Toyota V6 Engine BLEW UP Early Because of a Small Piece of Hose. Let's Fix It

hello and welcome to the car care Channel and welcome to this 2008 Toyota Highlander with a 2grfe that is completely blown up the reason for that is something we've talked about in the channel there's a little oil cooler line and unfortunately blue for this one and the rest is history in today's video we're going to pull this Highlander on the lift we're going to pull the engine out of it and replace it we'll talk about the details in between but first let us get started [Music] foreign [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] folks I do apologize if your ears are ringing from the sound of the knocking engine I Feel Like That Knocking was like knocking in my heart when I heard it the first time and folks I want to tell you a little bit of background on this car this is 2grfe with 144 000 miles original owner car is really taken care of that is a little bit Rusty a little bit is a little bit dirty but overall it is in decent shape this particular case was a really tough one so customer schedule appointment showed up we usually with engines like that as soon as you described it when he was making the appointment we knew exactly what happened but without assessing the engine in person looking around checking things looking inside we can't really tell exactly what's wrong so we needed to look at this car determine the scope of the damage so here is the first thing I did in in our diagnosis Periscope down the oil fill cap hole just look inside vvti gears are completely coming apart and destroyed that is very common when the 2gr runs it down an oil and then something that was a concern I looked at a sample of the oil it has heavy metal flaking I mean not flake really pieces of metal now it was unknown at that point if these pieces of metal were from the vvti gear bearings rod bearing I mean you send it to a lab it's pointless I mean this engine is just hemorrhaging with debris so this was the difficult part do we take this engine apart save it or do we get new engine brand new and do everything all the works from the get-go or do we go use the engine route but then I looked inside the cylinders now this engine doesn't does not have a history of oil burning chronic problem other than the vbti problem which is Gears rattling a cold start so I look down the cylinder there's severe cylinder wall damage it's engine run too low in oil for a long time they were actually on a trip driving down a highway at 70 miles an hour when this line ruptured and everything is history so I I sat down with the customer and I told him look we have three options we can try to save this engine best case scenario we only put variable valve timing gears which are very expensive for this engine to do both labor and parts and then we check everything and I have to charge you to disassemble this engine completely to see what's what and then after seeing the cylinder walls damaged that was not a good option because we're going to need a short plug and a short block for a 2gr is scary expensive so the other route was to get a used engine now this this is not my favorite solution in the world but in a case of this engine that is known not to have oil burning issues you don't want to replace a bad engine with a used engine that has the same problem that's why we did a lot of research and it really took us a long time to find this engine and before even deciding on this job the customer actually needed to think about it I told them you really need to think because this is borderline this car not being worth this repair they thought about it they researched probably a month later is when they authorized the job and we got it in the schedule and we got it taken care of but this is a tough case because this car is taken care of transmission is good but it is Rusty and you see in this video it is a little bit on the rusty side doesn't need a few more things but this was a tough one but we ended up going with the used engine took us a while to find it but we did and here's the engine coming out I'll leave you guys to watch that we'll talk a little bit after that [Music] so we got the engine out and I have to say this was actually very easy and I I keep saying that when we talk about the videos but what I mean very easy is we did not have a lot of casualties and given that this car is a little older it has a little bit more rust everything actually came off and that is good that's what I mean by easy we've done an engine like this before but we only done a front timing cover today you're going to see this entire engine come off of here install the new engine which is actually not the new engine I'll show you that in a bit but basically what as we talked about what cost all this mess is the oil cooler line which of course has been replaced but then I noticed something very very interesting if you look at the back bolt whoever replaced it actually decided nah we don't need to replace this very back bolt right here and install it all the way down that is hanging halfway so why not that's why it was actually leaking because I was wondering I'm like why is the new line leaking it's an updated line but it's too late for this engine so what happened here is actually the front time the vbti here completely came apart but then this engine ran low on oil we'd want to take this engine apart check bearings and whatnot and at that point these engines really don't have issues so getting a used engine is not a bad deal but here's what I did with the used engine and speaking of let's go take a look at it you have when you buy a used engine you have to be very specific and intentional about what you buy now this is a used engine looks covered in oil when they take these off they just make a giant mess but this is actually an engine out of a 13 Highlander not a 2008 they're exactly the same but this is the next revision of this engine so the 2gr had if you can call them four revisions first one was the 2005 the original it was the worst one 2007 it got updated and the