kudos! Nice to see this engine family get a little press.

If I remember correctly, I think I've seen a few of these things take insane amounts of boost and run happily.

i had a corona with a 20r up to 299,000 mi and it still ran like a top. i had never taken the thing apart ever. that engine was amazing. it was a period in life when i had very little money so i really was not good about maintenance. i think the big advantage the 20r had over the 22r is that most 22r's had a single wide timing chain. these had rare problems with stretching and such. that may be the only negative thing i could think of to say about the whole r series. my time as a toyota tech brought me in contact with quite a few of the 22r's in particular.

well done.

The other great engine along these lines is the Datsun 'L' series.
1.6 to 2 liter as a 4cyl, 2.4 to 2.8 liter when stretched to 6 cyl for
the early Z-car, even 6 cyl diesel versions.

@Vintage Racer: Hmm... I'll honor the L if I continue with the WHEOTD series. Any other suggestions?

For me there's just something about straight sixes. Ford had a good line of I6s from 1960-1984, found in everything from compact cars to full-size trucks.

Also indestructible.

Hurrah for the inline 6!

Had an '82 Pickup affectionately dubbed "The Shitbird" that had a 22R with 216K. Ran like a champ. Sold for $750 bucks. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

@Murilee Martin: How about Nissan's RB series?

[en.wikipedia.org]

after searching high and low for a used Toyota Pickup with a V6 and 4wd, i finally found one at a reasonable price in a reasonable shape. tired of schlepping materials in my hatchback, finally.

but after spending some time wrist-deep in the engine and having to take it damn near all apart to change belt tensioners, i was really, really regretting not snagging a more user-friendly 22R 4-banger.

live and learn, i guess. more torque isn't always worth it. but that damn truck will climb a wall in 4-low.

i would recommend honda's b-series if we're going down the import engine road.

@Murilee Martin:

Nissan's VQ comes to mind.

The Toyota R is amazing. An engine that you can run with kerosene and replace the oil with sand and it'll still go.

@Murilee Martin: The volvo B23 comes to mind.

you can't kill an R engine unless you really, really try. I beat the shit out of a 20R in a '79 Hilux. the engines are easy to work on and all the stuff's pretty much right there. even pulling the head to repair a broken AC compressor bolt wasn't a big deal (except scraping the old head gasket off was a huge pain in the ass).

my ex had a thrashed '80 Celica with a 20R that he ran out of oil one night and it'd seized. I refilled the oil, let it cool, and that thing bump-started right away and ran for another few years til he wrecked it.

the R engines have to be amongst the toughest 4-pots on the planet.

The 22R has powered many thousands of Tacomas way longer than they should have stayed alive.

And for workhorse engines, I vote 4G63T and LS1, in addition to the aforementioned B-series.

@Murilee Martin: T-O-P, of course. Or a flathead Ford V8.

My own little 10 best (in no order. Simplicity, durability, power potential):

Saab B20 I-4
GM LS V-8
Honda D1 I-4
Honda J3 V-6
Toyota UZ V-8
GM L (Ecotec)I-4
GM 3800 V-6
Nissan VQ V-6
AMC 199/232 I-6
Chrysler G I-6

Anyone care to add to that?

OK, will continue the series. Entrants can't just be good, however- they must be good and have been manufactured in some form for quite a while.

My brother has a 22R-E in his pickup. Never gives any problems, and easy to take care of it! The world needs to see the return of little pickup trucks!

@Murilee Martin: I nominate the Alfa DOHC 4 cylinder. Used in everything from ambulances to racers, for longer than I believe most of the commenters have been on the planet.

The six cylinder XK DOHC featured in yesterday's FG is another obvious candidate.

@Murilee Martin: I tried to put engines in production for at least a decade with the same basic architecture.

BTW, this is as good of a recuuring feature as DOTS! Awesome topic IMHO.

Jaguar straight six XK, produced from '48-'94 and a Le Mans winner.

The Porsche boxer, air or water cooled in my opinion.

The VW air-cooled flat four.

The last two I'll argue over, but the XK is a no brainer.

So what's the worst engine family?

I second the LS1, meets the decade criteria too!

a small part of me wants to do a honerable mention of the 2JZ... 700-800hp on stock boosted internals, whats not to love?

@Dr. Spaceman: Chevy 305.... L03 in particular.

I'm gonna add an enthusiastic vote for the Toyota UZ v-8. Forged internals from the factory, 260hp out of 4.0 liters in 1989, ~390 pounds, all aluminum, and as smooth as wet jell-o.

Reliability? Yeah. I just did the timing belt/water pump/etc on one with 230,000 miles. I checked the impeller on the water pump, and it had the same date code as the car: it was the original water pump and timing belt at 230k!

Replaced pump, belt, idler pulleys, put it back together, and it runs like a top. No ticking, no nothing.

-Non-interference engine means no valve problems if a belt does break!
-Unique gear-driven cams means only two cam pulleys for all four cams
-6-bolt mains
-Those forged internals can stand up to 700hp readily, supposedly even 1000hp, stock!
-Later models got 300hp from the factory via VVTi. Those are interference engines, though.

