First Gen 4-Runner. European family adventure wagon.

java230 said:

That looks like an excellent morning. Funny to see Campingaz still exists, I have a container here of that same blue brand that does not work with anything I own 

You know, we tried really really hard to not get rid of our Coleman camping stove.  That darn thing's been with us since Mrs. Hungary and I started dating!  But, like I said, I couldn't find those green Coleman gas canisters anywhere.

To add insult to injury, it seems like Decathalon is the only place to get any sort of camping gear within a 45-minute radius of our house, (and camping stuff is hardly their focus)  SO  campingaz it was.  I cant remember the last time I saw this stuff stateside!

It seems to work ok and the canisters seem to be available at just about every mom and pop or chain hardware store, so that's a plus.  Mrs. Hungary and I have dreams of backpacking some of the trails here, so having something compact and readily available has its appeal.

Good times.

Friday morning, and I'm still making coffee on my back porch.  Luckily, it didn't interfere too much with working on the truck.   After a day of rest, I decided I'm ready to install that clutch.

And that's how she'll sit for now.

Once done, I was able to pull the rope out of the #1 cylinder and reinstall the sparkplug.



Look at that!  you cant even tell it was smashed in there!

Top gear, top tip:
If you've stuffed a rope in your #1 cylinder to stop the engine from turning.  You, then, have to rotate the engine in the opposite direction a bit to releave that tension before removing the rope.  (A bit of a "Durp" moment for me there, when I pulled on the rope and of course it stayed where it was)

Anyhoo:  I still haven't received my spindle bushing lubrication tool in the mail yet, but just like the driver's side I should be able to install some of the passenger side components.  So I mounted the brake dust shield, greased up the spindle and went to town mounting the disc to the hub:

(I love the painted rust holes in this thing )

TA-DA!

(oh, forgot!  Remember all that grease I had spurting back out of there?  Well, it stopped spurting so I cleaned it up and reinstalled the zirc fitting)

Of course, just like the driver's side, I covered this side with a plastic bag to keep the weather out (no picture, sorry).  There's no precipitation predicted in the near or far future, but you never know how long the mail will take to get things to ya.  Better safe than rusty?

Good times.

Oh, and the tree it's parked under?

It's a plum tree of some variety, and lemme tell ya.  That stuff is smelling RIPE about now.

Luckily for me, I can get access to everything I need from the passenger (plum free) side.

Good times

And why aren't you using those plums to make hootch? 

I forgot to respond to your lubrication woes: When greasing zerks, give it 2-3 pumps. If you see it coming out of seals/boots/etc, you've put too much in. We don't need to blow the seals out of everything. 

Mezzanine said:

And why aren't you using those plums to make hootch? 

 

I forgot to respond to your lubrication woes: When greasing zerks, give it 2-3 pumps. If you see it coming out of seals/boots/etc, you've put too much in. We don't need to blow the seals out of everything. 

Unfortunately, we've stopped all fruit and berry processing this year (so no ferments, syrups, or preserves).  House work has taken the priority and we didnt feel like we could take days away from that for pickin and packin.

So Saturday morning I woke up early and feelin fresh as the morning dew, I thought I'd have a go at the passenger side swaybar bolts. 

It all went terribly...

It kind of went like this:  I'll try the small one first and hopefully I'll get some purchase before I break it.... (I promptly break it)

"well heck.  That's bothersome but no worries, I've got a bigger one that almost completely fills the bolt"

(snaps bigger easy out)

"Well E36 M3 damn berkeley E36 M3 shiney happy berkeley (diety of your choice) berkeley shiney happy E36 M3!!!!"

I was ready to wrap it all up and drink my coffee on the back porch when I thought I'd try to salvage the session and make myself a new battery hold down (another item lost by the shop I took the truck to). 

New "universal" battery hold down hooks are ten or so bucks on e-bay but a rod of all thread was something like $2 in the size I needed AND it came with all the hardware I needed!  From there I'd use the remaining steel from my "Bill's learning to weld" coupon stock, and bolt it all together.
 

I figured I'd put it in the vice and simply bend it like a J and...

"Well E36 M3 damn berkeley E36 M3 shiney happy berkeley (diety of your choice) berkeley shiney happy E36 M3!!!!"

Eventually I did get it bent in the shape of something that resembled a J...

