Head gasket oil leak, old motor...

[timebuilder]

My old faithful 1989 Camry with 3SFE motor has reached the crossroads. It has a very bad oil leak from the rear of the head gasket, and has racked up an impressive 236,000 miles.

Rather than taking an engine with lots of wear and blow-by and resealing the top end, my desire is to change out the motor. I bought the car with 120,000+ on the clock.

I see that there are a number of "low mileage" japanese engines on ebay, one for $440 and $70 shipping. Question: are there any difficulties replacing the engine with one of these imported units?

Any other considerations from those of you who have done this?

[Tommy]

Nope, took me 3 days to do mine and Id never pulled an engine before. Buy the engine, take out yours, swap over your manifolds/accessories, replace belts/hoses/water pump/seals and youll be good to go.

[marc780]

I swapped a used japan motor into my 1985 Nissan 200sx, a 2.0 4 cylinder, i did it back in 2002. And actually i do have some hard-won and expensive advice on this swap, and here is my experience.
I was told beforehand that many or most of the Japan motors are a little different from the US ones, and i found out they are right! These were not minor differences but major ones, just two i found -

1. the intake manifold ports on the new engine were square and the old (US) ports were round, the holes matched up kind of.

2. But worst of all, the metal water pump tube in the engine block protruded up at an angle whereas the old one was horizontal, and this meant my old intake manfold did not fit!

I had it flat-bedded back to the place i bought it, they swapped out the metal tube somehow and finished putting the motor in. In the end it all worked out, more or less. But it NEVER ran as well as it had before the swap! Not only that, because i had to pay them to finish it, it wiped out EVERYthing i tried to save by doing it myself.

The most important lesson i learned is if you are going to swap in one of these inexpensive motors, check everything and compare old and new! Because you dont want what happend to me to happen to you.
And because of all this, the best advice i can give you, is DO NOT buy one of these motors sight unseen! Because if parts dont interchange, you will have to pay the shiping back, buy new parts that fit, or pay to have it modified (if you can even do this at all).