daltongd

I have a 2001 RX300 FWD with 272K mi that had the oil light come on and now the engine is knocking. Looking at my options for swapping out the engine but I cannot find any information on how to do it.

It strange that there is all this information about the sludge problem and people needing to replace their engines but there is no information about how to do it.

From what I can tell you need to drop the engine from below. Can anybody tell me how you do it? I did find a you tube video that showed a shop doing the entire process but the whole thing was done in fast forward speed and they had a car lift.

I have to figure out how to do this at home and I don't have a car lift. If I raise the car first then connect a hoist from above and remove the bottom section then lower the engine will that work? Any idea how high I would have to jack up the car to do that?

daltongd

So I didn't get a response from anyone. From what I can tell the engine needs to come out from the bottom.

This poses a problem for me since I will be doing at home and don't have a car lift. Right now plan is to use of floor jack and blocking, from what I can tell I will need to jack it up about 24" higher than it sits on the wheels. anybody have any suggestion on this?

Looks like I have to trace the harness going into the glove compartment area in the attached picture and disconnect it from the computer. Any advice on doing that?

Looks like I also have to disconnect the air conditioning so I will need to break it near the top of the radiator in the attached picture. Any comments on doing that?

Any advice would be helpfull

salimshah

Since no one responded to your post ,,,,

I have not done this so take my input without merit. Also some of the stuff I state may be already obvious to you.

Please get hold of factory service manual.

To remove from below you have to raise the RX by 3 ft (my guess) + height of rolling platform (transmission jack .. what ever) ... that freaks me out.

Then you will need clearance front or on ones sides to extricate it out.

Salim

LeX2K

It is possible to remove the engine from the top but you have to strip the engine down to basically a long block which is not practical. The service manual specifies that you drop the engine down and out of the vehicle, you absolutely cannot do this without a vehicle lift don't even attempt it.

thomas1

The window cowl is different on the Highlander, but we were able to successfully remove engine from the top. the very worst bolt is this 10mm bolt on the back of the input manifold between the manifold and the firewall. You do have to remove the radiators etc. Removing the intake manifold will also help. It is tight, but labeling all of the wire harness on the engine with blue masking take and carefully pulling the harness to the side is a challenge also. I would suspect you would want to remove the wiper blade cowl also from the firewall. Good luck. By the way the 1mze engine has different motor mount points depending on the model of Toyota/Lexus vehicle. My neighbor tried to do a swap, but the wrong block came in and so we rebuilt the exhisting engine.

daltongd

I have decided to try to pull the engine from underneath. I am taking it slow and have a couple of plans on how to jack the car up. Right now I am looking at all the things that need to be disconnected. I do have the official Lexus repair manual as a reference.

Today's issue is the Fuse Box Harness which is located under the battery cover and goes from the fuse box over to the engine. My question is which end do you disconnect? The fuse box end or the end on the engine. The end that goes to the engine looks like it goes to several places while the harness goes into the fuse box. Do I disassemble the fuse box and disconnect? See pics

daltongd

I figured it out. They get disconnected inside of the fuse box, see pics

daltongd

We have success, the engine is out. I will do a write up when I get a chance

Bobster999

OMG thats good stuff! lol

JAB

I'm impressed!

salimshah

So how many feet you had to raise the body? It seems you had to do it outside else you would have needed to raise the garage roof.

Salim

thomas1

OMG that reminds me of the day when my Air craft Carrier the USS Saratoga CV60 was on blocks in the dry dock...Scary but you are the man...Hats off to your ingenuity.

daltongd

Lexus RX300 engine removal
I would just like to say that this tutorial is not all inclusive and some things that you have to disconnect are obvious so you should be able to figure them out on you own. I like pictures better so I will try to include lots of them. I could not find any help on how to do this when I started so I am going to do this to help other out. I have done several car repairs over the last 3 or 4 years that I could not have done without the help of other people making similar how to write ups. Phase 2 is the motor change out which I hope to start this weekend.
First off you have to come up with a plan to jack your car up pretty high, I didn’t take the actual measurement but my calculation showed I had to raise the frame up to around 36”. I decided to use beams and regular car jacks as you can see in the pics. The beams are made from 2” square tubing 3/16” thick and they cost me $50 at the local steel supply company, they were remnants and cost .75 cents a pound (66 lbs total). I used 2 pieces of 41” tubing with (6) 6” pieces cross braces. I attached (2) pieces of 2 x 4 to the bottom of either end of the beam so a jack could be placed under the beams while it was sitting on the ground. I jacked the beams up until they got close to the frame and then shimmed from the beams to match the car frame. The back and front don’t match so you will have to figure it out. The design is such that the wood dunnage you add is below the beam so it is easy to swap out pieces as you raise the car. We never had an air gap of more than a 2” before putting a 2x4 in to be safe. We got to a certain height and then added the big blocks and started all over again going higher. We did run into one problem in that when the engine came out of the car it totally changed the center of gravity so we had to get a 3rd jack and put it on the back brace. So we ended up jacking up the car with 3 jacks, sometimes we worked one jack at a time and sometimes we operated all 3 at once. When the aft jack ran out of stroke we put wood under the wheels. I will add some pics and you should be able to figure it out from them. Just make the base large and add wood under incrementally as you go up. I think it worked better operating one jack at a time.

The way I got the engine out was to use an engine hoist as a dolly. We took the engine hoist beam off so it would not interfere with the car. I installed the 2 x2” beams and jacked up the cars, took off the front wheels and then set the car on down on blocks of wood so the car was level just like if the wheels were on it. Then I slid the car hoist under the car and put 4x4 as a safety on top of the dolly frame for protection. I then used the car jacks to take the load on the engine frame and pulled the frame bolts. I then lowered and removed the wood until I had the engine on the engine hoist frame. They front of the engine frame was not level with the engine hoist dolly so I used a 2x4 as a shim on the front (you can see in pics). Once the engine was on the engine hoist I then switched to jacking the car until the engine could be pulled out.
Things you have to remove
The window wiper tray and all that along with the brace
The battery and tray
The air cleaner
The electrical harness that goes into the fuse box
Several vacuum hoses and some grounds. There are several things from the driver’s side fender area that goes over to the engine or tranny on that side of the engine.
The starter (I could not figure out how to remove the hot lead to the starter so I just removed the starter
The cruise control line and the box
The throttle connection
Drain the anti freeze and remove both radiator hoses.
You have to remove the steering shaft bolt. Remove the entire bolt, and you can do this later if you want. There is good access through the wheel well. Mark it so you can get it back on right.
Just look around and remove anything that connects the engine to the car
You have to remove the ECU harness and pull into the engine cavity. Remove the glove box and disconnect several harnesses. You will figure it out when you see it.
Disconnect the power steering input and return lines
The alternator connections
Disconnect the AC high and low pressure hoses.
Disconnect the upper motor mount.
Disconnect the transmission shifter cable. You can do this after the engine is partially lowered to get better access.
There were 2 smog vacuum lines that had to be disconnected. Follow them along the frame and they go up under the battery compartment.
The brake rotors and the ABS sensors
The exhaust
I hope I covered it all but just look around and unhook anything that is attached.
It all sounds worst that it is.

daltongd

More pics for you to enjoy

daltongd

I have even more pictures for you