I am in central Kansas and help maintain my friends 2009 LS460 and 2006 GS430.
We are stumped right now on the GS. A few months ago, the car began to over heat and the CEL was on. Shut the car off and had it towed to the local Toyota dealer. A few days later they called saying the engine was locked up and had to be replace at a cost estimate of $4k-$7k. Given the value of the car and the fact it has 225k miles on it we said hold off. So it sat in the dealers lot for 3 months. We decided to just go and tow it home. Before we hooked it up to tow it we attempted to jumpstart it. It turned over multiple times! So we decided to tow it home and get the battery fully charged back up before doing anything else. Upon getting the battery fully charged, we attempt to start it and it turns over if you revolutions and then stops. It seems to be completely locked up again. I pulled the dipstick in the Oil smells like it has gasoline in it. So I thought possibly an injector had failed and filled the cylinder with fuel causing it to fuel lock. So we pulled all the spark plugs and attempted to turn the motor over by hand at the crank. It moves about an inch which I confirmed the Pistons are moving by sticking a piece of wire in the cylinder and you could see the wire move up and down as we turned the crank. But it only moves a little bit in each direction.
So now I’m wondering what is locking the motor up because the pistons appear to be free. Is it possible that the starter motor is locked to the fly wheel? Is there an internal oil pump in this motor that could have been going out causing the car to overheat and is locking up? The starter is so hard to get to on these cars that I hate to tear it all down before having an idea of what might be causing the problem.
Any experts on here have any thoughts on where to go from here? Thanks in advance.
We are stumped right now on the GS. A few months ago, the car began to over heat and the CEL was on. Shut the car off and had it towed to the local Toyota dealer. A few days later they called saying the engine was locked up and had to be replace at a cost estimate of $4k-$7k. Given the value of the car and the fact it has 225k miles on it we said hold off. So it sat in the dealers lot for 3 months. We decided to just go and tow it home. Before we hooked it up to tow it we attempted to jumpstart it. It turned over multiple times! So we decided to tow it home and get the battery fully charged back up before doing anything else. Upon getting the battery fully charged, we attempt to start it and it turns over if you revolutions and then stops. It seems to be completely locked up again. I pulled the dipstick in the Oil smells like it has gasoline in it. So I thought possibly an injector had failed and filled the cylinder with fuel causing it to fuel lock. So we pulled all the spark plugs and attempted to turn the motor over by hand at the crank. It moves about an inch which I confirmed the Pistons are moving by sticking a piece of wire in the cylinder and you could see the wire move up and down as we turned the crank. But it only moves a little bit in each direction.
So now I’m wondering what is locking the motor up because the pistons appear to be free. Is it possible that the starter motor is locked to the fly wheel? Is there an internal oil pump in this motor that could have been going out causing the car to overheat and is locking up? The starter is so hard to get to on these cars that I hate to tear it all down before having an idea of what might be causing the problem.
Any experts on here have any thoughts on where to go from here? Thanks in advance.
