Glad you brought up the engine temperature in Toyota and Lexus engines! In fact, a well-known and highly regarded mechanic in the Orlando, FL area brought up the issue of extremely high temperatures in these engines back in the early 2000s! The temperature was very high and engine fires resulted! I recall a woman in a circa 1998 Sienna had her engine spontaneously combust while ON THE HIGHWAY! She got burned badly. Her show dogs were in the vehicle and they were torched and died! I was contacted by the woman's daughter who found my online engine oil sludge petition (with over 3300 signatures). Apparently, engine fires in these late 1990s Toyota and Lexus vehicles was not all that uncommon. I believe NHTSA opened and closed (we know now how NHTSA bends for automakers) an investigation into spontaneous fires.
I'm certain that somewhere I have the name of that mechanic who often did radio segments for auto owners! There was great discussion at the time because the engine oil in Toyota and Lexus vehicles was COOKING like grease when you fry bacon! BOY! The engine in some vehicle models, especially that 4-cylinder Camry that they later discontinued the engine in, looked blackened like burnt fried eggs and bacon! I saw one such engine up close myself and MANY more in pictures sent to me by angry Toyota owners! What a BIG mess for the owners to deal with!
Yup! Koua Fong Lee did indeed have one of those engines in question at the time! Owners who traveled mostly via highways and longer distances were the ones complaining the loudest! Why, at one time, Toyota had over 10,0000 complaints of various kinds...mostly about engine oil sludge...on the later DDoS-stricken website "The Complaint Station." At the time, Toyota beat out Walmart in numbers of online complaints! The site moderators later said it was permanently hit by malicious attacks and one confided in me when I asked that he thought Toyota was behind it! The site was very active under the Toyota forum with engineers, oil experts, and customers who had seized engines as a result of gooey, black sludge!
Things were looking promising for uncovering a cause of this malady when the site suddenly and very mysteriously went down permanently in the summer of 2004! At that same exact time, the Cartrackers forums also went down permanently and that was the second location of very active Toyota engine oil sludge discussion! I know because I contributed to the discussions based on my online engine oil sludge petition results.
Charlene McCarthy Blake
