Doing Your Customer Right: Offer Them A Used Toyota Engines

By Author: Peter Jones
Total Articles: 231
Comment this article

Many mechanic shops have been reluctant to offer used Toyota engines to their customers in the past because of the perception that doing so would increase their risk in job comebacks or make their shop look junky. If you are the owner or manager of one of those shops, you might benefit from reconsidering this position. The cost effectiveness of putting a used Toyota engine into your customer's vehicles is tremendous - as is the sales effectiveness of not offering them a solution that is more expensive than what they can get another vehicle for. In other words, I'm inviting you to have a reality check. You might be a shop that doesn't like to do engine jobs, and if you can afford that, more power to you. If you're struggling like many shops are now, then we'd love to help you. For this case analysis, we'll look at two vehicle types: The Toyota Celica GT and the standard run of the mill Toyota Camry with a 2.4L engine.

To eliminate comebacks, you need to work with a supplier who has gone to the school of hard knocks and learned in what specific years engine vehicles have problems. Take for example the Toyota Celica. Of ...
... all the Toyota Celica engines this author has encountered, the GT engine in 2000-2005 applications has had the most problems. These seem to specifically occur in 2000, 2001, and 2002 applications. Do I label these Toyota Celica engines as faulty? No. Absolutely not. But there is no denying that the 2003-2005 Toyota Celica engines have fewer failures. If you dealt with a salvage yard who only got the occasional Celica in, they wouldn't have the knowledge base to know that. However, a company that deals with just Celica engines would know this, and they would be able to save you money and potential pains from a failed job. Consider that a quality remanufactured Celica engine will run around $4,000 - and that you can get good used Toyota Celica engines for under $2,500.

If you're looking for a 2.4L Toyota Camry engine, the pricing scheme is about the same - more than $4,200 for a good remanufactured engine while you can get one used for under $2500-$2700, depending on what you want the mileage of the engine to be.

With these price differences, I'm bewildered that some shops insist on only using remanufactured engines for late model applications. You'll get no argument from me that for your 70's muscle car a reman is the way to go - I would go so far as to say you'd be crazy to put a used engine into something older than 1985 (and 1998 for anything out of Detroit). That said, I feel the opposite way about late model vehicles - and if your customer has a late model Toyota in need of an engine, a used Toyota engine should be your first thought.

We've established the clear difference in part pricing above. But you're in the labor business to. Did you know that 7-8% is considered an acceptable failure rate in the world of engine remanufacturing (granted, it is assumed that 75% of those failures are installer related), but that only 4-5% of used engines sold by reputable companies fail (again, with a similar rate of installer error)? Part price isn't the only thing at stake here - getting paid and staying paid for your hours is also an issue!

About: We have excellent availability of Toyota Tundra Engine. To get more information on used Toyota Tundra Engines please visit our site or call 800-709-9233.