Toyota Camry Blowing Blue Smoke

April 1, 2008

Hello all,

first off thank you for reading this. It might be a bit long but i want to cover everything, so apologies in advance.

I bought a 1998 camry csi about 6 months ago. Worked fine, but for some unknown reason needed regular oil top ups (unfortunately due to miscommunication between the 3 people who drive the car, more than I was aware of). It went through about 10litres of engine oil (good quality, expensive oil too!) in about 2 months. I went on a long trip, and as I was nearing home the engine just turned off and after sending it to a mechanic, he said that all the engine seals were worn and that the engine had run out of oil, and thus seized up and very badly damaged the big end bearing. I purchased a second hand engine (170000km, my old engine had 180000km on it) and had it put in (for about $2000 all up), so it was an expensive trip.

When the engine got replaced they also replaced the radiator. Anyways, engine worked fine, but i did notice after i got home from work there were a few drips of oil on the driveway, nothing to worry about though. Now i've discover that it blows very large amounts of blue smoke when i accelerate fast. So I'm thinking its probably the piston seals that are worn and that they need replacing or fixing, but I do know that I'm sick of forking out money to maintain this car.

Can anyone offer any opinions on what they believe might be the problem and whether its worth fixing or if i should ditch it and purchase a new car, and how much it would be to repair?

The car didn't have any service history and i believe it was a company car, which is why i got it cheap, but it obviously didn't get maintained very well.

We owned a camry before and it ran very well and i know toyota is a very decent brand so i'm kind of lost as to how to proceed.

Thanks for reading and i really appreciate any replies.

Regards,

Jorrit

EDIT: Might be worth noting that I might have put too much oil in, could this cause the blue smoke?

EDIT 2: Could it be burned out piston rings? Is this terminal for an engine?

EDIT 3: After doing some research I have discovered it could also be a sludge problem. How would i check and or fix this?