When I received the "Impound Camry" the drive home wasn't bad but you could tell it had been sitting awhile. Fluids were surprisingly clean aswell as the brand new snow tires that were on it. It should really bad on idle but the A/C works! Oh did I mention, it has 403k miles on it ha! I did a compression test on the motor and my readings were 200-35-176-179. I dropped a small amount of oil in cyl 2, which resulted in no change in reading. The spark plug was super carboned up, I dont even think it would spark anymore it was so bad. I decided based on that alone that it was a valve issue and worth tearing apart and trying to fix. I ordered a new rebuilt head with cams for 320 shipped which seemed to me worth a shot. I also picked up a new cap, rotor, coil, brake pads, and new torque mount aswell as plugs and a gasket kit which puts me around 700 total invested, not bad.
Let the teardown begin...after short while I noticed all of these bolts werent factory tight and everything came apart super easy, as if someone has been here before...
I even took out the penetrating oil, wasn't even needed.
Was coming along great as I got the manifold off the head...
Can you say clogged cat? Beyond shot...this may be leading up to why this may or may not have burnt a valve...
I get the valve cover off and Im simply shocked...I dont think this is original. You can see 98 written on the cams which is deff not factory and this is also a 96 to boot. Interesting, did I get lucky? Why was the compression low, is the bottom end original and bad? I was excited but also more confused, I need to know more!
This cant be a 403k mile motor... I popped the head off and instantly knew why cyl 1 had high compression...
Rat turds, thats fitting. Atleast the wiring wasnt touched! Now lets look and see if the walls are bad, or whats going on with that low compression!
Wow! These pics dont do this justice, much better than I was expecting. So was I right?
Looks alright at first, little bit of carbon build up but wait a second...
Would you look at that, my suspicions were correct and wasnt sealing due to a burnt intake valve.
Time to clean it off and get this head back on with new gaskets and see how it does, I suspect compression will be spot on after.
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