I hate to be one of those guys, but the fact is I just don't have enough experience with these engines to know any better. I have a 2JZGTE VVTI in the car. It was a recent swap. I had a number of things replaced before I dropped the engine in. After about 200 miles, the engine has developed a significant oil leak. It's not pouring out, but after I stop I see multiple drips. It appeared to be coming from the front side of the engine, so I removed the cover so I could see what was going on. I did have the water pump, front main seal, tensioner, and timing belt all replaced before putting the engine in. But now I have this significant leak. It appears that oil is spilling out all over the front of the engine which leads me to think maybe the oil pump/seal/gasket is bad...? I'll defer to some of you with much more experience if you can give a rookie some advice.





There's actually a pool of oil sitting atop this black bolt

 

Did you have the cam seals replaced? Valve cover gaskets? Getting any oil in the spark plug wells?

You are going to need to clean everything and then try to determine the exact place it is leaking. There are a lot of things that can be leaking

BTW, it's not an oil pump issue.

 

Thanks, Bruce. The cam seals, crank seal, and valve cover gaskets were all changed as part of the service pre-drop in. Cleaning everything will not necessarily reveal the issue. I suppose I could put everything back together less the timing covers and look for the leak, but thought I'd check here first to see if anyone had any additional advice.

 

pay close attention to you vvti cam gear. it uses oil pressure to operate and has been known to puke oil.

 

Thanks for the input! I'll be checking that. I do believe that a cleanup and subsequent startup with the timing cover is in order to help pinpoint this one. I'm partially relieved to hear it doesn't look like the oil pump housing or the crank seal.

 

I got a chance to truly clean everything. I then went and drove it. It took a few miles with some revs on the highway to get it glowing again where I could find it. My belief, based on the pictures here is that I'm losing oil from both intake and exhaust cams. What concerns me is that these are brand new seals, and so what would be causing a leak?





I'll buy some seals from the local dealer - just to confirm, from my research both the intake and the exhaust cam seals are the same, turbo, non, VVTI, or not. Is this accurate?

I don't intend to remove the caps / valve cover and so I'll pull the old seals out and install the new ones from the side. However, is it common practice to use RTV when installing these? If so, I may find myself pulling the valve cover too.

 

What brand of seal did you put in? If the lip of the seal got rolled up during install, that could also cause the issue.

Have you changed your PCV valve? If that gets clogged, you can get extra crankcase pressure that won't help matters.

 

PCV valve is new. Toyota cam seals were what were used. That's what I'll go with again. I'm going to change to a thicker oil (10-40) and see if that helps too. Currently on 10-30. I have a lot of confidence in my installer, but hopefully it's just a fluke.

 

I put the new seals in and, fingers crossed, have turned about 75 miles and (left covers off) haven't seen any signs of leakage yet I will take it on its first highway drive tomorrow (60 miles round rip) and if I'm not seeing any leakage thereafter, I'll call it good and button her back up! At this point I am getting pretty quick at timing belt removal/installation

Thanks for the inputs!