But, honestly the strength of that thing leaves a bit to be desired.  Plus the threads are probably joing to chew up the mounting hole I hook it in...  I started pondering the e-bay purchase when the eldest appeared out of nowhere.

"Can I help"

Lately, that answer would have been "no" as I'm doing things like drilling metal over my head, etc, but today I decide it's been too long since we've had a wrench session together and say "yes" instead.

The dog in the picture is "Alma".  She was one year old when our eldest was born and hasn't left his side since.  One time my dad stayed with us and had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.  Unfortunately that would have involved him walking by the door to the kids' room and Alma was there...  Dad went pee outside that night.

Anyhoo, enough stories.  Let's get to work!

Having the Hungarling out gave me the perfect excuse to get distracted again and we started talking the engine apart.  The goal will be a cam install.  We picked up a Redline "Torquer" unit from the guy who used to do the grinds from Engnbldr.com, a well respected individual amongst the Toyota crowd.  It's my hope that this thing'll give us a little more grunt for hauling camp-stuff long distances.

We're trying to get access to that valve cover to get it removed from the engine.  To do that we need labels, and it dawns on me...  The last time I was wrenching with this guy, I don't think he could spell!

He doesn't do the labels the way I prefer to do them, but I can read what he writes so that's good enough.  For the next 20 or so minutes its "give me a 'TB1' for 'Throttle Body 1'.  Ok, now a 'TB2' for the next hose" and so on.

Eventually enough labels were made, enough hoses were removed, and enough wires were disconnected that we got the valve cover off:

After that it was decided that we needed to pull the distributor to get that cam sprocket off, so we pulled the plugs and wires and began labeling those accordingly:

Roman numerals on my distributor cap...  The Hungarling thought that was HILARIOUS...

when I pulled the plugs I saw a lot of soot buildup indicating an exhaust leak between the #2 and #3 cylinders...

We'll pull the header and try to fix the leak (it's at the flange) but it was 6am at this point.  And to the eldest, that means it's "Morning Cartoon Time" so we had to wrap it up.

Good times though, and I'll have to get these kids out here more often.

Some things for consideration:

At this point I'm strongly considering removing the swaybar for good.  There are pros and cons to this.  Installing it is going to involve me trying to tap the remaining stuck bolts the same way I did the one on the driver's side.  I'm citing "strength of the newly tapped threads, or lack thereof" as my reasoning for not wanting to go through with it.

I just found out a can of "Cam Lube" I ordered was canceled on e-bay and my money was refunded (I didnt request cancellation, but the seller says "customer requested cancellation"... odd.).  I could order a new one, but shipping this sort of stuff can take up to a month sometimes (plus it's expensive).  Also, see "A Tale of Two FLAPS" for trying to source some locally.  With that in mind, I do have a bottle of "assembly lube" and was thinking of maybe using that:
 

I'm open to suggestions on either topic.  Tomorrow will probably involve me mostly just re-stabbing the distributor so I can do a leakdown test of the cylinders and not lose my timing marks, so we have some time for discussion.

Assembly lube is totally fine. And you need to do your swaybars. Sorry, buddy. Get drilling. 

I ran no sway bars on Jeeps for years. I never had kids in the vehicle. 

Offroad=Mint, Onroad=please no emergency maneuvering...

My last Jeep had a front swaybar with homemade disconnects. 

Made from old sway bar links and a tie rod. They worked awesome.

Mezzanine said:

Assembly lube is totally fine. And you need to do your swaybars. Sorry, buddy. Get drilling.

preach (fs) said:

I ran no sway bars on Jeeps for years. I never had kids in the vehicle. 

Offroad=Mint, Onroad=please no emergency maneuvering...

My last Jeep had a front swaybar with homemade disconnects. 

Made from old sway bar links and a tie rod. They worked awesome.

Yeah.  Kids change everything.  Granted this isnt the safest thing in the world, especially when compared to modern vehicles, but the ability to perform emergency maneuvering is a necessity.

Time to drill and fill.

Tuesday morning (I overdid it at the new house shoveling piles rubble into a bin for removal on Sunday, and was too sore to get out of bed on Monday) and as promised I thought I'd do the leakdown test today when I woke up. 

I fired up the air compressor and started prepping my compression tester (which involves simply removing the hose and its schrader valve)

Then I simply hook the hose up to my compressor and thread it into the spark plug hole (with the piston at TDC) and listen for leaks.

