2007 Camry SE
 

I finally got rid of the Outback and I replaced it with a Camry! So far the only thing I have done is aired up the tires to ~39 PSI. Based on the fuel gauge I seem to be getting at least 30 mpg, which is a huge improvement over the Subaru. I plan on doing a tune up, air dam, LED lights, and a partial grill block. My hope is to get at least 36 mpg combined from this car!

36 could be difficult in some driving conditions. The 2AZ is working against you a bit since it's so old, but you could try an underdriven crank pulley. Another area to gain a tiny bit is the power steering, you can decrease the system flow rate at the flow control valve to reduce its power consumption at the expense of slowing down the steering rack a little. Maybe manual torque converter lockup?

Depends how it's used.

These cars can be surprisingly efficient highway cruisers. I think 2007 was the first year of the next gen car compared to my dad's 4-cyl Camry - same engine?

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1351467646

Speed vs. MPG chart: 2002 Toyota Camry 2.4 auto (impressive highway MPG sleeper car?)

He's since replaced it with a slightly more efficient 2005 with the automatic 5-spd vs. 4-spd.

2007 still has hydraulic power steering, huh? That's low-hanginging fruit. I'd take the tire pressure up a bit more too. I tend to run ~45-50. Maybe some more underbody paneling.

I'd avoid any undamped crank pulleys. You can probably find a real underdrive damper, but easier (and cheaper) would likely be individual underdrive pulleys for the various accessories. An undamped pulley is likely to eat anything connected to the timing chain, especially oil pumps, and may also increase wear on bearings.

What do you have for mpg instrumentation?

The 2002 had OEM instant and average (on separate pages of the display though, so less useful). The 05 has nada... though I suspect if it had the button, it's there in the display anyway.

Nothing at the moment. I think I might use the scan gauge E from my Jeep in this car. Some higher trim levels do gave their own mpg readout though.

Is it safe to adjust the flow rate on the PS pump?

I agree with the idea of not getting just any underdrive crank pulley. Hopefully they have individual underdrive pulleys for the accessories.

That chart shows that the Camry really takes a big mpg drop at highway speeds. My driving is mostly highway, so focusing on aero should be a priority. How do air dams compare to underbody panels?

Air dams are a lot easier to make and test, that's for sure.

I'd definitely get the SGe in there. I like that gauge showing instant and trip avg. The average bar graph is a good motivator too.

Adjusting the flow control valve would be trimming the spring a little so it opens earlier. The rack will be slower, but if you can turn the wheel okay at idle I feel like it's not an issue. Better would be to just delete the PS and loop the rack, but you'll have to muscle the wheel a bit. If the spring was trimmed too much, you have the option of boring out the flow control orfice to undo the change a bit.

There are probably better gains to be had from the water pump. Due to the constant-flow-output design of the PS pump, the energy loss through the rack is fixed, and the energy loss through the flow control valve increases linearly. The water pump has no bypass valve so the losses grow cubically. At like 2500rpm the water pump is usually already eating a few headlamps worth of power in excess of the engine's cooling requirement.

As for the air dam, you could start with extended tire spats first for something easier and less conspicuous/fragile. They don't add frontal area and only improve the Cd, while an air dam increases the frontal area.

Is your Camry a V6 or I4? I surmise if you keep your foot off the floor with the gas pedal below you that you should be able to get some good numbers, especially on the highway.

I've always wanted to do a back to back FE comparison between the I4 and V6 Camrys and Accords.

^ I bet the highway numbers would be surprisingly close. It's one reason (excuse?) I've heard people give for choosing the 6 over the 4.

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Also, yes! Make a garage page for the Camry!

https://ecomodder.com/forum/emgarage.php?do=add

Luckily I have the 4 cylinder version. Less lucky is that I need to solve a misfire problem on cylinders 2 and 3. Hopefully it is the spark plug or coil.

I would like to look into the steering pop pump thing... is the spring hard to get to? I may d ok it if I ever need to service the pump.

PSA: Make sure it is an ignition problem and not a fuel injector acting up.
I went trough a lot of head scratching and replacing parts not necessary trying to solve intermittent misfires in one cylinder. Finally found the problem when one of the injectors died completely. :D

My boss had a 03, 4 cyl 5 speed, his son drives it now, I'd say just replace all 4 coils based on his experience with it, Same for the injectors when they fail. He's done all 8 coils & injectors spread out over the last 2-3 years.

