4AGZE Engine

[toyotaspeed90]

Originally Posted by EverAE

I'm pretty sure their the ae92 gze's that Osaka sells.

they sell more than just ae92 motors.....

we did a group buy (way out here in WA, yeah) a while back.... and we were pleased with the results.....

my engine was an ae101 motor... CLEAN inside and out.... e58 w/ lsd trans.... TRD racing clutch, TRD pressure plate, and TRD engine mounts.... the intercooler wasn't damaged at all either....

the other engines (6 in total... 4 smallport gze's and 2 bigport gze's) were relatively clean as well.... most had the s/c oil drained before hand, though so be careful..... one of the bigports even came with an aftermarket pulley


the 'distributor' is the camshaft position sensor...... most import places don't know the difference (or don't relay it too well)

[Kebin]

Chuck the gze in an old rwd corolla

[EverAE]

Originally Posted by toyotaspeed90

they sell more than just ae92 motors.....

we did a group buy (way out here in WA, yeah) a while back.... and we were pleased with the results.....

my engine was an ae101 motor... CLEAN inside and out.... e58 w/ lsd trans.... TRD racing clutch, TRD pressure plate, and TRD engine mounts.... the intercooler wasn't damaged at all either....

the other engines (6 in total... 4 smallport gze's and 2 bigport gze's) were relatively clean as well.... most had the s/c oil drained before hand, though so be careful..... one of the bigports even came with an aftermarket pulley


the 'distributor' is the camshaft position sensor...... most import places don't know the difference (or don't relay it too well)

Ah, I just figured it wouldn't be a MAP gze if they were offering the gze with the same price as the silvertop when they quoted me.

[rdyzz]

a friend of mine purchased an engine from osaka motors. they claimed it was a complete uncut harness with ecu. turns out it was cut harness, it had sludge build up and the tps sensor on the ITB was broken. he complained, they did send him another one. that one however has a sheared crank and cut harness. so he sends his ecu back for a tade as agreed, its been 7months now no ecu return or trade. osaka motors is defenately not a place i'd ever buy anything from from. if they are willing to sell unuseable engines for $800-1200 they should not even do bueisness.

[4Aaron GE]

OK This is just a freindly warning to stay away from a few shops in Montreal when looking for an engine, mainly Osaka and Japan Domestic Motors. Here's the story...

I blew up the ZE in the probe last tuesday so I started calling around looking for prices for a replacement ZE for the car. The first place I called was Japan Domestic Motors, I was told that they had some in stock and I could come down and pick up one that I wanted. Soundcatz is also looking for a ZE and he had called Osaka and they had enformed him that they had 6 in stock as well. Now the prices varied quite a bit. Osaka only wanted $750 and JDM wanted $950 so obviously were going to check out the cheaper place as we brought testing equipment with us and were going to compression test the engines and check everything out regardless of which shop we dealt with.

So Saturday we headed up, with a freind of mine truck ready to bring 2 engines home so that I could get it swapped in asap. We get to Osaka go in and look at the "KLZE's" they have in stock. Well first they only have two K-Series engines and there not KLZE's there K8's. So I explain this to the the guy and he just says well thats what we have. So Andrew repeats what the guy told him that they said that they have 6 and where the fuck are our engines (at this point were both a little pissed, but we still have another place to check out so no big deal) Osaka says give us 15-20 mins and we'll see if we can track some down for you. Fine we say and in the mean time head off to Japan Domestic Motor down the street.

We get there and they have 2 "KLZE's" except one has a curved neck Intake Manifold on it, but the marking on the block is correct. At this point I'm kinda in a hurry and just want to compression check this engine and get the hell outta there. After like 10 FUCKING MINUTES of arguing with the guy that were not buying shit untill we do a comp test he finally 'lets us' do a compression check. So we check all the plugs and compression check it and it turns out perfect. Nice so we move on to the other engine....HUGE fucking hole in the #6 runner (where did the chunk go thats missing? Probably into the valve train, ok so not getting that one) The guy says that he's going to bring another engine over from his other wearhouse, but there is no warrenty on it cause this guy he's getting it from doesn't give him warrenty. Which he does and after we compression test it it comes back with 0psi on at least one of the cylinders. Then I take a look at the distributer, its a 7 prong disty(extra one for an external coil)...the correct one, but something about it struck me as odd. I go back to the other ZE and its only got a 6 prong disty (internal ignitor)....So this jackass is trying to pawn off a different type of engine on me as a ZE. It has the wrong cam profile and about 20 less HP than a true ZE.

So fuck that we leave that shithole and call back Osaka and ask them if they've tracked down any engines, they say no but there getting a shipment early monday morning and they can have them delivered by 1pm on Monday. So me and Andrew disscuss this and come to the conclusion that this is fine, as long as they compression check the engines first and then we are able to check the engines again upon arrival and the driver doesn't get a dime unless this is done. They agree. Perfect we think. Untill we both kind of agree that maybe one of us should go back on Monday just to save the hassle of possibly getting a couple of crappy engines that way we can mark them before they ship out so we know that we have personally done the check already.

I head back to Montreal on monday, get there at about 11.....no engines. "Oh there here but our driver just has to pick up the container, shouldn't be more than an hour or hour and a half" he says. Ok fine so I drive around killing some time and go back an hour and a half later....still no engines.(At this point I'm feeling like I'm in an even worse version of TFATF almost yelling at the guy "WHERE ARE MY ENGINES!!!" After waiting for 4 goddamn hours another guys comes up to me and says man I'm gonna be here all night unloading this, they won't be available till tommorrow. I'm fucking steaming at this point, all I wanted to do was check two engines for us and mark them so they could be delivered. So he says again, we'll check them and you'll have them by thursday :dozingoff: Im thinking yeah.....right, but what choice do I have but to beleive him.

Fast forward to Friday, As no one could get ahold of these fuckers all week cause they were closed, so much for me getting the engine on Thursday eh.... :***: Call them up again and ask if 1, are you open friday to which they say yes and 2, do you have ZE's IN STOCK ready to go which they say yes. So I get a freind of mine with a van to drive me up. Well what a fucking suprise, the engines aren't off the container....stacked 3 engines high and about 10 deep. Suprise suprise they can't get them out cause 'his guy' is in toronto and they need 4 people to unload the container. So I told him either you find me 2 fucking engines in the next 2 hours or you just lost 2 fucking sales. His response.....'go buy them somewhere else'

So I did, found a ZE at a place down the road, compression checked it and brought it home that day, the place is called Tokyo Import or something like that.

......and as I'm just about to end this saga, Andrew just called me. He was at Osaka and he was there while they were unloading the container. They fucking dropped 2 of the ZE's one had a chunk of the block missing from when they dropped it, and then they had the nerve to fucking ask him "is this the engine you want?" :crazy: The other one's Intake manifold was litterely crush in with chunks of it missing...:***:

So he's at Tokyo right now apparently with Hackish and some other guys getting a ZE that wasn't dropped, chipped, and damaged in some way shape or form....

Long read, I know, but please give pause before going to Osaka JDM.

I know that some people have had good experiences with Osaka, but the glut of the stories that I hear about that place are like this.


Most people that I talk to say to go to Teknotik. I haven't had any real experince with thier engines. My brother bought a lip from them for his 'teg and it came like the next day.

[toyotaspeed90]

here's the thing you NEED to keep in mind when purchasing a JDM engine -- ESPECIALLY when you're purchasing it from a long distance....

be ready to:
-understand fully what you are getting and not getting
-understand that damage occurs during shipping -- both shipping from japan and from the dealer
-understand that even if they are pulled from running cars, may not be the best 'replacement' engine for reliability, and (at the cheap price in comparison to new/rebuilt) might need rebuilding
-understand that at the VERY least you should do some work to the engine before putting it in your car (ie, tuneup, pull pan & check things out, etc)
-understand that not everything will go your way, and expect to have unexpected costs associated with the swap

i've been both burned and VERY happy with results from JDM suppliers..... my smallport 4age in the corolla is in bad shape (runs well) and the company went under before i could use my warranty.... the smallport 4agze that was in the mr2 was IMMACULATE..... clean enough to eat on, incredible compression, and little damage to it.

i'm sure some of you have seen these pictures.... but this was what WE got from osaka (the day they arrived)....









the only 'bad' thing that happened to us was we were told we were getting 6 smallport 4agze's.... all dli & map based..... 4 were... 2 were bigport dli afm..... not a big deal, especially since one of the bigports had an aftermarket (larger than cusco) pulley on it

[toyotaspeed90]

maybe we got 8 of them..... either way, only 2 were bigports

[Flashmn]

WTF is a "ZE" engine? Maybe its just me, but I dont talk in JDM-codetalk.

[4Aaron GE]

You talking about the long quote thing? I think he's talking about the Mazda KLZE.