So the junkyard reluctantly issued a full refund because they could find no other engine with (documented) <150,000 miles. Magically they think the found the 70K or 90K engine I was supposed to get, but somehow its riveted-on vin plate got drilled out when their parts puller yanked it out of the car. Hmm...
None of the other yards had any engines with <150,000 miles so I decided to proceed with a presumed head gasket replacement on this one. I think it is likely this engine will have been warped and will need to be replaced, but by the time I get the heads off it won't be much worse to just yank the engine myself rather than pay a shop $2,000 to install a 150,000 mile old engine...
But after 2 afternoons I still have yet to pull even the front head. I am being methodical because it is my first time going this deep into a hybrid and because the factory service manuals, thorough as they are, still require some familiarity with the car.
Question of the night - how do I get this off? It looks like a perfectly round, probably plastic, nut on a probably plastic stud:
It holds down the injector/coil wire harness. It is tiny - for perspective the head of the bolts holding down each coil is 10mm:
(Among other things, I've ordered new coil plug wiring clips)
This water pump has not been leaking for long:
Wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to unclip the 90-degree high voltage hybrid clips. They're old and brittle, but still required decent force to get past ~45 degrees... Injector clips were likewise more difficult than I expected. The coil clips were already broken so bonus I guess?
Finding the coolant drain cock on the back of the block also wasted quite a bit of time, but would have been super easy to spot if it was on a lift. Now that I know where it is, I could do it again in 1 minute, but that goes for pretty much everything I've crossed off the list so far.
The worst was the fuel relay, which you unplug to idle the car out of fuel (pressure). The manual showed it being in the relay box on the driver's fender along with cryptic instructions, but the "relay and fuse" box located there clearly wasn't right.
Neither were the other 2 fuse boxes on the passenger fender. Or the fuse box under the dash. Consulting the 3 relevant volumes did not help. Finally I realized the cryptic instructions meant to lift the fuse and relay box off the bracket and expose another relay box below:
The other head-banging delay was the upper intake manifold ("surge tank" in Toyota lingo), which despite being lightweight plastic requires not 1, not 2, but 3 metal braces - 2 of which require wrenching by feel because they're right up against the firewall.
Nothing earth shattering - normal shade tree gripes about access combined with a little added hybrid complexity. Unfortunately from what I see so far, I think there is less than a 50% chance I'll be able to use this engine. But we'll know more when I (finally) get the heads off and see if anything warped.
The good news is that I've seen no rust at all (well, aside from a seized heat shield nut currently marinading in PB blaster) and the inverter also looks to have been replaced with a new unit fairly recently. I don't like the look of one of the lower control arm bushings and, I think it is not sold independently of the arm, but that's not a huge deal. So onward we go...