Ok so let me start off by saying I am new to this forum and did read around/search before posting this. I am not a camry person so I wont sit here and pretend to know everything about these cars. I have however been working on cars and engines for years and years and built many turbo race motors (mainly mitsubishi's and worked at a performance shop).
The situation I am in currently is as follows. A close friend (currently a college student on a limited budget) owns a 1996 Camry LE. Currently it has the 4cyl 5SFE motor in it. Id like to think the car has been well maintained but im not 100% sure about anything. As it sits the car has 96k on it which to me is nothing for a japansese car. Hell my grandmothers 90 camry had 200K and ran great, she just wanted an old person car after 10 years.
She consulted me with some questions about an oil leak from the car. Her regular mechanic said it was a real main leak and he couldnt do it. I (not having the time being in school and working full time) referred her to a respectable trans shop. They inspected it and said the rear main did not appear to be leaking, it was the distributor O ring seal and to take it to a general shop. She eventually took it over to a toyota dealership here in MD who told her this... The oil pan gasket, distributor O ring seal, Valve cover seal and possibly the trans seal. Heres where your going to what to $hit yourself...they estimated the work for this and replacing a torque mount to be $4500!!!! Personally I want to file a claim with the better business bureau and toyota since they were trying to take advantage of a college student and her single parent mother, but were not going there with this post.
Knowing a lot about cars I figured id look it all over and steer her in the right direction as for $4500 I could completely redo the entire car. I spent the day with the car and toyed around with a few things. Decided to help her out and replace the oil pan gasket, VC gasket, mount and a few other things while I was in there.
I noticed initially with the pan off the EXTREME amount of "sludge" and when I got to the valve cover off even more. (We'll touch on this in a minute) Once it was all back together, a few bottles of brake cleaner later and running I came to find out more about this engine. While the leak slowed a great deal it was still leaking engine oil. Now with the engine clean I saw it was coming from the oil pump, under the timing cover thus im sure the seals under that cover, around the crank and probably the cam gear. Additionally the timing belt was cracking and in need of replacement. There is also a bit of oil coming down the trans underside, either the rear main or the dist o ring which I could not get since its a dealer part and they were closed.
So what im looking at now is this... A rear main is hours of labor, a shop $450-800 depending on who does it, the timing belt and related parts will be atleast $600. Even with this all sealed back up the engine is COVERED in sludge. In all honesty I was shocked, ive never seen anything like this. All in all im suprised it can run with the amount of oil contamination im sure its getting. So really what this engine has left in it is a big question mark. I can really justify putting $1000-1500 into repairing this engine, even sadly with 96k on it. Im a big fan of JDM motors. Ive bought 6+ turbo 4G63 engines for my DSM collections, an H22 for my daily driver accord and many other motors for friends cars. I am aware that I can get the JDM 5SFE for this car. So this is what brings me to my real questions. Id bet many of you agree its no worth the $ into this cars stock engine.
The cars a 1996, hence OBD2 and from what ive read and seen a crank sensor. My JDM lace has a good 1995 engine in stock. Please correct me if I am wrong but my thoughts were as follows. Get the engine, haggle down due to the 95 vs 96. Take off all the accessory parts down to the bock and head. Then swap out the oil pump with a new unit for a 1996 model (with crank provision). I found the OEM oil pump brand for mitsubishi AISIN (I think thats the spelling) for this engine at around $50. Really why not for that price while im in there. IS there OR IS THERE NOT there a CAM sensor in the 1996. From pics I feel (and I could be way wrong) the 97+ version has a coilpack, not a distributor. Thus these models have the cam sensor. The 96 with a distributor does not have this??
Essentially what id be doing is using the JDM block and head. Reusing the intake/exhaust manifolds, EGR stuff, Fuel rail... While its all out replace the timing belt, waterpump, misc seals/gaskets specially the rear main seal. What I need to do is verify that the crank sensor is the only difference between the 91-95 and the 96 5SFE motor. It will not be a problem to swap around all the accessory components to make it a bolt in affair and proper for the OBD2 I just want to be 100% sure what im getting into.
Remember this is for a college student on a limited budget. Figured I could get it all done here for $1000-1500 or so and get here through 2-3 years of school. At that point she can buy a new or slightly used car. A teardown/rebuild would be timely and me being in school I can't say I have time to do that...if it were winter I may but this engine is really cruddy!!! Figured a good weekend if my thought process above is right and I could have it all taken care of.
Thanks for reading through my long post and please let me know what you all think about this I really do appreciate it!
-Jon
Additional question, stock compression is 9.5:1 whats the factory pressure in PSI on these motors...I want to check the compression results to see another variable in this.
Linear Mode
