Sorry for the bad image quality.
The image is of the top of piston 4 and the cylinder wall in a Toyota 2AR-FE with 162,000 miles. All Toyota recommended maintenance was performed throughout the engine’s life. I have the feeling those recommendations were written by marketing people and not the engineers.
Based on what the image shows, the engine needs a short block. Am I correct?
Unfortunately, the endoscope I used does not take screenshots. So that was taken by my 15 year old with a mobile phone of the endoscope screen.
The car is a 2014 Camry LE made after the rule changes, so it has the electronics of the 2015 model year. I bought it with 7k on the odometer.
Oil changes were done by a Dealership until about 120,000 miles, when I switched over to a locally owned place that specializes in Toyotas. The dealership’s own mechanics, two of them plus a CS person, all said not to do oil changes any shorter than what is in the manual. I tended to do them between 8 and 9K thinking the pure synthetic oil would be OK. I’ve not used synthetics in any of my previous automobiles and religiously did changes at 5k.
There is definitely vertical scoring and that area of the cylinder wall is shiny.
All 4 cylinders show the exact same pattern, although 4 is a little worse.
I’ve a few minor issues with this car, not mechanically related. I’ve replaced all 4 door locks once and one a second time. It’s eating headlights now for some reason. The original headlights lasted for 130,000 miles and all the replacements die after about 5k of driving. I’ve used high end Sylvania and Philips. When replacing them I make sure I’m wearing nitrile gloves, on top of being sure nothing touches the glass, to make sure no oil gets on them. I may go with a lower line bulb thinking that the high end versions run too hot for the projector enclosure. I’ve also gone through every ground I can find on the car and cleaned it and made sure it’s tight. Checking with a multimeter, the bulbs are getting proper voltage.
My wife had a 2003 Camry for 17 years and it is probably still on the road, she traded it 6 years ago. I bought this 2014 Camry hoping to drive it past 200k, but it will not be seeing that kind of mileage. Overall, my car has never felt as well built as my wife’s 2003.
If that’s scouring then there’s not enough lubrication, or possibly because the engine is investing dusty air through the intake (bad filter/ not enough filter changes etc). Some scouring is normal over time, but once there’s not enough material for the rings to create a good seal you’ll have combustion problems. At that point the pistons can’t squeeze the aerated fuel/air mixture hard enough to make it go boom and the engine will run badly. A machine shop could machine those cylinders and sleeve them but the camera is a relatively cheap car with an engine that’s probably also fairly inexpensive (enough where having this kind of work done wouldn’t necessarily be cost effective).
The reason you should change your oil regularly and more than recommended is because over time the filter material breaks down (not the oil), and can also circulate in the engine. Even if it doesn’t break down it can clog with particulates from the oil (as oil heats up and cools down etc). Full synthetic is for turbo charged engines. It doesn’t have a meaningful effect on the longevity of the engine to use synthetic in place of regular or synthetic blend oil.
All that said, for the scouring, it does depend on how deep the scouring is. If your engine is running rough, and this is the cause, you need a new engine. If not? I would look for other problems).
Is the engine leaking oil, have you had a tune up (did you change spark plugs and coils when you had the tube up), is your engine air filter clean or clogged. Is there a noticeable change in the amount of coolant in the reservoir (while the engine is cold).
It looks like the engine that’s likely in your car is about $1300 used. These engines seem really really reliable. It’ll cost more than that to have the block machined + removed and reinstalled. Might be worth it to buy a used or rebuilt engine if you can.
The interesting thing is the engine is running just fine. I changed the plugs about 60k ago and put in Iridium plugs, or whatever…They were the OEM recommended. All filters have been changed on the dot according to the manual and I’ve always used OEM or better.
The car sits in the same spot in a garage and it has never leaked anything. So the oil is definitely being burnt.
I haven’t paid attention to the coolant level other than making sure the level in the overflow is good. I had a car that blew a head gasket before, so I know the symptoms for that and I don’t see any of them with this engine. That car was an 85 Pontiac Sunbird. I haven’t owned a GM product since, because of it.
The plugs actually look OK when I pulled them out. Coils are the originals.
The main thing is I’m trying to make an intelligent decision between dropping a bunch of money on this car for new PCV, shocks/struts and a few other things and getting another 60k to 80k out of it. Or dropping a whole lot more on another car.
Thank you for taking the time, I appreciate it .
The problem is the used car market still hasn’t recovered from the pandemic upshot. Prices have come down some but not nearly as much as they should.
If it’s burning oil that means it’s getting too hot. That’s not okay, and this seems like it might be a loss if it’s got an electrical problem eating headlights.
Electrical issues like that can spread and I wouldn’t want to someday upen up the fuse box or ECU and see something has melted. The newer the car, the more electronics it has for everything, and honestly that just means more parts can fail in the event that it’s already got an electrical issue.
I had an 05’ mini cooper base model. The radio wouldn’t shut off like it should or would turn on by itself. It burned up the 30 pin apple connector you’d connect your phone to. It eventually started having other issues with the electronics (tail lights that were always on (even the third brake light), etc. It also had transmission issues (which I don’t believe were related to the electrical problem, but to a recall that requires the transmission be rebuilt). It made it to 130k miles before I sold it (to a used car lot) but only just. Oh. And the hazards stopped working.
Never had engine problems with it but the electrical and transmission issues made it too expensive to fix vs buying a new (used) car. My brother put a junkyard engine in an older focus and right now that’s my daily driver while we rebuild my other car.
If it still runs and it’s not showing symptoms just do the oil changes more regularly, and fix what you think is reasonable. But think about selling it because it’s probably a ticking time bomb.