First Gen 4-Runner. European family adventure wagon.

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

I've got a new cylinder head on order...

I like how you snuck that in there like we wouldn't notice. Good job getting the head removed. What a ridiculous comedy of errors that was. 

Mezzanine said:

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

I've got a new cylinder head on order...

I like how you snuck that in there like we wouldn't notice. Good job getting the head removed. What a ridiculous comedy of errors that was. 

Ha!  Yeah, hopefully the assembly goes better than the disassembly.  I kind of have a history of not getting things 100% on the first try

It's driving me nuts, because i cant find a picture of it.  But that nub of a bolt that was stuck in the block came out with nothing more than a pair of pliers.  But this meme hit that nail on the head:
 

As of yet, the timing chain set and cyl head haven't arrived, so I've been keeping myself busy with simple stuff.  One afternoon, I had some free time so I scraped some gaskets and blew the crud out of the cyl head bolt holes in the block:

I wont accuse anyone of being able to eat off of any of those, but the surfaces should seal (Famous last words, I know...)

Easy money

Today (Friday) I had almost a free hour so I bled the brakes (I know, I'm getting pretty damn optimistic here!)

I got about thiiiiiiiiiiis far:

Before I started pulling a butt-ton of air!

Thinking to myself "I didn't take apart the drums... where's all this air coming from???"

Does anyone in the class want to tell Bill what he forgot to do? 

Alrighty, so I hooked up the lines, filled it with RBF600 and the pedal was still squishy.

I made another round, but instead of using the pumping action of my contraption I simply hooked it up, elevated the unit, closed the bleeder finger tight, and pumped the pedal slowly with my foot.  It turns out, I didnt get all the air out of the passenger side caliper.  Feels like it should be about perfect now.

Having a bit of extra time (15 minutes, to be exact) I thought I'd go and fix something that wasn't a problem in the first place:

That right there is how you replace a coil that's been working perfectly for 30-years with one whose acronym stands for "My Spark Disappears".  The MSD unit also has the added benefit of needing extra parts (just that ballast, really) which need jumpers made to hook it all together.  Basically, I took something that was working and made it infinitely more complex AND possibly less reliable for no noticeable gain in performance.  You know what they say:

Till next time folks.  And remember, keep your stick on the ice.

Well, I got my radiator back (A little over $300 for the re-core...  ouch!)

And my cylinder head arrived:

But no timing set yet...

every day since the 17th:  "Customs Delay".  I sent another e-mail today to see what's going on.  No word back yet.

Good times

Been waiting on a timing set,

Been waiting all day....

I ordered it last month, but it's "Customs delay"!

I swapped out a cam shaft,

I bought a new head...

I re-cored the radiator but the engine's still dead.

Fuel, air, and spark

would suit me just fine,

but this engine is picky, and needs them in time.

Sorry guys, I'm in Germany for work and away from the truck at the moment.  Two quick things that are mostly good news.  The first is that the timing set arrived to the house right before I left for the work trip.

The second is, I got my 40th birthday present from Mrs. Hungary:  My Toyota and I are entered in the 2022 Budapest to Bamako Rallye!!!!



 

Starting January 28th, I'll be headed out of Budapest on a 9000km jaunt across Europe and the Sahara (I think she might be trying to get rid of me!).  Normally the vehicles are sold upon arriving at the finish.  As I'm rather attached to this one, I'll be turning around at the finish line and headed back north the same way I came.

B2B Rallye Site

First things first, though.  I gotta get back to Hungary and get to work on this beast! 

WHAT?! That is awesome!!!!!!

soooo does the AC work? 

java230 said:

WHAT?! That is awesome!!!!!!

 

 

soooo does the AC work? 

It's got the old 2-55 AC.

2-windows, 55mph  

It doesnt blow very cold, but then again it never needs recharging.

That drive would be sick!

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

Holy crap, congrats!  Cannot wait to follow your progress on the rallye, I'd love to attempt it myself some day.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

If I didn't have security clearance issues, I'd volunteer to be the co-driver. That trip is going to be EPIC. Like once in a lifetime epic!

In reply to preach (fs) :

Who says I'm not volunteering? 

In reply to preach (fs) :

Uhhhhh maybe I'm volunteering too? 

preach (fs) said:

That drive would be sick!

I am 100% geeking out over this.  I've got dozens of browzer tabs open, powerpoints, I've even bought a paper map of north africa

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

Holy crap, congrats!  Cannot wait to follow your progress on the rallye, I'd love to attempt it myself some day.

I'm really hoping it'll be as good as a run as it sounds like.  I 100% plan to tell all about it in the "Adventures" section of the forum when I get back.

preach (fs) said:

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

If I didn't have security clearance issues, I'd volunteer to be the co-driver. That trip is going to be EPIC. Like once in a lifetime epic!

