2007 Lexus ES350 - KA BOOM!

my dad's wife owns a 2007 ES350 with 120K on it. Originally owner and fully serviced......

Over the weekend she was driving and the timing chain let go. Entire engine goes BOOM! Did so much damage that the valve cover even broke. Pretty crazy to think that the chain didnt even give an warning, just let go. They quoted $17,000 for a new engine installed from Lexus.

Anyways, not looking for advice, just wanted to share the story.

 

Lol $17k. What's the car even worth at this point?

 

$12k with a good engine....lol

they will put in a junkyard engine with 70K on it for around 7500.

 

Crazy. Chains normally don't break that soon. Must have been an inferior part.

 

Tell her to stop drifting...

 

My 2006 Chevy Colorado puked the head and timing chain at 78k. Love it..

 

Yikes....how bad was the short block? What did you end up doing?


After talking to Toyota Engineers, they might want the engine back for research. They are thinking that something else let go and caused the chain to break.

 

Sounds like oil starvation caused the failure, chain might have just been the first thing to go. In the 14 years I've been with Toyota I've never seen a chain break

 

The Toyota Engineers believe something else went first and that cause the chain to break. They mentioned something abotu a valve dropping......no one will know until they open it up.

 

New head, chain, and cam. The heads went often on the 04-06 Colorado, to the point where GM gave an extended warranty on the head. Of course 2 dealers either "didn't know" about it or tried to say "well I don't think it needs a new head"..and then soaked me full price for the other stuff it broke telling me GM would reimburse me (they didn't).

The rest of it was fine fortunately, and I got a good quote on it when I bought the Tacoma 6 weeks later.

 

pics?

 

We have seen a few valve springs break on the ES350's and RX350's. This can cause the valve to drop and absolutely destroy these engines depending on the engine RPM.

 

I'd also like to add that budget oil Change facilities jam the head of the oil gun into the oil fill hole and bend down the metal diverter that keeps the chain from flinging oil onto the bottom of the cap. Well this may be ok for a few miles, then it gets loose and the chain grabs it and it can derail the chain and skip timing, and the rest speaks for itself.