Toyota Camry Engine Problems

The oil leaks are fairly common on all engines, so they’re really not an issue and Toyota has fixed them anyway. To get to the bottom of the smoke and power loss issues you need to have a mechanic check the engine over to determine its inner health. It’s done 160,000 km, so you would expect some wear and that’s possibly the cause of your problems.

The FCAI guide to E10 compatibility indicates you can use E10 in your car and BP also says you could use E10 without a problem. But there is too little real world experience available yet to say for sure that it will be fine. At least for the short term your mechanic's advice to use Premium unleaded would seem to be prudent until we know more.

According to the FCAI website, which uses information supplied by the carmakers, you can use E10 in your car.

No one I know of has done a comparison of the various brands of systems, but it sounds like a good idea. You could use either a vapour injection system or a liquid one, both would work well, but the problem is finding one that has been developed for your car. It will be much easier to find a vapour injection system because those systems have been around longer. Liquid injection is newer and system developers have had less time to produce systems.

Yes, it can be converted, and converted successfully, but you really need to use an injection system, either vapour or liquid because the risk of damage to the plastic intake manifold in the event of a backfire. That risk is high with an old venturi/mixer type system, but virtually nil with a modern injection system.

Your experience of increased performance and increased fuel consumption on E10 is in line with what we've been told would happen, but the failure of a rubber component in the fuel tank is cause for concern. So too is the starting difficulty you had. Both of your cars are claimed to be E10 compatible, but like you I'm not convinced that E10 won't cause some issues on some cars.

There’s no problem about buying a generic brand of coolant off the shelf and filling the system, just make you mix it to the correct ratio. It is a good idea to replace coolant at times and it might well be worth doing that at this time of your wife’s car. Before doing anything, however, inspect the cooling system for leaks that might have caused your wife’s car to lose coolant.

The 2.4-litre four-cylinder engine in the Camry 30 Series does have a timing chain rather than a belt and it doesn't need to be serviced as your friend was told.

The light coming on suggests that it is about to stall, so it’s unstable at low speeds. Without having a diagnostic lead to go on you’re best to cover the basics, and replace the plug leads, perhaps the coils, check the PCV valve, and clean the throttle body.

There’s something wrong with your car to be so far away from the claimed fuel consumption figures. It needs to be checked by a mechanic with diagnostic equipment. I could be a problem with the oxygen sensor making it too rich.