Just had a rod bust its way out 3.4L

I'd still check your local lemon laws.

 

Man that sucks, I've been there. My 1999 3.4L threw a rod at 55K miles, just a month past the 5 year warranty period. Every oil change had been performed by Toyota on schedule, so they honored the warranty part way and paid for a new shortblock. We had to pay for the labor. So it was about $3000 for them to put it all together. Haven't had any problems for the past 300K miles, so I guess they did a good job.

If I blew the engine again, I'd search for a used 3.4L engine and I'd probably pay for a shop (not the dealership) to put it in.

 

my sister and her husband would have a nice little yellow orchard in their back yard with all of the used mopar stuff in their 1/4 century together, throw in the occasional chevy blazer, ford bronco and some minivan but I recall that was a Caravan still a tarty lemon

 

I bought a used high mileage truck. It didn't knock or have any weird sounds. Of all the components, the bottom end was the LAST thing expected to fail. I really wouldn't feel right about pursuing anything against the seller because of this.

 

I doubt if the seller did any "work" as that would constitute removing the engine to actually get inside to the bottom end. Funny you make mention of the radiator issue having run that thing hot wouldn't be unlikely that it may of had a compromised head gasket possibly even fouling the catalytic converter. Having short run time on the truck you may not have started tracking any coolant loss or consumption yet. My dad a lifelong mechanic threw two rods in his 96 Mercury. He just went out to the garage one morning and just started knocking on startup. Upon further inspection there was two bookmatched holes in the block where the rods knocked through on each side of the block on the last throw. Evidently that year motor was notorious for the intake manifold going bad and leaking coolant into the cylinder bore. On this particular occasion the cylinder filled enough to hydro lock it and bend the rod. Moral of the story shit happens even to good people.

 

What I meant to say was I bought a JDM engine for my 2001 Honda Accord 5spd manual forgot which location. It was advertised as 45k miles and I was a bit skeptical but the price was attractive. Worked out really well the engine was tight and spooled up real nice everything they said it was. Still daily driver installed it 110k miles ago. Japan is is an island country where its expensive to own a car, park a car, with now epic road trips in sight. As a result the cars age out before they wear out so the government constantly provides incentives or laws to keep people buying new cars essentially fueling their own economy. America is a great market to dump all these car parts as some of us run them till the wheels fall off.

 

Now that you mention this, I had an engine with clogged/cooked catalytic converters to the point where it would barely run. The dealer couldn't figure it out. I had to have the car towed to my driveway. I figured out that clogged/cooked cats were part of the issue. Then root cause for the cooked cats was two leaking injectors that had been flooding the engine with a crazy amount of fuel. Also, it had a blown head gasket from overheating. The cylinder walls were scored up.

 

as to your original question...

the long block you linked to says ...

This is not a rebuilt Toyota 3.4 long block, every one of our engine blocks comes manufactured from our state of the art facility.

I dont know the reputation of this "state of the art facility" but I do know that many, many people are getting hundreds of thousands of miles out of 3.4's with regular maintenance so Toyota is doing something right. This sounds like new castings. The price is right. My concern is that there are many things with a new casting that go wrong. The biggest is did they drill and tap ALL of the holes for the accessories to mount. I have seen "new" blocks come with 1 of the 4 motor mount holes not drilled/tapped.

Will you be doing the work yourself or will a shop be doing the engine swap?

 

Yeah the risk wasn't worth it. All over forums I see people asking about spprecision and nobody has much to say. Good or bad. I ended up going with a different source for an engine. Yesterday I ordered a rebuilt longblock from a place in Springfield Oregon. Multiple people had recommended shop and it's close enough to me, we can drive to a mutual spot and meet to do the transaction.

I'm a little nervous about the swap, but excited too.

 

If this a father son project, I am jealous...

it is nuts and bolts, nothing. I will post further comment on your other thread.

 

Thank you for saying that, it helps put a good perspective on the situation. I need that.

The last few weeks have been rough in my life. I have to keep reminding myself of the good things I have going for me. I just keep trying to stay positive but honestly I'm riding on the edge some days (the edge of staying positive).

 

Sorry for your bad luck!

This is the first time I have heard of that happening. What kind of condition was it in when you purchased it? Get a used one, rebuilds are usually junk (speaking from my own experience).

 

Too late, ordered a rebuild from a reputable builder.

I told my son the same thing "I have never seen this happen, even on vehicles that were outright abused". The truck seemed to be in good shape when we bought it. I got maintenance records dating back MANY years, basically all of the fluids were replaced in February of this year (I have the paperwork, it was all included in the deal), new plugs and wires about 15000 miles ago, etc. Sure it had 217,000 miles on it, but still I see these trucks for sale at similar prices with 300,000 on them. We had been looking for a while and this seemed like THE truck. $5400. The market in this area, this truck would only be for sale for a few days. I felt lucky that we had cash in hand on a Sunday so we could buy it. There was not a single drop of oil in the garage under the truck. Seemed very well maintained and the seller was the son of the original owner, he had driven the truck for many years. I guess it was just bad luck?

 

I take it you have access to an engine hoist, floor jack, stands, air compressor, and the shop equipment required for an engine swap?

Does the rebuilt you ordered come with heads already mounted or will you be moving the heads from the current motor?

 

Well like it’s been said, a rod blowing up on a 3.4 just doesn’t happened hardly ever.

Something had to have failed to have caused that and there’s a list of things from
it being overheated to a bad oil pump , low on oil etc.

It’s a hard bullet to swallow and when my head gasket popped at 480,000 I felt pretty depressed
thinking I had to go through the process of finding a new motor and all the work associated with it.
I wasn’t wanting to get rid of the truck.
On the other hand it gave me an opportunity to find a low mileage motor and to fix and replace all those parts that normally would not be addressed when the motor still in the truck.
With the motor out of the truck it’s so easy to replace any parts in the engine area.
That was 3 years ago and 100,000 later my engine is running fantastic.
Best of luck with the new motor.

 

I either have, or have access to everything you listed except an air compressor. I was planning on either using hand tools or electric for nuts and bolts. I ordered a long block, heads attached.

 

Got ya. Battery powered tools are replacing air impact.

 

These early 3.4l 6 cyl engines had a reputation of head gasket problems/ issues . My bet is the rod failed due to a Hydrolocked cyl from ingesting coolant . As we all know a piston can't compress liquid and the rod failed " bent" causing failure of the rod cap

I bet when the " OP" pulls the cyl heads off the combustion chambers and valves will have an orange color on them . This is tell tale sign of coolant leak

 

Seems unusual that would just happen out of the blue. Was it low on oil? Start with the simple steps. I've revved mine up pretty good towing and going up long grades and it's never once came close to this. Uses and leaks no oil, this just seems really strange to me to have randomly happen with no forewarning at all. Usually an engine really starts to clatter before it lets go in most cases.

 

Not when you hydrolock a cyl !!!!