Celica 1.8 St Drinking Oil

[GT4 BOOSTER]

i hung around a garage for 20 years , so i learned alot .

bikes scare me , way too fast too soon for me. :!Removed!:

[sotal]

I will have a poke around tonight and post my results tommorow.

Bikes scare me as well! I used to have no fear on it until I fell off. I don't think I would have minded if I did something wrong. I could have just blamed myself and not been so stupid again, but I fell off on an oil patch at slow speed doing everything perfectly! Broke my arm and wrote my bike off! So I prefer cars now! Problem is a 600cc bike which has a top speed of 172mph and 0-60 time of 3.5 seconds only costs £340 for insurance where as a stock celica 1.8 st costs £780 for the same level of cover!

Anyway please update this if you think of anything else to look at!

Cheers

[GT4 BOOSTER]

i paid 356 last year on my celica fully comp with esure - 6 years no claims discount , and a sp30 which i picked up 2 weeks after buying the motor , damn gatsos .

[cookci]

what oil do you use mate?

you tried wynn's stop leaks additive?

its a chemical that helps condition the valve seals... sometimes you can repair a leak with this similar to fully synthetic oil however that makes the problem worse in most cases first because it cleans all the crap out the engine uncovering leaks.

[sotal]

right, I had a bit of a look last night,

maleborn :- as you look at the picture the breather pipe on the right is completely clean and supple. The one on the left (with a one way valve going into the rocker cover) has a bit of oily gunk in it but it's only coating it a bit - it's not blocking it. Is that a problem?

cookci :- I first tried Castrol GTX the really thin stuff that Halfords recommended as being the best possible for this engine, that disappeared really quick so I have since been using cheap 10w40 stuff from Tesco - £5/gallon seeing as it goes anyway! I haven't tried any additives as I wasn't sure how well they work. I was thinking of trying some "high mileage" oil as I think that has the additives in it.

I have done a bit of research into this and found a lot of conflicting comments. (maybe slightly different engines etc)

I read that the celica has 2 cats in it, one in the header pipes off the manifold, and one in the normal place - Is that right? They said that you need to be burning a lot of blue smoke to get through both cats??

I read that the valve seals are located below the combustion seals?? so you won't notice any difference in compression, and the spark plugs won't get oily?? Is that true??

If that is all true then as I see it if I was to go out and look for another celica in a few years, I would not be able to tell if it was burning oil! I want to atleast learn from this!

Any further suggestions for anything to look at would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[GT4 BOOSTER]

send me your vin numbers and i will look to where the valve stem oil seals are located. maleborn1967@aol.com only 1 cat on mine mate . are you looking on american sites cos their celicas were totally different to uk and jap models , some having 2.2 litre engines in them . producing less horse power than my 2 litre.

[sotal]

urm, yeah it was an american site! I guess it makes sense that they would stick more bits on it! Well I think I would prefer just one cat if I'm going to be knackering them!

Is it safe to send VIN numbers etc?

[GT4 BOOSTER]

ur safe with me mate .

[sotal]

cheers maleborn, I have replied to you email as well. Do you have any idea what the second rad in my other post is? I just have no idea now, does that software show you?

[GT4 BOOSTER]

you dont have air con mmmmm. i will have a look for you , is this it ???

[sotal]

yeah looks something like it, I can go outside and take a picture for you if you want, it's just I'm lazy and it's 9 flights of stairs down to my car then 9 back up again!

What is that anyway?

[GT4 BOOSTER]

oil cooler

[sotal]

Is it a standard item and could it have anything to do with my problems (obviously it's not leaking oil! ;) ) Also should it have a fan? The main rad only has one fan, but has space (and fittings) for another which would be behind both the main rad and the oil cooler.

Anyway I'm going a bit off-topic! any ideas with the oil problem and the valve stem seals?

cheers

[GT4 BOOSTER]

no fan its air cooled.the old celicas had 2 fans on the radiator. this is your valves et up , changing the seals can be done with the head in place . ask a dealers for advice. i had 2 cars done now and neither had the head took off , they take a spark plug out , screw a tool in and connect an air compressor to it , this keeps the valve from falling into the head whilst being changed.my granada had them changed at 80,000 , cost me £ 120 at a ford dealers

[sotal]

So you sure it is the valve stem seals that are worn then? I just expected to see more signs, such as oily spark plugs and stuff like that

[GT4 BOOSTER]

not sure of anything bud , its a possibility they have gone hard now and started cracking.seeing as they are made of rubber.if the cat wasnt on you could see the smoke and make a diagnosis better. when mine were gone i used to get a cloud of blue smoke on first start , a bit like a diesel car does , other than that the car ran fine , plugs were always good etc. i would personnally have them checked if keeping the car , even have them changed to just eliminate them from the equation.

[sotal]

well I've got to say thankyou for all your help maleborn, I will ring my local Toyota Service Department and let you know how much they quote!

Go on..... have a guess how much it will be whilst I'm on the phone to them!

[GT4 BOOSTER]

6 hours labour at £ 60 an hour , then the parts say £ 25 the set , so thats £ 385

[sotal]

Not a bad guess!

Firstly they weren't much good.

They said they've never heard of a toyota engine burning oil and they were 95% sure it wouldn't be the valve stem seals but it would be a leak somewhere! I told them it was not leaking and they said that "the engine was probably just burning oil" and I asked "wouldn't that be due to the valve stem seals" to which they said "dunno really". They said I could bring it in and they would examine it before making a diagnoses which would cost £25-£50. Then if it was valve stem seals (I really had to push to get a quote for that) It would be a full days labour at £460+VAT plus the parts and they said they would have to strip the cylinder head off.

Is this a dealer only job or could the friendly mechanic in the little garage do it?

[GT4 BOOSTER]

a garage of good caliber should be able to do it for alot less.

[GT4 BOOSTER]

taken from avensis forum today

My avensis engine (1.8) has failed after 55k miles and 3.5 years. On talking to a friend in the trade he says he's had 40 calls over the last few months with people with the same problem.

Are Toyota aware of the problem whichappears to be excessive oil burning related and what have other folk done.

I think this is appalling I would never buy another Toyota.

Can anyone advise?

Thanks

[sotal]

That doesn't sound good!

The Toyota Garage I phoned told me that they had never heard of a Toyota Engine burning oil!

[cookci]

have you done a compression test?

a wet and a dry test?

im too tired to read through it all

[sotal]

A compression test?

A wet and dry test?

how, what, when and why?!

[cookci]

a compression test is the first thing you want to do when to try and diagnose a problem like you have.

Purchase a compression test too say from Halfords for about £16... follow the instructions record the results.

Put a tea spoon of oil down the plug hole you are testing then retest for each cylinder.

Let us know your results