Originally Posted By: B320i
Originally Posted By: Brons2
This is a known sludger year of Camry, I would be careful about going too far on the oil. 5,000 looks pretty good, I would be hesitant about going further, or at least, I would be conservative about extending further,
I spent a lot of time on the Toyota forums, as I was originally planning on getting a late-90's Camry with the 2.2 engine.
The consensus seemed to be the issue was caused by the long intervals spec'd with a typical conventional oil, hotter temperatures coupled with failure of the PCV components.
A lot of cars like the Toyota Camry of this vintage are being purchased as cheap "beaters" at this point where people won't be maintaining them properly. IMO, a lot of cars seem to get a bad rep after they are sold on from this use, where nothing was done maintenance-wise for 10-20K miles.
That said, I'm not sure how high the TBN for this oil is new, but seeing it so low after just 5000 miles is a bit of a worry. Maybe I'm just used to European I6's pushing nearly double with similar results.
I would be interested in seeing how clean this engine is under the valve cover at this point.
Here's the under valve cover pictures.