So my trusted mechanic tells me that my wrist pin bearing is bad in my 22R, he also tells me its not worth fixing? I like second opinions so is this motor junk or could a guy pull the oil pan off and pull the crank and pistons out and change the bearing or all of them and put it back together? This motor ran perfect before it developed of little click clack sound and progressively got worse.

 

You can't just pull a piston out the bottom. Well you can, but good luck getting it back in. And you absolutely cannot remove the crank without either removing the engine or pulling the trans apart from the engine.

No need to remove the crank to change a wrist pin/bushing/piston anyway.

And by wrist pin bearing you mean wrist pin bushing in the rod? How does he know it's a bushing in the rod and not the piston and/or wrist pin itself?

I have more money in my engine rebuild then my truck is worth.

But to replace 1 piston/rod/ring is pointless. You replace all or none IMO. As you pretty much cannot buy just 1 piston or 1 bushing/rod bearing anyway. You buy those in sets.

 

Yes I admit I dont know alot about engines, thanks for the small education... I'm not sure what makes him think it is a bad wrist pin bushing, but if this is in fact the problem, I suppose the motor would have to come out and be completely torn down?

 

You can change pistons and rods while the engine is still in, but there will be a whole lot of what if's when doing so. What if the wear on the crank is too much and accelerates the wear on new rod bushings. I have seen people just slap new rod bushings (crank side) and be OK for a while. But it's a risk. Not something I personally would do with an engine with high mileage. The there is cylinder clearance issues that a machinist should really take a look at if your unfamiliar. That will cause a what if the rings don't seat because the cyl's aren't round or needed to be at least honed.

 

x2 on everything xxxtreme said. If you slap new bearings on a worn crank then your going to end up in the same situation sooner or later.

I'm just not seeing how the mechanic diagnosed it with "wrist pin bearing", however this could be the case, but it could also be something else.

 

As others have said, the diagnosis of "wrist pin bearing" is iffy, but to do the diagnosis correctly you'd have to tear the engine down. Which is not cheap.

So if your mechanic is good he is using his experience to say something like "I'm 95% sure it is something too expensive to be worth fixing, and do you want to spend $500 just to find out if it is the 5% option?"

You can replace pistons without removing the crank, but the heads have to come off. You can just slap in new bushings/bearings, and you'll "probably" get another 25-50,000 miles. Or not. And on the way, what else do you think you're going to find?

You don't give a year or mileage, and given your self-admitted lack of engine knowledge, it sounds like you've been given good advice.