the O2 sensor and catalytic converter with oil fumes. Although the effect is small it can be cumulative. Generally speaking, regarding all oil seals, they last longer when the oil is kept clean, although the valve guide seals are a commonly known weak point. Your Camry runs slightly hotter than my '94, but at 140,000 miles I have zero oil smoke on cold start, whereas when I bought the car with

85,000 miles I used to get quite a cloud of it in the mornings. Here's what I did. First, not trusting the prior owner's oil change schedule (although they had copious records from day one) I changed the oil more frequently. Sometimes after 500 miles, or even one week. I was experimenting with different oils like Valvoline and Toyota brand. Then reading about the benefits of fully synthetic oil, switched to Mobil 1, 10W30. Then I read about auto-rx at auto-rx.com, so switched back to conventional oil, added the auto-rx, drove 500 miles mostly on the freeway, drained it out, and put the synthetic back in, also adding 20 per cent, Lucas heavy duty oil stabilizer. Recently I've switched to Mobil 1 5W30. The car uses negligible amounts of oil and I haven't seen that blue cloud of smoke on cold start for years. Read once someone had the valve guide seals changed, and apx. year and a half later the symptoms returned.

Worn valve stem seals.

I'd imagine it could be bad piston rings too. With the logic being they are allowing oil to blow by until the expand from the heat. But I'd probably suspect the valves first too.

If we are talking about the V6, don't overlook the problem of clogged baffles in the Valve covers. That forces oil into the intake manifold causing the blue smoke.

Toyota recognizes this problem and has redesigned valve covers to replace the originals. Replacing the valve covers is cheaper and easier than trying to clean the baffles.

Merritt

Blue smoke after parking for a while usually means leaking valve stem seals. But don't ignore the more serious engine sludge problem, now that you are at the end of the 8-year extended warranty.

switch to a high mileage oil and that will swell the valve seals and stop the smoke. may take a couple of oil changes but cheapest solution.