Our 1JZ-swapped Volvo 240 that we’ve affectionately dubbed ‘Trolvo’ has become a Carnage fan-favourite, but unfortunately it’s been on the back-burner for the past couple of months.

That’s because when Scotty was doing a typical post-mortem on the engine after a race weekend, he found a worryingly large amount of metal shavings in the oil. He then cut open the oil filter and found even more sparkly misery, so it was obvious the stock-bottom-end 1JZ wasn’t in the best shape.

In this episode, Scotty pulls the engine out of the car to assess the damage properly. Funnily enough, this was actually the first time we’d ever had the 1JZ out of the Trolvo since we got our hands on it, as the donk was already in the car when we snagged it for $1000.

With the engine out, Scotty began pulling the bottom end down.

Pulling the sump off revealed even more silt that pointed towards bearing material, and popping a few of the rod caps off confirmed the theory. Nothing had spun or locked up, but the rod cap bearings were completely toast.

To be honest, we knew this was coming. The Haltech ECU logged only 30psi of oil pressure during some of our 8000rpm launches, as the oil in the front-sumped 1JZ must’ve sloshed to the back.

The plan for the Trolvo from here is to take our aspirated 2JZ bottom end and throw some beefy internals in it along with the 1JZ head to create our own 1.5JZ. The car has already run nines with its stock-bottom-end combo, so a stronger unit with more capacity will make this thing really spicy.