I am trying to remove the valve cover of my 99 rx300 to see if I can find any sludge. Does any one know if the small bolts showed in the red also need to be removed? And if so what size socket? Thanks.

 

I am not answering your question here, but if you want to remove the valve cover for sludge, you should do the other side .... next to the firewall. It might be more difficult, but the tilt should give you more collection in there.

Before you open the cover, I would suggest getting a new gasket and torquing the screws/nut to the specified value. You dont want it to leak.

Salim

 

It's called an External Torx. I went to Sears and bought a 7pc External Socket Set for $30, even though I only needed one. The size used for this is a E6 External Socket. It fits perfectly and came off with ease. And Only the top two (red circles) need to be removed for this job, because the wire harness is in the way. The bottom two (shown) and there is a third off to the right, held the engine cover in place, these you don't have to do anything with. Good Luck.

 

Very honestly, though I have almost every tool known to man (total 40 years in the trade) if I didn't have those Torx sockets, I wouldn't spend $30. to get the 1 socket out of the set that I needed, I would use Channel Locks or Vice Grips. It's easy to pop those loose and that's not a critical part at all. With a car 10+ years old, it's going to make little difference and not gonna hurt anything. And this is from someone who has to have the right tool for EVERYTHING!

 

Thanks guys for the reply. I havent had a chance to open the rear valve cover but here is how the front looks like. I swiched to pennzoil platinum synthetic 5w-30 last oil change and have noticed 1.5 quart oil loss since in last 2k miles of mostly highway driving. I was using regular oil before and there was no oil loss. How bad does it look? Also I pulled out a spark plus and the tip looked fairly white with some dark oil deposits on the side. Any suggestions are welcome. Car has 136k on it. Thanks.

 

To me, the only thing I see is varnish. It looks all AOK.

Salim

 

That's a pretty clean engine. Your returns are clean, the edges don't have any gelling... I would say it's fine. Keep using the synth. oil at this point.

As for losing oil, since the synth. flows better, perhaps you're getting burn off? Do you notice any blue smoke when you accelerate?

 

I have not noticed any smoke so far. I have read some other posts about oil loss during highway driving. I know lexmex had oil loss issues and he switced to castrol 0w-30 which fixed the problem. Coolant looks clean so probably not an internal leak. I am guessing its the age of the engine and possibly loss in compression. I will try a different engine oil and see if that fixed it.

 

I personally don't like to see oil loss, especially if it is going by the rings. That means the rings are developing carbon around them which is not good. Also the combustion chamber is likely to develop carbon as well as the valves. Then there is the catalytic converter. The oil doesn't just disappear into thin air, when oil burns it leaves deposits behind, none of which are good. Your engine looks very typical for an engine with quite a few miles on it. Varnish deposits, but no sludge. I have been a big fan of Castrol for the last 20-25 yrs. I have NEVER developed varnish or deposits inside an engine when I use Castrol. I used Havoline for many years and quit when I pulled the intake and heads at 60k mi on a Pontiac that I had purchased new and found the same type of varnish. I change oil every 3k mi.

 

You might try the Castrol 0-30 German made oil... The Catalytic converter will actually burn the oil up for a while till it gets contaminated... Then its replacement time. I wonder if Auto RX or some kind of cleaner in the engine would loosen the rings. I agree with Code58, Castrol is very good oil....

 

WVUGUY,what oil change intervals were you doing on the conventional oi?? And what brand were you using?

 

I have owned the car for only about 4 months. Previous owner had service done at Lexus dealership and I still need to get records from them. I don't think Lexus dealership uses synthetic oil. When got the car I changed the oil to Pennzoil conventional 5W-30 and there were no issues at all. After driving 3k miles I changed the oil to Pennzoil platinum synthetic 5W-30 and started seeing oil loss. I do a lot of short trips (less than 2 miles) since my work is very close my home so I wanna keep on changing oil frequently. At this point I am thinking I could either switch back to Pennzoil conventional 5W-30 and change oil every 2k miles or change to German Castrol (expensive option and not easily available) and change every 3-4k miles.

 

anyone have instruction how to replace the rear valve cover? it look very hard to me, hope someone come up with some pics of replacement the rear valve cover.

 

Personally,I`d stick with the Pennzoil Conventional 5W-30.Cant beat that oil,that`s what I`m using in my RX330 and it`s running great on it!