Hi all. I am in the process of fixing my daughters 2000 camry ( 104K miles) that has an oil leak around the timing belt, probly the oil pump. I was wondering if you thought that this job would be easier to do if I hoisted the engine out of it and worked on it like that as oppose to trying to work on it in the tight engine bay. Is it worth the trouble of removing the engine for. I am going to be changing the timing belt and water pump also. And is there a thread that goes through this? I have done this on a Subaru but the engine was not sideways. Any advice?

 

If your going to be working on the engine suggest picking up a low cost service manual such as from Haynes for around $20.

Is the engine a V6 or 4-cylinder? The 4-cylinder oil pump is powered by the timing belt and its drive shaft seal can leak. The V6 pump is built into the engine front housing and powered directly by the crank. Its seal is like a crank seal.

Even though access to the front of the engine is tight it is much easier to leave the engine inside the car!

Access to the oil pump on the 4 cylinder requires removing the same parts as changing the timing belt. There are threads at this site and others such as Toyotanation on how to change the timing belt. Search the web under "timing belt change 5SFE" for 4 cylinder or 1MZFE for V6. YouTube may even have videos.

A few tips.

Due to limited space one of more tedious requirements is remove the upper engine mount bracket held on by 3 bolts. For these bolts suggest using a 6-point box wrench to avoid any possibility of rounding over the heads of these bolts as they can be tight! If this happens bolt removal becomes a problem.

The crankshaft harmonic balance needs to come off. It is two metal pieces with a rubber sandwich between. Use only a bolt on puller as a jaw type may pull the outer piece off.

You will need to hold the crank from turning in order to unbolt the pulley crank bolt. One methods bolt a section of wood to the front of the pulley using the same holes the puller would attach and having a hole to allow access for the socket to turn the crank bolt. Make the section of wood long enough that it will bind up with the chassis or floor when the pulley rotates.

Once you have both timing covers off, make note of how the timing belt wraps around the pulleys.

If the leak is from the oil pump the seal would be under oil pressure when the engine was running. As such there would be a drip when engine on. You may be able to see the drip if you look under the engine, firewall side of timing cover for a slow drip as the engine is running.

The crank and cam shaft seal can leak but these would tend to be slow leaks as the seals are not under oil pressure.

You can examine all the seals once the timing cover is off and harmonic balance.

If it the oil pump seal is bad the pump can be taken apart and the seal replaced. Note there is a preformed O-ring seal between the pump assy and housing it bolts to.

 

Awesome, thanks toyomoho.
It is a 4cyl and this will help alot. I will leave it in and work on it like that. From what you say I think that the oil pump is leaking. The leak gets worse when driving so the oil pump being under pressure makes sense. I have a full timing belt kit with the idler pulleys and a water pump, figured I would change that too while i have everything else apart.
By "upper engine mount bracket" do you mean the dogbone that is on the passenger side? I actually have to replace that because the bushing is tore up.
I got a Haynes manual the other day, some people are saying to get the Service Repair manual from the dealer, but I think that the Haynes will be fine for this. anything else I need to watch out for.
Thanks again.

 

The engine mount bracket is called the No 2 bracket. The dogbone bolts between this bracket and chassis.

It is common for the dogbone bushings to get torn.

For more info see private message sent to you.