Toyota Camry 1999 4 cylinder. Ok so here is what I observed. The car shown no signs of mechanical failure or wear. Going 40-50 miles per hr. the engine bay clanked and banged like the car blew a tire. It even shook like it blew a tire. But the force was in the middle of the cabin. The oil light came on, the engine shut off and lost power instantly. Car was pulled over and oil was leaking out the bottom passenger end.
Oil is at half capacity. No idea what broke. The spill dominate area is the passenger end/front where the timing cover is. My money is on sudden oil pump failure. But I'm not sure. im just an amateur. Can't Really see where the oil spill is coming from and timing cover is hard to get to. Codes found is p0325, current, knock/combustion sensor A. my question is what could have failed and how screwed is the engine? It shut off at mechanical failure and I did not attempt to crank it since. Safely had it towed but will not be seeing a mechanic just yet. Trying to figure out who I trust enough to see it. In the meantime I wanna learn what may have happened from anyones previous experience with cars.
Sounds like your engine threw a rod or experienced some other catastrophic internal failure. An event like that would make enough noise and shock that it would overpower the knock sensor, so the P0325 is not surprising. Note that "internal engine problems" is listed as a potential cause of that code:
You didn't mention mileage, but the car is 26 years old so almost anything could have gone wrong with it. How old is the timing belt? I believe that's a non-interference engine but it would suddenly stop and possibly make some noise if the timing belt snapped. If you can't determine what happened yourself you need to have a mechanic look it over, either a mobile mechanic or have it towed to a shop. (Avoid dealers and chain shops.)
Chances are it's time to start shopping for another car.
@chucktobias the mileage is 246 k it's had oil change intervals of 3000 miles and had been maintained by the previous owner before me. The engine always purred and gave me no issues, no codes no grief. so the sudden death is shocking to me.
@skmiles_You have to be prepared for that sort of thing when you drive a car that old. I drive one even older with much higher mileage and although it runs well I would not be surprised if one day out of the blue it just craters on me. All part of the game. However we don't really know what happened in your case until someone does a hands-on diagnosis. All we can do here is go by your description and it doesn't sound promising.
Toyota Camry 2.2L Engine 111k miles 1997 1998 2000 2001 . | eBay
My 2 cents. Drain the oil, look for disco party. (metal in oil looks shiny and sparkly) Something let go by the description of the sound and effect you felt in the cabin.
You can fix this. Park it, after looking at the oil, drop the oil pan, if there are chunks of metal in the oil pan, you need a new engine. For 1100 bucks thats a decent deal. Put the new block in use all the same cable s boom back on the road. This time change the oil on a regular interval.
