2001 toyota camry head gasket

[sidriptide]

01 camry V6.. thinkin the head gasket is bad.. rough idle and off-idle.. she says it "smokes" so i'm thinkin steam.. check engine light has been on for a few weeks.. car has a very poor maintenance history and at 50K miles its all sludged up inside the engine.

are head gaskets common problems on these?

looks like a real BEOTCH of a job that will be big $$ to have done at a shop. time to buy an FSM and read up on it. might as well use my new shop space for something besides parking.

 

[Matthew Currie]

If it is a head gasket, and smoking and running badly, then you should be seeing loss of coolant, as well as haivng the characteristic white sweet smoke. I'd give it a pressure test before going much further. I think head gasket problems are not that uncommon on Toyotas, but that one seems pretty young.

If there's a check engine light, it might be worthwhile getting the code off it first.

I imagine it will be a pretty nasty job, and definitely a candidate for the FSM. I have some recollection, mostly from listening to Car Talk, that the water pumps on these things are a monster, so if the head job duplicates a good portion of the labor on that, you might consider doing that while you're in there.