Except I was under the impression that keeping the compressor in the garage with the doors shut would keep things quiet enough that I wouldn't bother my neighbors at 4am.  When I stepped outside to prep the engine, I realized just how loud that darn thing was (and my neighbors are close!), so I shut it down before I woke anyone up.  I'll try to sneak in a leakdown test this afternoon when the boys are home.  We'll see.  This is just me being pedantic because i have things ripped apart.  If I'm leaking somewhere, I'd like to know now "while I'm in there" (let's face it.  Me and project creep are old friends at this point).

I figured I'd do a quick valve lash check just to see how things were before I ripped everything apart and installed the new cam.  Really I was just satisfying curiosity.  This thing never quite felt as powerful as my 22R in my pickup (using the term "powerful" loosely here), and the RE is supposed to have MORE grunt than the carburetted lump in the old truck.  It's subjective, but in my pickup I felt like I could really feel the cylinders hit, in either of my 4-runners it just seemed "dulled" a bit and I'm always looking for reasons why that might be.

(see those two exhaust rockers that look really new?  I wonder what happened there...)

The intakes measured .003"-.005" cold and should be .008" hot.
The exhausts measured .003" to .006" cold and should be .012" hot.

In theory, things should expand and that gap should widen when the truck is warm, but I'm thinking that's a smidge tighter than it should be.  All to be corrected when I install the new cam.

Anyhoo, while doing all this I'm trying to think of the best way to do my leakdown this afternoon.  The headers have to come off so I can fix the exhaust leak it has at the flange (give Doug Thorley Tri-Y headers a skip if you're in the market.  I'm beyond unimpressed with these), so that should give me a good ear shot at the exhaust valves, but I'm not quite ready to commit to an intake manifold removal yet so I'll have to listen for leaks there through the throttle body...

From there, I was chewing on ways to get all the pistons to TDC quickly for their respective checks so I can move from hole to hole as fast as possible (breaks when the boys are home are few and far between at times), and it dawned on me that I should be able to remove the entire valve rocker assembly (thus defaulting all the valves to the closed position regardless of piston position).  Sweet!

Getting started right away, I went about removing the header:

The nuts came off easy enough (I hit them with some anti seize during the last install, but the whole assembly got hung up on the studs...  To get around that, I used the 2-nut method do start removing those.  (did I do this when I installed this thing?  I cant remember)

It took pretty much all morning, but I got 3 of the 5 studs out

Bleh.  To be continued, I guess.

This is my last week on day-shift, so come next Monday I don't think I'll be waking up at 4am anymore.  Instead I'll be going into work around 2pm and staying until midnight.  In theory, this would give me from 6am to about 12-noon to do hobby stuff (like truck work) but in reality there are a million errands that always seem to need running that get in the way (not to mention, work on the other house).  I'll have to try to stay as productive as possible this week, in an effort to lean forward on this next shift change.

For now, I've got myself set up for sneaking in some evening work:

I'd better keep the list short so I can stay on track tonight:

1) 2-studs to remove, followed by header removal

2) Rocker assembly removal (with cam sprocket)

3) Leak down test.

4) Profit

From there I'll decide whether I want to put everything back together or to take the heads off to lap the valves, etc  (Had I been thinking, I would have done a compression test sometime in the truck's history, but I didn't think taking it in for transmission repair last march would lead to all this )

Good times

Tuesday evening:

Well, I had a mandatory meeting with some folks stateside for work which meant I would have to stay up until 10:30pm my time...  The first thing that came to my mind was "there's no way I'll be up at 4am after that", so I decided I'd try to turn the loss into a win (or at least a "break even).  I decided the best course of action would be to use the time in between our evening chores and when I had to log in to the meeting to work on the truck.  It all started out simple enough, but then... well... you know...

First things first, I know the rocker assembly bolts have an order they needed to be loosened in so I got out the book:

One through four bolts out went pretty easy, but then came bolt #5...

Getting #5 broken loose enough to start spinning was bad enough, but then it decided it was going to fight me the whole way out!

Here it is (right) compared to one of the bolts from the intake side:

I took lots of pictures so I could get on here and ask "dude!  What the heck is THAT????" but various results from google tell me that it's called "coking" and it happens on these engines on the bolts in the middle of the exhaust side.  Feeling mildly more comfortable about a potentially serious situation, I decided to continue.

