Toysrme

1) Cut your used oil filters in half & see what it's picking up. 2) Drop the pan & see what's going on & make yourself feel good for buying a car that should never have pump, or bearing problems.

Is it billowing white smoke out the exhaust? If it is, it's blown up. A compression test is a good idea. The specification is 178psi normal / 142psi minimum / no more than 14psi different between any 2 adjacent cylinders. If you're under 155psi compression. It's blown up. ;) A leak-down test is good too. Toyota red blew it up. ROTFLMAO! Na. But it shouldn't have been used in the first place. It rusts the block, doesn't last as long & gels with the coolant you had. Block sealers don't normally work. They just try to patch something like a cracked block (neeeeever gonna happen), or a blown head gasket (which doesn't really work to begin with... 2000*F exhaust @ 150+psi a few thousand times a min is > block sealant) Block sealants are more like a "I've blown up, but I need to drive home damn it". Sounds like you've blown it up, but who knows. Flush the coolant out & fill it properly. Then see if it's still overheating. If it's blown up, you've just roasted a head gasket. If you're mechanically inclined, take the heads off & have them milled flat 'cause they're likely warped. Then put it back together with some custom copper gaskets (Best choice you can ever make), or Victor's Nitroseal's from NAPA/Car Quest. The Victor gaskets are the strongest gasket u can buy pre-made for that engine. OEM Toyota gasket would come in 3rd & anything else - don't use it. (Unless you can pay for custom multi-layer steel gaskets) Then just replace stuff on your way back out. Cam, dizzy seals, valve cover gaskets, plugs, check the wires, dizzy rotor & cap. timing belt, drive belts etc. Or buy an imported Jap 3vz-fe. Beware. Most only have a 7-14 day warrantee that they're not blown up. So you gotta get one on a stand & running, or in the car & running. If you buy a Jap motor & you have emessions, you need to swap the rear manifold, upper intake manifold & EGR controls from your engine, to the new one. If you don't have emessions. You get a free mod 'cause I'd tell u to take it off anyways. Otherwise, same difference. Also beware... Some random douche (not one of the common sellers) on eBay just sold someone I know a 2.5L 4vz-fe from Japan & tried to pass it off as a 3.0L 3vz-fe.

Steering racks are completely different. If you swapped the ES suspension & steering into a camry. (ya right) You'd get a Camry that would drive, for the most part, like an ES. TOOOO expencive.

It's a different car, for a different market. You're not offending anyone here. Werd with SW. Have her drive both. The best thing to do is let her pick & you just make sure it's not going to break. *That's* the role most women want you to fill!

Never played with a Seinna, but it's a Camry too so... ;) Just buy the refill. It slips into the middle of the metal mount. It's easier with a lift, but you can jack up the car high on jackstands & jack up the engine a tea tiny bit to get access to it. You may have to take off the passanger axle tho. I forget. Oh... Disconnect the dogbone mount when you go jacking the engine up. Just do the strut tower bolt.

Sure. This... Is the stock crap: 2" mandrel bend next to stock Merge Post y-pipe merge to cat next to a 2.5" pipe That's mainly what you don't want. You can build a new one for like $40-150. Get a high-flow cat (NOT a test pipe) off ebay to replace what you have & an o2 bung to put your heated sensor in post-cat. That way you don't throw a CEL. For lack of any rescent Toyota v6 y-pipes. Maxima y-pipes! Same thing... Shows you what you want to do. This is more what you're shooting for: Don't worry about equal length. Just route the rear bank to the rear of the car & merge the banks. If you go buy your pipe for $20 @ lowes like I did... It's galvanized mild steel. The fumes are quite bad for you welding galv. Weld outside. Or just wire brush the galvanization off where you're welding. Takes a second. ;) None of my mild steel pipes are rusting yet (After around a year on the car) *note* Alabama doesn't do salted roads... So maybe spend $5 on a can of high-temp spray paint. Maybe not. Maybe buy a $100 powder coating gun & some high-temp powder. Maybe not. Whatever.

Powerful, eh? An LS is no faster than an ES at any equivilant power level. Higher top speed tho. Just buy whatever she wants. She'll never be happy with something you pick out for her. If she doesn't mind the fact that it's a much bigger car, do the LS, if she wants something smaller, do an ES.

