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Interference Engine

by Bull6791, November 20, 2014



The 05 corolla has an interference engine. I wanted to know what that means.

Thanks

An interference engine by design means at when one or more valves are fully extended, they will projects into spaces that are overlapped with the piston's travel.

That means that if the timing chain stretched / broke, timing gear jumped a tooth or two, then the piston tops could collide with the valves, causing significant engine damage. Unfortunately, there is no definitive way to figure out when and how this will happen on an interference engine. Some may run poorly (timing is off) or show signs of timing gear issue - other times, just boom - dead engine.

Best you can do is keep up with regular oil changes, note any unusual behavior from the engine, and hope for a little luck as well. Some of these engines have gone trouble free for 300K+ miles, some have a chain snap at 36K miles.

Why do that make them this way? Because it maximized the compression ratio and boosts engine performance (increases volumetric efficiency).

Interference engine questions: what happens to your interference engine if you have a timing belt and that brakes.

What engines or vehicles in Toyota fleet have interference engines.

What is better to have a timing belt or timing chain.

The earlier Toyota engines with timing chains also were interference engines. Some of their inline 6 cylinders and V8 are interference. Diesel variants, I think were all interference designs.

Belts tend to be quieter than chains, but chains have a longer service life. As which is better - that is still up for debate. Toyota made engines with both belts and chains.



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