My 92 ES300 let out smoke when first started. It only does it when starting after setting overnight. I've replaced the cam seal and timing belt but, it still smokes upon start (white smoke). It did this before I had the work done and continues now. Any info on what's happening. Should I be alarmed? Again, it only smokes when turned after setting. The smoke quickly leaves.

 

I have the same problem with my 94' ES 300 but in mine it will only sometimes smoke after sitting overnight but most of the

 

head gasket?

 

check the head gasket as it may be a little leaky. Also check under your oil filler cap for white sludge and under your water coolant cap for brown sludge.

Check your oil level... if it is high then the car will give a little blow of white smoke until the oil is burnt off.

Scary thing to have ($$ ) ... good luck!

 

How many quarts of oil should be used when changing oil?

 

4 litres should do it..... i did mine the other day and it took 4 litres...

 

Valve seals tend to be a common problem Camrys.

 

Mine was leaking from a screw. What was burning was the oil, but just for a few minutes when it was parked overnight.

Clean it... I know its hard but do your best.

 

Ok... let's say your hood is open and you are in the middle of the car looking at the engine. You can see the front of the engine, and the sides if you move. The BACK part is what you can't see, that's where mine was smoking from. I bough a degreaser and because I could not reach just sprayed it all over the back of the engine.

Before you do that, check with your finger.....

Let me know what happens !

 

Hi,

It is your valve stem seals that need to be replaced, Mine did the same thing and i had the valve stem seals on the valves replaced by a local toyota dealership and the smoke is completely gone, what happens is that the rubber seals over your valves over time from heat and high mileage start to dry and crack, and when you let it sit overnight the oil leaks down the valve and burns off when you start the engine, and then it goes away. It cost me around $1280.00 to do the valve cover gaskets and the valve stem seals.

How many miles does your car have?

 

Hey, I'm driving an SC300 with 72,000 miles, and burns approximiately 2 quarts of oil per 3500 miles. I'm pretty dissapointed because the engine has extremely low mileage for a 1992 vehicle. I purchased it used and during that time, the mileage was 63,000. I hear so much about lexus's with the wonderful highly reputable toyota engines in them, but mine seem to be garbage. I knoticed that when I used full synthetic mobil 1 at the beginning, if was smoking like crazy. The smoking was on and off. When I fire up in the morning, there's tons of smoke at the tailpipe. Once in a while when I accelerate, an unusual amount of smoke comes out also. I could be at a red light and have the tail pipe smoking like crazy too. Next thing I did was I brought it to my mechanic to perform a compression test. Only 2 cylinders read nominal cylinder compression. The rest was inaccurate. I remember having one cylinder over 200PSI, which was too high. My mechanic said the head gasket was okay, and that the only problem was probably bad seals. I'm not exactly sure what seals he was talking about, but I was hoping that they were just the cylinder valve seals. I've heard that's very common. Well, enough of my writing and your reading. My most importantly questions were whether cylinder compression would be affected through valve seals going bad? Secondly, would bad valve seals weaken the performance of the engine? Finally, my mechanic mentioned that if he were to performed the job on my vehicle, he was to send the cylinder head/block to the machine shop. What is he really talking about there? The valve seals you were mentioning about, does that require a machine shop to repair the problem?

Please help. thanks so much for all your time by the way.
liz

 

I don't know if any of you got the letter from Lexus recently (discussed in a thread called something like 'anybody else get the letter?'), but Lexus recently sent out a letter to let owners know that if you have a problem related to sludge buildup, they will fix it for you for free.

I don't know exactly which problems are covered by this policy, but it is probably worth at least a call to a local dealership if you are experiencing smoke that could be from burning oil.

Later,
bR

 

Mine's smoking a little on cold starts, and when the engine is cold it hesitates during hard acceleration. It also sorta feels like it might be missing a little low end power, but I'm not real sure on this. Could this be the valve stem seals? The valve cover gaskets were replaced recently.