Worn valve stem seals

I have a 1997 Camry with 157,000km (98,000 miles) on the clock. When I start the car after it's been sitting overnight I get a huge puff of blue smoke from the exhaust. There'e enough smoke for it to be embarrassing if anyone's around, but apart from the initial startup in the morning it doesn't smoke at all. Between the six-monthly oil changes the level on the dip stick hardly moves. It seems silly spending money on repairing the seals if oil consumption isn't a problem, but I was thinking of adding an oil additive designed for worn engines next time I change the oil. Has anyone tried this before? Recommendations for or against? I'm also going to change from 10W-30 to 15W-40 oil. That in itself may help.

Reply to
sd
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I heard that adding Lucas Heavy Duty Oil Stabilizer will reduce the morning smoke puff. Can someone comment about this please (Daniel perhaps?)

Reply to
Car Guy

Stick with the 10-30 oil in the winter but switch to one of the "high mileage" type oils like Pennzoil makes for older cars. Works by slightly swelling the seals to stop the leaks. Stopped my 97 smoking at 80,000 miles, now it is past 170,000 miles with no smoke on startup. There may be just an additive you can add to your oil to swell the seals too, check around.

Reply to
ROBMURR

OK, the dilema you'll see is the catalytic converter will become plugged up. In the eman time, you have a slow degredation of power, soon, it wil barely run under any load. The cat is right on the manifold. The burnt oil burning will plug it up quickly. Its about $700 just for the cat and no aftermarkets are available. SO any money saved on stem seals will go toward the cat. Might as well do just the seals now. Yoy already may have a plugged cat.

Reply to
MDT Tech®

I had the same problem with the 1997 Camry when I bought it from the dealer with 60,000 miles. Since it was still under the 90 day warranty they did an engine overhaul and changed the piston rings, rocker arms(?), and valve stem seals.

It didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling to see thsi car's engine shot when I bought it, but the dealer did me right by fixing it all with no expense to me.

My 1994 Camry had lots of smoke at startup but it became cured by changing the PCV valve.

Reply to
badgolferman

The cat was removed when I had performance exhaust headers installed. There's no legal requirement for the cat in NZ.

The climate down here is moderate. Some winters there might be the odd night where the air temperature drops to -10 degrees Celsius (+14 degrees Fahrenheit) and the owner's manual shows that 15W-40 oil safely covers this temperature range.

Reply to
sd

That's been my experience. Had completely forgotten about the smoke on cold start. I haven't seen a trace of smoke on start for the last 30,000 miles since I began using the Lucas. Also ran one treatment of auto-rx first. I hesitate to even mention additives because so many are opposed - and for good reason. Several have been forced by the FTC to cease false advertising. You can still pay lots of money for plain mineral oil - re branded - which can actually damage the engine. The Lucas products do not contain solvents that swell the seals, but instead coat the internal parts. They also do not contain any PFTE. Some have speculated that the Lucas product is simply 50 weight "bright" petroleum. Others have suggested simply using a heavier weight conventional oil. At the concentration recommended, the overall viscosity at operating temperature is raised only marginally, yet the parts are coated at cold start. I do not believe this is true with conventional oil, since I run 20W-50 in an older truck, and I don't see the same phenomenon occurring where the oil clings to cold parts rather than all settling in the oil pan over night. I think the Toyota four valve dual overhead cam design with the centrally located spark plug and lifters that generally never need adjustment is really well engineered, but I've heard of people actually replacing the valve seals with new, and then having the smoke on start return again later.

Reply to
Daniel M. Dreifus

I would not worrry about the oil plugging the catalytic converter. That thing runs so hot that it will burn off anything as long as you allow it to get up to temp most every time you drive the vehicle. I had a Saturn that regularly burned 1 qt of oil per 1k miles. After

120k miles, the catalytic converter still worked. So this little puff of smoke is not going to kill you. It may look ugly, but I would not worry too much about it.

Scot

Reply to
Scot

While this experience may have been just plain bad luck I'd like to mention a guy at work who has shot stem seals on a Falcon 6cyl (3.3L inline). He drove it like this for a couple of years until it lost compression in one cylinder. He took the head of (aluminium cross-flow) and found the inlet valve burnt on one cylinder.

What apparently happened was a piece of carbon from the morning oil-burn on start-up became loose and lodged under the i/let valve's lip. Inlet valves are not subject to the same heat as exhaust and this only made it worse,..the clump of carbon stayed there until the hot gases on the power-stroke caused the valve lip to warp.

So maybe it is a good idea to repair the seals. My old 351cleveland had no seals ( simple 'umbrella seals', they went hard and broke off) and it too lost power on one lung altho I didnt strip it down to see why.

Jason

Reply to
Jason James

Reply to
Devils Advocate

At best they are viscosity improvers, something which can be achieved by using heavier oil. Seals that have hardened (and I mean hardened, like stone in my '96 Camry) aren't likely to improve.

Jason

Reply to
Jason James

My 94 has leaky seals also...I have a replacement engine from an Avalon which had 60,000 miles when installed. I recently paid about $500 to de-sludge the engine, but I do not attribute this to Lucas, which I have used much over the three years of owning the car. I still have a puff of smoke after driving at highway speeds for over 50 miles and parking the car for a couple of hours or more. Lucas has not solved this issue. Their rack-and-pinion stop leak works like a charm, though.

Reply to
drumpaul

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