Toyota Camry 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.

Check the PCV valve, if it’s leaking it could cause a weakness at idle that would result in the stalling you speak of.

You can use both fuels with safety in both cars. You should get better economy by using the better fuel, but I would suggest that you try 95 before trying 98 because it costs less up front.

It depends on how long you plan to keep the car and its condition. If it is in good condition and you plan to keep it for four to five years minimum then it could be a worthwhile thing to do, but if it's not in great shape and you don't plan to keep it then it certainly wouldn't be worth it. The problem is that it is an old car and you can't predict what problems you might have in the near future. I wouldn't do it.

The four-cylinder Camry can be successfully converted to run on LPG. Use a sequential vapour injection system from a recognized brand and you won’t go wrong.

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.

Check the wheel bearings, and also the drive shaft joints for wear.

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.

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 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.