Engine Seized
12-31-07, 07:10 AM
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Engine Seized
I looked but could not find other threads on this. My son's '95 ES300 seized coming home from school before Christmas, 145k miles he has had it for >3 years. He was driving along and it just stopped. No noticable difference in running. I went to the car and the engine did not seem hot or have oil/water steam/smoke coming out. Turn the key and it would not turn over.
Took it to Lexus dealer and he said bad news the engine was seized and they could not turn it with a break bar. They said all antifreeze was gone. Their price was $13.5k plus 40 hours, so started looking. Rebuilt engines were $3-$5k. I found a salvage engine for $600, very large shop that buys insurance wrecks. They recommended a local shop that would swap the engine for $550 (local shop does 3-5 engines per week for past 10 years). That is what I did so for little over $1200 we have an engine with 100k miles that was a direct swap. Running great, hopefully many years left on it. They did change oil, antifreeze, valve cover gaskets, belts, tighten muffler pipe to muffler, I'm very happy with this so far.
NOW the interesting thing, the guy at the engine swap shop said the car had over 2 gallons of antifreeze when he drained it. He said water pump was still turning, and he had to drop the oil pan and remove the rod bolts on one piston to turn the engine so he could pull the old engine. He said it was not overheated, but he thinks one piston had the oil return blocked and did not get oil and seized. I wanted to understand what went wrong so it did not happen again. I thought blown head gasket and maybe son driving it too hard,
but now thinking maybe just bad luck and something went wrong with one cylinder.
COMMENTS?
Sorry for the long thread.
Took it to Lexus dealer and he said bad news the engine was seized and they could not turn it with a break bar. They said all antifreeze was gone. Their price was $13.5k plus 40 hours, so started looking. Rebuilt engines were $3-$5k. I found a salvage engine for $600, very large shop that buys insurance wrecks. They recommended a local shop that would swap the engine for $550 (local shop does 3-5 engines per week for past 10 years). That is what I did so for little over $1200 we have an engine with 100k miles that was a direct swap. Running great, hopefully many years left on it. They did change oil, antifreeze, valve cover gaskets, belts, tighten muffler pipe to muffler, I'm very happy with this so far.
NOW the interesting thing, the guy at the engine swap shop said the car had over 2 gallons of antifreeze when he drained it. He said water pump was still turning, and he had to drop the oil pan and remove the rod bolts on one piston to turn the engine so he could pull the old engine. He said it was not overheated, but he thinks one piston had the oil return blocked and did not get oil and seized. I wanted to understand what went wrong so it did not happen again. I thought blown head gasket and maybe son driving it too hard,
but now thinking maybe just bad luck and something went wrong with one cylinder.COMMENTS?
Sorry for the long thread.
12-31-07, 12:24 PM
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When we bought it I did the 120k miles service for ~$800. Since then full service oil changes every 5-8k miles. Oil looked good when it stopped, no water in the oil.
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