Very few people keep their car for 300,000 miles. Even fewer people spend money on repairing cars with that kind of mileage and serious oil burn problems. But the owner of this 2009 Toyota Camry is a rarity, which is why they walked into The Car Care Nut repair shop.
Toyota Camry is also rare. On the outside, it may look like any other beige four-cylinder Camry produced in 2009, but it was one of the few cars from that year to come equipped with a manual transmission. According to The Car Care Nut, the owner wanted a manual transmission, found this car in Florida, and brought it back to Illinois. Since then, they have kept careful records of the car. The biggest expense for this Camry is gas. It also goes through two clutches, four sets of tires, and three batteries.
Other than regular maintenance and a few other repairs, there’s nothing wrong with this Camry. Everything about the car shows that it is well cared for. Apart from religious maintenance, it is clean, the paint is shiny, and the hubcaps are all there. However, if the owner takes care of it so carefully, what happens to the engine to cause the oil to burn? Does it just wear out after 300,000 miles?
According to The Car Care Nut, the problem of oil burn is not due to engine age, but bad piston rings. The 2.4-liter four-cylinder Toyota 2AZ-FE had an oil burn problem from the start. It issued a technical service bulletin addressing the issue, which affects other Toyota and Scion models, as well as 2007 through 2011 Camrys.
The solution was to replace the short block and rebuild the engine with new piston rings and pistons, exactly as the customer had done. It might seem odd to put a new/rebuilt engine in a fourteen year old Camry with 300,000 miles. The cost of the repair work will make for a nice down payment on the new Camry Nightshade Special Edition. But if rowing gears on a manual transmission Camry is your thing, where else are you going to find a replacement?