Enter:  Bolt #8

SNAP!

Well E36 M3 damn berkeley E36 M3 shiney happy berkeley (diety of your choice) berkeley shiney happy E36 M3!!!!

To make matters worse, during all this I learned that the whole time I was calling these "rocker assembly bolts", I should have been calling them "head bolts" because that's what they are.  There's only one other bolt (the magic bolt) that holds the 22R heads on this beast, otherwise these are it.

Which means, I:

1) need to change the head gasket when I change the cam, as you cant change the cam without loosening these bolts.

2) am NOT going to be performing a leakdown test with the rockers removed, as previously thought (Lots of good that would do, with nothign clamping the head in place...)

and

3) just broke a VERY long and VERY stuck head bolt...

Moving on...

What's done is done and all that, and if I had set to work drilling swaybar bolts  (like Mezzanine had told me to) then I wouldn't be here right now, but still that rocker assembly has to come out first:

That wasn't easy either.

I'm more gentle than the tools imply with my whacking and prying, and the thing finally gives.

And WHEN it finally gives, it also gives me a final "berk you"
 

Both bolts in that picture hit something solid long before they're even remotely close to coming free of the rocker assembly...  It turns out that the back of the engine shifted down a bit when the transmission was removed (due to a lack of a cross member) and in doing so, it pointed those bolts in the perfect position to hit everything you see there...

Time for bed kids...

Good times

Tuesday evening:

So I got the kids to bed, and dang if I cant just leave well enough alone...

First things first, I loosened up the hose on my heater control valve clamp and was able to get those two bolts out of the back of my head (both figuratively, and literally)

In doing so, I noticed something kind of funny.

The cam tower RIGHT AT those two new exhaust rockers was installed with the arrow pointing backwards!  (pointed at the fire wall)

That right there is why there needs to be a facepalm emoji on here...

Anyhoo, I get out my "broken bolt" kit:

and even though I was 99% sure it wouldn't work, I hammered a bit on the end of the bolt and started cranking.  I figured with the head no longer a factor, there wouldn't be much keeping this from turning other than the carbon....

So away I went!
 

SNAP!  (complete with sparks this time)

Well E36 M3 damn berkeley E36 M3 shiney happy berkeley (diety of your choice) berkeley shiney happy E36 M3!!!!

Well, nothing else for it now but to get out the trusty DOT4 and hope it can do something productive with some of that carbon based loctite we've got. 

I noticed a small gap between the cylinder head casting and the bolt.  I bet myself that if I got a syringe, I could strategically squirt some in there in such a fashion that it might actually get to where I needed it

It looked like it was working, but I cant help but shake the feeling that one day I'm going to have to use brake fluid for its intended purpose... (shudders nervously)

Either way, that stuff is going to take time to do what it needs to do, so I need to find something else to keep me busy (and I really could use an easy win about now) So I decided to tackle the heater control valve I was just messing with

So, that crappy part that looks like it was RTV'd into place and then hose clamped, only to start cracking from the pressure and heat cycles?

Yeah... that was me.

When I got the truck, this was part of the LPG system that was installed.  Apparently they needed a coolant temp reference and the way they decided to do that was to weld a port onto the heater control valve.  This had the added effect of warping said valve so the heater knob is IMPOSSIBLE to move in the cab (and the back side is plastic, so don't force it or it'll break).  I found a rubber thingie from a door stopper and clamped it into place until a more permanent fix could be implemented.  Looks like now is that time

My goal here was simply to remove the old unit, and replace it with one I had ordered recently.  Two 10mm bolts that went into the firewall, and I should be done!

Except you know the truck wouldn't let me have things that easily...

Yup, just two 10mm bolts going into the firewall and that screwdriver there is as far as I got one of them before I gave up.  Not that I wanted to go any further...  I could almost instantly feel that whatever was on the other side of the firewall was free-spinning, and I'd hate for them to drop to wherever they would go.  Short story long, the hoses are disconnected, but the cowl panel looks like it might have to come off to get any further.

With strike 2 under my belt, I decided I'd keep playing it dangerously and not drill swaybar bolts, but instead go back after that header.

Of the two studs still holding it on, one came out:

But I was able to work around that, so I'm calling it a hit.

Anyhoo, looking at the flange you can see that this thing is held on by about 7-bolts, and most of them are located at the top.

