Knock Knock! goes the the 1zz! I need suggestions!

[RCale]

So, I bought this 2001 Corolla S in January completely unaware of the disappearing oil issue. So, about two months after my last oil change she went empty on me. It started to knock I figured it was a spun rod bearing so i dropped the oil pan but none of the rods move anymore than they should. After It started knocking i drove it 5 miles home and havent moved it since then. So my question is....Should I replace the bearings seal it all up add oil and just keep adding oil? Or should I say screw the bearings seal it back up and call it good until I can rebuild it?

[sam333]

It may not be loose enough to tell by hand. What you do depends on how much money you have and how reliable you need your car to be. If you really have a rod knocking and keep driving it , its only a matter of time till you have a major failure.If it was low enough on oil to damage the rod bearings then the whole engine more or less has damage, so just replacing your bearings is not going to do much.

[briankmizell]

Just to put my 2 cents worth in, what sam333 means when he says the whole engine has damage is that when the rod started knocking it imediatley started shaving metal off of the rod bearing and the rod journal. All those shavings are floating around in your oil. The filter does catch some of the shavings but not all.

The shavings that are floating around are scratching up everything that they move by. hence the saying the whole engine has damage.

Its inevitable that you will at some point in time have to pull the engine and rebuild it. It just mainly depends on how out of round the rod journal is that has the rod knocking.