My car broke down because there was no oil in it, now after the engine has cooled down, it still won't even tu

Question

Here's what happened. I was a doofus and didn't put any oil in my 1990 Toyota 4-Runner. I was driving home last night going at a pretty good clip (80 mph), when there was a cranking noise from the engine, and everything shut off. I put the car in neutral and coasted for awhile before I came to a stop at the side of the road. I popped the hood and there was smoke. I unscrewed the cap for the engine oil and smoke came billowing out from there. I checked the oil and it was bone dry. My friend took me to a gas station where I bought three bottles of 1040 oil. Poured them all in my car and went home and waited a couple hours for it to cool. I came back later last night and it still wouldn't start for me. It won't even turn over. Anyone have any idea what I'm dealing with here?

Answer 1

Well Mr Doofus, you most likely have incurred a very costly mistake.  You cooked the rod bearings along with other major components which oil is there life blood.  You best bet now is to either sale it as is, or invest some more money in a motor, the cheap route would be to pick up a motor from a salvage yard, or have a mechanic place a crate motor in it.  Good luck.

Answer 2

you have a totally conked engine, a mechanic will have to sort you.

Answer 3

Your motor locked up from lack of oil, and you are a doofus. But you learned a lesson. My son still kills motors this way.

Answer 4

chances are you just got lucky that you made it home. sounds like you blew the engine and will need a new engine now.  

Answer 5

sounds like a cracked block

Answer 6

You're probably dealing with a ruined engine.

Chances are you may need to swap it out for a different one.

Answer 7

Sounds like a seized engine. An auto engineer may be able to re-bore the engine block but it may be more economical to to buy a second hand engine and just replace it.

Answer 8

possibly seized motor, (pistons fused in the cylinders)

Answer 9

hook up a breaker bar to the crank and try to turn it over by hand, if it won,t budge, you locked up the engine. if you dont have the money for a new engine, do this. drop the oil pan and loosen all the bearings and try to turn it over by hand using a breaker bar and then torque the bearings back up and put the oil pan back on. if your lucky, it should start.

Answer 10

You might have ruined the engine.It will take a mechanic to really find out what happened.The pistons probably are frozen to the cylinder walls.

Answer 11

You've destroyed your engine.

First off, three bottles of 10w40 isn't even enough to get the oil onto the dipstick, so you were trying to fire up again with insufficient oil.

Running at high speed generates a lot of heat in the engine; doing it without oil generates a tremendous amount of heat and even less mechanism to carry the heat away - the oil is pretty important in keeping stuff cool.  Keeping metal parts away from each other is pretty important too, and without oil you've had some crucial bits weld each other together.  That cranking sound was something breaking.

Try this:  Add more oil until the dipstick shows FULL.  Then try to gently turn the engine over - put a wrench with a long handle on the big bolt at the front of the engine, the one on the center of the fan, and just try to turn the engine by hand.  If you're incredibly lucky, then it seized from heat but relaxed again later.  If that's the case, you may be able to turn the engine some.  If you can do that, you may be able to start it.

But I doubt it.  Time to call Jasper and price up a new engine.