All my kids drove a 98 Stratus without PS when it failed. Just disconnect it and get most of the oil out, loop the hoses and see how it drives. I've deleted the PS in my cobalt just to try it, but it was simple as pulling a fuse.

I am fairly certain that it is an ignition related problem. The coils are all original and the spark plugs are going on 40k miles. Hopefully swapping these out will increase my mpg too :) However the ECM did not specify where the problem was coming from.

Another PSA... I've driven several small cars with PS deletes (Insight, Miata, Mirage), and steering effort isn't significantly higher than my Metro/Firefly with factory manual steering. (Higher tire pressure helps.)

But my dad's Camrys are total brutes to steer without assist.

Yea that's why I suggested cutting the flow control spring. With what, 1700lbs over the front axle, a bit of assist is going to be really nice to have. I successfully muscled my PS disabled MR2 wheel but I will admit it is kind of unsafe if you need to do a fast maneuver since the fluid restriction really slows you down. That's probably more like double the resistance but it was really way too heavy.

So I'm still trying to find the source of the cylinder misfires. I replaced the coils and plugs but that did not fix the problem. I suspect the problem is the connectors because the last person who worked on them broke most the clips off and used zip ties to keep them on the coils.

Getting a code for which cylinder is misfiring?

Boss's had a miss fire, had shop diagnose and replaced it, then another replaced it himself. Doing all 4 upfront would have been cheaper than one shop visit. On the injectors I think it was telling him which cylinder so just replaced one, not much later another one went, that time replaced the other 3.

I chased a occasional LTFT (long term fuel trim) issue on my Cobalt causing flooding, did coils, injectors, O2, still randomly come back, one day funny noise when got to work and it was the evap purge valve squeeling, replaced it and good for a few month. Came back, replaced it a again with different brand part it it's been good for a while. I really didn't think enough air could leak through that hose to max out fuel trims. Code was always a lean code even though the car was flooding itself.

Cylinders 2 and 3 are misfiring. I also got a P0300, which is just multiple misfires detected. I'm hoping that changing the connectors fix it. I don't really want to mess around with injectors or sensors at the moment.

I replaced all of the connectors on the Camry. That seem to greatly reduce the problem, however cylinder 2 still misfires under load. The only thing that I can think of is that it may be the injectors, though that doesn't make sense that it only misfires under load. The injectors are original with 190k miles on them, so it probably isn't a bad idea to change them out anyway.

One easy test would be to swap the injectors between cylinders and see if the issue follows the injector.

That's pretty smart. I'll do that if the injectors are easy to get to.

One quick test is to start the car, then put earmuffs on, then get a long stick/something similar and hold one end on the muffs, the other end against the injector.
Working injector makes clicking/ticking sounds and a faulty injector is silent.
Obviously this works only if one injector is completely dead.
With this method you don't have to spill any gas. :D

If you have a VVT-i engine I suggest getting 93 Octane fuel you will gain quite a bit of MPG that is how i'm able to pull 27-31.5 on the highway I use 91 octane Top Tier Chevron/Texaco Mobil/Exxon is great also

$2.899/18.5MPG(city or highway)
$0.156 per mile

$3.199/ 27.5 MPG(i seem to be able to get that a lot on the highway)
= $0.116 per mile

3.199 /22.5MPG city (i seem to be able to get that a lot in the city)
=$0.142 per mile


just becareful some shops will charge the 93octane price but dispense 87 octane

The 2AZ-FE engine in that Camry has only a 9.6:1 compression ratio, which is pretty low. It shouldn't be anywhere near knock limited even on 87 octane.

The hybrid version of the engine has a 12.5:1 compression ratio which could easily benefit from higher octane fuel if that were the end of the story, but I'm nearly certain it doesn't have ignition timing tables for higher octane fuel, and those improvements would really only apply at wide open throttle anyway. Instead the hybrid runs the Atkinson cycle to reduce the dynamic cylinder pressure, which again makes low octane fuel perfectly fine to run.

91 should not be called "supreme" or "ultra" as it does absolutely nothing in engines not designed specifically to run on them, and those engines typically don't run at all on lower octane fuels.