So the worst happened. Long story short my truck got stuck in the floods, hydro locked, and then I'm guessing a bent rod sent the bottom end to hell. Felt like I hit a deer when it went out. Actual diagnosis to take place tomorrow.

In the meantime I am going to assume the motor is shot...
86 4runner 22re 5spd

So now I have to decide what to do next. I do rely pretty heavily on this truck but I can be without it for a few weeks. Obviously no one is working today so tomorrow will be full of phone calls. I can't decide if I should just find another 22re and have that motor swapped in, or if I should start looking into a 3rz conversion. I probably don't have the knowledge/skills to perform either myself, and I definitely don't have the space for it. I have done a lot of research about the swap, but I have no idea what kind of $ is involved. I live in Denver so I have access to some 2.7s and 3.4s at local yards around town.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I expect that it will be prohibitively expensive but I won't know for sure until people are open. Thanks!

 

If your paying someone to do this work.

It is going to get expensive fast.

The first thing would be to find out just what is wrong.

Just what happened ??

Then what did you do after the flood ??

 

Rent a canoe?

 

I went through some high water...higher than it looked. Car stalled, I figured it was water choking the air box. The water was obviously below the air box so I waited a bit for it to drain and started it. It chugged a bit but I was able to move it away from the water and shut it off. I pulled the plugs and turned it over after swapping in a dry air filter. No water shot out, but I'm worried the damage was already done. It didn't run right after that and later that day the motor went out when I was traveling about 30mph. It violently slowed the vehicle down when it did that. I don't know enough about the low end of the motor but it was smoking from that area. I shut it off as soon as the initial trouble was felt. They don't let me in REI anymore...there was an incident

 

Ok; you probably spun a bearing. Now if you did not throw a rod and block is Ok you can fix it. You can a lower parts kit and hone the cylinders with a ball hone and reassemble.

Or just a junkyard engine till you can fix this one right. Then swap it back.

 

that pretty much spells out the course of action... about the only cost-effective solution that i can see is going to be paying for a used 22re, and paying someone to install it for you.

i've gotten lucky with a rebuilt but unstarted motor on craigslist($1400?), it had a new, not rebuilt, head... and a fully rebuilt short block that had a low-mileage rebuilt head put on it, the combo was then run for maybe 9,000 miles, for $900(?).

 

I figured as much, but I wanted to consider all the options. I am basically trying to figure out the dollar difference between the 22re replacement and the 3rz swap. I've always wanted to do it anyway and I figured now might be the time. Or maybe now is the time to figure out how to swap a motor myself...

 

If you swap it yourself plan on at least a couple of days. Flat rate is 12 hrs for xfer and trans in / out. figure another day for the engine. Thats with all tools & equipment.

 

An "incident"? Haha...that's funny.

The dollar difference between a replacement and a swap will be big. There's a lot more involved with labor not to mention needing the entire new system to run the swap. I don't have any exact figures for you, sorry. I can tell you my buddy did a swap in his VW Westy with a Suby engine. A LOT OF WORK and costly. But, he did all the work himself since he's been working on his own cars for quite some time. Would have paid a lot more to have someone do it for him, though. Maybe it is time for you to learn yourself. That would be a real nice swap...