2014 Tacoma 4.0L V6 Prerunner - loud lower engine knock

Hello -

New here and glad to have found these forums. My sons 2014 Tacoma started to make a very loud lower engine knock about 10 miles after leaving his house - and the truck had been sitting for about 3 weeks. Oil was very low apparently and he had the truck towed to a shop where they pulled it in and listened to the noise and said that is very likely a bad rod or bearing and a replacement engine is probably needed. They said they truck could be driven at slow speeds to get home (about 6 miles from shop). It has 319,000 highway miles on it.

My questions are: is there a way to determine which rod/bearings are bad without tearing apart the engine? Where is the best place to find a replacement engine? (We are in NC. Have looked on ebay and there are a few but hoping to get something for 2k or less). Our options are putting in a replacement engine or selling the vehicle as-is and the body/cosmetically is in very good condition (8 out of 10). I understand the loud lower knock is usually the kiss of death for an engine... but wanted to get other opinions on getting to the source of the knock and possible fixes.. Tks

 

I would not reccomend driving it with a rod knock as the odds of throwing a rod are very high.

If it was indeed caused by oil starvation likely the crankshaft and/or connecting rod(s) will be damaged in addition to the bearings. As far as determining which cylinder its on you can try unplugging coils one at a time and see if it changes or goes away, if it does that's likely the cylinder its on.
You can try calling salvage yards in your area and see what they have available, theres also hollanderparts.com you can search salvage yards in a national database.

 

call LKQ and see if they have a salvage motor. They have a warranty on used motors.

 

Thank you for the info on Hollander search - it is really useful. I found a used 4.0L that looks promising. Have another question: How hard would it be to replace the water pump on this engine while it is out of the vehicle?

Also would like to learn how many hours in labor it would take to remove the old engine and replace it with another. I am getting estimates for labor that vary substantially in price.

 

Water pump would be very easy to do with the engine out.

Mitchell book time shows 20-24 hrs depending on it being 2wd or 4wd manual or auto trans, it can probably be done in half that time by a competent mechanic. I did an 08 prerunner 4.0 auto 2wd in about 10-12 at the shop I work at.

 

Thank you.

 

Holy cow! 319K miles on a 2014. I say you got your money's worth. I would be slowly driving to the nearest steak house to celebrate.

 

It is a very good truck... and we ultimately decided to sell it to someone who wanted to put the effort into putting in a replacement engine. They got a heck of a deal. If my son didn't drive so much for work and need a 100% reliable vehicle that would take 60k/yr driving - he probably would have kept it. He plans to get another Tacoma.

This leads me to another question: There are many used Tacoma's out there with higher miles - say 125k+. Is there a year or engine that is known as the best and most reliable? Tks.

 

The 4cyl seems to be pretty bulletproof in all years with good maintenance, the 4.0l is too after 05-06 some of which had head gasket issues.