**Sorry in advance for the long winded story**
So, we've had the '06 100 series LC in my profile photo for prob 10 years. Bought it w/ about 145k on the clock. Outside of a couple drives from TX to FL & CO, it didn't go much further than 5 miles from the house as my wife's DD (she works from home). I was one of the VERY early adopters of the Dissent bumpers when they were fabbed to order (i think out of his garage) thanks to a well timed rear end wreck that didn't do much more than bend the exhaust tip a little, didn't even wake up our sleeping toddler in the car at the time, but totalled the little Hundai that hit my wife. God bless creative insurance adjusters.
Since I've always got feelers out, I snagged an '08 200 series from Sewell Lexus w/n an hour of intake on a trade-in. We kept the 100 since our son was nearing his 16th birthday, we never had ANY mechanical issues, it was a proven tank w/o the Dissent armor, and now even moreso. Perfect vehicle for a teenage boy. Reliable, safe, and effing cool.
Well, now the story begins. 2 days into driving after his birthday, he runs in screaming. Thinks the car is on fire. After dealing with the car and picking apart his lie of what happened, it turns out he pulled a Dukes of Hazzard, came down hard, cracked the radiator. I make him split the cost and help me swap in a new one. Thrown immediately into the fire of fixing his own car. Well, that got fixed, but over a couple of weeks things started making 'noise' under the hood. Turns out he had hairline cracks in the fan shroud from the first "jump" and it came off the tabs, started hitting the fan, cracking off pieces and sending them flying around the engine compartment. Back to another replacement. Then the belt was squeeling. Then throwing codes on temp sensors. yada yada yada. Everything gets running smoothly, he's headed out to meet some friends and I get a call that it won't "go". I throw on the OBD reader and get 6+ codes, car won't start (w/ a new battery mind you), and I'm at a total loss of what to do next as I can't keep chasing his gremlin through the engine compartment.
Have it towed to a friend's fairly large auto reconditioning shop. A few days later I swing by, talk to a couple of the techs, and i guess in my son's last attempt at a repair, one of the hose clamps didn't get pushed back down over the "overlap". it had popped off while at highway speed b/c of the pressure, and the engine overheated, siezed up, and now we don't have good compression in at least 4 of the cylinders. I have to absorb the blame on this one for not triple checking his work.
So here we are. My buddy has a very good relationship with some c-suite guys at LKQ and if we can be patient and find an engine, they'll book it as salvage and I can get it for a song. Just pay the 17 hours labor. So a couple grand. Problem there is, his shop guys don't know enough about the 2UZ FE VVti to know it's also in the LX and I'm not 100% certain on swapping w/ a GX but it's the same engine too. So they're only searching inventory for Land Cruiser engines. Roughly 3,300 LC's were sold in '06. Pretty low odds they'll find a used engine pulled from a wrecked vehicle. But they're not searching LX's which have about 2.5x the annual sales in '06/'07.
So here's the dilema. It's $4,700 for a complete rebuild of our existing engine, but i'd have an '06 LC w/ essentially 0 miles on the odometer.
OR, I can be patient, my buddy's shop is big enough he's got an empty bay it can sit in while we look for an engine to swap and cut that cost in half. But no guaranty of finding one anytime soon.
Either way, I can expect to get him through HS/College, and early career w/ this thing if he learns from this and takes care of it going forward. So I'm looking at it as a 10 year investment.
My son is starting back at school soon, has a job (both, fortunately close to our house) and just needs a vehicle of his own.
Given that my job is 100% commission based and relient on the other side of a transaction to pay my fee, things are tight right now as I haven't gotten paid on anything since March, I'm inclined to be patient, but there's the uncertainty of the timing.
Turning to the always sage advice of MUD. What should I do??????
So, we've had the '06 100 series LC in my profile photo for prob 10 years. Bought it w/ about 145k on the clock. Outside of a couple drives from TX to FL & CO, it didn't go much further than 5 miles from the house as my wife's DD (she works from home). I was one of the VERY early adopters of the Dissent bumpers when they were fabbed to order (i think out of his garage) thanks to a well timed rear end wreck that didn't do much more than bend the exhaust tip a little, didn't even wake up our sleeping toddler in the car at the time, but totalled the little Hundai that hit my wife. God bless creative insurance adjusters.
Since I've always got feelers out, I snagged an '08 200 series from Sewell Lexus w/n an hour of intake on a trade-in. We kept the 100 since our son was nearing his 16th birthday, we never had ANY mechanical issues, it was a proven tank w/o the Dissent armor, and now even moreso. Perfect vehicle for a teenage boy. Reliable, safe, and effing cool.
Well, now the story begins. 2 days into driving after his birthday, he runs in screaming. Thinks the car is on fire. After dealing with the car and picking apart his lie of what happened, it turns out he pulled a Dukes of Hazzard, came down hard, cracked the radiator. I make him split the cost and help me swap in a new one. Thrown immediately into the fire of fixing his own car. Well, that got fixed, but over a couple of weeks things started making 'noise' under the hood. Turns out he had hairline cracks in the fan shroud from the first "jump" and it came off the tabs, started hitting the fan, cracking off pieces and sending them flying around the engine compartment. Back to another replacement. Then the belt was squeeling. Then throwing codes on temp sensors. yada yada yada. Everything gets running smoothly, he's headed out to meet some friends and I get a call that it won't "go". I throw on the OBD reader and get 6+ codes, car won't start (w/ a new battery mind you), and I'm at a total loss of what to do next as I can't keep chasing his gremlin through the engine compartment.
Have it towed to a friend's fairly large auto reconditioning shop. A few days later I swing by, talk to a couple of the techs, and i guess in my son's last attempt at a repair, one of the hose clamps didn't get pushed back down over the "overlap". it had popped off while at highway speed b/c of the pressure, and the engine overheated, siezed up, and now we don't have good compression in at least 4 of the cylinders. I have to absorb the blame on this one for not triple checking his work.
So here we are. My buddy has a very good relationship with some c-suite guys at LKQ and if we can be patient and find an engine, they'll book it as salvage and I can get it for a song. Just pay the 17 hours labor. So a couple grand. Problem there is, his shop guys don't know enough about the 2UZ FE VVti to know it's also in the LX and I'm not 100% certain on swapping w/ a GX but it's the same engine too. So they're only searching inventory for Land Cruiser engines. Roughly 3,300 LC's were sold in '06. Pretty low odds they'll find a used engine pulled from a wrecked vehicle. But they're not searching LX's which have about 2.5x the annual sales in '06/'07.
So here's the dilema. It's $4,700 for a complete rebuild of our existing engine, but i'd have an '06 LC w/ essentially 0 miles on the odometer.
OR, I can be patient, my buddy's shop is big enough he's got an empty bay it can sit in while we look for an engine to swap and cut that cost in half. But no guaranty of finding one anytime soon.
Either way, I can expect to get him through HS/College, and early career w/ this thing if he learns from this and takes care of it going forward. So I'm looking at it as a 10 year investment.
My son is starting back at school soon, has a job (both, fortunately close to our house) and just needs a vehicle of his own.
Given that my job is 100% commission based and relient on the other side of a transaction to pay my fee, things are tight right now as I haven't gotten paid on anything since March, I'm inclined to be patient, but there's the uncertainty of the timing.
Turning to the always sage advice of MUD. What should I do??????