It's certainly no 100+hp/liter monster, but it'll outlive them long enough to laugh at their ground-up chaff in the recycling bin.

Sadly, mating a manual transmission to them is a bit of an expensive exercise.

@Dr. Spaceman: GM 350 diesel hands down.

I'm thinking at least 20 years of manufacture to qualify, which means the Mopar Slant Six barely qualifies...

How about the 2.25 L I4 from the Series Land Rovers? Those things were bombproof.

@Murilee Martin:

for the L series

[en.wikipedia.org]

@Dr. Spaceman: I'd say whatever that 4-cyl was in the '83ish Tempo we had in Driver's Ed. Sweet mother of suck.

fuck that, smallblock any day, hands down.

the bmw M30 l6's are awesome too. 320000 miles on mine and still going.

Toyota UZ; 1989 start, and it's still made: 19 "model" years. Damn. Once the '09s hit, does that make it 20 years?

@skaz: Dude...R series is a 4-banger. Although the Xmg(t)e 6s bolt up in its place. (Supra-powered PreRunner FTW)

@elwood: Actually, the 2XR series never made it to the Taco. On the Toy Truck-with-no-name (Hilux everywhere else).

They switched to the 2 and 3RZ for the 4 banger. It's completely different, and really hard to swap (the intake/exhaust are switched).

I had 1 great 22RE that overheated it in a big way 2x from a failing temp gauge that kept reading in the middle...then immediately jumped to pegged-in-the-red. It kept on tickin just fine, even though it had 170k on a rebuild, and 270k total.

I had another 22RE that was an absolute nightmare, but that was because it had been cared for by the same people that kept that one girl in a crib until she was confiscated at 12 years old.

Not really, but there were stripped holes and crappy parts all throughout the engine. Ended up paying a ton of cash to get it re-done properly...and then the car got stolen 2 months later.

Finally this engine gets some of the love that it deserves. Anyone who questions the durability of them, should watch the top gears where they try to destroy a Toyota Hi-Lux. It's truly amazing what kind of abuse these engines can take.

If you want another unappreciated, but nice engine, how about the Hyundai Beta series of engines? They are know to outlive the cars (or trucks) they are attached to, and make tons of power and torque.

Whoever nominated the ford CVT engine though, should know that I've owned two cars which featured that engine, and neither made it to 200,000 km. The one in my old ford focus was particularily poor, breaking a connecting rod at 164,000 km (completely un-boosted and well oiled if you were wondering.) And breaking my heart in the process.

@Murilee Martin: I think vintage racer's got you there the Nissan L at 18 years don't make it...

If 20 years is your constraint then I pare my list to:

AMC I-6 1964-2006
GM 3800 1962-present
Honda D 1984-2005
GM Small Block Gen 1 1969-2005
Chrysler G 1960-1986

@Mad_Science: Yeah.. well.. that'll teach me to read before I post. And anyways, I just wanted everyone to know of my fondness for the Ford I6.

Love the R-series. Hopefully I can come into a couple thousand $$s so I can get a 4Runner/Pickup with one and put the Goat away for the bad weather.

20 years sure puts a limit on the # of engines.

maybe just splitting it pre-smog and post-smog? that'll allow some of the newer kings to emerge for their proper place in history.

BTW, i drive a Honda D-series within an inch of it's life every day. yay!

I love my old 22R. Carbureted. You can fix it with hand tools. No computers are required because the only silicon chips on this truck are in the radio.

There might be one somewhere in the ignition, I'm not sure.

My wife had an even older one before we met. She bought it used at around 150K miles, drove it to 378K, and sold it for her original purchase price. Not bad. Saw it around town for the next ten years.

22R for the win, baby! After the apocalypse, Toy 22R-powered vehicles will be what all the radioactive mutant cockroaches drive.

@Dr. Spaceman: I got your worst right here.

racking up the votes for the slant six and the amc inline,

im a amc six guy, and ive seen first hand well maintained 4.0L's go 300k without ever having the head or oilpan off.

@larsenf: I gotta nominate the BMW M30 I6, too. Besides the rubber band, the things are bulletproof.

@streetpirate: Oh yeah, they made that six for a long time.

Weren't the Toyota F3 and FAtlantic engines Rs as well?

Oh, and BMW M10/12.

If you think racing engines, there are two that qualify:

The Offenhauser (competitive in various forms for over 40 years);
The Cosworth DFV (which spawned a whole lot of engines, won in F1, won Le Mans in 3.3l form, won the Indy 500 as the DFX and is STILL being manufactured for vintage racing...)

the BOP/Rover V8...

@FLB:
Weren't the Toyota F3 and FAtlantic engines Rs as well?
Nope, 4AG or derivations thereof:
[en.wikipedia.org]

@skaz: A variation of said Inline 6 is still used today by Ford, in the aussie Falcon. Same bore centre's. Turbo'ed now as well.

IM only gonna agree with the R badwagon cause they made a pushrod version.</