JDM engine swap

I would be doing it.

 

I'm not in CA...have no interest in even visiting there. I live in beautiful SC...land of the free!!

 

I plan to do it myself. I also have NO plans to sell it. I love my truck....so, I'm not concerned about it. We do not do emissions testing in SC, and I live in the country!!

 

Lucky guy! SC is my exit plan. Cali IS a liberal SH-T SHOW.
Its bad.
Sanctuary state...?
Really?

 

I went back and forth between rebuild or JDM. It seems that the 5VZ-FE is an excellent engine with OEM parts; so, when you start rebuilding with aftermarket parts, it is not as good as having a JDM engine....from what I have been reading on here. I guess maybe it is 50/50, but, hey, for $1200...I'll try the JDM.

 

Cali always looks beautiful in pictures, and I've heard that there are some really nice "non-Cali like" places in California, but I think I would lose my mind being any closer to there than the Southeast!!!!

 

I would still call the state, just be sure.

It is like a rubber, would rather have and not need, than to need and not have.

Information is power. Ya know?

 

Yeah, you'll be fine.

 

There is NO guarantee that these JDM motors have 60k or less. These motors are 10 and 20 years old now. Anyone can say anything they want about miles on a motor with no frame or vin for reference.

Buyer beware

There are plenty of horror stories on these JDM motors too.

Even if they come with a warranty the hassle to reinstall a bad motor is a lot of extra work.

Honestly I don’t understand how anyone can buy a used motor without reference to the original
miles or a carfax on the truck for some maintenance info, but that’s just me.

I paid 1500 for my used motor will 100,000 miles on the odometer that was still in the truck and I could hear it running and did a car-fax to see the history.

I did all the timing stuff, belts and bearings, rear main seal, knock sensors, knock sensor wires, etc.
It gets expensive at the end of the install if done right.

Best of luck that you get a good motor as you have no way to know what your buying.

 

Look here first before you buy a JDM motor,car-parts.com

You actually have no idea what year the JDM motor is.
It could be a 1995 motor or a 2004 motor.

Wouldn’t you want a 2004 motor if you had the choice? A motor that was 10 years newer? Or just take a gamble on an expensive project and hope everything is ok?


http://www.car-part.com/mobile/index.htm

 

Thanks for the link. I've been searching. I found one place that apparently goes by different names. They ask for your name and email. They then give you a qoute, but after reading the reviews, it doesn't look good. It seems that it takes them awhile to even ship out the engine. Yota Tech is a little expensive. I found one company that seems reasonably priced, but I do not like their "core" return policy. Basically, you might not even get your core charge back if they deem it unrebuildable. I'm fine with a used, low miles engine....although...mine is used, low miles (under 120,000 for a 2003 engine) and it is bad!! I'll check out that link and see what I find.

 

Just checked out Car-part.com
Looks good.
Thank you!!

 

How the heck can a 2003 motor with 120k go bad unless the oil wasn't changed or it over heated

 

You got me. It has never overheated. I do not really know how it was maintained, but it definitely is bad. It started off with symptoms of leaky valve seals (only smoking on start up and going away quickly). It progressively got worse and started smoking more/longer. I did a leakdown test on it. I have ZERO compression in cyl 3 and air heard coming from the crankcase in multiple cyl during test. It seemed to all start the night that I accidently backed up to retrieve my boat at night and did not notice that my tailpipe was underwater. I have been told that is not an issue, but the problem did start (ie: the smoking issue) after that night. I do not lose coolant. No bubbling in my radiator. No "puffing" at the oil fill whole or at the tailpipe. Up until recently, it idled fine and even had good acceleration, but, the moment it started to idle rough, I stopped driving it and did the compression and leak down test.

 

Something had to have happened somewhere from lack of maintenance, running it low on oil or something. These motors don’t just fail at 100k miles. They are actually just broken in.

I ran the hell out of my 1st motor, red line it, boosted 10 pounds,it’s whole life till a head gasket popped at 480,000. It never burnt any oil even at 480,000
Maybe it had a factory defect

 

I'm as baffled as you. Like I said, it still ran great even with the smoking, but it did burn a lot of oil. When I took off the air intake, there was a LOT of oil in there!!!

 

I did a JDM recently, I didn’t have any problems. At the end of the day you’re buying a used engine, so there is some risk, but most people have good luck. For me I swapped the intake, AC compressor, and oil pan. The oil pan was out of a 2wd truck, I also had to move the oil filter mount, there’s actually two places that the filter threads in. Since then it’s been running great.

Most places will warranty the engine, but you’re probably going to be out the labor. That’s the biggest risk I see. In my opinion, if you’re doing the work yourself go for a JDM. If you’re having a shop do it I’d be hesitant, because if something goes wrong they’re going to blame the JDM engine, and the importer will probably blame the shop.

 

I found a used 2004 3.4L online. Cost for the engine and shipping to my house will be $1700. Sounds a little high to me, seeing that I could rebuild mine for that.

Also, it is coming out of a manual 4WD and my truck is a 2003 Tacoma automatic 4x2 Prerunner. Does anyone see any issues with the installation? Any differences that I should be aware of?

Thank you all in advance for your help.

 

really good info thanks

 

Motors are the same, auto doesn’t make a difference.

If you only had 125k on your motor maybe a rebuild would be better