88 Camry oil fouled plug??

[mb571]

As I was trying to eliminate my 4 cyl (3S-FE) camry from stalling in wet weather I found some other potential issues. 1st I replaced the rotor, cap and plug wires. (Still stalling in damp weather). Then before I changed the coil, I decided to replace the spark plugs. One of the four was very fouled with oil. A compression test showed all four cylinders at 180 psi. Is it likely valve seals? Another cause I read a little blurb about was that the spark plug tubes needed to be inserted with Locktite sealant. Has anyone ran into this before?

PS: My Haynes manual describes how to change the valve seals for the SOHC but not the 3S-FE DOHC. What is involed??

Mark

[davemarfl]

The only thing I ran into was the leftmost plug once became very oil fouled and caused missing ....because I put in too much oil.

It seems like this model is pretty sensitive to that. Doubt this is your problem though.

[Mike Gerber]

If the oil on the spark plugs was above the threads on the hex and/or the porcelain, before doing anything else, try retorqueing the large 32MM nuts on top of the valve cover to about 15 foot lbs in 2 passes. First 8 foot lbs and then 15 foot lbs on the second pass. These were the 4 nuts that were exposed when the plug wires were removed from the top of the cam cover. This will screw the spark plug tubes down deeper in to the head and compress the seals at the top of these tubes a bit tighter up against the underside of the cam cover. This usually stops the leak.

As far as your damp weather stalling, the coil developing a hairline crack and shorting itself to ground in damp weather is a common problem on 3SFE engines. I replaced one about 6 years ago on my niece's 3SFE engine, with an aftermarket Borg Warner coil I got at Pep Boys for around $45. It solved her wet weather problems. The dealer wanted to replace her whole distributor for around $600. The distributor has to come out to replace the coil but it's really a pretty easy job.

Good luck with both problems.

Mike

[typesix]

It's common to this generation. Toyota had some TSBs on it and some solutions to this, but they don't always work. I just live with it.