Watch This Junkyard Minivan Engine Come Back to Life and Make Big Power

There are few things in life that come with more tension and promise than a cut-rate junkyard engine. Unfortunately for this Toyota 2GR V-6 pulled from a minivan and slated for a 350-horsepower buildup, it ran out of promise long ago.  

So YouTuber Ben of Gears and Gasoline headed to his engine builder’s place, several states away in Ohio, with merely a handful of head gaskets, a prayer, and the defunct junk engine loaded in the back of his Toyota pickup. 

In a previous installment of this build series, the engine had failed leakdown tests, with a layer of oily milkshake gunk coating the inside of what appear to be the valve and/or timing covers. Bad news.

Once at the engine builder’s shop, with the heads off, initial impressions looked promising. Save some carbon buildup on the pistons, the engine checked out with nearly perfect cylinder bores, and a crankshaft and rotating assembly that were clean enough to save from being pulled during the rebuild.

Of course, this isn’t your everyday garden-variety junker build. At one point, the builder breaks out a tremendous amount of CNC machining on a set of high-compression pistons, milling out their raised surfaces to clear the engine’s valves. 

There’s even machining of the cam phasers to allow for more-advanced timing than was intended by the factory unit. Really, really cool stuff.

This build is a tedious and exacting process that should yield beyond 350 horses, while the assembly, measuring, disassembly, and rebuilding processes—repeated over and over—give some insight into why good engine builders are worth their weight in gold. 

When finished, the engine is destined for the bay of a Toyota MR2. We can’t wait to see it happen.