Top 5 Problems Toyota Camry Sedan 7th generation 2011-19

Here we have a 2013 Toyota Camry. We're gonna go over the top five problems with the vehicle. I know some of you Toyota fans are saying, "There's no way there's anything wrong with this car," but every vehicle has its problems.

Number one, check engine light with a rattle noise coming from your engine. You may notice an engine rattle coming from the front of the engine. The front of the engine is actually on the passenger side on the vehicle because it's front-wheel drive. Now, with that, you may find a check engine light with a camshaft position code or some kind of camshaft correlation code. Now, there is a service bulletin that Toyota knows about the problem, and what that is is the company finding a problem with the vehicle and coming up with a solution, but it is not a recall.

Right here, there's some solenoid valves. These are gonna change the timing in the camshafts, so that changes the camshaft timing. Now, the actuators in the camshafts could have some problems with those, there could be problems with these valves. And something about these valves, they're very sensitive to oil changes. You wanna make sure that you keep your oil up to the proper level, and use a quality oil, and change your oil regularly, or that can cause premature wear of those components. So, if you put a lot of miles on your car or your engine runs for long periods of time, maybe you're a rideshare driver, you're gonna wanna change your oil regularly. I can't stress it enough, this will prevent some of these problems from happening.

Number two, maybe your AC stopped working. A lot of times, there's a pressure switch or a flow switch on the actual AC compressor that goes bad, and you go to use your AC, it's not gonna work. You may have a code B1479, and that's the problem. Your AC compressor is located right down here, way down deep into the engine. And this isn't something you can do at your house because you're not gonna be able to take the refrigerant out of the system safely, so you have to go to a trained professional.

Number three is noise coming from the water pump. You may hear a noise coming from behind this pulley right here. That's where the water pump is. A lot of times, the bearings go bad in the water pump, so you'll hear a bearing type noise or a grinding noise. It's not gonna be the same as the timing chain noise that you heard from upper of the engine, it's gonna be lower. So, if your water pump is making noise, it's time to change it, and this is something you can do at your house.

One of the ways you can determine if that noise is the water pump, you can use a stethoscope made for automotive. This is very similar to a doctor's stethoscope, just has a different end on it. So, keep it away from the belt area, and you can touch right on the body of the water pump right there while the engine's running, and if you hear the grinding noise coming through the stethoscope, then that's probably your problem. You can also use this tool to check for that rattle noise at the camshaft sprockets.

Number four, battery and electrical-related problems. After you jumpstart the vehicle, you may notice that you have a check engine light on with a code P2118, which is actually a throttle actuator control code, which is caused by a blown fuse. The fuse panel is right here, just pull the cover off. And on the back, you can see which fuse it is. It's actually on the right, it's the third one up. It's the ETCS fuse. This 10 amp fuse right here. Pull the fuse puller, pull that fuse out, check and see if it's blown, it probably will be, and install a new fuse. Then, you should be able to clear the code and be good to go

Now, the reason why you had to jumpstart the vehicle was probably because the battery was bad, whether it's old or the alternator's starting to go. A lot of times, you'll be driving down the road and you have a battery light come on the dash, it's probably your alternator.

And number five, misfires. A lot of times, you'll get a misfire code with a check engine light. You'll have a P0300 through P0306 because this is only a six-cylinder. So, any of those codes, it's caused by the cylinders not firing, there's something going on, whether you have a bad ignition coil or you have a bad fuel injector. Anytime you have the check engine light flashing, it's caused by a misfire, something's not working right, and there could be potential damage to your catalytic converters, so you wanna pull over and have the vehicle towed. Here's the front three ignition coils and the back three, they're behind the intake. Now, you can access them without taking the intake off, although it's extremely difficult, it's a lot easier to just take the intake off. And the fuel injectors are down here. And then, same on the backside, it's easiest to remove the intake gasket, the intake itself because you won't be able to access those without doing that. Here we have with the scan tool, we have a P0302, misfire number two detected. What number two is this cylinder right here. The even cylinders are on this side, two, four, six, and odds are on the back bank. So, what we could do is we could take this coil out, and swap it with this coil, and run the engine again, and see if the misfire moves to cylinder number four, then you'd know it needs a coil.

So, there's the top five problems with this vehicle. Every car has problems. This is still an amazing vehicle.

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