way you know it got updated is it doesn't have as much of the vvti rattles however in the Highlander that didn't happen until 2009 and there's really difficult way to find it because you got to look at the vvti gear itself then in 2010 into 11 on some models 2010 some models 2011 and the Highlander was actually 2011. they came with the revision three better coils because the coils in the previous engines were failing left and right better vvti gears and that's the main thing the third thing is better baffling and they switch over to zero w20 so the way this engine actually is a zero w20 this is revision three and the fourth one is a 2grfks which is completely different the way you know which version you have it's really difficult to tell the first and the second but how you tell the third first they take zero w20 the third and then if you look at the baffle right here if you look at the way this baffle looks like when you look at it right inside this one has the two cutouts it's not wide open on this side that's how you know this is a version three of the 2gr and would you look at the inside of this engine and this is what I usually look at the outside can clean it whatever but the inside it's super clean in here and this is why we went with it this is from a 13 Highlander it has the right updated coils it's very clean on the inside it only has 96 000 miles so basically if the customer is going to spend all this money and put a used engine at least get one with lower miles and it actually has a lot of the original problems fixed but we're very far from completion here because majority of these parts I don't trust them I don't know where they were stored you see all the connectors are cut in this guy so I am going to end up swapping a lot of this stuff but then there's a lot of things that we're going to replace preventatively things like the drive belt tension or the drive belts The Idler things that I think that are common to replace when you do a job like this because they're right there common things to go out that otherwise would be actually a big expense of course the water pump is the first one now we're going to install this oil cooler line same one this was recently installed just to get them by and the car runs but it's horrible at any given point it's just going to grenade and this engine will come apart internally the other thing is this line this is the other line that loves to go on these this one is revision two it already has the metal line right here so basically if you have version three of this engine majority 99 of them had all metal but there's a very few at the beginning especially like if you look at 2011 Sienna that has version three of this engine but it did have the rubber oil cooler lines folks I cannot emphasize how important that if you see this line in your car as a rubber one I'll put a picture of it right here you replace it otherwise this is potentially in the future for you I hope not I hope you catch it in time but if you get negligent about it this is in the future because if you're even if you're a car guy and you check check your oil check everything you're driving on the highway you're doing 70 miles an hour this line pops by the time you find out it's too late you already ran it low no you can't just shut off the car and park in the middle of the highway that's not going to happen so be careful with these lines now this is the car in case you haven't seen a Highlander engine bay without anything in it this is how that looks like pretty interesting hey you can get to the brake lines very easily so that's uh one thing for you and a comment for one of my technicians who he was working on this Sienna and he was doing spark plugs on it and I told I pulled this engine out and I'm like you could do the spark plugs very very easily because the bracket at the back is very easy right now so here's what we're going to do right now we're actually going to go home for us it's the end of the day we started this right around two o'clock three o'clock right now it is about to get six o'clock we pulled this engine out tomorrow for us for you is going to be a few seconds we're gonna get that engine out we're gonna disassemble everything here and we want to get everything off of this engine the wire harness the plenum the exhaust manifolds everything get this engine ready to be pulled out we'll pull it out of here we'll probably strip that engine a little bit then install it here and install everything then we'll uh kind of catch you guys in the middle at some point probably when we have the engine Bayer here so you can see the new engine how it's set down everything's going but the only casualty we had here it was really a casualty that I anticipated is one bracket and I'll bring it from here this exhaust bracket is notorious to break now you get the bolts break off of it so what I usually do is cut the ends off of it and just put a bolt and not life is good every single 2gr that you try to take this off of it it'll break but otherwise nothing broke and that is pretty cool actually when we have the engine out the front the cover of the transfer case is leaking a little bit of oil we're going to go ahead and reseal that we'll talk about a little bit when when we get there but for now we're gonna go home and we'll see you in two seconds or for us overnight we'll get back to work welcome to day two bright and early in the morning it's actually nine o'clock when the shop opens and we start working let's talk about some of the costs for this job and then later on we'll talk about some general advice for used engines and what to look for and whatnot even though nothing is guaranteed with used engines as you will see a little surprising twists so we're at the end of the video so this job labor-wise is 19 hours of Labor it is actually if you count the initial diagnosis that is 20 hours so that's right around just over two thousand dollars and then the used engine with a good warranty from a company called LKQ look when it comes to use engines no good company is a good company it's