Been a while since I've been on this board, and that's a good thing. My daughter's 1987 Camry has been a pretty good car I've been keeping it running and about a month ago I did an oil change on it. It's got about 160,000 MI, and I do the oil about every 6 months so about 3 to 4,000 miles per oil change. Well about a week ago she noticed it was kind of making a humming noise and it sounds like it's coming from the top of the engine and it also the valves seem a little Ticky. I'm wondering if it's losing oil pressure but it has the idiot light so I was thinking about putting a oil pressure gauge on. Is a oil pump failure on these cars common? And do you know what the fitting is so I can try to hook up an oil pressure gauge. Thanks in advance I know this is a little bit long-winded.

 

The fitting is a 1/8 in BPST. Auto parts stores should have an adapter to go from this size to 1/8 in NPT as common with US oil pressure gauges.

Oil pump failure is uncommon. The 4 cyl pump is located about mid height under the timing cover on the firewall side where the bulge out is. Check here for noise. The V6 pump is behind on the crankshaft behind the timing belt pulley.

4 and 6 cyl idle pressure is 4.3 psi or more.

4 cyl at 3K rpm 36-71 psi. V6 is 43-78 psi.

The timing belt should be changed before 90K miles.

Make sure the ticking noise is not the injectors.

 

I don't drive this car very often so I'm not sure that the ticking wasn't always there but I'm sure the whirring was not. But what would make the injectors start ticking more loudly because I just don't think this engine was this noisy. And the timing belt was done about 2 years ago because I had to do the oil pump seal so I just did all that then

 

Some people don't notice how loud the injectors are until they notice the sound. If you think the noise is the same then forget about the injectors. The valve clearance setting uses shims which is not going to change.

Use a section of hose as a stethoscope to narrow down the whine. Could also be the power steering pump and alternator.

On rare occasions the oil pressure bypass valve has issues causing oil pressure issues.

One on occasion needed to change the oil weight from 5W-30 to 10W-30 to keep the oil light from flickering at idle. Engine runs fine years later.

Check the oil pressure and report back.

 

The car is about 2 hours away from me so I don't get to look at it as much as I would like to. I'm waiting on the adapter for the oil pressure and I try to get daily updates from my daughter about any issues. When the adapter gets here and I can get a day off of work I'm going to go up and take a check on the oil pressure.

 

Finally was able to get back up and look at this car. The oil pressure is good about 64 PSI cold and about 60 after it warms up. The other issue I'm having with the air conditioning. When I was here last I didn't realize that the condenser fan is not kicking on. Well I found that the relay for it is bad so that was an issue, I jumped around the relay and got the fan to work but the weird thing is is when I kick the compressor on the high side goes to zero. When the compressor is off high low sides are equal. So I'm kind of at a loss on this one

 

Did you install gauges on the AC to check pressures?

Do the fans start up to move air when the engine idles for a prolonged time? If so the fan relays should be OK.

Does the AC system have enough refrigerant? Low refrigerant might cause this or bad compressor or plugged compressor intake..

The low and high side would be equal with compressor off as the gas pressure equalizes between high and low. side. The compressor increases the low pressure gas to high pressure.

If the compressor is leaking internally, worn out, intake clogged it will not build up pressure. .

 

I was looking at the piping diagram and I realized that the high pressure port is actually Downstream of the condenser dryer and high pressure switch so any of those could be clogged which would explain why I'm not getting any pressure on the high side. The 5-pin relay for the condenser fan was definitely bad, the contacts are burned on it. I'm going to have to try to find one because I didn't see any locally. And yes I did have a manifold set on there. My experience has been that most cars the high pressure port is right off of the compressor but it doesn't appear to be the case on this car

 

Also, this compressor is relatively new in the fact that I installed it a few years ago but it has never really worked it's been disconnected. And I know one of the fans kicks on when the engine gets hot because I replaced the radiator a year ago and let it run until the fans kicked on just to make sure that they did

 

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