Oil Control Valve Location

I just took my Oil Control Valves out. One broke right off on the way out. It was pretty brittle.

I just ordered two new ones from Rock Auto. Hoping these will get rid of my POO22 error codes that show up more often these days. Now I wait for them to arrive.

 

Jonas - what did you break? They're metal so I'm not sure what you're referring to.

 

The solenoid hood at the top of the OCV looks like it can snap off. I replaced my passenger side one while troubleshooting P0016, and it fought me coming out even sprayed with Kroil and wiggling it to loosen the o-ring seal.

 

The solenoid broke off when I tried to pull the unit out. Basically right where it enters the head it broke off flush. Wasn’t easy to get the broken piece out. But it’s out now. It’s like a cast metal where they join and it snapped off with little to no effort.

I was super gentle with the other side pulling it out and it came out as a full unit. Sprayed it with wd40 first and let it sit for a few min.

 

Yup, that's the failure mode I was describing. Make sure you lube the o-rings with motor oil when reinstalling the OCVs, clean up the bores carefully so no debris drops into the engine, and twist them while inserting back into the bores.

 

Just wanted to put my experience out there with 210K on the odometer on an '07 TRD Off Road Access Cab. I pulled the passenger filter and it was clean as new. I sprayed it down any way, but didn't bother with the driver's side since I had to drop the alternator. I figured it was going to be the same condition as the passenger side filter. I ended up swapping out my OCV valves since I was suffering from poor mpg (losing about 50-100 miles a tank from when the truck was new). The truck itself felt like it ran fine prior, my OCD swears it had a ever so slight rough idle at times that the AC compressor smoothed out when it kicked in. Any way, OMG the truck woke up after swapping the OCV valves!! The old valves like the filters looked brand new inside when I pulled them out, but I guess they weren't performing to spec. I can't wait to see if my MPG improves, but I'm betting it will. I'm no longer pressing the throttle as far as I used to and it doesn't take much to get the transmission to downshift now. I did once get a OCV malfunction on passenger side, but I forgot what code it was and it only came on once and went away on it's own. That was over thirty thousand miles ago, but was about the time the truck stated to suffer from poor MPG. As clean as the components were (OCV, OCV Filter, CPS sensor) I guess my 10k Mobil 1 synthetic oil changes are fine. Again, the parts literally looked new inside. Another thing I noticed was the MPG would improve every oil change and gradually taper off. Although this stopped some time ago when I started to experience the loss in MPG. I'll try and remember to update after a couple fill ups on my MPG status and hopefully some pics of the old valves.

By the way, did anyone notice the passenger side OCV had a hard time pulling out? it seem that once it started coming out, it still fought me the whole way. Even the new sensor had resistance going in. The old valve body got scratched up from trying to move it out. The drivers side was as expected, very smooth.

 

What was the size of the bolt on the Oil Control Valve Filter?

Assuming I'm looking at the correct one on the passenger side I have to say that access is quite restricted. I can probably get it off of getting it on with the proper torque could be an issue. I'm not sure my torque wrench will fit in that tight space.

 

Nevermind, it was a 14 mm bolt and I got it off the passenger side. It looked cleaned so I returned and just torqued it by hand. I won't bother checking the driver's side.

 

So how the heck do you access these 2 oil control valve solenoids? I'm guessing you have to remove this air intake box or whatever it is called. I can't find any DIY videos on YouTubes. Is it a pain in the ass? Any tips would be appreciated.

 

Yes it is a pain in the rear and hard to get to. Go slow and have patience. It is doable.

 

Does it require removing the Upper intake manifold to gain access to the OCV solenoids?

 

Passenger side can be accessed by removing the induction tract and air filter housing all the way to the throttle body. Unsure whether the driver's side can be accessed this way.

 

I would say that makes it a lot easier.

 

And if you can't look at the bolt and housing and decide whether they're accessible, it's time to put down the wrench and have a shop do the work.

 

I have a contribution to make to the discussion... 09 4Runner 4.0 2WD with P0022. Truck runs perfectly. It had dirty oil so I changed it and cleared the code. Code came back. I pulled the OCV and cleaned it with carb cleaner and cycled it manually. I got 7.9 ohms at 85F degrees also pulled the filter and it was perfectly clean. I will give an update on if cleaning the OCV was a fix.

Update: after 100+ miles the code hasn’t come back.

Update: well after a few hundred miles the code came back. I’m going to replace the OCV.

 

Did you pull both sides?

 

No, just bank 2.

 

Finally, jesus I searched dozens of times looking for people who have had this problem. Mine is intermittent but exactly as you described, right down to the correlation with oil changes.

I have been tearing my hair out trying to figure out if it was vvti, actuator, chain slack, transmission problems, injector problems, fuel pump problems, wiring, evac, or whatever mysterious system I thought of.

I will check the actuator wiring and order new ones. Finally, thank you. Thank you!

 

JKD, it's a bitch of a problem to figure out if you don't know any better. I did the same thing, checked all kinds of things until I stumbled onto these solenoids. Happy to report that mine is still running like a top.

 

2 questions here.

Ok, so these are the valves, in the picture in the quote above... and the filters are on the outside of the engine block as shown in this (driver-side) picture in the quote below?

Is that correct?

My second question, if these filters were clogged and/or one or both of those valves were faulty, would this cause my mileage to drop to like 11 MPG even though the truck is running fine? I do have the CEL and the p0011 code, so I am going to clean the filters and test the actual solenoid valves... but again, can this be the reason my mileage has fell off a cliff? I have been driving it for awhile like this, but I let my gf use the truck too and I never noticed the mileage thing until the other day when I was the sole driver of the truck for the past week.