I have the dread cam tower leak

So I just got my truck but I knew about this infamous cam tower leak and checked on both sides however my dumbass only checked the front part of the engine on both sides and my buddy who I ironically told him about the cam tower leak when he bought his pointed out the back of my engine where cylinder 7 and 8 is by the firewall has what appears to be a cam tower leak it’s pretty wet but doesn’t appear to be leaking on to the floor yet
The passenger side is seeping but not as bad, my buddy who pointed it out has a 2017 with 143k miles and has it on both sides mine is a 2016 with 75k miles and my other buddy with a 2011 100k miles has it as well

The kicker is the previous and only owner of my truck had a 75k miles platinum warranty and my truck literally has 75,457 miles as I type this, he was pretty meticulous so I truly believe he didn’t know about this issue or he would have gotten fixed under warranty

the driver side looks like it dropped on to the manifold but I haven’t noticed any oil burning smells passanger side doesn’t look like any on the manifold yet

I’m 99 percent Toyota corporate will tell me to f myself but I’ll call them tmrw anyway

 

Join the club.

Mine have been seeping for 10 years. Never have had to add oil between oil changes. I'm not touching a thing.

"Cam tower leak" should change its name to "Cam tower seep".

I have heard of no one complaining about floor stains, oil consumptions, burning oil smell or an engine fire.

It's an engine. Oil is remarkable for its ability to make a stain look like a leak.

Watch your oil level. If nothing changes between oil changes, then things are fine.

 

yes my engine is far too low miles for me want to tear into I’ll do it as a last ditch approach if it gets so bad it’s leaking actual drops on my floor with significant oil loss

 

sucks the 3rd gen guys get a brand new long block for Toyotas fuck up design yet us second gen guys are told to suck a fat one

 

Just switch to 5w-30 and forget about it, nothing to stress about.

 

WTF are you talking about? 2 and 2.5 gen get the 5.7. Have you not heard about the engine problems with the 3rd generation? It is not even a V8.

As a previous poster pointed out, this issue is blown out of proportion.

 

My 2018 has had that leak for about 155k of the 215k that is on it. Never had any drips, no consumption between changes, it doesn't even smoke on the exhaust like my leaky 2.9 ranger valve covers did. I won't lie I fuel it and I wash it from time to time, when it says it needs an oil change I change it. Other than that I just drive the piss out of it.

 

I don't see anything. Definitely not seeing something that would disturb my sleep.

 

Can't see anything in the picture but if its just a small seepage escaping then I would just leave it as is and check the oil level every 1000 miles or so.

 

Gen 2 owners are so bored that they check oil level every 1000 miles. Or so.

I once poured 2 extra quarts into the engine (jug was 5 qt, not 4). Drove it it for a few days before stumbling upon empty jug and noticing the disparity. Evacuated extra quarts, but nothing happened to the engine.

On another occasion the drain bolt backed up a bit on the shaky log roads, engine lost about 1.5 qt of oil before I noticed the yellow stains on the snow that were not mine. Nothing happened.

Before getting the winch, I spend a winter night with the left side in the ditch. Tilted at about 35-40 degrees, engine ran all night long. Oil level was not level, of course, but nothing happened.

This engine does not give a sh!t about owner's fears. It has no time for that, it just works.

 

calm down yes I know all about the 3rd gen engine problem my buddy is an engineer at Toyota in Plano who works on the truck teams project, he said the machining debris is a lie and it’s because they didn’t design the tolerances tight enough when they did the r&d up in Michigan

I was pointing out Toyota is replacing long block engines for those customers

the second gen guys us with the v8 have a known problem but Toyota is keeping it hush hush hoping people won’t notice and most tundra v8 owners aren’t on here or ever heard of this cam tower leak and 90 percent have never checked so it’s a win win for Toyota not do do a tsb or campaign on it and they sure as shit won’t now with all the shit ton of money they are losing on the v6 long block replacements

 

According to the car care nut Toyota did fix cam seals for free if you were still under the factory powertrain warranty. The cam tower leak is not a catastrophic engine failure like they are seeing on the Gen 3 tundras. More of just an annoyance.

 

Yeah a new engine for a seeping gasket would be really Nice.

But lets be honest - an engine that can lockup and fail by the side of the road is a Huge Difference from one that has a seeping leak that most do not even see hit the ground or smoke. Again it would be Nice.

 

@sudobash
@psuedoRyan
@Mr. Egg

 

yes it was covered under warranty the issue is if you read the 90 page thread on here about them, they happen at any mileage one guy had it at only 3k miles and one guy noticed it on his the dealer when he went it to buy it brand new! Others get it at 150k miles so it can be any time and well past the warranty and it effects pretty much all of the 5.7 if you don’t have it now you will later so it clearly is a design issue therefore a recall should have been done and even guys who were under warranty who took it to the dealer for regular service said the techs never mentioned it. Toyota started paying them less and less hours to the dealer like only 7 hours and it’s an extremely hard and time consuming job so no tech will want to work for “free” beyond those hours since they get paid flat rate and even car care nut said the job sucked so bad he joked to call out that week if you’re a tech and techs are only human so they most likely keep it hush hush if you’re under warranty especially if it’s just a seep. Warranty work in general doesn’t pay much at all to the dealer that’s why the dealer is so hesitant to do any warranty work nowadays. Think about it if Toyota paid them a ton for warranty work they would gladly do any little thing that a customer bitched about

 

I’m saying there should be a recall to fix it, read the cam tower thread bro some engines smoke bad because of the leak got so bad that’s the only reason the customer or member on here found out about it, one guy said he is losing about a quart every 6k miles and a few guys said it gets so bad it smokes into their cab so it’s way more than a minor annoyance imo

 

Laughable. 100% related to debris.

 

Believe what you want my guy. I’ll never buy a third gen ever so it doesn’t matter one bit to me what the cause is

 

Alrighty Jimbo.

 

I had my cam tower leak fixed last year, cost around $5K.
Had around 105K miles, but mine was dripping on one side, not seeping.
I didn't see it because it was dripping onto my cat shields...

https://youtu.be/vhxa092g8W4

 

The bearing clearances have not changed since the introduction of the V35A-FTS (Type '21) in the LX600. They are the same today as they were back in Late 2021. Nothing has changed.