Toyota Camry: Worn valve stem seals

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

"sd" <net.nz> wrote in message
news:google.com... 

>I have a 1997 Camry with 157,000km (98,000 miles) on the clock. When I 
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.

sd wrote:
 


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.

--








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sd wrote: 

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.

MDT Tech® <com> wrote in message news:<8yNGb.7028$news.pas.earthlink.net>... 

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.

"Car Guy" <com> wrote in message news:<RnMGb.14131$d%bellglobal.com>... 

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.

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

"sd" <net.nz> wrote in message
news:google.com... 


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