Hi -- I'm new here and have a '97 Camry V6 that I've had since 2001. It has 150K+ miles on it and had 53K when we bought it. It's been a fun and relatively reliable car until recently. We've taken it to the dealer a few times with not much help so far.

Symptoms: loss of power. This car used to be pretty fun to drive. Now it seem sluggish. Lousy gas mileage. Getting around 19 mpg overall -- used to be more like 23 - 24 combined and 28-30 highway. Now -- 19 all the time even if miles are more freeway. And lastly -- when asking for acceleration it sometimes goes out of gear (to downshift) and hesitates like it can't find the gear (I think this only happens if it's going for the lowest gear). Today when I started it and was backing out of the garage, it was idling very rough -- I almost scrapped the trip but then, after sitting idling w/o the a/c for a couple of minutes, it was OK.

So far, we've had the plugs and wires changed (Toyota called it a tune-up - did the regular stuff with that), which didn't help. That's about it. Not sure if it's partly a transmission problem or if something else is causing the trans to act strangely. We have maintained the trans fairly well, changing fluid when needed.

I'm just looking for some suggestions as to what to say to the dealer. They've driven it and said they don't find anything wrong, but maybe they didn't really realize it was a V6 when they drove it. I've put 100,000 miles on this car, and something is clearly not right.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or suggestions.
Dana

 

did they change the fuel filter, if not try that, timing adj I hope, compression check to see if low or has leaking head gasket maybe, the 3.0v6 known for that problem,

 

Oh, yes. The fuel filter was changed too (forgot that). We'd let it go too long (really too long) and it ended up getting changed twice. Thanks for the other suggestion. I'll ask them about the timing and compression. Thanks again.