Toyota A-series (4A-FE / 4A-GE / 7A-FE)

Toyota's 1.6 and 1.8 twin-cam four — the engine of two decades of Corolla, plus the Celica, MR2 and the Geo/Chevrolet Prizm.

The FE and the GE are the same block and not the same engine. The 4A-GE is the performance head — the AE86's engine, and later the twenty-valve versions — while the 4A-FE is the economy version in almost every Corolla ever sold. Everything written about the A-series' character is about the GE, and it does not describe the FE beyond the bottom end they share.

Which head an engine has also decides what a snapped timing belt costs. The variants differ on valve-to-piston clearance, so confirm the specific engine before assuming a broken belt is only an inconvenience — the family contains both answers and the badge on the car does not settle it.

What actually goes wrong is peripheral, because these engines outlast the cars around them. Oil leaks are the commonest complaint — the distributor O-ring and the valve cover gasket harden with age, and oil reaching the distributor produces misfires that read as ignition faults because they are. The igniter fails on earlier cars, and the front crankshaft seal weeps.