Alternatives to Gen 4 Engine Swap

Hi. I’ve been lurking in this forum for a while as part of my research while considering buying a Prius. Much of that has been considering how to prevent and deal with the head gasket issue on gen 3, and I want to be prepared in case the engine ends up being too far gone for a successful head gasket swap.

While I would hardly call gen 4 old yet, it certainly is getting older, and it will get harder to find lower mileage engines. I noticed that both the Corolla (Cross) Hybrid and the gen 5 Prius also use a 2ZR-FXE, and was wondering if anyone has successfully put either of those engines into a gen 3.


From what I’ve heard, the Corolla Hybrid is basically a gen 4 Prius, and the swap would be almost the same as with a gen 4 Prius, except for the fast that the Corolla Hybrid is newer and thus would have a lower mileage engines. I found one person on this forum attempting a swap a few years back (Corolla Hybrid engine vs Gen 4 engine | PriusChat), but didn’t see the results. While it looks promising, I haven’t actually found anyone pulling it off and am wondering if anyone out there actually had. As for an engine from a Corolla Cross, I haven’t found anything about that.

As for gen 5 Prius engines, while it’s technically the same engine, I’ve got to imagine there are new differences that would have to be navigated verses a gen 4 swap, and so a successful swap probably hasn’t occurred yet.