<cough> Only roughly 250,000 US buyers alone think that buying a "rebadged" Toyota product is a good idea <cough> Every OEM on the planet does it. <cough> It's not for everyone... But it is for some people. It's a better car. Now as to asking if someone wanted to pay $30,000usd for a loaded Camry XLE VS $32,000usd + for an ES350... The base ES is always a steal compaired to a Camry XLE.

I'd tell you to go get some high qualiy Kerosene, or Diesel fuel, put a quart in on top of the oil. Let it idle 10min & dump all of it out. But I'd have to think hard about that on something that's having sealing problems. (It thins the oil out alot.) Good job! It's just the front bank. Take the plug out & see what this one is doing too. Front bank = 5-10min job. It's misfiring on cylinders 1 (P0301) & 2 (P0302) @ at the same rough amount of time (P0300). If you need too, download the stickied 2001 ES 300 FSM. See the Diagnostic & Ignition pdf's. Start with the plugs & coil's. What plugs did you use? If they're not NGK, or Denso. They'll likely eventually be giving him weak spark. I doubt this soon tho. (Unless it's something like a multi spark plug. Yicky!) Check the wiring (Do not replace with cheap generic wiring). Anything can happen, but I doubt it's the coils. It's a COP (Coil-On-Plug) so it has 6 individual coils. Fairly tall odds of two coils going out at the same time on different banks. Anything can happen... Check the compression / cylinder leak down test while the engine is warm. He may have blown it up (rings) & he's getting so much oil in some of the combustion chambers he's mis-firing. Seems like you're on the right track so far. Just keep ruling things in & out. btw he blew chunks off a valve stem seal in 50,000 miles? What the hell kinda oil is he using!? I've been trying to get an Astroglide sponsorship of a 1 gallon jug to use on the Civic for years now to prove it really is "second only to nature". I didn't think someone would beat me too it! DAMN! Juuust kidding.

You're locked into going a full blown stand-alone ECU, or buying a real piggyback. SMT-6, or SMT-7 from Perfect Power are tops. Then E-manage SAFC's work, but I despise them. $150-250 & they only change one thing & don't have a good resolution to tune that one thing with in the first place.

You don't adjust the idle on an EFI car. They'll idle at whatever the ECU wants them to idle at & any "adjustments" that can be performaned are mostly irrelevant. The ECU will still run at whatever it wants to run at. Start by taking the IAC valve (EGR Valve & Throttle plate - for that matter the entire upper intake manifold) off & cleaning it. Then check for vacuum leaks on your hoses. IAC valve sticking is the common cause.

Valve stem seals only creates an oil / smoke issue at initial start-up after sitting.

<- still doesn't care. The 1uz-fe is aluminum. The VZ blocks are not... If there is waster in the coolant, it rusts & turns nasty. Look at any puke tank on any iron block v6 that isn't religiously changing coolant. It's brown for a reason. Just like the block coolant ports are brown for reasons.

Yeaaaah. My '93 had that stuff in there when I bought it 4-5 years ago. The only time it was changed was after it blew a head gasket & Lexus did it. It only blew a radiator from that stuff gelling within 3-5 months of me buying it too. Radiator probably weighed 40-50lbs pulling it out. Yeesh.

Warm the engine & do a compression / leak-down test. Go ahead & assume the rear valve cover gaskets are leaking if it hasn't been changed in the last few years & expect it to be making 175hp from the EGR carbon buildup. As long as the compression is good it's about bullitproof. Check CV boots. Transmission fluid. Expect to: Flush the transmission fluid, (add an aux cooler for $25-50 is the best thing ever for any A/T too if you wanna keep it high miles.) Change the differential fluid Flush the brake fluid Flush the P/S fluid Plugs Dizzy cap & rotor Flush the coolant Thermostat & two pressure caps So... Expect to blow $100 & two weekends of doing general maitnenace when you first get it to make yourself feel better.

Unlucky few. Some just have a harder life than others. Toyota/Lexi normally make it alot farther, but... If you never change a PCV valve, or leave oil in there ungodly too long. Or run too much boost... Or too much fuel. Ya, 100,000m isn't unheard of. Warm the engine up & do a compression / leakdown test. Tell us what year you have & tell us the compression (Or % of leak) on every cylinder.

