Vehicle blowing thick white smoke at low kilometers.
This is really disappointing from Toyota. The car is 9 years old and 70,000 km. The efficiency, comfort, and overall quality seems really high--I've never enjoyed a car more, in fact.
The EGR cooler is a newer invention. In the old days the Exhaust Gas Recirculation system was relatively simple- when the car was running, some exhaust gas was recirculated back into the air intake to help finish burning some of the unburnt fuel, especially when the engine is cold.
To improve the air density coming into the intake manifold, (and no doubt to allow the inclusion of more plastic parts), it was discovered that running the hot exhaust through a heat exchanger would improve the effectiveness and fuel efficiency of the EGR system.
Sadly, Toyota engineers ended up designing a problem as they did not make the walls of the heat exchanger thick enough, and natural corrosion eventually ate through this internal wall on the cooler, allowing coolant to drip and dribble straight into the exhaust pipe, where it is evaporated in thick plumes of expensive white smoke.
Although this is not damaging to the engine, the white smoke is an expensive waste of expensive Toyota Coolant.
In my opinion, Toyota ought to take better care of their customers by providing timely availability of parts, or perhaps even helping with the cost of the parts.
As it was, I am a fairly handy person, so I was able to do all of the parts ordering and swap-out in my own garage at home. The parts cost 1600 CDN, or about 1200 USD. It took me two days (probably because I'm not the fastest mechanic), but I am convinced that it would cost at least 10 hours at Toyota shop rate to do this job, or another 2K CDN, maybe 1.5K USD.
So this is not a cheap problem to fix. I made a work around to allow me to continue driving while I waited 6 weeks for Toyota parts to come in. (I made a sheet metal/gasket material "blank" to insert in the pipe joint extending down to the exhaust.) I went through an additional 2 jugs of coolant during that time due to an imperfect seal on my "blank".
I work out of town a lot and it was stressful leaving my non-mechanical wife to keep topping up the fluid, and asking her to reduce her driving on the only car we can afford.
I bought a Toyota to avoid this sort of thing. That has been a good choice in the past.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
Vehicle blowing thick white smoke at low kilometers.
This is really disappointing from Toyota. The car is 9 years old and 70,000 km. The efficiency, comfort, and overall quality seems really high--I've never enjoyed a car more, in fact.
The EGR cooler is a newer invention. In the old days the Exhaust Gas Recirculation system was relatively simple- when the car was running, some exhaust gas was recirculated back into the air intake to help finish burning some of the unburnt fuel, especially when the engine is cold.
To improve the air density coming into the intake manifold, (and no doubt to allow the inclusion of more plastic parts), it was discovered that running the hot exhaust through a heat exchanger would improve the effectiveness and fuel efficiency of the EGR system.
Sadly, Toyota engineers ended up designing a problem as they did not make the walls of the heat exchanger thick enough, and natural corrosion eventually ate through this internal wall on the cooler, allowing coolant to drip and dribble straight into the exhaust pipe, where it is evaporated in thick plumes of expensive white smoke.
Although this is not damaging to the engine, the white smoke is an expensive waste of expensive Toyota Coolant.
In my opinion, Toyota ought to take better care of their customers by providing timely availability of parts, or perhaps even helping with the cost of the parts.
As it was, I am a fairly handy person, so I was able to do all of the parts ordering and swap-out in my own garage at home. The parts cost 1600 CDN, or about 1200 USD. It took me two days (probably because I'm not the fastest mechanic), but I am convinced that it would cost at least 10 hours at Toyota shop rate to do this job, or another 2K CDN, maybe 1.5K USD.
So this is not a cheap problem to fix. I made a work around to allow me to continue driving while I waited 6 weeks for Toyota parts to come in. (I made a sheet metal/gasket material "blank" to insert in the pipe joint extending down to the exhaust.) I went through an additional 2 jugs of coolant during that time due to an imperfect seal on my "blank".
I work out of town a lot and it was stressful leaving my non-mechanical wife to keep topping up the fluid, and asking her to reduce her driving on the only car we can afford.
I bought a Toyota to avoid this sort of thing. That has been a good choice in the past.
Toyota, please do better.
- D.R. V., Surrey, BC, Canada