I've got a great head-scratcher for all you superior techs!!

Ye gods.

Bent connecting rods. A hydrolocked engine can very easily bend connecting rods even just being cranked with the starter.

Running them at 100% duty cycle? It could've done.

DS

Why not try to convince the insurance company the car is totaled and start anew. It'll be less hassle that way.

"Yea Gods", yes this was my thought as well. All things equal, I'd rather have the car back. JUST put $1800 into it (timing belt, brakes, A/C, water pump, CV boots, 4 days before incident took place. Ah well.). I'm just looking for as much information as I can get concerning this engine's long-term prospects.

Connecting rods, yeah, I hadn't thought of that. I suppose it could have damaged the crank or even main bearings, too, couldn't it with that much strain?

Any other thoughts?

I hydrolocked a motor once - broke a cam chain, filled up the cylinder with fuel - ouch. Bent connecting rod, bent valve, caused crack in head. fuel does not compress - something will give if the thing has been cranked. You can do an oil and plug change and install a computer from a scrapyard in an afternoon for about 200 bucks, I think 1500 is a little excessive for an 8 year old motor just to diagnose, but if your insurance company is willing to do it, and then stand behind the work that gets done, I'd let em have a go. Just make sure that they will stand behind the thing - I learned of my cracked head AFTER I replace the other stuff in the motor and drove about 400 miles - and AFTER I replace the head gaskets again. If I ever lock a motor again, I'll scrap it.

Before I'd spend anything to diagnose the motor, I'd look into getting a replacement motor - should run about 1200 bucks tossed in.

Andrew

Cox wrote:

It seems pointless. Have em take the pan off and look around in there. I have a feeling they destroyed the engine on purpose for giggles. My guess is there is a fuel cut off rev limiter in the computer so they wired the injectors directly to circumvent this.

The only hope is they weren't able to get their scheme to work and blew out the computer resulting in a non-running engine. And that means it's just been throughly abused within the limits of the computer.

Anyway these mechanics should pull the pan and take a look in there. If it looks good then put it back on add fresh oil and do a compression test. This will show how far they got along in their destructive efforts without costing $1500.

Pollution regulations in Japan are very strict. As a result there are American outfits that import used engines from Japan that can still pass even California clean air checks easily. See if you can get your insurance company to spend their money at places like this...

Actually it's required inspections that basically make it damn near impossible to keep cars on the road. It's designed to force people into buying new cars all the time. But the result is the same, perfectly good engines ending up in salvage yards.

I seem to remember hearing that you are required to stop driving a car once it's 7 years old in Japan.

I bet they are overflowing with "junk" motors in Japan just waiting for someone outside Japan to call for it.

Jamming many million people together on an island..... I bet it gets polluted quickly if everybody fires up the old 1996 Suzuki.

What do they do to their engines to make them so clean compared to American counterparts? O2 sensor per cylinder?

most likely bent rods due to flooding. they went about it the wrong way though. the injectors have voltage with the key on. the ecu supplies the ground. so it may never have started properly. they would have had to run a hot and a ground to flood it. the computer fried because it took a full 12 volts from the hotwire. computers like grounds but hate voltage. have them get it started and see how it runs. then do a leakdown test and find out the actual condition of the engine. Chip