just as good as their warranty in the world is and the LKQ seems to be a decent company for that now the end used engine was forty five hundred dollars plus tax we needed two gallons of coolant at fifty four dollars we needed some oil filter drive belt was 48 dollars idler was 81 drive belt tensioner was 282 spark plugs were 99 and some miscellaneous gaskets here and there water pump was 173 174 actually and the grand total for this job and make sure you are seated for this one because 2grs are expensive both used and new total cost for this job was eight thousand dollars just over eight thousand seventy six to be exact this was why I told you this was a borderline thing I mean this car I don't really know the exact market value for it at the moment at this moment because the market has been all over the place but basically what I advise this customer is look this eight thousand dollars plus whatever they're paying you for the car as it sits what does that buy you and are you okay with car payments I mean you let's say they give you two three thousand for your car with a blown engine of course this really thinks the value you get that take that three thousand plus eight thousand now you have eleven thousand dollars it's not like you're gonna go buy another Highlander for eleven thousand dollars this is what people usually think and I'm advising you this from seeing how people think about these things you're not going to think about it that way you put a down payment on a new car for that is eleven thousand dollars let's say you buy a RAV4 30 28 whatever the case may be you put a down payment of eleven thousand your payment will be lower and that's how you got to think about this not just oh well what am I going to buy for 11 000 that is used well that's not a good a good thought process because this car in addition to it needing this engine Transmissions were serviced fluids clean so I have good outlook for the transmission but of course nothing is guaranteed that's the thing with automotive repair people always what do you think of this car I only think of what I see I can't foresee the future and that is being realistic here transmission has been serviced shifts fine it doesn't delay when it's cold it shifts fine that's the main thing with Transmissions with their cold is when things happen I mean other than that we can't really do much else to check I can't take the trains apart to check the clutches for example see how they're doing see the debris inside the valve body that's not realistic but the rest of the car it does need brakes all around doesn't need a wheel bearing which is something that believe it or not we haven't addressed yet because we wanted to put a thousand miles on this used engine make sure everything is good before we move on to any other expenditures the rest of the car a little bit Rusty not crazy this is very typical for the Midwest a little bit above average for rust but nothing no holes no problems nothing chronic body is relatively clean inside is relatively clean car is all there it hasn't been in severe accidents so the car drives actually pretty good suspension is decent it's not perfect but it's decent doesn't need any attention in the moment and should we take a moment of silence for another dead 2gr Fe too sad this one too early oh [Music] you can't make YouTube videos without a little bit of drama so another thing we were doing here is the transfer case like the cover that cover I'm removing right here so this was not leaking a lot but since we are removing the engine since we have direct access to it why not let's make this car leak free which it is we tested drove it after it was done which again there's a little bit of a Twist these are super simple by the way this uses a different kind of sealer this is the sealer that is red so Toyota has two types of sealers just for you to know what's going on the black Sealer or oil pan you can use it for oil pans oil like engine oil components now some will give you the speech about there's a third kind of sealer that is used only for coolant and all that folks you can use the oil pan for cooling you just got to be careful the main thing is application that is really the biggest thing now with transmissions and this is important they have the red sealer the red sealer mixes well with transmission fluid or gear oil or anything that has to do with gl5 gl4 you use that red sealer it just works better now the thing with jobs like this people see it and they see it as a major major job it is to a point but the best thing about the 2gr is and this whole motor drop this cradle is assembled at a factory like this so dropping it is actually not difficult and this is not a I'm not making it simpler than it is it is simple because this car was assembled like this you really don't take much to take it apart the way I did and the one thing I want you to know if you're if you are a technician you're happy to be watching you haven't done jobs like this there is one thing about jobs like this that they that makes them go well or go south you gotta have a plan as a technician you know people often look at my videos look at other videos and they Wonder like how do you remember where everything goes how do you know how how can you do this Monumental task of pulling an engine out and all that folks it all have to do with mental orientation and kind of overall plan you got to have a plan going into an engine you work from one side and you go around so I do the circle route some technicians will call it something else I do the circle route and it is a method that is taught actually you start from one side and you walk around you make a circle and then when you're done when you start assembling you start from the other side there is an order to things for example you can't put the AC compressor without putting the harness because the crank position sensor is behind it so you're going to assemble everything else then put the harness compressors last then the then the belt goes on and if you've watched my previous video on the 2gr and you've