I have a friend who once owned a 2007 Camry. Although he was once a mechanic, his wife wasn’t. She made some comment about the oil light coming on for a bit during some turns or when hitting the brakes. He went out to check the level and it basically took the rated capacity before coming up to full on the stick. He told her to keep an eye on the level but she only mentioned it again when the light came on. At that point he began to add oil once a day. He realized that the engine was consuming its rated capacity in oil each week and traded it in at his earliest convenience.
has your oil light ever come on? If so, the engine was actually being starved of oil and you might want to move this along. The oil pickup is like a straw. The engine may be low on oil but is getting proper lubrication until you start sucking air at the pickup. That is when you lose oil pressure, lubrication, and the light comes on. Picture a drink glass with a straw. If you are sucking without looking at the drink, you have no idea how much liquid is present until you start sucking air. That is how an engine works. Now in an engine this is all getting recirculated so you will end up with a smaller amount of oil doing more work in cooling, cleaning, and lubricating the engine. You don’t want to be low for long, even if still in the “safe” range, because of this.
If you are looking for an excuse to trade up, this is it. If you are wanting to save money and see how much life you can get out of the car, check the oil once per day until you get a handle on how much it is burning. Remember a running Camry is worth more than one with a blown engine by a large margin so keep that in mind.
If I were trading it in or selling it, I would need to disclose that it was using excessive amounts of oil. Of course likely a dealer would not pass that information on again to a new buyer and oil usage is not something that can be determined during an inspection.
If you are soured on the reliability of a Camry, wait until you experience the cost of maintaining a used VW or Audi. You might get lucky and get a good one.
Thanks @cwatkin this is EXACTLY what has been happening with my car. I’ve been bringing into the dealership to get this checked repeatedly and it’s baffling to me how it passes their oil consumption test yet seems to be burning oil at a rate that is not normal for a car of this age. My frustration with them has been it should have been repaired while under warranty. At any rate, sounds like I’ll have to keep a close eye on the levels while figuring out what’s next. Thanks!
There are 1.9 million vehicles involved with the oil consumption warranty extension, Toyota can’t repair all of them, a line must be drawn somewhere.
An engine with a consumption rate of one quart in 1300 miles is eligible for the warranty repair, that is a reasonable offer compared to other manufactures. What is your engines oil consumption rate?
That’s understandable, my issue with the dealership has been that this is a recurring issue I’ve brought to them for 2 years when it was covered under warranty (now it’s not). They have tested it for oil consumption test and said it did not meet the requirements under the warranty replacement the last 2 times I’ve brought it to them, though now they’ve said it’s effectively bone-dry after only 2-3k miles since my last oil change. I don’t know what the exact rate of burning is however.
You can drive without oil in the engine if you want to however if you destroy the engine don’t expect Toyota to take pity on you, your car is 11 years old and the warranty has expired.
I have the same car and the same mileage. The extended warranty is now expired, it was either 2017 or 10 years from initial purchase.
Yes the 2AZ-FE burns oil. 1 quart per 1000 miles is the oil consumption spec that they used to gauge whether or not to replace the pistons. The consumption may increase dramatically as the oil control rings get more stuck. The dealership can only do whatever they’re guided to do. I don’t think there is any bad intent there. If you drove up and down hills for 1000 miles, they would have seen that the consumption was higher than 1 qt/1000 miles. But now that warranty is over.
I like checking oil in the morning before startup.
That shows you were not checking your oil level . So why should the dealer or Toyota spend money because you did not do your share of responsible maintenance.
Indeed. That’s the key thing to do for as long as you have this car. Keep a record of miles driven and oil added. A quart of oil every 500 or 1,000 miles adds little to your overall cost.
Checking and adding oil is a quick simple thing to do. Some people find it distasteful, some don’t know how to operate a dipstick, some people just think they can’t be bothered to do it. Here’s my analogy:
There’s a device in my house that is in regular use every day. Every member of the household uses it several times a day. It may well be the most important device in the house. It gets regular, simple service once a week, and at the first sign of it not working right, it gets repaired or replaced immediately. Despite the fact that people pee, poop, dispose of bugs and dead fish and throw up in it, we service it once a week. You can go to the garage or driveway on a weekend morning and check and top off the oil in 3 cars faster than someone can clean the toilet. And I’ll bet most people spend more time sitting in their cars than they do on the toilet. Yet people drive around without checking their oil.
Oil is cheap. Even if someone uses synthetic oil and the car uses a quart every 1000 miles that’s a cost of $150 a year. If the rest of the car is sound and reliable and comfortable, keep driving. $12 and change every month isn’t a good reason to trade in a car.
I guess the other thing I’m wondering if this type of potential excessive oil consumption is a kind of fact of ownership owning any car for 10 years? For comparison my last car was a 2002 Nissan Sentra which I drove for 9 years before gifting it someone, and while that was not a car I’d like to have again since it was too small, underpowered, etc, it didn’t have an issue with oil consumption so I don’t think of this as something that should be particularly normal (albeit I’ve only owned a couple cars). As far as servicing, I’ve always done what all the recommenced service intervals were and relied on the advice of the mechanics for anything else, so I’ve always done what I believed was responsible maintenance. This engine oil issue is something I’m continuing to learn about (as you can tell why I’m here asking on this forum), and I do take a bit of issue with a dealer who has told me nothing was wrong with me burning oil during my 3 previous oil consumption tests which I’ve surfaced to them since 2016, and them now telling me my engine is burning a lot of oil.
“a lot of oil” is too indefinite to really help anyone speak to the issue. How much oil is it now using per XXX miles? How much was it using during the earlier tests? Without accurate numbers there’s no basis for anyone’s opinion.
Not all engines use a measurable amount of oil between oil changes.
Those previous tests will mean nothing. What you need to be concerned about is your current usage. Which you can determine by keeping track of your miles and how much oil you add.
Just trade this thing on a new vehicle with full warranty, pay attention to the oil level and take this frustration out of the picture . Life is to short to let a car drive you nuts. There are plenty of good deals on left over 2018 vehicles now.