today I'll tell you the truth about a Toyota oil-burning engine in this case
it's in a 2008 rav4 and what it is a 2.4 liter 2AZ FE engine
now what happens is as these engines age they often start to burn some oil it was
a design flaw they basically did not design pistons and the piston rings
correctly and then oil gets burnt because instead of sealing the oil from
the combustion chamber the oil goes by the piston rings and is burnt inside the
engine that's relatively easy to top your engines burning oil it's not
dripping on the ground and using oil just take out a spark plug and you find
the end of the spark plug it's a bunch of built-up carbon that's all hard and
it's starting to clog up the spark plug you got an engine that's burning oil
now when I was a young mechanic Chevrolet made this Vega they had serious oil
burning problems their mistake was they built a car that had a cast aluminum
block but a cast iron had it was kind of a stupid designed to begin with why
would you make one light and the other have you should have made the whole
thing alone but regardless this cast aluminum block and Pistons that went up
and down with piston ring steel piston rings and for some crazy reason the
engineers convinced GM they could spray on the inside of the aluminum block to
keep them from burning oil well fixed didn't last so long sometimes the thing would have
twenty thirty thousand miles on it and it would wear out and they would burning oil
like mad a friend of mine had one we had to put a quart of oil and I think about
every 50 miles of driving it was absurd now Jim only had two real solutions one
you'd have to take the engine apart you'd have to put stainless steel
sleeves inside the block and then put it all back together they should have built
it that way in the first place or just put a cast-iron engine back in and what
some guys did but going back to this Toyota now we got the valve cover off
you can see the timing chain you can see the cam here see it's nice and shiny you
see the oil has been changed a lot in this vehicle there's no sludge or anything but if you
wanted to fix the oil burning you would have to take
the entire head off the engine replaced the piston rings usually the Pistons and
that cost you three to five thousand dollars now the strange thing about this
problem is sometimes Toyota's fixes them for free sometimes they don't I've had
customers had new piston rings new Pistons put in by Toyota for absolutely
nothing they stopped burning oil but I've also
had customers they wouldn't know anything for it say oh it's too high
mileage is too old but really they know it was a design flaw it's not like these
people didn't change their oil regularly as what the Chevy Vegas it was a design
flaw now they don't burn oil as bad as the Vegas dick but for a perfection
company like Toyota kind of annoying to have a Toyota that burns oil especially
if you maintain the vehicle well you change your oil all the time and it
still burns oil it's a design flaw that they should stand behind regardless all
the age or mileage of the car they know they messed up with this particular
engine no they didn't make the block wrong like Chevy did in the Vega this
does have an aluminum block but this has cast-iron cylinder liners so the Pistons
go right up and down on aluminum like they did in the Vega they ride up and
down and cast-iron liners the problem is they didn't make the piston rings and
the Pistons correctly those are the parts that where the main problems are
these four cylinder engines from 2007 to 2009 those are the main ones that really
burn oil they obviously had some kind of production problems from 2007 to 2009
now they don't make these engines anymore but they had a long run they
started in 2000 and the end in 2018 but for the 2007 to 2009 and a lot of
problems not Toyota claims that over 1.7 million of them were made that can have
this problem and they say that they will perform a test on them if they're under
so many years and so many miles to determine if they need to be rebuilt or
not but Toyota never gave any figures on how many they actually rebuilt all these
1.7 million they're not telling us so we have no idea and unfortunately I see
this all the time most car manufacturers they'll put out
some kind of all we screwed up bringing in and we'll check it out and for my
experience nine times out of ten with my own customers they'll say oh that's not
covered out of their warranty that's a different model or that has too many
miles or yada yada yada they're always making excuses now other than the oil
burning it's actually a great engine and since its cast aluminum this one with
cast-iron liners so it's got liners the piston rings where on the piston but
it's not like they blow up like the Chevy Vegas did they didn't have
anything lining them they were just bare aluminum these days will continue to run
but they do burn oil which is a bad thing in a modern car because if you
burn oil it's gonna clog up the catalytic converter then you have to buy
another catalytic converter it'll ruin the oxygen sensors even though it's a
little bit at a time still eventually damages the vehicle and of course if
you're not big on maintaining your car all that well I had a costume of mine
last year and she was never checking oil in her Camry which had the same exact
engine is that when I checked it it only had one half of a quart of oil on a four
and a half quarts in it only at half a quart left when I changed the oil she's
lucky it didn't blow the engine up and I have seen engines blown up in these
things because they ran out of all cuz the people didn't realize they were
burning oil of course Toyota is such a good reputation a lot of people just
driving they don't check anything they don't check the air and the tires they
don't check the oil and the agita don't check the coolant cuz they're you still
college just runs and runs and runs I don't have to do anything to it so let's
say you got one of these engines and is burning off what'd you just make a copy
of this video or leave it on your phone go to Toyota
tell them hey it's not fair you need to put new piston rings and pistons this
engine you guys messed up you should stand behind what you've built I
personally got involved from my own customers cars and guess what magically
they got their engines rebuilt by local Toyota dealerships mean I make no bones
about it Toyota makes really good vehicles but
they messed up on this particular design especially a 2007 to 2009 so if you own
one of these Toyota's you just need to go to the sticker and look here if it
says to that means it's one of these engines
that can burn oil especially if it's a 2007 to 2009 because wouldn't it be
great if my video get you a three thousand to five thousand dollar repair
job done for free and here's some bonus questions and answers
sure man says I got a 2012 Mazda 3 check engine light on it says P0011
camshaft timing over advanced help those things that variable valve
timing they're very complex systems you want to pray you really don't have a
problem in that system you didn't give the mileage so I don't how many miles
you got if you got really high mileage they don't wear up they also do
something that I see all the time if you haven't been religious about changing
your engine oil and filter that will clog up the VVT system and it'll trip
that code I see that all the time I've had so many people bring me cars either
drive them here or if they really run like crap they told him here and I got
that code the first thing I do is check the off and it's black and dirty and
sludgy and I see wow it's really bad so I'll put a quarter engine flushing and
then follow the directions let it idle for 15-20 minutes or so then change the
oil and filter put new orleans el turin and many times they fixes the problem
entirely the code doesn't come back because dirty sludge you oil will trip
that code I see it so many times it would make your head spin change your
all and filter and if it's really dirty have a mechanic flush it out first see
what happen said they could easily fix it if it does change your oil more
frequently on that particularly thing with a high tech engine I don't care
what anybody says I would still change the engine oil and filter every 5,000
miles in that thing Billy's a twirl on 96 says I got 2012 Chevy Equinox 2.4 liter
it intermittently stalls when I come to a stop and there are no codes
I tried spark plugs air filters check faking leaves can't find anything help
generally when I stalled it should trip some kind of code on that vehicle the
most common thing is an electronic failure in the computer system when they
go bad they often don't know they're dead like computer that's gone bad
doesn't always tell you it's gone bad cuz it's gone bad it's kind of a vicious
circle make sure you don't have any vacuum let's check your fuel pressure
make sure your pumps working but if you check all
that stuff and that's all normal Tallis the doughnut says you have a bad
PCM the powertrain control module I know it's GM products that age it's
eight years old PC arms go bad a lot and it'll just turn the power off the last
time I fixed one of those I wrote tested it I watched it and as it died my
computer recorded that event when I looked I saw all the fuel injectors were
shut down and then it stalled out and it was the PCM that drives the fuel
injectors it was shorting out internally turn injectors off in a car stop odds
are if everything you checked is true when the fuel pressure is good too you
probably got a bad PCM have it road tested and when it dies he'll analyze
it if he sees fuel injectors just dropped off odds are you need a PCM you
can check the wiring the wiring and go bad too but Jenna the wires just plugged
in so you know unless let's rub the hole somewhere it's the PCM the main computer
to the power can control module that goes bad I knows
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell