1997 5S-FE Camry Engine Locked Up

[toddub]

Greetings,

I just picked up a 1997 Toyota Camry for $200. The 4 cylinder engine is locked up, but the body and interior are in great shape. I am not sure how many miles are on it, when I try to hook up the battery the horn blows and the lights flash. The previous owner’s daughter had been driving the car and is away at school. He thinks it has between 130k & 140k miles on it.

The previous owner told me the engine locked up, but they were able to free it up again by using a breaker bar on the crankshaft nut. It ran for another 2 weeks before locking up again. I have confirmed the engine is locked up and there is no oil visible on the dip stick.

I have found used engines in the range of $750 - $900 in the yellow pages and on Dallas.Craigslist, and $1200 - $1600 including shipping from internet wrecking yard e-mail quotes.

I purchased a Chilton Manual which leads me to my first question. It says I need to remove the torque converter from the drive plate before removing the engine and transmission. Do I really need to do this? The Chilton manual leaves out a lot of details, but, thanks to this forum, most of my questions have all ready been answered!

I plan to pull the engine today and at least look under the oil pan. I suspect the problem is in the bottom end. This is not my primary transportation so I can afford to take my time on this rebuild or replace project.

In the past I have rebuilt Chevy V-8's, Harley Davidson, 4 Cylinder motorcycle and countless 3 - 4 Wheeler / Dirt bike engines. I am fairly confident I can handle this project. I am a forum member at rx7club.com. Their forums have helped me a great deal in the past whenever I had a problem I could not figure out. I was very happy to find a forum here dedicated to the Camry.

Any help or input will be appreciated. I will try not to ask questions that have all ready been answered.

Thanks,
Todd
Shreveport, LA

[carsrus]

Over 1000 for a used engine is just ridiculous.

I would say pull it and then see how it looks like inside. If its been run really low on oil for a prolonged period of time its probably not worth the money to rebuild.

However, you can use a 5SFE 2.2 from any year. Its been done before and the swap is not hard at all. The newer (96-01) 5sfe engines have the distributor hole plugged so you can just do this mod to the new engine (pre 96'). It also needs a couple other small things but it has been done before successfully.

[Chris Crash]

Easiest would be to get one from 97-01 years, that's just a simple drop in. But keep in mind, I only paid $1400 for a brand new engine...so I wouldn't pay more than $500 for a used one. I sold a perfectly fine used 5SFE for $400, and would have accepted $300 for it.

[toddub]

The engine is still froze up so I pulled the Oil Pan off the other day.
The balancer assembly was missing one of the bolts. 4 of the 5 remaining bolts were finger tight. I could feel fine sand like metal in the bottom of the oil pan.
After removing the balancer I still was not able to turn the engine over by hand.





I decided to pull the engine. I just need to remove the axel shafts and 2 electrical connectors that I can not reach until I remove the motor mounts.

When I get the motor out, I should be able to figure out what went wrong.