Avensis 2.0 D4d

[Charlie b1]

I own a 2007 avensis- 81,000 miles and been told head gasket has gone. After reading many posts found this is common fault- took up with toyota but no success. Estimated cost to repair is into thousands. Do these steel seal products work or are they more hassle?

[Duggerz]

Unfortunately there is indeed a problem with the 1ad and 2ad diesel engines in a small percentage of vehicles with excessive oil consumption leading to premature head gasket failure. Details are available in a pointed post at this site. I have a 2006 version of the same vehicles you have that's covered over 200k with no major faults, but realising early on that I could have a problem I put a bottle of steel seal on standby. I don't know yet whether it works, but since the cause of the failure would still be there, I expect any fix would be temporary in nature. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[james.s]

I used one of the head gasket repair products on another car I had. I sold the car not long after but I know the person I sold it to and it's still going over a year later. Not sure how many miles it's done since the fix but I would say it's a good few since the boy drives quite a bit.

Sent from my iPhone using Toyota OC

[avensis rob]

I'm not a fan of mechanic in a bottle type product - mainly due to it being used to dupe buyers of hidden problems in a vehicle

but it does have its limited uses

I used steel seal in a mates bmw petrol engine to buy him some time to get to work with his car till he could afford a hg repair but he thought happy days and ran it till it failed again 3 months later then bought some more himself then sold the car - pure rotten in my opinion.

I rarely use radweld etc in the plant industry to seal a leaking rad/core plug/ hg fault etc but only if under major pressure to keep a production line moving until transport can deliver a replacement machine the next day - if tyhey ignore my advice they don't get a second chance when it goes pete tong

id never use it in my own car

it has always proved a temp fix in the 20 years experience ive used it

[avensis rob]

but

aint this type of hg failure on this engine kinda different to the norm?

egr coking and prolonged low rev driving in 6gear etc related coking causing combustion chamber piston clogging resulting in a hammering of piston to head causing head bolt stretch along with small end and/or piston damage including scoring of cylinders due to coked up piston rings

then this causing oil consumption making the whole cycle worse

meaning the bottles of coolant sealing additive will render useless

maybey ive had too many tonight lol

but this is what I thought the deal was with this

I'm prepared to be shot down on this conspiracy lol