I just bought a luxury hoopdy 99 rx300 for the woman for $3500. it was previously owned by a female school teacher in Georgia so using stereotypes and from what ive seen so far under the hood it was run moderately and put away wet all day every day. it was pretty clean and had a few expected older car cosmetic issues. it screeched when cold but I chalked it up to being a pulley that I could easily fix. the screech went away when you put it in gear. I thought "its a Toyota which is essentially a Subaru so its indestructible". I just dumped a couple hundred into it doing a full tune up including plugs, coils, coolant flush, air filter, oil system clean, oil and filter change, new optima yellow top battery with gold plated terminals, new fuel filter and seafoam fuel system clean, and I replaced a vvt and ran some seafoam through the oil system before the change because the vvt was so fowled. I didn't want this thing to ever leave my woman and child on the side of the road. well...it did.

she drove it from north to south florida and then north to mid florida for the holidays to visit friends and family. on her way back from the second trip it died on the side of the road, luckily, down the road from our house. she said it was making a weird noise and the oil light was on. to be honest the oil light came on spuriously after I just changed the oil. so I figured it was a bad sensor. when I got it back to the house and checked the oil there was none. this thing ate 5qt of oil in a couple hundred miles and now the engine is toast.

even with no oil the engine cranked and briefly turned over. I did another oil and filter change to see if there where any issues and try to save the engine. the engine runs and idles. you could hear the cylinders scraping until oil got back into them and then the scraping sound went away. however, when you accelerate the engine there is a significant knocking sound proportional to rpm and sometimes it goes away at idle. I know its not good for the engine to test it like this but I figured, if its done its already done.

I found a youtube video with a camry that had a similar sounding engine and in the comments the owner said that his #5 cylinder was in pieces and the cylinder was scored bad enough that he decided to get a new engine. I looked up how that works and I guess the engine hase to come out the bottom attached to the entire front drive train with a full body off two post lift job. I was trying to do this at home but a two post lift isn't in the budget and the repair might not be either...nor is an entirely new car.

what are my options? what is easiest? what is quickest? and what is cheapest and worth my time? I know its going to be yet another holliday season signifigant financial hit any way I look at it. like I said I just bought it so im definitely still paying on it (we just bought and moved into a new house because my landlord refused to fix things)

im in the navy and I have a couple months before I transfer probably without my family and we need to have a second car before then. I would like to keep the vehicle. im thinking it might be worth it to put in a new or refurbished engine because the body is in great shape and I feel like it would be way cheaper than getting a new car.

thank you all for your time and inputs

 

Trade it in on a new car. The dealer deserves all he gets!

 

Well I bought it privately from a sweet old man who was trying to sell it for his apparently half wit daughter. Although dealers do deserve all we can give them. I was thinking a trade in while it runs is probably the best idea.

I took the oil pan off today and there are shavings...not particles...not flecks...shavings of metal in it.

Possible sources in my mind are melted bearing babbitt material, the oil pump gear (would explain the oil pressure light being erratic when full of oil), maybe cylinder rings (worst case but the tail pipe doesn't smoke like she's choochin on oil), maybe some wear from the cams that dried out when the oil flow plugged up. A **** hair off the cams doesn't bother me too bad especially on a 99 luxury hoopdy.

this may be a seafoam related casualty. Well...no maintenance for the life of the car and then the consequences of using seafoam. I believe huge chunks of crap came loose and clogged up the oil flow which caused a catastrophic chain reaction of drying out cylinder rings allowing significant blow-by into the oil chamber with a clogged pcv valve and newly chemically scrubbed gaskets. Oil gets pressurized and weeps out every crack whlist chuggin down the freeway poundin the **** out of some pavement. That's probably where the 5qts went...Rt95.

Anyway it does run well, except for the knock and without smoking like crazy, so I'll slap her back together and monitor the dipstick frequently. It'll get the old lady to the grocery store and back before it eats all the oil.

if I don't trade it in the woman agreed to let me get a two post lift for my shop. I may just hold on to this pos. Lol.

 

Welcome to Club Lexus. Unfortunately your intro is with bad news.

Your diagnosis about engine being toast seems correct. You can have it compression tested.

Salim

 

I won't reiterate what's been posted already, other than to say I agree with your thoughts on keeping it and replacing the engine, if you're able to. If you decide to keep it, you may think about a transmission as well. The 99s were known to have transmission issues from time to time. It would be a lot to swallow all at one time, but once running, it would last longer than you'd want to keep it...

Oh, and welcome aboard!

 

Harrier's suggestion makes sense particularly if you can find a used engine/tranny assembly in verifiably good condition, since installation of the combined package is probably easier than one piece at a time.

 

thanks for the welcome and the warning about the transmition. that puts a check in my personal poll to get a parts vehicle.

 

anybody interestede in pics and videos for knowledge purposes? i may even put this on my youtube channel.

 

This is public forum and we have certain rules that we expect the post to follow. Fell free to post but please adhere to forum rules.

Adding links is the most efficient use, but keep in mind there are restrictions ... no FOR Sale ... do not try to generate business for others etc.

Salim

 

Pics are always welcome. Makes for an interesting read as one goes through the journey of rehabbing the car.

 

yeah no worries about the youtube videos. they are for learning only and are non profit because any money i make on commercials goes right back into making more videos. and they don't pay me enough. peanuts or grains of salt would be more substantial payment.

my channels mission statement is to provide useful knowledge for the good of humanity for free.

the name of my channel is HillbillyMatt ExtremeDIY. im not very big so it might be hard to find. feel free to check it out and let me know if posting engine/vehicle rehab videos like that would be against the rules.

im not trying to step on anybody's toes. i appreciate learning from you guys and i would like to share what i learn with everybody else.

thank you for the warning. its a good point and i probably wouldn't have thought about it.

 

i will either be doing an in house swap or full engine rebuild. should be pretty exciting to follow. its nice to know whats inside the heart of the beast. i will be making a whole series related to this project including how and why i believe it failed and a step by step follow along for replacing or rebuilding the engine. i do like to include my mistakes. id rather look like a dumbass if i can teach something from the experience.

im leaning towards the complete rebuild because i will get more tools out of it.

 

I'm looking forward to the videos!

 

Do you have access to an automotive "hobby shop"? I'm not familiar with the naval stations but I've been on airforce bases that allow personnel to work on their cars and friends cars per invite.

If so, replace the engine. If not, IMO..walk away and get a new car. Donate the car to charity and write off the residual value next tax season.

 

Truly a sad yet entertaining story. It's a great car, the previous owner did not care for it.
I agree with the person that said if you swap the engine and tranny, the car will last longer than you'd want to keep it. How many miles is on it now?
It'll be an interesting journey if you decide to go for the swap. I want to watch the process on your channel. I'm sure i'll learn a lot but hopefully not have to go through it lol