Old car, low mileage, or get one coming off a 1 year lease & do maintenance like crazy on it 'cause it probably hasn't seen any. 89-93 had the M/T option. The 92-93 is rare for an ES (findable, but not many for a Camry) The gen2 Camry v6 & ES250 both had the E52 M/T option, and both are *extreeeemely* hard to find. You see a few 92-93 M/T ES 300's around. I've heard of one, maybe two ES250 M/T that were M/T from the factory. AFA the overheating, it is overstated because of it's brother by engine family & name (But really only sharing a few minor parts, like bearing) the SOHC 3vz-e Truck engine. All pre multi-layer steel Toyota headgaskets from 89 on are weak. Just like nearly every other OEM. Some are prone to external leaking, some will blow up. The differance in a 92-93 3vz-fe and a 94-late '96 1mz-fe is that a 1mz-fe is an aluminum block. It will heat-up & you'll see it on the temp gauge. It may drag along performance wise, and you'll get to a stop & let it cool off before it roasts. The 3vz-fe is a near 400lb bottom end. It'll heat up slowly, the coolant will overheat, then cool back down & the coolant gauge may not fully show you what the coolant is doing. (Yay Dummy gauges! LoL!) That can mask the fact that you're overheating. It'll go from normal to overheating faster than most people look at the dash. At which point, by the time you let it cool off, the overheating has likely warped the aluminum heads & blown the head gasket. Which goes back to the part about being overstated. Flush the coolant every other year. Change the thermostat & pressure caps every few years. Change the water pump every timing belt change. (Now 90,000 miles.) All of which, is something you as the owner should be doing. Overheating is normally traced to two main causes: 1) Ignoring the coolant. Which eats turns corrosive & eats parts, while gelling in the coolant system. 2) Failed thermostat. If you don't let it overheat. It'll never blow up. So do your maintenance. Otherwise, if the new GR family isn't stronger. It's still tied with the 5vz-fe for the strongest v6 Toyota's made to date. ;) MInus the whole don't let them overheat & blow a headgasket deal.

Nope. If it's the wiring, rip the old wiring out & replace it with a heavier gauge wire. That's not difficult by and means, but I dare you to get the cig lighter out without cussing up a storm. I can't do it. It can also be the cig lighter itself too. But my money is always on nthe wiring.

Good choice! If you've got $250-350 to spare Get a new Y-pipe made (That doesn't restrict the exhaust) & just have them weld the cat straight to that.

Brembo blanks > OEM ---------------------- Everything else down here somewhere.

Not sure. If I were doing with a cheaper wire, it'd be NGK tho. Pre-cat. I recommend whatever the cheapest generic splice-in sensor for your car is. Cut the wire & harness off the old sensor. Soldier + heatshrink it on the new sensor. (Or crimp/twist & tape if you just *have* to, but I don't like that.)

Melted the wiring to the cig lighter. Common problem on any Lexus, or Toyota that has a real cigarette lighter installed instead of just a 12v power port ('cause smoking is bad for you - so few late model cars have them). It's designed to warm the lighter only. Cell-phone. OK. Much more than that & you can kiss it goodbye. Laptops, air pumps. A 120v inverter of any kind. All of that stuff will kill them. If not instantly, keep using it a few times. ;) Half the time the wiring melts before the fuse will. Amazing, considering that fuses are designed to fail.

I know what that is now. It's a small pressure relief valve. There's only one that size on the entire valve-body. But the fact remains the same, that part is still sandwhiched in between like atleast a 1/2 inch of steel & aluminum. So it's physically impossible for it to just jump out anywhere. So... The conclusion is the same. A/T mechanic reached into the parts bin & pulled out a part. Pretty much like yes250 said.

Ah, thanks. The valve body is only complicated the *first* time you take it apart rotfl! After that, it's really straight forward. There's only like 6-7 sizes of bolts all over the thing, but after you look at it while you take it apart. It's obvious what bolt goes where. 'cept for that one I stripped some threads out of. Eh... That's why god gave noah taps & dies. So Brandon can put a big bolt where a 1.1mm smaller bolt goes, strip it out 3-4 aluminum threads from the transmission. Then fix it! OMG!!! Digicams do own re-assembly time! :) ^ That picture is *much* easier to interpret than the nasty one in the A/T FSM's.

Awsome job! Ya... Cam alignment newbies. It's sad too, cause all of these v6 engines are the flat easiest cams to align for the most part. I'm glad you purged air out of it. I know a lot of people that forget to do that & wind up wondering why they keep overheating when they've got all new parts & good compression. :whistles: