140 "oil Problem"

[Gunzi]

Hi,

A friend has the 7th Gen 140 and has had 'the oil problem'. It's now knocking/tapping and I'd like to know what his options are. So far I have come up with this list:

1. Remove the engine and repair it.

2. Buy a recon unit and fit that.

3. Fit a 190 engine + loom

4. Fit another engine? Would the 3SGE N/A unit fit onto the 140's box?

I'm not up on Toyota's so any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

Chris

[stevest202]

failing the repair under warranty by toyota the easiest and quickest is a like for like swop but a few have put the 190s in i dont think you would get a 3sge in without a lot of modification i think fensport 7 has a 3sgte so its possible todo :D

[Gunzi]

Thanks for the reply. It's a W Reg 2000 model, would that be covered by the Toyota Warranty still?

[marty32]

theres a few threads on here about toyota repairing the engine

has to have full dealer history, be under 100k miles and i think its 7 year old maximum.

best bet to have a search through see if you can find the threads

[Gunzi]

Ok a search has revealed that the above is correct. FSH but not all dealer with over 80k and it's 8 years old and therefore will fall outside the repair warranty

So his options are repair, replace or upgrade.

Any opinions on this? Rough prices would be appreciated. I see from a search quite a few people have suffered with this so there must be a fair bit of experience.

Thanks,

Chris

[fazzer]

Personally i would go for a recondition on your engine using only genuine parts,your looking at £1000+ depending on what is found on the strip down,if you go for a replacement engine be carefull you are not buying the same problem.I can do the stripdown and recon at a good price.Pm me if you are interested(im in the north west)

good luck

[xEla]

i had similar story, but luckily the garage i bought it from took full responsibility and reconditioned the engine (i insisted on recon) free of charge. bill was for £1300 all together and took 3 weeks to sort out all paperwork’s etc.. have 1 year warranty on it as well.

car seems to be fine even better now, however i'm not allowed to do over 4k rev and over 62mph for another 500 miles..

thanks to Fazzer, who kindly described the work for me so i was able to make sure everything was done properly...

[TheNumpty]

Righto, I'm the guy that Gunzi is posting on behalf of. Figured I'd get stuck in since I'm the one with the problem.

The car: Black Celica 140, 2000 on a W, all standard (including that damn alloy wheel peeling effect). Still looks a treat and is mechanically sound, apart from the engine!

The story:

Car has been delightful for ~2 years of ownership 70k miles when bought, up to 97k now. Then I made a trip to the Lake District, making a 700 mile round trip. It seems that this coincided with it turning into an oil-burner because it was fine a week or two beforehand, but all the oil disappeared during the trip. Dipstick was pretty much dry when I got home, and a clatter had developed near the end of my journey that only appeared when the engine was not working hard i.e. driving at constant speed. It's still drivable but I doubt it'll last much longer, so I'm not moving it unless I absolutely have to.

If I had to guess, it must have used at least 1.5 L of oil in my journey, as I'd not done many miles since I last took an oil reading prior to my big road trip.

Local greasemonkey listened to the engine for about two seconds, before declaring that it sounded like the crank was damaged. He then suggested that the fix would take big bucks (£1k+) and probably involve crank, con-rods, and whatever else might be in bad shape.

The dilemma:

Fix? Replace? Give up on a bad job? Go for a transplant?

I've got no garage or much mechanical skill, so I can't look on this is a project. It's going to have to be dealt with by someone else.

The fix is clearly costly. Thank you xEla for your £1300 figure, as that's better than I was anticipating. I could imagine it touching £2k. Would a garage be able to cure the oil consumption problem at the same time? No point in fixing the bottom end only to have to stick as much oil in as petrol!

Getting another engine in will obviously carry a risk of it developing the same oil problem or something else. No guarantees, but might be a similar cost to the recon, since no engine disassembly required.

I tried bunging details into webuyanycar dot com to see what sort of worth the car has as a non-runner: Bottom value is £1200. If it was in full working order, I'd not be able to get more than £3.5k for it I guess. Is there likely to be much interest in this car as a hulk? While I have dearly loved driving it, a super pessimistic estimate of a £2k repair on a £3.5k car is getting very close to the point where it might be better to move on. I can also imagine other expenses in the future.

Then Dr Frankenstein looms his ugly head. Seeing as how the engine is going to have to come out anyway... might as well check out the possibility of dropping something more fruity in... but as I said, it's not something I can undertake personally, so labour costs might make this a non-starter. Is this fabled "lift" worth an extra few hundred quid?

Fazzer, I'd love to take you up on your offer, but I'm on the south coast. It might cost more to get my motor to you than it would to fix it! I don't really fancy 400 miles on a tow rope either!

