Lessons Learned Rebuilding 5.0 V8 2012 LR4 Engine

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BJ021

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This is an excellent post. My 2010 LR4 LUX is in wonderful shape, sans fried motor due to the coolant system imploding last summer. Plastic coolant parts make no sense to me... I have debated a new to me motor swap, but at $10-15K plus - and around $20K for rebuilds - seems insane. Just yesterday spoke with a shop that has done a few rebuilds of these motors - he's very optimistic about it working - and of course not being as expensive as a swap. This thread gives me a lot of hope! For those that are doing the work, we would love to continue to see the posts and the pics of the projects - and your summaries of how things went! Thanks
 

serge1060

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Anybody has luck on engine swap so far? My engine is acting out and been throwing check engine codes which I hope could be electrical in nature. I am hearing occasional knocking sound (tin can) probably from the timing chain guide. I'm attaching the pics for the codes read by my GAP tool. By the way, the check engine light comes up each time I start the car. When I drive the car after clearing the codes, it will not reappear after more than 50 miles of driving until I restart my LR4 again. Please see attached files. Any help is much appreciated.
 

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avslash

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Anybody has luck on engine swap so far? My engine is acting out and been throwing check engine codes which I hope could be electrical in nature. I am hearing occasional knocking sound (tin can) probably from the timing chain guide. I'm attaching the pics for the codes read by my GAP tool. By the way, the check engine light comes up each time I start the car. When I drive the car after clearing the codes, it will not reappear after more than 50 miles of driving until I restart my LR4 again. Please see attached files. Any help is much appreciated.

I wish. I'm not sure if the numbers of these trucks support the economics of development, but the ultimate saviour of the LR4 would be the development of an engine swap that both integrates with the electronics as needed and uses a much simpler and easier to service mill.
 

Nechaken

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I wish. I'm not sure if the numbers of these trucks support the economics of development, but the ultimate saviour of the LR4 would be the development of an engine swap that both integrates with the electronics as needed and uses a much simpler and easier to service mill.

And there's the rub. The obvious answer for anything is to throw an LSX in there -- cheap, big torque, relatively decent fuel economy for what it is, parts are available at any autozone, etc. Problem is getting anything to talk to the terrain control and gauges.
 

TrinidadLR4

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I think a 5.0 Ford Coyote mill out of a recent F150 would be perfect. Since they use a 6R80 trans in the fords(which is a rebadged ZF6HP anyway), if you can get the electronics to talk, it should be relatively straightforward(on paper, at least).
 

gsxr

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Just curious... are the AJ133 V8 flaws that bad, they are worse than all the drawbacks (and cost!) of a complete engine/marque swap? Other than the timing chain issues which should be a 1-time repair expense, what is the incentive to lose the stock powerplant? (OK, ok, more power would be nice, but 375hp/375tq is at least adequate.)

:stupido3:
 

TrinidadLR4

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After having my engine replaced due to seizure, I will argue that the aj133 is, overall, not designed to be a truck engine and is too finicky and failure-prone for hard use. For evidence, will point to DI pumps/injectors, plastic crap cooling system, small oil passages. I am not convinced it is entirely suitable to be used in a real truck.
 

ktm525

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After having my engine replaced due to seizure, I will argue that the aj133 is, overall, not designed to be a truck engine and is too finicky and failure-prone for hard use. For evidence, will point to DI pumps/injectors, plastic crap cooling system, small oil passages. I am not convinced it is entirely suitable to be used in a real truck.

Seizure? What mileage?
 

TrinidadLR4

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114k. Used engine has 84k on it. Still no clear answer as to why it seized, but it was jammed solid. Either catastrophic coolant loss(with no warning, exp tank was bone dry) or something else. Running great now but confidence rattled.
 

H20 Open Wallet

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Red Top Engine...thanks so much for sharing your story and the experience! Your story actually helped me feel better about what I did that made me feel pretty foolish. My experience is similar to yours but with different components and my own set of dumb mistakes that have made this quite challenging.

Bought 2012 LR4 from an auction...barely ran...knew the problems with the motors but had never seen the problem I uncovered. The previous owner had run the engine to the point that it was so hot that the oil filter cartridge melted down into the block and all the rest of the cartridge (fibers and melted plastic) was pumped throughout the engine. Everything was clogged. You very accurately state that so many of the oil passages on this motor are small...

Fast forward...had the block milled (sleeves had sunk from the heat) and had the heads milled to their limit. Huge mistake I made was that I decided to just "clean" (put that in quotes on purpose) the oil cooler. So, if you are in this process...whatever you do...just buy an oil cooler. Don't cheap out like I did and try to clean it. I replaced the timing chains and tensioners etc. Truck ran like a champ for a 500 mile trip...and suddenly I heard a rod knocking. Broke engine down and oil pickup was completely covered up with particles to where it could barely pick up oil. The only thing that I can figure out is that bringing the engine up to operating temps had dislodged all the oil filter pieces that I "missed" when "cleaning" the oil cooler. :) Again, best thing is to just buy a new one.

I was able to get the crank turned, but the heads could not be brought back and the block was questionable whether it had more oil filter particles in it...so I opted for a used block. Thankfully, block I found had not overheated so didn't have to be milled...the machine shop just deglazed the cylinders. Had to get two heads and both heads had several burnt exhaust valves. Machine shop magicians scavenged exhaust valves from the old heads at the machine shop and I got away for under $1k.

In the process of re-assembly now. Was looking something up when your post popped up. Thanks for sharing your experience! I too hope that someone that's thinking about fudging on an oil cooler like I did won't. It cost me a lot of time and sweat trying to save that little bit of $ on the oil cooler!

Hopefully this time a get a little more fun out of this than 500 miles. My 2001 Disco II is actually more reliable than this, but I've done some serious mods to that as well and that's another long story.

Thanks again Red Top!
 

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