watched now you're watching this one you're going to notice that the order of things is exact because these engines come apart the exact same way and if you refer to the manual it'll actually walk you through that process sometimes it'll be a different orientation I do modify things from the from the manual from experience from doing hundreds and hundreds of these over and over through my career at the dealership but you gotta have a plan as a technician that way things don't get forgotten you orientate your balls and you arrange everything in a way that goes back that makes sense so you do not forget anything there's a rule that some technicians live by I happen to be one of those technicians no bolts Left Behind if you arrange your stuff well things don't get forgotten things don't get left over and that's how you become a professional mechanic or an alley mechanic that is the difference between the two alley mechanics it's just a mess they they're doing their best nobody wakes up in the morning and says as a technician how do I mess this car up no they're trying their best but it's just they lack the organizational skills and perhaps the experience to get things back exactly where they're supposed to be now yes some of these brackets read and all that it is unnecessary in your opinion but you know what this is how the car was designed my objective as a technician is we're going to work on this car to a point where if somebody else looks they will have a hard time noticing that somebody's actually been here I mean I work on at least 10 cars 15 cars a day every single day five days a week I see how it's very easy sometimes to catch oh somebody's been here because that's not right that's the objective is to make sure that the next technician that looks at this car cannot tell somebody's been here and that's the mark of excellence in in kind of professionalism that every technician hopes to achieve and it's very hard and here's that kind of the Cradle fully assembled and ready to go back in the car it's looking good I'm happy with it I was happy with it at the moment when this was actually done and then there is a small twist toward the end of the video you'll see that let's go to the live video and then we'll continue our conversation all right so we got the engine all assembled now we did end up putting a new tribal tensioner new idler new water pump new spark plugs we got all that taken care of new drive belt just this is a common stuff with the 2gr we got it all taken care of while we're here we cannot unfortunately take the front timing cover off and reseal it because the supplier of the used engine they were very clear you're welcome to replace the bolt-on accessories but do not take the engine apart and start resealing and replacing stuff because that voiced the warranty this engine does have a warranty so that's why we were a little bit easier about going with it that way the customers protected they got some kind of warranty should this engine have issues we can take care of it now in case you haven't seen it we've done a video like this this is the entire drivetrain of the 2gr it all drops in like that you basically have access to everything now if you look here you got your bracket for the plenum they're right in front of you I guess it's easier to do the spark plugs that way and same thing with this O2 or EF sensor actually it's not an undo sensor it's much easier to do it like that but then again there's a point and I always read your guys comments in the comments by the way I have to say this lately we have been kind of bombarded with Spam telegram whatever folks don't fall for those if we are doing a giveaway or something you will see my face on a video talking about it otherwise it is fake please be careful because so many folks have emailed me I'm actually concerned some of you are emailing me about this some of you are not it is all scam nobody will give away something and ask for shipping or money that's not how this works so please don't fall for these anytime I do not have a telegram and in all honesty in full disclosure I don't even know what telegram is barely figuring out Facebook and Instagram and that stuff but going back to the 2gr when you get new used engines I want to talk about this real quick when you get used engines you gotta not only look at the outside I mean this engine was covered in oil but because the way they transport and kind of store these things they will have oil spilled all over them but look inside because all the oil outside can be clean but the inside is the real story you start looking inside the engine that's when things show up now we're about ready to put this back in the car and that's what we're going to do next we'll put you guys in the back in the time lapse just to give you a time perspective this is about two-thirds of the day on day two so we're probably going to get this engine back in this car start attaching it and everything and then we'll do the grand start tomorrow and our time for you will be a few seconds when we roll into tomorrow let's put this engine back in the car and then we'll catch you back off the time lapse when we're ready to start it for the first time okay let's talk briefly about used engines folks used engines are a mystery and sometimes they're actually not a good idea if you're replacing your engine because oh it burns oil be careful because you could be buying another engine that also Burns oil now the 2gr you are relatively safe to buy a used engine but you gotta research because they do have vvti problems and you don't want to want to buy one that does have that problem that's very expensive to fix anything over 12 13 to play it safe you're good but anything earlier like you have a 2007 Camry the V6 something happened to it you want to put a used engine don't go buying a 2007 Camry actually most of them are interchangeable you just have to do the research and verify that before you go buying one used engines are only as good as the warranty they come with because honestly it's completely unknown you can find