Head Gasket Problem Was A False Alarm

[Andytanes]

Thanks for the help guys but thank goodness my car head gasket was not blown the computer went out and it caused the engine to misfire I had the computer changed with a rebuilt one and the car is working fine. The trouble was a fuel injector was dumping fuel into a cylinder which was not able to burn all the fuel off thus causing the smoke that was billowing from the tail pipe. the new computer is throwing code 55 and 14, code 55 is the knocksenor on the right side and the code 14 is a ignition malfunction how much will this cost to fix? Can anyone give me some advice on this? Anyway the Tech who fixed everything said that he had to change my oil weight or something; would it be prudent for me to rebulid my engine or should I just play with my oil weight to keep it from burning off?( by rebuliding I mean redoing the o rings on the pistons and machining my head and the engine block etc; I know it will cost me a pretty penny to do, but ,hey, I am planning on keep the car for another three or four years) The car is a 93 es300 and like I said everything works on this car. 4000.00 for the car and 1800.00 for repairs not bad considering its a :P Lexus plus the fact that I hate car payments I think I am still in pretty good shape. Anyways is there any other thing I should do other than regular mtnce which can prolong the life of my engine and tranny .

[Toysrme]

^ No o-rings on the pistons. They're differrent types of steel rings.

He's changed weight to try to keep something from leaking. Valve stem seals, rings, or any other number of tengine seals. Find out what's leaking first.

Fix the ignition malfunction first. Check distributor rotor & cap, spark plugs & wires. Wires next to never need replacing so don't get sucked in unless they can demonstrate the problem is fixed with new wires - if you do replace, either get high dollar wires, or the $99 OEM wires. Cheap wires will not work for long.

Also check that the right side fuel injectors are spraying OK.

For god's sake stop trying to rebuild the engine. If you are so itching to want to throw money into; it let me do it LoL! If you want to know when you need to rebuild the engine, do a compression check. 142psi is minimum, 178psi is maximum. If everything is over 160psi, you're fine.

If you do ever have to reubuild the engine (that means you've done in some rings & the pistons have to come out), don't rebuild the engine... Buy a used JDM engine & swap that in. If you don't have emessions, great, if you do you need to swap YOUR rear exhaust manifold, EGR pipe & Intake manifold/throttlebody onto the new JDM engine as you won't pass emessions without it. Takes 10 min to do with the engine's out.

If you ever do have to replace the head gasket, it's sometimes free the first time under a lexus/toyota headgasket recall.

If it's not eligable, just for a side note, the block rarely get's machined because it rarely get's out of spec. Iron block VS head gasket VS aluminum head. Normally the head gasket goes & you replace it long before the aluminum head get's warped (It's not a v8 domestic, you simply won't drive one wtih a blown head gasket for months like you can a domestic hah). In the unlikely event the Aluminum head warps, there is an even more unlikely chance the iron block warps. What I'm telling you, is it's also rare to actually need to machine the head, or block.

Get use to import engine's, they don't F up like what you're apparantly use to.

It's a tank, the head gaskets have a tendancy to blow for various reasons, but they sometimes are a recall thing.

(Right bank = rear bank btw)

[Icemaninlv]

andy,

Before the smoke did the car have a hesitation? I changed the head gasket because of the white smoke. Eventually changing the engine. Now the car floods itsself and misfires and I have been thinking computer but everyone else says no. I have changed everything else nomore ideas.

So you changed the computer and the cylinders fired fine and still do?

[SKperformance]

Ever checked to see if somethign is wrong with the cold start injector causing it to stay open?