Engine Rebuild - Toyota Nation Forum : Toyota Car and Truck Forums

mnrolla · 12-28-2005, 07:59 AM

My son drove his customized 98 Corolla home for the holidays and said that it had been running real crappy. So being the good dad I took it to the shop. They said it has low compression on cylinders 3&4. They recommended putting a used engine in it. Said it would be cheaper than "rebuilding" it.

He's put a lot of work into the car with body kit, paint, etc (won Best Import & Best in Show in a Wisc car show a couple years ago) & I'd hate to have him sell it for less than its worth or put more money into it than necessary.

Now in my experience low compression could be bad rings, blown gasket or valves. How difficult & expensive is it to rering (or overbore pistons)? I've replaced/rebuilt motorcycles & a truck & have a mechanic buddy for assistance.

Thanks for any advice!

Bill

Corollacrazy42 · 12-28-2005, 06:18 PM

well.. thing is, if you can do the whole reringing yourself then it should cost little to nothing. The rings themselves cost practically nothing. Depends on how much work you do yourself i suppose. If you did everything yourself it would bea very cheap fix. But.. if it is not the rings, then you have to figure out what else may be wrong. Also used engines are farly cheap specially the 1zzfe engine. As for how difficult that would be, quite difficult!... you will have to open up the whole engine to replace the rings. And besides if the car is that important to you.. a new engine all together would not be very much. Nothing more than the new paint or the bodykit i would assume.

94_Rolla_Guy · 12-28-2005, 06:20 PM

this is a thought, try doing a leak down test on it with a compression guage in the opposite cylinder possibly the head gasket is blown across those cylinders might find when you apply air pressure to cyl 4 you get pressure in cyl 3 and vise versa.

mnrolla · 12-29-2005, 08:29 AM

Thanks for the help. They brought the car home from the shop yesterday and the son said they said there was leaking cylinder gasket on #3 & 4. It did make a "huffing" noise as it was pulling up the driveway. I think this can be fixed a whole lot cheaper here than paying the dealer to do it.