Replacing engine with used engine

Well, after reading the Transaxle replacement sticky posted in 2009 and seeing how generous folks were with their knowledge and patient they were with a rooky I decided to join and post my sad, sad story...

Forgive me if I have written a book here but I figured I'd try to answer a lot of questions right off the bat. So for those of you that are interested and willing - Please read on.


I have a 2006 Prius that actually threw a rod at 80K miles. Toyota washed their hands of it even though they are the ones that did the pre-purchase inspection at 59K miles. My wife was driving it with all the kids in it when she calls me and says that its making a funny sound. I told her to pull over but while trying to do so she says "now it’s making a very bad sound and we lost almost all power". I drove out to meet her and discovered a quarter-size hole in the engine block and you could hear the rod swinging around and hitting the case when I turned it on. Then came the crappy feeling in the pit of my stomach and the thought of how much this would cost.

I towed it to the Dealership and they quoted me $4300 to install a USED engine in it. Pbbff - yeah right. I got the heck out of there before they could unzip their pants and get out the KY Jelly. I had it towed home and I bought a used engine with 60K miles on it for $700 delivered.

I decided to take it out from the top as I don't have a lift and didn't want to have to deal with struggling to get it in and out from the bottom. I have the front end torn off with the AC condenser and the radiator still installed. I have the AC compressor detached and hanging from the fan guard with wire. The cowling is removed as well as the wiper mechanics. I drained what I could of the engine coolant and removed the coolant reservoir from the top middle of the engine. I unbolted the brake reservoir and swung it out of the way and removed the brake reservoir bracket. I removed the wiper fluid reservoir.

The Used engine came with a lot of the equipment still on it - even an undamaged wiring harness. I decided to keep the new harness attached and remove my harness with the bad engine. With only 5 connections it was incredibly easy to disconnect the harness from under the dash and pull the whole thing back through the firewall to the engine compartment. So far this seems MUCH easier than doing the myriad of connections all over the engine.

Nonetheless, I am just about ready to begin to hoist the engine out from the top. It seems to me that it will come out fairly easily but that has yet to be determined. I had to raise the car to disconnect the exhaust, engine mount and to remove the bolts keeping the engine and transaxle together. Once completed, I will lower the car to give me more hoist travel headspace. I will then connect a small chain temporarily to the engine to which I will connect my hoist. Once the hoist is connected I will take the slack out of the hoist chain then remove the left engine mount and the remaining engine to transaxle bolts. I have taken pics along the way as I have learned the hard way trying to remember what bolt went where and how this thingy is oriented.

There may be some things I find that I didn't have to do but I can afford it since I'm not the having to pay the stealership.

I will be the first to admit that I am a rookie with regard to the Prius so I want to throw out a few questions for anyone to answer.

QUESTIONS:

* How should I prep the good used engine before I begin to install it? I was planning on a new water pump but what else?

* A Toyota Tech told me to also replace the Transmission Input Damper (although he called it a "Damper Disk" - which was unknown to the Parts guys). It's $200 bucks though and the parts guy told me that it isn't a common replacement part as he hasn't sold one for over a year +. So - what to do? The used engine came with one installed and there is also one still on my car. At 60K miles and 89K miles respectively I don’t see how either could be bad yet.

* Any engine alignment issues to be aware of when installing the used engine?

Thanks very much in advance for your input.