bornpeace

So i saw a little oil trip where i park my car and decided to take the engine undercover. This is what i saw

First i thought it was oil pan, then i kept going up and i end up on left cam. I spend half of my day taking everything out. All this oil cam from left cam seal.

The bad part is i will have to take the timing belt out and then take the camshaft out. i will also need a new belt since my i year old 20k belt got oil on it. I wish i change all this when i did my timing belt last year

Privateer

You do not need to remove the camshaft. I just replaced the cam seals on mine last week. It will, however, require you to remove the cam pulley. I'd recommend you pick up a chain wrench, if you dont' already have one, along with a length of pipe to slip over the threaded end of the wrench. I used a 30" piece of chainlink top rail myself. I only recommend this because not only was I not able to bring enough torgue to bear against the pulley with just the wrench, but I didn't feel it wise to let the wrench handle rest against the other parts while I applied force to the breaker bar to relase the cam pulley bolts.

All that being said, on mine, I noticed a large amount of oil/dirt caked up below my valve cover gasket, are you certain they're not leaking as well?

PureDrifter

iTrader: (10)

you dont need to remove the cam on a pre '98 car.

bornpeace

My car is 99 so i do have to take the cam out. Valve cover gasket was okay but the spark plug tubes where sip some oil. I remove one of the coil and it was full of oil. Well i run to the dealer and got cam seal, valve cover gasket, spark plug tubes, and FIPG. I also bought some additional parts since my car is apart; coolant temp sensor, coolant, throttle body gasket, some o-rings, and radiator hoses(about three mechanics told me i needed new ones)

bornpeace

Just to explain a little bit
For 1998 - 2000 because of the VVT-i you have to remove the camshaft to take the timing gear out then slide the seal out.

PureDrifter

iTrader: (10)

this is why you put your car's year in the thread title or original post

deanshark

See that, I learned something new. I didn't know the cam had to come out. But the seal leaking, I feel your pain. I just went through the same thing in Jan. I wished I changed my cam seals when I did my first T-belt 14K miles earlier. But at least this time ya got everything ya need, hoepfully.

3UZFTE

So replace it.

bornpeace

Off course i will replace it, did you read the post about parts i bought for the job. You will be helpful if you tell me same tricks to make the job easy and quick rather than post a post like this.
Well back to my problem, I spend almost the whole day taking everything out, cleaning and put back in. One thing that gave me hard time was i forgot to put a service bolt on the exhaust camshaft. it was a pita to load back the sub-gear. I also replace the coolant temp sensor(the old one didnt look good), thermostat(the middle rubber broke in pieces) Now my car run a little better than it used to run.
One problem though is the idle speed, when i crank the car up in the morning it will idle around 1200rpm until the engine warm up and then drop down. Is this normal? it did not do this before. One thing to note, i did clean throttle body and change the gasket.

deanshark

Yes that's normal with the idle going up to 1200 until warm then drop to around 600. It probably didn't do it before b/c the ECT sensor was bad. Now that you got a new one it's giving out correct signals. Your MPG should be better now also.

bornpeace

I notice this today, the run way better than it used to. I also see improvement on mpg. Using the trip computer set on tank average i never went past 25mpg but today i got 27mpg on highway. And the car is a little quite so this project real worth the time i spent.

KoukiMonst

fuuu that sucks