glenntwo

Didn't know that, thanks...

Very cool, thank you. Looks like its a toss-up since I live near Corpus Christi and San Antonio is about 180 miles away, and Houston just a bit more. But I am supposed to be working in Houston for three weeks starting in the next week or so, so I can actually walk into this place and see what they're all about. I will definitely call both tomorrow and talk to them. How come no one carries the 22re anymore? I thought Toyota still uses it as one of their base powerplants?

That reminds me: I was thinking of putting headers on her, since the exhaust will soon need to be replaced, but I noticed that the air-flow sensor is stuck right in the middle of my stock manifold. If I install headers, would they have a spot to plug in the sensor? I've never seen headers with a fitting like that before.

Welp, I was driving down the highway at 55 and looked down and saw my temp gauge climbing, so I pulled over to the shoulder. She stalled before I could even get her to a complete stop. I waited for her to cool down, then got some water and filled the radiator. Looked around and noticed a small leak, probably the lower hose, but didn't think it was anything dangerous, and figured I would drive it a mile to the auto parts shop and replace the hose there. Unfortunately, after I got her hydrated I got in, turned the key, and got the dreaded sewing-machine whirring sound when I tried to start her. I knew the timing chain was either broken or had jumped. Anyway, at that point it was time to call the wrecker. When he got there I asked him to listen to it and he agreed. Same with a friend of mine who knows vehicles better than I do. What I figure happened is that I had a slow coolant leak for a day or two, never noticed it and then when I went for a fifty mile drive I overheated her to the point where the water pump probably ate itself and since it is on the same shaft, it somehow managed to cause the timing belt to go, but who knows? It could have been that the plastic guides melted and caused the chain to go flying off too. For all I know the leak may have had nothing to do with it. It may have just been the timing chain's time to kick off. Those are the only things I can think of. I doubt I'll ever know for sure what happened. And in the end it really doesn't matter anyway. The engine now needs a rebuild or replacement because its an interference type engine, which means that when the belt jumped it went out of time and the pistons were slamming up against the valves. I see no point in doing half the engine and having the lower half fail 100K miles down the road. I'll just do the whole thing now and she should be good for another 150K or so. I would like to keep the original powerplant too, but as long as I find a new replacement, it will be OK. It has to be Japanese though, not Chinese or some other cheap knock-off. It's not like all the numbers need to match with her anyway. She may be old and really cool, but really she's only worth maybe 5-6K, maybe a little more on the west coast. I just want to fix her and keep her. I just want the new powerplant to be beefed up a little more than the old one. I'm kinda tired of getting to the top of the hill only doing 50mph.

OK, so my 22re just tossed her timing chain, which of course means that I need to do a top-end rebuild, along with a few other things that happened to cause her to jump timing. She only has 54K miles on her and she's never given me an ounce of trouble until now. I figure that rebuilding just half the engine is a waste of time, so I'm looking around for either a new powerplant, or someone to rebuild what I have, and maybe modify it for a little more power and torque. I don't want a racing engine, just one that will help her on the hills a little more than the old one. and I don't want to swap to a Chevy V6 or something like that. The 22re is fine. Does anyone know of anybody out there that rebuilds motor home specific 22re engines? Or someone that will sell new ones off the shelf. I prefer Toyota-made and not a Chinese knockoff. I live in Texas, BTW, but I'm sure I can get the powerplant out and crated and sent somewhere if that's what it takes to get it done right.