For those of you who use Castrol....

[DanDombrowski]

So I did the switch on my GFs Camry to the Mobil 1. It really isn't THAT much more expensive that dino oil, I just buy a 5 quart bottle for $19 at walmart and I don't even use all of it. If you consider she was paying $25 an oil change at Jiffy Lube before I started doing it, its no extra money out of her pocket, just extra work for me, which means she does my laundry, which she ususally gets fed up with it being all over the floor and would have to do it anyway, so it all works out. I'll let you know if it ends up burning less in about 1500 miles

[DanDombrowski]

I'd just love for you to take your car in to a Goodyear or Jiffy lube and have them flip out and tell you that you put coolant in the oil sump

[cary]

Dan,

Take a cruise over to bobistheoilguy.com and do a search for toyota + sludge. There is a ton of information. Most people recommend using Autorx for a cycle or two to remove the sludge and then running Mobil 1 10w-30 (if you are in a cold climate 5w-30) for 5000 mile intervals.

BTW, most of the sludging occurs in the valvetrain. Most think it is because of a large temp drop going from the head to the block.

Cary

[ryan roopnarine]

I'd just love for you to take your car in to a Goodyear or Jiffy lube and have them flip out and tell you that you put coolant in the oil sump

oh, that's simple.....i tell em its a half kraut/half frog halfbreed car...a joint project between citroen and BMW....the motor oil, coolant, transmission fluid all use the same thing seriously, though, the second the oil picks up any dirt, it begins to look like really pale motor oil. if that camry could use a heavy oil, i'd suggest that you maybe try one of the high detergency diesel 15w40 oils along with one of the gentle cleaners like the auto rx cary mentioned. i was gonna try some delvac 1300 15w40 in the e34 as a flush before i went back to a synthetic, but i was able to get the ger. syntec for 3.99 a quart, which would be about what i'd pay for 7 quarts of 0w40 anyway.

[Bill R.]

issue. Here
Whats usually happening in the case of increased oil consumption like yours with low mileage is that the oil control rings on the pistons have gotten gummed up from the sludge and aren't springing out tight against the cylinder walls. Cleaning the sludge out of the crankcase won't help in this case for that but its a good idea to clean the sludge you can get too anyway and then use one on the cleaners mentioned on the yota site.
When its as sludged up as yours is I don't think the mobil one will clean it up you'll have to use a more agressive cleaner. Gm top cylinder cleaner might work since that it used to free up stuck rings. GM's procedure is to remove the sparkplugs and pour a couple of ounces in each cylinder and let it soak for a couple of hours then hand crank the motor without any plugs in it to blow the cleaner out, then spin it over with the starter to remove all the rest. Then reinstall the plugs. But you'll still have to removed the valve covers and clean up the sludge in the head and pull the pan and clean the sludge out of the oil pickup screen. Once you get it cleaned up with solvent , then I would try mobil one... For your info the valve covers are over 200 each on the camry v6, thats one of the items that toyota replaces when they do them since its too much time for the mechanics to clean them up at the hourly rate the dealers charge.

Hey Bill,

I posted this awhile ago, but I guess you were still out of town or whatnot. Have this issue (I think) with my girlfriends Camry now, the engine only has 30K miles on it (was already replaced once at 70K miles at the owners expense). Anywho, she's burning though oil pretty fast, so I switched it to Mobil 1 synthetic and now I'm praying it doesn't get any worse.

If it does, how hard is it to pull the oil pan on that car and clean the gunk out?

As far as the new oil, well, things tend to get shaken up on the drive home from the store rather than settle

[Sweetwater]

I've never used it and don't know if it still exists, BUT

I thought there was some stuff called Rislone ? that would clean gunk out of oil burners. It required a rapid oil change after minimal circulation...maybe 1000 miles with it in the oil.

Could it be an answer? HellifIknow....

[ryan roopnarine]

issue. Here
Whats usually happening in the case of increased oil consumption like yours with low mileage is that the oil control rings on the pistons have gotten gummed up from the sludge and aren't springing out tight against the cylinder walls. Cleaning the sludge out of the crankcase won't help in this case for that but its a good idea to clean the sludge you can get too anyway and then use one on the cleaners mentioned on the yota site.
When its as sludged up as yours is I don't think the mobil one will clean it up you'll have to use a more agressive cleaner. Gm top cylinder cleaner might work since that it used to free up stuck rings. GM's procedure is to remove the sparkplugs and pour a couple of ounces in each cylinder and let it soak for a couple of hours then hand crank the motor without any plugs in it to blow the cleaner out, then spin it over with the starter to remove all the rest. Then reinstall the plugs. But you'll still have to removed the valve covers and clean up the sludge in the head and pull the pan and clean the sludge out of the oil pickup screen. Once you get it cleaned up with solvent , then I would try mobil one... For your info the valve covers are over 200 each on the camry v6, thats one of the items that toyota replaces when they do them since its too much time for the mechanics to clean them up at the hourly rate the dealers charge.

haw haw haw

if you've read my travails over the last 1 1/2 months, you will have read that i've done what bill describes to the e34 (with the exception of the valve covers, of course). i was doing it for the sake of carbon removal, not to unstick the rings. when i was hanging around the saturn places that this is described in( they have stuck rings a lot, apparently) , i read that they are moving away from using the gm top engine cleaner for this procedure, and are using something called GM piston and ring cleaner. it is about double the price of the top engine cleaner, and is supposedly better at this task. i personally used berryman's b12 chemtool, but i didn't know of the existence of the aforementioned product. restarting the car was a primo BIA-TCH. it took at least 10 mins of effort on my part, cranking the crap out, putting plugs back in after drying, thinking that i'd have to call a towtruck and take the car somewhere, before it would start up again (i bet the starter's life was knocked down a couple of notches afterward). an aircompressor might make the engine easier to start up afterward by removing as much crap from the cyl. as possible. you definitely run the risk of killing a spark plug by fouling after doing this.

[632 Regal]

haw haw haw

if you've read my travails over the last 1 1/2 months, you will have read that i've done what bill describes to the e34 (with the exception of the valve covers, of course). i was doing it for the sake of carbon removal, not to unstick the rings. when i was hanging around the saturn places that this is described in( they have stuck rings a lot, apparently) , i read that they are moving away from using the gm top engine cleaner for this procedure, and are using something called GM piston and ring cleaner. it is about double the price of the top engine cleaner, and is supposedly better at this task. i personally used berryman's b12 chemtool, but i didn't know of the existence of the aforementioned product. restarting the car was a primo BIA-TCH. it took at least 10 mins of effort on my part, cranking the crap out, putting plugs back in after drying, thinking that i'd have to call a towtruck and take the car somewhere, before it would start up again (i bet the starter's life was knocked down a couple of notches afterward). an aircompressor might make the engine easier to start up afterward by removing as much crap from the cyl. as possible. you definitely run the risk of killing a spark plug by fouling after doing this.

[ryan roopnarine]

its gone down quite a bit after doing that, but i only let it soak 30 mins, which might explain why it didn't do more.

[DanDombrowski]

GAH! That sounds like something I want to avoid.

I actually found that yotarepair site and read his sludge article, but I don't remember it saying anything about the rings or why it was consuming oil. For now, I'm going to pray that it doesn't get worse, but I might PM you in a month or two and ask some specifics on this procedure. With any luck, this should be covered under Toyotas secret warranty, right? RIGHT?