I'd appreciate opinions and information anyone may have. It's a beautiful car, but one can get quite a lot of jollies for £3k these days, and that's what I'd have if I didn't make the repair and sold the poor motor off. Thanks for reading

[Burning Feet Man]

im posting here for 2 reasons, firstly i have an X plate 140, nearing 80k miles so i want to keep an eye on what my car may cost me in the future, secondly it's a little bump for the thread so we can get affore mentioned advice :)

I really hope your car can be sorted cheap mate, these cars are very nice, but this oil problem is quite a pain in the butt and can cost a lot of money by the sounds of it :(

Anyway, gl!

BFM

[TheNumpty]

im posting here for 2 reasons, firstly i have an X plate 140, nearing 80k miles so i want to keep an eye on what my car may cost me in the future, secondly it's a little bump for the thread so we can get affore mentioned advice :)

I really hope your car can be sorted cheap mate, these cars are very nice, but this oil problem is quite a pain in the butt and can cost a lot of money by the sounds of it :(

Anyway, gl!

BFM

Cheers BFM. Guess nobody has anything to say beyond what has already been said.

I've not found a satisfactory way to proceed so I'm going to cut my losses and get a new ride. I could use some more horses anyway! Therefore, if anyone is interested in picking up my car as a parts donor or ongoing project, get in touch ASAP. I'll throw in 3 of Mr T's unused plugs for attaching the undertray for free!

Interested parties should be aware that it drives, but probably will not last another 1000 miles before the big ends shower themselves all over the road.

[ollieatkins1988]

Youl be silly to sell it, but ten thats just my opinion.

My car had the same problem but i found out too late and bust a piston.

I went to API engines which charged 1850 including taking out the old engine, and fitting a new one. They even picked up the car.

They are prodominantly a impreza specialist, but with their knowledge on vvti they were very helpful and made a good impression on me.

Every car breaks or has some sort of common fault....what can you expect from a machine rotating at 7k revs.

I think your getting a lack of replies as their are so many of these threads already on this forum, including mine and ICELAND POTTERS which have plenty of info to sort you out. Sorry it happened to you its a bit of a *****ter.

[TheNumpty]

Youl be silly to sell it, but ten thats just my opinion.

My car had the same problem but i found out too late and bust a piston.

I went to API engines which charged 1850 including taking out the old engine, and fitting a new one. They even picked up the car.

They are prodominantly a impreza specialist, but with their knowledge on vvti they were very helpful and made a good impression on me.

Every car breaks or has some sort of common fault....what can you expect from a machine rotating at 7k revs.

I think your getting a lack of replies as their are so many of these threads already on this forum, including mine and ICELAND POTTERS which have plenty of info to sort you out. Sorry it happened to you its a bit of a *****ter.

Thanks for the opinion, Ollie. My old man's rule is to not spend more than half the value of the motor keeping it on the road, and I'm right on the line of it costing much the same whichever way I turn. If everyone had come marching in with excitement about a particular solution then it would have been a no-brainer, so I had to ask. The big question for me was more about which choice was best/cheapest.

To summarise the threads you mention: Fix it under warranty while you still can! Too late for me

Failure anywhere between 50k and 100k miles, only on 1999-2002 Celicas, possibly not affecting the 190 variants.

Iceland Potter's thread: http://toyotaownersclub.com/forums/index.p...c=77650&hl=

Ollie's thread: http://toyotaownersclub.com/forums/index.p...c=79604&hl=

Maybe Santa will get me a new fully equipped garage for Christmas so I can avoid the huge labour costs! This Celica is my first car too.

[ollieatkins1988]

If you dont mind me asking, what did you pay for yours?

i bought mine for 6 grand in january so the new engine was worth it.

The price may have come down now for the 1zzfe engine at api engines since april, either that or perhaps you know smebody that will take the engine out cheaper than api would and then have them pick it up. Im just waffling really but from my experience with selling a car cause something needs doing, i had a pug 106 which basically everything wrong then a 3rd gen civic, then a seat leon and now im on the celica.

http://www.apiengines.com/contact.php

Humour me :) , speak to someone there called simon and tell him whats going on, perhaps your engine is not too late and possibly cheaper

[ReaperGFX]

oil problem is a nightmare which has affected alot of people both on and off the forums. so far i havent had any issues with oil but since i dont drive it that much due to work commitments ive not yet to be affected, the thing that kind of gets me with this is that toyotas came out held there hands up and said yes weve made a ***** up, but instead of replacing all the affected engines they've put on tight guidelines to get it replaced. since the cars ive owned ive never put it into a garage to get serviced as ive always done it myself

bit of a diffrence between £300 and £100

but as someone said above all cars break, my first car i had to put in 2 gearboxes because the crown block kept going.

but atleast if you get the engine re-done you know that its sorted for life