[All] [NA] MR-S (roadster)

[dawn]

Hi all does anybody know if the 2001 vvti MR2 has oil problems like the the celica or did they fit the short engine (the better one)into these

[steve b]

I maybe wrong but I thought all the 14obhp engines were prone to failure, the 190's are good though, but they never came in the mr2

[Ben]

Not sure how relevent this is... but my mum had a 2001 Avensis 1.8 vvti that had the engine replaced by Toyota, for free when it was 6 years and 50k miles old. Apparently it was a dodgy batch with (i think) a porous block that would start to burn oil after about 50k miles. I imagine this would have at least a passing resemblance to the mk3 mr2 engines?

[Rowland]

My 1ZZ blew after 30,000 miles late 2000 model

[RobCrezz]

My brothers 2000 W reg Roadster engine died of the oil starvation problem. Toyota replaced it for free, even out of warrenty. But it was low mileage and had been completly serviced by toyota to the schedule.

[toxo]

Didn't VC's roadster blow up recently too?

[Tiny]

one of the chaps in a Mk3 blew up on the last brighton run

v6 it you know you want to

[BenF]

There's a lot of scare stories about the 1ZZ - the problem isn't 'officially' recognised by Toyota, and there are a number of theories about it.

Some say its due to a resonance of the crank at around 4krpms (ie motorway cruse speeds in 5th in earlier 5 speed cars ) but more popular is the valve phasing Toyota used as a cheap form of exhaust gas recirculation.

ISTR Cylinders 1 and 4, 2 and 3 ( or similar ..) are joined on the exhaust manifold to a pair of small pre-cats for designed to heat up quickly and clean up the emissions.

However, on some early cars the pre-cats have been found to fail, crumbling. With the EGR, exhaust gas from 4 is drawn into 1 through the exhaust manifold to clean the combustion.

The theory is that dust from the failing cat can also get drawn into the cylinders at the same time, and case damage to the cylinder walls.

This leads to increased oil consumption - and then engine will seize up if the oil level isn't checked.

The Fix is to gut and remove the precats on the early Roadsters - the larger main cat is certainly all you need to pass a MOT ( Mine has like this for the last few years ) and the later ones ('02 facelift onwards, possibly earlier ) don't seem don't have this problem at all.

Certainly my 2003 car has been fine - considering the engine is pushing nearly double its original power figure for over 45,000 miles now with a total of around 90k miles there's nothing wrong with the fundamental mechanicals if teh car is well cared for.