The picture below is my idea  (I stopped by the hardware store at lunch to pick up some M10x1.25 bolts).

The two holes you see just to the right and the left of that lower triple-bolt set (three bolts side-by-side, between cyls 2 and 3) aren't threaded.  I see these as potential leak areas once I get this back on, but that's not going to stop me from making things harder on me than they need to be.

I plan to use a spare exhaust gasket I had to help me line up the holes.  from there, it should just be a matter of getting them the right size, and then torqued down.



$20 says it still lets the gasses escape.  Has anyone ever heard a 22R of this vintage WITHOUT an exhaust leak?  Inquiring minds want to know...

All for later though, right now I've got a meeting to get too.

Night everyone!

Wednesday Evening

Needless to say I did not wake up at 4am.  The meeting Tuesday night went on until about midnight and poor little Bill needs his sleep.  Also unfortunately, I had an appointment in Budapest earlier today which meant I'd be on the road for about 5 hours (plus the time the appt took), so if I was going to sneak some wrench time in I was going to have to be crafty.

First things first, in my absence two packages arrived! 

My Bellhousing (for the new transmission I ordered)

And my differential oil!

Here's what I came up with.  Whatever I did, I needed to exert as little effort as possible, and make the truck do most of the work.  The diff oil was a godsend in that sense as I could duck out, drop a drain, and run back in, and no one would even notice I was gone.  I figured if I did this during the kids cartoon time (about an hour before bed) I could double the chances that my absence wouldnt be noticed.

Here goes.  "Sophia the First" is rolling credits when we turn the TV on.  The two hungarlings and myself sit down and I wait for an opportune moment to make my move...  Just as the theme for "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" starts in:

"Oh, look at that.  My water cup is empty.  Excuse me for a second guys"

I am out the door and RUNNING!  Are the kids even questioning what the heck is going on right now?  Why did dad run out the front door to get more water???  Who cares!

I grab a socket that's too small, my drain pan, and a creeper.  It takes a couple back and forths to the tool box, but I eventually get the right socket.  This should be super easy as I was just in here about 2-years ago fixing an issue that had diff fluid leaking all over the place (front and rear breathers were plugged with mud and rust).

A couple of good smacks and the fill port is off.  A few more and oil is draining!



SWEET!

With the oil draining, I make a break back for the house.  Once inside the door, I mosey on over to the kitchen sink and wash up like nothing is out of the ordinary.

*PLOP* on to the couch I go and HOLY CRAP!  Credits to "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" are already rolling!!!  How....????

No worries, I tell myself.  These episodes are always short.  I'll just sit for a minute and the front diff'll go quicker since I got all the tools set out.  I'll be back in in no time.  The kids wont even notice!

The credits wrap up and there's a 5 second interlude before the theme song to the next episode starts.

"Whelp, excuse me guys, I'll be right back"  (I couldn't think of an excuse that was going to top the already used "water")



That funnel was my attempt at keeping things pointed in the right direction.  I was able to wedge it under the diff and into the pan so it was solid and PERFECT.  Perfect that is, until it didn't work.

Wedging it that way plugged the bottom and it was all coming out the top!!!

Crap. crap. crap!

I got some paper towels and wiped it up as quick as I could.  I tucked everything under the truck and moseyed back in the front door like I was never gone.

A quick hand wash later and...

HOLY HELL!!!! The credits are rolling again!!!!

I decide that this plan sucks and isn't working.  "Geronimo Stilton" is up next and there's no way I'm going to hand pump 4-liters of fluid into those diffs before THESE credits roll...  Besides, this is the last cartoon of the night and I gotta sit down sometime, right?

The kids are convinced that this is my favorite show and will call me out if I'm missing it.  Truth be told, it's just the show that comes on the latest (when I'm too darn tired to do anymore chores) so I just happen to be sitting for its whole duration. 

I'll take it, though.  It gives me an excuse to be lazy for 20-minutes.

Good times.

Speaking of bellhousings, this popped up in my FB feed:

Too soon, Facebook.  Tooooo sooooooon.

Wednesday Night

Nothing major.  I originally came back out to the truck after kids cartoons and bedtime to pump fluid back into the diffs, but during the pre-bed "story time" my mind kept wandering to that vacuum rack that I now have easy access too...

