Experience on Doing engine swap

Hello All,

I’ve been a lurker for a since I bought my 2007 June this year. I just want to share my tale with PC because this forum has helped me a lot with my car.

I bought my gen2 with 207k mi for $3300 CAD.

Shortly after buying the car, i discovered it burns a lot of oil, and has no cat. Luckily I live where there’s no emissions testing so i kept driving as is.

The oil burning and plumes of smoke from tailpipe after a long downhill bothered me a lot. Based on some threads on PC and with help from a service manual other users uploaded and shared, I decided to replace valve stem seals.

After putting things back together. Engine wouldn’t start and made knocking sounds and shook a lot. Spark plugs were wet and reeks of gas. I suspected wrong timing. So i opened up the timing case but all is lined up correctly.

It turns out the timing chain tensioner failed and the timing chain has stretched beyond spec on the manual. 1 intake valve clearance was so tight i doubt it even closed. Anyway instead of putting more money on a high mileage engine I decided its time for a new engine.

Luckily I found a used engine from a local recycler with only 95k kms.

After watching watchJRgo on youtube pull an engine are drop in a new one in 6 hours, I decided to give it a go and rented an engine hoist from a local guy.

I was a bit in a rush since this is my only vehicle and I was just borrowing a friends car so I did not really think much about taking pictures but here’s how it went.

Saturday evening-
disconnect harness from engine and ecu, put aside. I left the trans side connected.
drain engine oil and coolant. Remove coolant hoses.

Sunday afternoon-
Pull engine. Came out the top with no issues except that the waterpump and crank pulley were kinda in the way. If I unbolted those it would have been much easier. Removed Dampener and flywheel from engine.

Monday- went to pick up engine but was MIA in the yard. Wasted time.

Tuesday - recycler delivered the engine for free to compensate for wasted time.
-swapped flywheel and dampener over to new engine.
- dropped engine in and mated with transmission.
-Installed motor mount and bottom mount.

I had a friend help me with this part because I imagine it would be hard to try and clock the engine the right way alone. No regrets.

Wednesday
-Put new oil and filter.
-Installed all coolant lines and filled with new coolant. Toyota Pink SLLC.
-Plug harness back in.
-Reconnect battery.

With my heart pounding I pressed on the brakes and hit the start button. After a few seconds, the engine cranked and it started! It shook for 1 second but after that it purred perfectly.

This is my first engine swap and it honestly was not that hard to do. Now there’s no more plumes of grey smoke after a long downhill! Next step is aftermarket cat.

Hope this helps some other person here who is trying to decide to do an engine swap.