I have a 94 Sc400 with nearly 300,000 miles on it. For the last year or so my rear main seal has been leaking and probably every other seal on the engine. Its not pretty. I've done pretty much everything else to the car except replacing these seals.

To me it doesn't make too much sense to pay nearly $800 to $1000 to replace the rear main seal alone on my engine that has 300,000 miles. I'm pretty sure the engine is still in very good shape mechanically. However it makes more sense to me to swap out the engine with one with alot less mileage and before I put the engine in I can replace the seals, water pump, etc.

The thing is I have California car so the emissions are stricter and the computer,engine, and engine wire harness are all different. So I guess the only thing to do is to find a California engine. Unless I can find the ecu, harness and engine sold together that are federal 49 state legal.

The other thing is the transmission also has 300,000 miles on it as well. Would it be wise just to go ahead and replace the transmission along with the engine?

What do you guys think I should do?

 

if you want to go for performnace mods later and want go fast eventually then you should save up and get a 1jz swap. if your not that interested in going fast then you can pick up any soarer or sc400 1uzfe. as far as i know the only difference in the engines is that the california cars have an extra catalytic converter. internally the engines in all the soarer v8/sc400's (year specific) are the same. so if you have a 95 you can run a 1992-1994 engine, in fact you could even run a 1995-1997 but you might need a tune due to lighter rods and higher compression. transmission you might want to replace it. if your interested in a 5spd set up i'll be selling mine soon.

 

Yeah I thought about it a little more and I should be able to just remove whatever california emission parts from my engine over to the other. I know the egr valve is a different part number for CA. Thanks for the info. I've never looked into the 1jz swap. Auto to manual would be very nice, my only concern would be how much it would cost to retrofit everything.

You say it would need a tune with a 95-97 engine.. what would that entail? Would it need an additional ecu. or just a tps adjustment or something. Thanks again.