The 22R and RE engines have an air injection setup that pumps air into the exhaust to help burn hydrocarbons(?).  At least I think that's the idea.  Well, part of my reason for ordering the Doug Thorley headers was that they had the option to keep the air injection ports (yay).  Except, whoever made these headers never saw a 22R/RE exhaust manifold before, as my stock air injection lines were never going to mate up with what the headers provided...

It wasn't a big deal, and probably worked in my favor later when I broke a nipple off of one of the air injection system's valves.  Instead of paying $60 for a new one, I just capped it off leaving this check valve to do nothing:
 

I simply compared what was left of that system to the vacuum diagram in my Haynes manual....

(random hose scraps, not pictured)

When all was done, you couldn't really tell I had done anything.  I was hoping for a cleaner bay, but it looks like the bulk majority of the vac rack pertains to the EGR system and I plan to leave that in place.  This is kind of my atonement for previous shenanigans.  I used to delete these things in my younger days, but on this particular beast I decided to weld in a catalyzer where none had existed previously (Euro emissions didn't require catalyzers until after '92, I think?).

Maybe I'm getting older, who knows?

Good times.

Thursday morning.

What was that I was saying about "needing my sleep", and did anyone think to tell my brain? 

After going to bed around 9:30 last night, my brain decided I was wide awake at 2am...  By 2:30 I was making coffee on my way out to the garage.  It was raining

Admittedly I'm a bit of a space case at this ungodly hour, but this is one of those mornings where I could tell that there was no way I was going to go back to sleep

After getting everything opened up, I tried to think of ANYTHING I could do that didn't involve removing the intake manifold...  All I came up with was the differential fluids:

It seems like for every one thing I check off my list, 5 more appear, but it was nice to cross something off for a change.

It all makes sense though when I thought about it.  I start working now, need something tomorrow, order it, and wait a month for it to get here.  During that month of waiting, I've probably started a dozen more things so logic dictates that there are a dozen more months that I'll be waiting on things to arrive!  So I start new things, and the cycle repeats.

If you're wondering, I wasn't stoned.  I was here:

We've all been "here".  It's a tight spot where "better" tools don't fit, so you're left with a bolt removal that moves at a speed of about 1/8 turn at a time.
 

so your mind wanders... your eyes wander...  You're looking around... this task is so trivial, you don't even need to look at what you're doing...

and then you see something!  Holy crap, can it be???

See it there?  Next to that red switch???

It's my battery hold down!!!!  Those garage punks didn't lose it after all!!!!

Now I'll be able to use that "Bill's learning to weld steel" that I was about to chop up, for "Bill's learning to weld stuff"!

They just set it somewhere stupid where you'd never see it unless you were looking directly at it!

(Also:  I couldn't help but notice that the battery hold down that I was bummed about losing, was basically a smaller and crappier version of the one I was making... but still.  Gotta take the wins when you can get em.)

Anyhoo, taking off the manifold is just a bunch of simple tasks that add up to one big task.  The upper manifold came off pretty easily.  Just remove the vac rack, label a few hoses and wires, and then you're in to the lower manifold removal.

For the lower manifold, I figured I'd remove the t-stat housing first when disaster attempted to strike (sorry for the blurry pics)

Two-turns out, this bolt started to bind.  I was really not in the mood to have another broken, bent, cross threaded, or otherwise goofed up fastener in this darn engine, so I decided the best course of action was to spray under it with WD40 while working it back and forth. 

Eventually it came out, and it brought a few of it's favorite threads with it!

This is how I know GRM is upping my game.  It may seem simple, but back in the day I would have just muscled through and buggered everything up.  When it didn't go back together I would have said something along the lines of "well, this thing is junk!" and that would have been it...  Same with that head bolt I have yet to get out.

Anyhoo, from there it was just a lot of un-routing wires to get things down to a bare lower intake....

I'm getting that nagging feeling that I'm in danger of getting in over my head at this point (pun intended) but figure that if I can tear apart an Alfa and put it back together 5-year later, I should be fine.

Here's how she looks without wires and hoses:

Except she will not budge when I try to break that lower intake loose.

I'm whacking with my soft mallet, I've checked all the bolt holes twice, that fuel rail is NOT holding anything back, the darn thing is moving slightly... what the heck is going on???

Well... I'm glad you asked!

When I felt around under the fuel rail, I felt a nub that HAD to be another 12mm bolt.  Except I couldn't see it very well, and I couldn't get a socket on it.  When I took OFF the fuel rail (I was hoping to avoid having to do that), this is what I found:

I was gutted. 

