Blown Engine After 70000 Mile--help?

[thdt98]

First of all as sjrainsford told me to do I posted this.

I have an Avensis X reg estate auto 2.0 CDX vvt-i 70000 miles

- I had the engine management indicator on several time, Toyota did reset it.

- I got fed up with that as I also started to have a quite high petrol consumption 21mpg instead of 30. I never had problem with oil at all.

I booked a visit 2 days ago wih a Toyota dealer ( I had again the engine management on). They only wanted to reset the ECU but I insisted to have this thing fixed.

Bad news :

- They do not really know for sure but it seems maybe it is the head gasket or injectors.......bill around £2000 and 5 days in the garage. I said no.. thank you very much I prefer to get rid of it and buying something else. 70000 miles it is too much? My wife does only 7000miles per year and drives at 90mph max....

What is wrong with Avensis? Sorry by the tone but I am quite upset. Spending £7500 thinking it would be alright and after one year the engine is blown....great...

This is his kind reply.

I think it may be time that you took the car to another garage so they can have a look at it. It is very bad that they should say I think it may be the head gasket or the injectors. They should know exactly what it is that is causing you problems.

If your head gasket is gone you will see signs to point this out. Perfect examples are that your oil will go white in colour because the water has mixed with it. Or the colour of your engine water will change because there is oil in it. Also another thing is that you will start losing oil or water and not know where it is going.

So make sure you keep a good check on your oil and water, if you aren't losing any and it is the right colour then there's a good chance that your head gasket is ok.

Also, i'm not so sure about your injectors having problems. This will normally cause un-even running and the engine just won't feel right. Also they are normally quite reliable.

If the engine light comes on again, tell them to read the fault code off the car to see what the car thinks is wrong with itself. They should give you a print out of the fault code. Then you can post it on this site to get some more ideas.

[Jinxed]

I can appreciate your frustration and upset :( and i feel for you esp at this time of year when stress of xmas, increased outlay of cash, cold weather and familly visits etc.

tho ecu readings can be good they dont always sho up whats wrong. From my own personal experience, recently i was having probs and my ecu didnt even reckon there was a problem and showed clear.

although, some probs are fairly easily diagnosable for any skilled mechy, some probs just arent and require investigation which usually requires stripping stuff down. Tho i agree a blown headgasket should be giving some externally visible sign(clouds of mist from back, milky oil, scum on inside of oilcap, murky coolant, coolant dissapearing, bad running) maybe it isnt that at all. if you have found no sign of any of these things, it might not be this. maybe theres something electrical thats triggering the light? bad fuel consumption can also be a result of many things. im no mechy and dont know much for certain tho so...

are any of those signs present? do you just drive urban cycle all or most of the time? have you tried some of that petrol additive that cleans carbon deposit from stuff as it goes thru the fuel system? are your sparkplugs, distributor, and ht leads ok?

one thing that sometimes can help a poor running motor.... as long as your oil and water levels are fine and it isnt overheating... is to get on the motorway and absolutely bang it.... and i mean bang it. urban cycle can mess cars up seriously to a point where people do think summats seriously wrong. going very quickly high revs can clean stuff up somewhat. not recommending this all the time tho :)

have a check for any of those signs, take ur sparkies out and check their condition, post it up ... someones gonna have some clue

[sjrainsford]

Yeah, as I said and the one above too.

But I stress that you do need to find out what fault is coming up on the system. As said the faults aren't always correct, but they are transparent fault codes. They tell you exactly what the engine management is seeing.

The fault may not be the actual fault you have, but will be no doubt caused by the fault you have. That's why it is important to find out what the fault code is, this will help guide toward the actual fault.

[silverarrow]

run on good fuel and high dose injector cleaner

cat fails at 70 k common and so are o 2 sensors

not that much to change

have you taken the car for a mot you can then see the change in exhaust gases and have you a rattle from the exhaust ie cat rattle

needs to be on a ramp