the VIN number of the original car that came from try to find the service history sometimes service history is vague because some places don't report to Carfax some you you know you go to honors website on Toyota you try to find it what if they didn't maintain it in a dealership they maintain it a private mechanic I mean there's a lot of mysteries here but the main thing is warranty is the biggest thing because when you get this this engine the first month or two is really when a bad engine is gonna show up you know you get a ride on cold start you got oil burning you got smoking you got whatever the case may be you're gonna find that out very early in the life of this of the re-life of this engine again in another car but as far as long term there is risk always with used engines I mean you're putting another used engines with miles so it's not like you bring a brand new one but having that warranty is important because you're getting this engine at a risk and you don't really can't really research this is history so warranties everything reputable company don't go buying a used engine from eBay from an unknown entity unless they're a big company listing on eBay but just uh your neighbor happens just to stumble across a used engine that they have in their backyard and they want to sell it to you for cheap be careful and some of you will say I almost can't guarantee it in the comments you're gonna ride this engine was too expensive and it was because yes sure you can go on eBay and find half the price for 2grs but be careful because those don't have warranty and even if they do you buy it off eBay how are you going to ship it back have you ever got a quote on a shipping and engine back and you have it to basically you buy it off a random entity they're going to tell you well remove the engine send it back to us then we'll send you the replacement well what are you going to do in the meantime what no shop will let you just pull the engine out send it and wait until no shop will just tell you get me the replacement engine and then we'll start the job again to warranty this engine we're not going to just tear the car and throw it to the side that's just not how this works so in the case of LKQ folks LKQ is a decent company of course they're dealing with used parts that's just it's a total mystery and unknown some of these engines get damaged and transport some of these engines get damaged while they're stored and being waited to to so get sold so warranty is important LKQ does have decent warranty but they don't pay well on their warranty but that's the Shop's problem never Source the engine yourself always have the shop Source the engine because then the shop is giving you the warranty not the company that sold you the engine because the shop will come up with a 101 reasons why they do not want to deal with you again when should there be an issue if you supply the engine that is one thing that is important to know always let the shops apply the engine and just deal with them as a warranty claim nothing else so we're getting pretty ready to start this engine and you'll see it fire up or not and there is a small twist coming up here let me just have you see it so welcome to a month later and this is uh welcome to the automotive repair world we installed the engine as you saw we filled the fluids everything was good start the engine no compression we actually started getting a coolant leak that I was mysterious ended up being this engine was probably dropped at some point they originally put in and the cylinder head was cracked see this how the situation is an automotive repair and making YouTube videos that the real world is different than what you see on the video unfortunately so this is actually another engine that we got for this car this is why it's a month later because we basically had to stop the job push this car to the side wait for a new engine and we had to really shop because I'm not going to just grab the first one they have laying around in their yard so this engine has 106 000 miles it is from a 2012 Highlander and it is also the updated one it's the later revision as much as I would have loved that other engine to run fine because it was such a clean engine on the inside but unfortunately something happened to it in transport and we were not going to leave our customer hanging like that so we got this engine in here's a little clip of it running running perfectly fine [Music] unfortunately we could not film the first start and that was actually a cold start that you just saw just because I wanted to make sure that we have no vvti noise issues which it doesn't runs pretty healthy runs pretty good this car is all set so folks if you have a V6 you do not want to go through this adventure change the oil cooler line from the rubber one to the metal one and you wouldn't have to go through the whole mess but unfortunately this owner had to go through and now we are into I think we are a month and a half into this it's finally done we're about to do the final checks and he's a little bit of cleaning and she's all ready for hopefully a lot of miles without issues folks I hope this video is helpful informative I hope you learned something new if you like it consider giving a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing to the channel check out some videos until the next video folks may the Lord bless you and keep you and you have yourself a wonderful day

Channel: The Car Care Nut

Views: 187,924

Keywords: Toyota v6 engine, toyota, lexus, v6, toyota engine problem, oil, oil leak, toyota v6 engine teardown, toyota v6 engine rebuild, toyota v6 engine problems, 2gr, 2gr-fe, toyota problems, common problems, highlander, camry, avalon, sienna, oil cooler line, car repair, engine swap, engine removal, engine replacement, mechanic video, the car care nut, car care nut, tccn automotive, car wizard, south main auto, savagegeese, toyota tacoma, toyota supra, toyota gr86, toyota sequoia 2023

Id: X_wRIzFxrR4

Length: 32min 51sec (1971 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2023