3RZ-N73 engine... anyone else have one?

This post is a follow-up to this post here:
http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/1st-gen-tacomas/230539-low-oil-pressure-weird-sound-engine.html

I have a 99 Prerunner 2.7L 4-cylinder, and the 5th letter of my VIN is M, so everything tells me that I should have the 3RZ-FE engine... but after I bought a rebuilt one from Denny's Auto Machine, it arrived at the shop doing my engine replacement, but the engines were different. The 3RZ-FE has coil packs, while mine, which apparently is a 3RZ-N73, is distributed... so a major difference in engines.

The shop was ticked that he sent the wrong engine, but even after calling around to several toyota dealerships, they only found one tech that knew what was up-- only a few trucks at the end of that model year for the prerunner got the N73 engine instead of the FE style. Even if I had given the shop every bit of info I had about the truck, except for actually looking at the designation stamped on the engine itself, they would have made the exact same mistake.

While the 3RZ-FE is a difficult to find, expensive engine, the 3RZ-N73 is even rarer-- no one I talked to could even find a single one that was worth putting in the truck.

Thankfully, Denny is an amazing business person, and offered to ship both his engine and my engine back to him, rebuild my engine, and ship mine (rebuilt) back at no extra cost to me. One other thing I have to mention is that he had a great price on a rebuilt engine in the first place, with a 3-year, 36,000 mile warranty, AND he offered to buy my core back for up to $200 and pay for the shipping to get it.

All in all this has been a one-in-a-million type experience, from my engine going bad in the first place, to finding out that I have the rarest tacoma engine on the planet.

So this warning goes out to all of you Tacoma owners out there... make sure you know EXACTLY which engine you have.

Happy driving!

 

Hey, I recently bought a motor off craigslist (which I thought was a 3rz-fe). Turns out it's actually a 3rz-N73. It's in great shape. I was told it was out of a 97 Tacoma 4x4. Anyways ways I'm doing a 22r to 3rz swap and I was wondering how much of a difference there is between the 3rz-Fe and the 3rz-N73??