Toyota 80 series engine replace/rebuild?

[Rot Box]

My brothers 94 FZJ80 (212K) is making a weird clatter/rattle sound and has been since he bought it a few months ago. Under acceleration it goes away however while decelerating or idling (no load on engine) it sounds like a diesel engine and it's pretty loud. Its definitely coming from the engine and it is bad enough he is worried about it dying in the middle of nowhere. We spent the morning pulling the front cover off of the engine hoping it was a bad timing chain or guides because that is exactly what it sounded like--it was not they look new. Inside the valve cover looks new with no sludge or oil buildup..

At this point I think the motor needs to come out and be pulled apart. That is going to be a lot of work so we're trying to weigh out options. Rebuild, replace, motor swap.. From what I've been seeing nothing about rebuilding or replacing the 1FZ is going to be cheap. I guess what I'm asking is if you had to pull out an 1FZ what would you replace it with? Would you just rebuild it? If so who would you have do the work? I tried looking for an import exchange engine with little luck. I'm not familiar with broken Toyotas Thanks for any help.

Andrew

 

[bryson]

I really, really like the idea of a GM 5.3/6.0 V8 in my 80, but when the time comes, I'll probably just do what is needed to keep the 1FZ going. I'm worried that an engine swap would compromise the vehicles reliability too much.

 

[Brian P]

Price check on FZJ short block?!? If you can find one.

You are almost better off buying another FZJ80.

I agree on the V8, I have read about a Toyota V8 being done, but it's another quite expensive install.

 

[Rot Box]

Thanks guys I think you're right about the motor swaps. At this point he's starting to look for used long block. I'm surprised at how few of them are out there. Found one in SLC with 114k for around $2000 I guess that's not terrible. Master rebuild kits are not too expensive but I'm guessing the machine work would be... Still weighing out options and looking for the right deal

 

[Kevin B.]

So, I know nothing about that motor, but I had timing chain slap on my current 22RE that went away when I replaced the oil pump and timing chain tensioner. It was either a defective tensioner or not quite enough oil pressure to make it function. My chain guides looked new too. Could something simple like that be your brother's problem?

 

[Rot Box]

They are similar to the R series engines with a few more cylinders and two cams. I would have bet the ranch on it being the guides, chain, tensioner but everything checked out fine and the tensioner seemed to function and hold pressure like it should. I'm still not convinced it isn't the problem though I wish we would have tried to manually hold pressure on that guide (the tensioner bolts onto the side of the block) to see if the noise went away before we ripped the entire front section off of the engine. I think another one of our biggest mistakes was not using a mechanics stethoscope to find out exactly where the noise was coming from :-\

 

[zukijames]

2uz!

 

[ace]

I had a cracked flexplate on a Chevy once that sounded like that. The bolts were tapping against the bell housing.