2-hours I've been out here tinkering at a nice, relaxed pace all morning and nothing had gone catastrophically wrong yet, and here I was thinking I'm going to hit my next major landmark today (that would be:  intake and exhaust manifolds removed) and now I'm looking at ANOTHER potential bolt that's going to have to be drilled out of this damn thing...

Luckily I was angry enough that I went straight to muscle instead of trying to be intelligent about things...

I clamped those nut-rounders on there as hard as I could possibly get them, and when I went to crank it on over, the bolt went with.

Thank goodness for vice grips. 

After that fiasco, I decided not to push my luck any further.  It's time to stuff a sock in it, take a shower, and get to work.

Good times

Also, here's the damage (er... I mean "order") sheet for today:

It seems like a lot when you look at the shipping and customs, but there's no getting around it.  I priced a head bolt set locally for $70, the the rest wasn't much cheaper.

Plus there's that RockAuto magnet 

Why did you take off the head bolts to remove the cam again?

In reply to docwyte :

Rockers are held on by the head bolts.

You're wrenching with your kids before 6AM? What's your schedule over there??

solfly said:

You're wrenching with your kids before 6AM? What's your schedule over there??

Yeah, they're early birds when school isn't in session...  Normal wakeup time is 6:30 on school days, and it does take some rousing to get them moving.

On weekends, holidays, and summer breaks, it's not unusual to see them join me at 5:30 or even 5am.

In reply to Docwyte and java230 :

Correct,  this should help show a little better what's going on:

That rocker assembly makes a pretty good spider web that prevents access to the cam shaft without removing it.  The bolts that hold the assembly on, also just happen to be 90.9% of the bolts that also hold the head on.

People on the forums (mostly the Celica forums) say they've done cam swaps without removing the head gasket (and just re-tightening everything after the install) but I figured a few things:

1) the way my luck goes, if I didn't change the head gasket I'd be headed back in there after 5-whole minutes of engine operation, and whatever damage I caused would be far in excess of the irritation I'm going through now.

2) That #8 bolt was broken anyways.  The chances of me getting it out with the head still on are probably near nil, so why not prepare for the worst and hope for the best

The other 9.1% o the head bolts (singular, actually) is this little guy we call the "magic bolt"  (Aka the oh berkeley bolt)

its just forward of the cam, in a little pocket that's always filled with old oil.  It's the one you find after you've been destroying your head with pry-bars for three days.

Good times

So Thursday evening I came home to a package that had arrived!  it was my spindle grease tool from Shop.Cruiserparts.net!

Now, obviously this isn't a Landcruiser so what I had done was decide that I wanted to grease my front spindle bushings while I had everything apart.  I then spent a butt-load of time looking at options for making my own spindle bushing grease tool, but decided that the headache and time needed to get specialty stuff out here was worth it.  I accidentally came across a tool online that was advertised for an 80-series Landcruiser...

After that, I spent a god-awful amount of time looking at Toyota's front spindle assemblies and I was able to determine within a reasonable doubt that my IFS 4-Runner used the same front spindles as a 80-series Landcruiser.   The problem was, the store that offered it for sale, wouldn't offer international shipping.  That's when I came across the CruiserParts store!

Except what came in the mail wasn't a spindle grease tool...

... it's a spindle nut adapter (that would fit my truck... but still...)

I seriously wanted to cry.

Not only did this come RIGHT on the tail of a perfectly priced INMARSAT Satphone I won on e-bay that magically became a belkin wireless router when I opened the box , but this was the ONE THING I really wanted to get done when I took apart the front hub and brake assemblies on this thing (in my '87 4X4 thread, I ran into issues with my front spindle bushings and could no longer lock in my hubs for 4wd) and here it is something I didn't even want!!!

I collected myself the best I could (I was up at 2am that day, remember?) and sent off a polite e-mail asking how this could be fixed.

The next morning I got a response from a rep, and they said that while they (or maybe that person in particular?) do not cover "international mistakes", they would offer to let me keep this tool, and would send out the correct tool, if I would spot them shipping ($43.95) to get it out to me.

I think that's fair.  It's not my fault they sent the wrong tool, it's not their fault I live in BFE.  We both walk a way with a little invested in the fix.

(I linked their name above for easy future shopping/reference purposes).

good times