Toyota: maybe fixed, maybe not

[Dave W]

I'm still waiting for Mazda to reintroduce the rotary engine in all its sedans.

Anyone else remember this?

[Denis]

I'm still waiting for Mazda to reintroduce the rotary engine in all its sedans.
Anyone else remember this?

Nice! There are still one or two of those sedans running around town here. Remember once upon a time you could get a rotary in a Mazda pickup truck!

[Pilgrim]

Funny thing about the Avalon oil issue - the VWs made over the last decade had the same issue.  Seems that to fit the 4 cyl in the Passat they just created a smaller oil pan.  The turbo then "cooked" the oil into sludge which cycled through the engine more due to less capacity, and then, if you are not a big maintenance person, BANG - your engine goes south.  Mine didn't seize, but VW got up front about it and rebuilt the entire top end of my motor for me.  Nice Volk, those VW volk.  For now, I stick to my VW.

That's a great reason to run synthetic motor oil in any turbo motor.  It has considerably more resistance to gelling and breaking down under hi-temp operation.

Amazing how even engineers can forget that the motor oil is a critical part of the engine's cooling system.  Reduce the volume of oil and you reduce the heat sink effect - and the oil runs hotter, suffers more mechanical breakdown and generally ages much faster.

[Darrol]

The only real problem we have had with Toyota is with our 2001 Rav4. We started to notice a problem shifting between 1st and 2nd gear so we took it in. They said they could not replicate the problem which is somewhat understandable considering the problem usually only happened when the car was first started in the morning. We took it back to them again when it had gotten a bit worse and they still said they could not find anything wrong. I started doing research and found that it was linked to the ECU to which they replied that there was a recall on it. By that time, the damage was already done. Now the car still hangs and jerks when going into 2nd if accelerating too fast. They still fail to admit that they had anything to do with the transmission issues we now deal with even though we took it into them when the problem first started, before the damage occurred.

[eb2]

Wankel engines.  Time for them to return.

[Denis]

Wankel engines.  Time for them to return.

I wish I could a) afford a Norton rotary and b) get it past emission requirements for the US.

[Barklessdog]

RX-8 has one or was it discontinued?

Funny thing about the Avalon oil issue - the VWs made over the last decade had the same issue.  Seems that to fit the 4 cyl in the Passat they just created a smaller oil pan.  The turbo then "cooked" the oil into sludge which cycled through the engine more due to less capacity, and then, if you are not a big maintenance person, BANG - your engine goes south.  Mine didn't seize, but VW got up front about it and rebuilt the entire top end of my motor for me.  Nice Volk, those VW volk.  For now, I stick to my VW.

Subaru adds an oil cooler on top of the engine. I use synthetic oil as well.