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Up to 4 this year, 3 are Toyotas. I have no idea why this is shaping up to be the tend but I guess 23 is going to be the year of the chain?
07 4Runner with 159k, this is fairly typical unfortunately....other two were a 2.4 Camry and 1.8 corolla 09/11 respectively both around 150k miles as well.
Maxed out completely
Dealers all wanted $3900-6500 to replace depending on what car it was, I'm somewhat surprised but also not to see so many. The issue is a lot of Toyota owners just don't take the oil change interval seriously due to the halo of reliability around their cars.
I hate these as well since I always try to stay positive but that goes away quickly as each sensor checks out and then the scope confirms the 5* off situation...the customer goes from hoping a sensor is out to really depressed.
People don't realize how important maint is, especially oil changes. If I didn't handle the maint for my wife and daughter, they would drive their cars until black smoke came out of the engines. There are many people I know (mostly women) who have never opened the hoods of their cars....even once
Changing the oil and filter is not the only requirement.......one must also use the CORRECT oil and filters. They are listed in the Owners' Manual, and, in some cases, on the oil filler cap.
Changing the oil and filter is not the only requirement.......one must also use the CORRECT oil and filters. They are listed in the Owners' Manual, and, in some cases, on the oil filler cap.
Literally went to the dealer it's whole life, it's wearing one of their filters as well lol!
You know what would be helpful to have in this thread? Metrics and data, plus a how-to.
Okay so operating under the assumption that all your sensors (cams, crank etc) are all good and the engine is at full operation temp and base idle you can actually easily check if you have a stretched chain or not.
The engine (well, most modern ones) will log and track the variance between the cams and crank and bake in an offset for spark/fuel/VVT etc and this is called the camshaft adaptation and is expressed as degrees. Usually a totally new and perfect timing system will still have a 1* delay between crank and cams, compounded by number of sprockets, chains, chain length etc....
Ideally you want to see 0-1* but anything under 4* is safe, 4-5.5* is out of spec on certain smaller engines and may manifest as running problems. 6* plus is going to have problems.
Here is my W12 for reference, it's an infamously durable engine so it shows barely any at all. Some engines like the EA888 are really horrible and will drift to the mid 4* range in less miles!
The intake cam adaptation is crank to head, and exhaust is cam to cam but you need to subtract the first value from the second for that measurement. In my case I have nearly zero stretch on the upper chains and also only about 1* total.
So if you want to check yours all you need is a scanner or OBD11 that can display this value. It is a good thing to always check on a car before you buy! Aka not what I did!
If your car doesn't offer this value then you will need to use an oscilloscope to view/compare the waveforms and their offsets relative to each other. Much much harder to do but fortunately not often needed
Last edited by Striker223; Feb 26, 2023 at 06:41 PM.
The receipt stack doesn't really lie so I'm not sure why it's having this problem
The pictures indicate the vehicle was operated under severe conditions, without the requisite additional maintenance called for. The built-up grease and grime, and the prevalence of varnish inside are telling.
The pictures indicate the vehicle was operated under severe conditions, without the requisite additional maintenance called for. The built-up grease and grime, and the prevalence of varnish inside are telling.
3000-4000 mile oil changes so no that was not the issue, the grime is only due to a valve cover leak that was never cleaned off when it was repaired. It's just a bad design, that's why it has a TSB and parts revisions. Good ones never have parts revisions.......
when you say dead chain does that mean it stretched or did it physically break? or did the guides wear down maxing the tensioner?
Originally Posted by Lwerewolf
Guessing stretched. Snapped chains are specialty of... other brands :P
Chain itself is elongated, the main (crank to heads) chain is the one with the "real" issue since it has so many link vs the cam chains. All of them were showing stretch that would math out to equally worn per component but the longer chain adds up to more overall.
Yes lol! Toyota doesn't tend to ever actually snap like BMW or the infamous 4 cyl VW engines or the cursed non-FSI Audi 4.2. The truly sad part about the 4.2 non-FSI and the gen 1 FSI is that if you swap the chain guides to the all metal ones used in the same year RS4/5 the issue is totally corrected. *rant triggered*
In reality the whole issue with guides on the 4.2 is not actually the plastic guides at all, it's the two anti-drainback valves at the oil distribution block under the intake. They have a stupid design (typical VW trying to save money and use the same parts for many models) and fail to keep oil at the chain system tensioners. This leads to startup slap and the stock plastic rails and guides get killed from it. If you never let the drain back valves fail then you won't lose guides.
In reality the whole issue with guides on the 4.2 is not actually the plastic guides at all, it's the two anti-drainback valves at the oil distribution block under the intake. They have a stupid design (typical VW trying to save money and use the same parts for many models) and fail to keep oil at the chain system tensioners. This leads to startup slap and the stock plastic rails and guides get killed from it. If you never let the drain back valves fail then you won't lose guides.
Ok, putting on my tinfoil hat just for a minute and I'll take it back off asap. haha
Is it possible this was engineered into the product as a "planned life expectancy" for the engine aka the whole car.
It sounds like the fate of the car is the crusher when it is older and not worth the repair with stretched chain.
PS- awesome pics and detail, didn't know newer cars had the data for cam vs crank offset, lot easier than scoping the pins at ecm and doing an estimation.
Ok, putting on my tinfoil hat just for a minute and I'll take it back off asap. haha
Is it possible this was engineered into the product as a "planned life expectancy" for the engine aka the whole car.
It sounds like the fate of the car is the crusher when it is older and not worth the repair with stretched chain.
PS- awesome pics and detail, didn't know newer cars had the data for cam vs crank offset, lot easier than scoping the pins at ecm and doing an estimation.
I'm honestly fairly sure it's simply an instance of "on paper it's fine" vs real life hitting them in the face. Reason I'm giving them the excuse is since every single version following this one has metal guides and generally do not have this issue.
The other trend I have seen is that the Germans tend to introduce stuff first with the best numbers but usually don't figure out the durability side of thing till one gen later. Case in point is the air suspension in the D3 vs D4, or the audio system, or the ACC, or the fact they omitted FSI from the W12 until AFTER they solved the carbon issues on all the other engines.
Rule of thumb is never buy gen one of new German tech, you will have to deal with issues that were okay on paper but fail in real life. Technically life expectancy is warranty period, but I think Germans are of the mind 70k is "high" based on the attitude of my contacts over there. You can get 200k+ out of them if you pick a good design of car and take proper care of it. Some just won't and those are best avoided, most every 4cyl is junk and every BMW V8 and most of their other engines are junk. Mercedes generally has very good engines with only a few having critical failures and they are well known. The newer Audis in the A8s at least have removable bulkheads to allow in car chain service.
Yeah new stuff is kinda cool in a lot of ways! Chain repair on these is engine out and about $8000 at a shop. Parts alone are 3k to do it "right" and minimum is RS4 guides and tensions plus chains for $1250. I may or may not be looking at an S4 6-speed manual right now....that has chain issues.
Another dead chain
