Meet Roxi, my wife's "new" RX350 - tales of cheap cars, expensive engines and maintenance along the way

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Location
Iowa
A couple of years ago I was working on a customer's 2007 Lexus RX350, putting a new serp belt, tensioner and idlers in. The next his wife took it out of town and it stopped running. Guy calls me up and immediately I fear for the worst! I thought to my self, oh no, what did I do!? It shows up on a flat bed and go out to inspect and to my relief, the degas nipple at the radiator failed and leaked all the coolant out... She drove it till it stopped.. No compression. They really didn't want to repair as the engine was quite spend for used, so it sat in my lot for better than a year. Around last December he comes in for some service work and I cornered him and shot him a low ball offer of $500 and to my surprise, he accepted! This thing, aside from the bad engine is clean! Zero rust and perfect interior. The mechanicals needed a little attention, but with 160k, it's to be expected..

So we sold her Lincoln Aviator and funded the RX build. Sourced a JDM 3.5 with the usual "60k miles", bought a slug of parts from the local Toyota dealer, a set of injectors from Trav, all new brake pads, rotors, a new radiator, battery, tires and probably some other odds/ends I'm forgetting..

Here she is waiting to get stuff disconnected before eating up lift time
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The jdm motor looks pretty clean, so had high hopes
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Here's the old mill, prior to being extracted

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Removal wasn't too hard actually, I removed the engine harness from the ecm and laid it over the engine, a few cooler lines, rad hoses, steering and... Not a whole lot more? Then sat the subframe on jack stands, unbolted it and lifted the car free.. Easy peasy.

Here it is looking sorry for itself
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The new engine didn't have an oil cooler like the old did, and I wasn't spending the money to retrofit it! Probably close to a grand. Lots of unhappiness in the pan
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Vacant space, awaiting new engine
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Moving along, existing wire harness attached
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Swapping rads
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More progress
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After lots of checked and re checking, I pumped the old fuel out and dumped in 10 gallons of fresh (don't want to skank up trav's freshly cleaned injectors). Then cranked it over without the pump relay to get oil pressure and finally.... The moment of truth.. Hit the key and it fired up like it had never been shut off! No rattles, knocks or any other stray noises!
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She has about 350 miles on it so far and it's been smooth sailing. There is a bit of a belt chirp sometimes, but I'm thinking it's the alternator decoupler - I used the jdm one, so who knows?
 
A couple of years ago I was working on a customer's 2007 Lexus RX350, putting a new serp belt, tensioner and idlers in. The next his wife took it out of town and it stopped running. Guy calls me up and immediately I fear for the worst! I thought to my self, oh no, what did I do!? It shows up on a flat bed and go out to inspect and to my relief, the degas nipple at the radiator failed and leaked all the coolant out... She drove it till it stopped.. No compression. They really didn't want to repair as the engine was quite spend for used, so it sat in my lot for better than a year. Around last December he comes in for some service work and I cornered him and shot him a low ball offer of $500 and to my surprise, he accepted! This thing, aside from the bad engine is clean! Zero rust and perfect interior. The mechanicals needed a little attention, but with 160k, it's to be expected..

So we sold her Lincoln Aviator and funded the RX build. Sourced a JDM 3.5 with the usual "60k miles", bought a slug of parts from the local Toyota dealer, a set of injectors from Trav, all new brake pads, rotors, a new radiator, battery, tires and probably some other odds/ends I'm forgetting..

Here she is waiting to get stuff disconnected before eating up lift time
View attachment 103135

The jdm motor looks pretty clean, so had high hopes
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Here's the old mill, prior to being extracted

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Removal wasn't too hard actually, I removed the engine harness from the ecm and laid it over the engine, a few cooler lines, rad hoses, steering and... Not a whole lot more? Then sat the subframe on jack stands, unbolted it and lifted the car free.. Easy peasy.

Here it is looking sorry for itself
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What JDM vehicle did this engine come out of? Just curious, as I think it was called the Toyota Harrier in Japan. Is it the 2GR-FE?
 
What JDM vehicle did this engine come out of? Just curious, as I think it was called the Toyota Harrier in Japan. Is it the 2GR-FE?
I really don't know? It came from an ebay store who claimed fitment of multiple vehicles
 
Just curious, as I think it was called the Toyota Harrier in Japan. Is it the 2GR-FE?
Before Toyota decided to sell the 3rd gen RX in Japan, it was the Harrier over there - the new Venza is the USDM Harrier.

With Toyota, there’s enough commonality between platforms for a easy swap. The major platforms before TNGA is the Camry, Corolla, Yaris/Echo and the international truck platform(4Runner/GX, Land Cruiser/LX and Hilux - the Tacoma is a tweaked for America platform and the Tundra was unique to the US).
 
All told (haven't actually added it all up) I have somewhere around $5500 to $6000 in this car including purchase.

Big thanks to members Critic (for a comprehensive parts list) , Trav (for doing me up a set of injectors to drop in) and Timmastertech for cluing me in on long block fitment between the model years.


But the most important thing is that my wife really likes it! Hopefully it'll give her many years and 10s of thousands of miles of good service
 
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Beautiful RX. They run and run and rum. Just keep coolant in 'em!
Very nice work.
It really is! The finished exterior pics are only after a trip to the car wash and back down a dirt road a couple of times and it still looks that good. Like I said, the interior really is perfect.. Like it's only got 10k miles!
 
Couldn't care less about the Lexus, tell me about that Town Coupe! 1981?
1983 Lincoln continental Mark VIII with power everything, digital dash and a fuel injected 302/5.0. Guy bought it at an auction (had sat untouched for years) and told me that if I could make it run good, then "Do whatever it needs"

It's a side project/fill in work for me
 
Love seeing an RX saved from the scrap heap! Not sure if you saw my thread, but I recently rescued my own RX from the dead:

Lexus RX score
I did not - good on you for looking out for your roomie!




An odd coincidence, on its maiden voyage, we went to the next town over to shop at a home improvement store. Pulled in the lot and parked and I saw a familiar vehicle and said to my wife that it looked like the previous owner's husband's truck. Just then they both came walking up, so we chatted and wished each other well - hope that's an omen for happy ownership.
 
I did not - good on you for looking out for your roomie!




An odd coincidence, on its maiden voyage, we went to the next town over to shop at a home improvement store. Pulled in the lot and parked and I saw a familiar vehicle and said to my wife that it looked like the previous owner's husband's truck. Just then they both came walking up, so we chatted and wished each other well - hope that's an omen for happy ownership.
Good ending to your story Eric. Were you at least courteous enough to supply the napkins to mop up their drool?
 
Good ending to your story Eric. Were you at least courteous enough to supply the napkins to mop up their drool?
Being the wife's old car, she seemed happy to see it back on the road, but I don't think she was too envious - she replaced it with something newer and nicer.
 
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