Thrown rod!!!

[Chopper]

Depending on your willingness/ability/and luck, the fix could be as cheap as several hundred bucks (A lucky junkyard find that you drop in yourself) to four or five grand (a reman block and you pay a good mechanic) I'm guessing your heads are ok, but I'd do them at the same time anyway. A decent remanufactured is probably 1800-2500 bucks. (A new crate engine is gonna go several grand) Rodeo/ Amigo/Axiom 3.5 will certainly work. The direct injected engine in newer Axioms will not....not as a direct swap anyway. That would require swapping the ECU, and some other things would have to be done as well, making it a real project. If the car is in otherwise good shape, consider this; you'd get next to nothing for it as a cripple...certainly not enough to get any kind of reliable vehicle (unless you know someone taking up crack as their new past time). Putting an engine in, is still gonna be cheaper than the above mentioned 1998 Honda. The sad reality is...you'd make much more cutting it up, and selling the pieces/parts on here, than you'd ever get for it as it sits now. Wait'll Isuzu disappears altogether from the US in a couple years...The value will really tank. Fix it and go another 100thousand in it. Seems the most reasonable answer.

[Pepino]

there are two on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/3-5-I...=p4506.c0.m245

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Isuzu...=p4506.c0.m245

[pbkid]

i had the same horrible experience and its very very very expensive compared to what the vehicle is worth...i got a remanufactured block with everything else new..ended up costing me around $4,500 to fix it.....

everyone i talked to (no offense chopper) told me that without modification to electrical, motor mounts, transmission adapters the only motor was the 3.5 vx motor...

basically they did their research for me and most of the problem was all the connections with TOD, tranny and motor...nothing was a direct swap....

they ended up finding a motor out of california that sold the remanned block for around 2500 i believe with me giving them my *#$*$ed up block...

granted, i replaced basically everything else in the motor that even had a chance of going bad so that i wouldnt have to worry about this for a long time...

if your interested in going this route ill be happy to give you the name of the company in california that has remanned VX blocks..

thats my 2 cents...

[Chopper]

There are connector issues, but the engine is the same....even the Jap/Euro 3.2 is essentially the same.

[nfpgasmask]

Wow, that sucks. Do you know what caused it? Did you burn outta oil? Please be honest and let us know if you think it was no oil.

Bart

[kelledee]

No wasn't out of oil. Had just had oil changed about 1 month prior. Was coming off the interstate and it started knocking. Thank goodness I only live about a mile off interstate so I drove it home. Never lost power or anything. Just the terrible knocking. It has been sitting and hasn't been started since other than when the mechanic looked at it.

[Scott Harness]

No wasn't out of oil. Had just had oil changed about 1 month prior. Was coming off the interstate and it started knocking. Thank goodness I only live about a mile off interstate so I drove it home. Never lost power or anything. Just the terrible knocking. It has been sitting and hasn't been started since other than when the mechanic looked at it.

Did you ever check the oil after the oil change? Sometimes those places don't get it right!

[nfpgasmask]

No wasn't out of oil. Had just had oil changed about 1 month prior.

Well, 1 month is a long time to not check your oil level if you had the oil burning problem that a lot of VXes have. After you blew the engine, did a bunch of oil spew out from the bottom (did the rod blow a hole underneath) or can you still check the oil now and see what registers on the dip stick?

I only ask these questions because I find it hard to believe that a blown engine will occur without some sort of preexisting condition, such as burning oil.

I blew the engine on my 2000 Xterra. It was 100% due to my neglect. I literally didn't check the oil for way to long and had the exact experience you mentioned, rod knock, then break down (except I was like 600 miles from home).

Bart