That's a bit of an issue for me as well.  There are some new requirements I'm subject to, and I'm not 100% sure they wont interfere.  Fingers crossed, but in the end I'm 100% in the "berk it, send it" bin

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to preach (fs) and  Java230

If this goes well, the three of us are going on a second run.  100%

What a roller coaster of a thread! Keep at it, you'll win!

Hoo dawgies, I'm back and after a couple days rest I'm back at it.  Here's how yesterday went:
 

The timing set arrived the day or so before I left for Germany.  I'm all about a mad-thrash and all, and I probably could have had the engine started in time to have the 4-Runner make the drive to Ramstein, but without any deadlines at the time I decided to save everything for when I got back so I can take my time and do things right.

Picking up very much where we left off, things look like this:

I gotta say though, that new timing set I got from RockAuto is the business.  It was $44 and was every bit as good or better than the one I bought from ENGNBLDR some years back.  As I understand ENGNBLDR's wrapped up shop and retired, so if you're looking for a timing set like his I very much recommend this one as a replacement:

(speaking of RockAuto, I gotta send them some photos of the project when it's done.  Maybe I can get on one of their magnets )

Anyhoo, my working hours have shifted 30-minutes to the left, so waking up at 4am doesnt give me as much time as it used to, but I'm still able to get the timing set in...

...and the timing cover on.  The oil pump went in, and before long the engine bay looked like it was finally coming together!

Which brought my attention back to the cylinder headache.

Before installation, I had to bolt up the EGR plate.  I swear Toyota made these heads with EGR deletes in mind.  Look how easy it is to make an aluminum plate that would block this off permanently!

('cept I'm not really interested in EGR deletes these days.  No benefits, really)

That is one ugly plate on one pretty new cylinder head(ache).

Anyhoo, plop goes the head, and now we're looking like this!

oooooh, pretty.

Good times

TheWraith said:

What a roller coaster of a thread! Keep at it, you'll win!

Oh man, rollercoaster indeed!  This, sir, is just for you:

So today (Thursday) we're back out and it's finally time to install that magical part that drove all this mess.  The Redline "Torquer" cam-shaft

Out went the old...

In went the new...

"Click" went the torque elbow...

aaaaaaaaaand......

(Come on, by now you HAVE to know this is coming...)

The mother-berkeleying cam sprocket bolt wont fit. 

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

I've got two choices at this point.  I can take the cam back out and have it drilled out and tapped to fit, or I can take two berk-it-alls and install the stock unit and do all this over sometime in the future.  I opt for the second option in an effort to keep things movin':

That picture right there is MONTHS of work and money spent to install a part only to find out that didn't fit, forcing you to go back and put it back to how it all was originally...

well, you know what they say!

Immediately following the cam-shaft mess, I ran into an issue with the head bolt holes not lining up between the valve assembly and the new cylinder head:

I seriously tried fitting it two or three times and was very much getting very scared I bought a cylinder head casting that had bolt holes that weren't going to line up...  I even went as far as to start thinking about how I was going to make the old head work...

And then I realized the mounts for the valve train assembly can slide forward and aft on their shafts...

That was way too close to a full "code brown" for comfort.  I decide not to touch anything else this morning and just to slather the cylinder head boltss in anti-sieze and set them in place...

And I mean SLATHER.  From head to thread, I've got my "two-by-two, hands of blue" rubber gloves on and I am wiping gobs of this stuff on the shafts of these bolts.  This is the stuff we put on the igniters in a Pratt & Whitney turbine engines on our jets, and I am 100% hoping that this will prevent any future issues with head removal (that is, if it doesn't get washed away by the engine oil first.  In which case the oil in my engine will have a super high graphite content )

and we finish the day looking like this:

Nothing's torqued, nothing's touched, everything's in place, not chancing anything, berkeley you Murphy, not today, nope, nope, nope.  We're just going to leave that there and hope that tomorrow isn't cursed too.

Good times.

Whelp, taking the day off was probably the right thing to do.  Nothing special happened on Friday, I got the heads torqued down and then I cold adjusted the valves to .005, and .009, respectively.  The factory manual states that they should be hot adjusted to .008 and .012, but I figure a "thou" or two amongst friends wont hurt anyone.


 

The oil pump was installed and I decided to knock it off when I noticed the head I bought had a provision for a cam-driven fuel pump, where as my engine utilizes an in-tank unit...

Lucky for me, the engine gasket kit I purchased came with a fuel pump gasket, so I have a template to make one from aluminum.  That'll be in the later-later bin as I dont really feel like doing that at the moment.

Good times.

Tuesday (Monday was a holiday) was a bit "wet' so I did my best to keep from having to crawl around under the truck.  With that in mind, I installed the headers with my new bolt system (working perfectly, so far!)

All was going good until I tried to install the crank pulleys.  No matter what I did, I could NOT get them to line up, and it really looked like it wasn't seated all the way in where it should be:

After the third removal and reinstallation of the oil pump and the crank pulley, I decided there wasn't much I could do except forge ahead and see if it really was an issue.  I figured if I started bolting up accessories, they'd let me know if I was crazy or not.  Looking at the water pump, I could see it aligned with the middle groove, but when I installed the alternator, things became readily apparent that they weren't right:

Not sure if you can tell, but that alternator pulley wants to put the belt right where that dead space is on the crank pulley.  so back apart it came...

It turns out there was a sleeve that slides over the crank shaft with some teeth on it.  I had it installed backwards.  Once i got it "smooth side in" things slid together just like they should.

I figured I'd end the day with a water pump install, and got within 2-bolts of having it done when...

I snapped a bolt...  See it right there in the center, right next to the snout?

So that's gotta come back off...  I'll pick up a handful of new bolts for it tomorrow morning, but all this bolt breaking is really getting old.  I swear I wasn't cranking on it that hard...

Anyhoo, what makes this especially frustrating is that the team heading to Africa with me wants to get together and drink a few beers in Bratislava on the 13th (11 days from now).  See, none of us have ever met each other so none of us know how we're going to get along during the drive.  The idea is we all have a few too many, and see what we think about each other afterwards.  Kind of a futile exercise really, because we're all locked in to this event   But the other big part of us meeting up, is they're dying to check out the truck!  I was hoping to have it done and shook down before I drove it an hour and a half across the Slovakian border and I just KNOW things are going to leak or need adjusting after I turn the key for the first time.

Ah well, good times.

New day and not a lot of time to spend in the garage.  I've got kids to get to school, a vet appointment, and a haircut all before work starts at 2pm.  I'm trying to be as efficient as possible.  When I drop off the kids, I swing by a machine shop on the far side of town.  The guy that runs it is the same guy that re-cored my radiator.  He's got a half-dozen VW bugs on his lot, several out buildings (that do god only know what, because I cant read the signs), and he sells a TON of metal stock.  Going back a bit, I feel the need to tell you that I took a chance and got a bit lucky with the cam.  See, I may have three cams for this truck now (original, stock unit that came with the new head, and the infamous "torquer") but I only have one cam sproket bolt...  BUT, in a fit of "berkeley it", I decided to try to thread one of my head bolts into my uninstalled stock cam and wouldnt you know???  it worked!!!  Same pitch and diameter as the cam sproket bolt!  This meant I had a show-and-tell piece to bring to the machine shop to see if I could get some assistance locally.  Back to the program:

Anyhoo, Zoli (the machinist) measures the cam and compares it to the bolt.  he tells me the cam is drilled metric, but the bolt is "USA"...  I have questions, but sometimes it's better to just nod and say "ok".  He points me to another machine shop in town (same one that re-surfaced my flywheel and rotors) but I cant get there just yet.  Instead I pop into the hardware store and order 5 new water pump bolts and 5 new fan bolts (I order extras to re-stock my coffee can).  Total cost: $0.40, and we're back in action.

what a waste of a waterpump gasket (luckily I had a spare):

The broken stud comes out easy enough with a pair of vice-grips, and Robert's your father's brother.

After the vet appointment, I'm in the neighborhood of machine shop #2 and Bela (the very old machinist) is just chillin with his breakfast and his dog.  I show him the issue and 5-minutes later the cam is out of the chuck and the bolt is in the cam.  He charges me $3, but I pay him $5, and we both leave happy.  Him with his breakfast, and me with my head bolt sticking out of my cam:

Poor Bela did ask why the dang bolt was so long on this thing.  He offered to drill it deeper, or to cut the bolt to the correct length, but poor me didn't feel confident enough in my language skills to properly explain why I stuffed a head bolt in my cam and brought it to him.  In the end, I just had to reassure him it was ok, and let him scratch his head.  Sorry man.

Anyhoo, I went through a lot of back and forth on this one on the drive back.  I've got the stock cam in and everything adjusted...  I can lose a day and go back two steps now while it's easy, or I can make a big headache for myself later whenever I finally decide to install this cam again in the future.  Eventually I figure if this cam is going to have any issues, it's better it has them now.  PLUS there are a lot of little things that need done with a cam swap that I'm already in the middle of now, so I decide to install the damn thing that caused all this headache in the first place:

Out with the old:

In with the new.

Dear 22R readers of the future:  I strongly recommend this "head bolt" method if you have spares laying around.  Cleaning and lubing this thing with that lolly-pop of a headbolt installed was a BREEZE!

Anyhoo.  Time for the big moment, will the cam sproket bolt in?

So we're back to where we were a couple days ago.  Everything's set in, nothing's torqued, nothings adjusted, but this time I'm quitting on two wins (The waterpump bolts and the cam bolt) and dang if it isn't much needed at this point.

Good times.

WooHoo! All the torques! (that a 22-RE can make )