Working on a Tundra is not a lot of fun

My tow vehicle needed some love to pass inspection... the passenger side exhaust manifold cracked (6yrs ago) and it finally got loud enough for them to fail me. Toyota wanted some $250+ for the part and so I figured I'd try one of those cheap shorty header solutions on ebay for $150 for both sides.... and it showed up looking pretty darn good - TIG'd 304 stainless with all the gaskets and hardware. I don't know how they do that for that price but... they were a perfect fit.

"This ought to be easy"... You would think that a truck you can lay under without a jack, with room all around the engine would be easy to get a manifold off of. You can think that but you would be wrong. To get them off I had to open the motor mounts and jack the engine up as far as it would go. I needed the oxy torch, a 24" breaker bar, cold chisels, Dremel with cutoff wheels, impact gun, homemade "leverage engines" including welding an old wrench to a nut... and I broke 2 14mm sockets from using a jack handle on the breaker bar. I got rust and ancient road salt in my eyes because the goggles kept filling with sweat and I had to take them off. Every single bolt was at exactly the wrong angle to apply force and provided an opportunity to augment the english language with a new "word". I have done some pretty awful jobs on some pretty weird machinery but this one is easily top five most irritating effort ever. It took 12hrs over 2 days. To top it all off when I was putting the tires back on I broke a wheel stud because I used impact gun to try to save 30 seconds. From now on every job begins with STEP ONE: Remove engine from vehicle.

Thanks for the warning, I was considering some new headers for my Tundra to gain a bit of power. I've seen some pretty dramatic dyno charts.

So how's the end result?

Keith wrote: So how's the end result?

For the 1st time in 6yrs it does not sound like a sewing machine and the throttle response seems better but the test will be how it comes up the mountain pulling the race car. I don't really drive it around much w/o a load so its hard to say if its got more power. I really don't think I'd notice 10hp on a 4500lb truck with a slushbox so it would have to be a pretty dramatic increase anyway. I'm just happy to have it legal in time for the trip to the new NJ Motorsports Park in two weeks.

Cool, let me know. This article caught my eye: http://www.jbaheaders.com/assets/articles/4wdsuv_1005.pdf, so I've been considering it.

Keith wrote: Cool, let me know. This article caught my eye: http://www.jbaheaders.com/assets/articles/4wdsuv_1005.pdf, so I've been considering it.

My Tundra is a 2000, with 100k miles and and a lot of rust on the frame. Having a lift and a 2nd set of hands to help would have made a lot of difference during the install as well. If it really yielded 20hp and 21ft-lbs for $150 & 12hrs then I'd consider it a worthwhile endeavor - especially since that was bonus for the cheap way to get it legal again.

Yeah I always thought the trucks were easier to work on since they have plenty of room all around but the engineering seems very inefficient to take advantage of the additional real-estate. No matter how much leverage I applied I couldn't remove the transmission pan on my '92 Dakota V8 which was covered about 1/2" by the exhaust Y pipe. So after 2 hours I suctioned out the ATF and put the pan back in as I was in no mood to un-bolt the frozen exhaust header bolts for a friggn trans oil and filter change!! Apparently I should be able to remove the pan by removing the trans mounts and jacking up the tran as high as possible...ugh!

In the words of George Carlin "more room means that you need to get more stuff to put in it."

When the looming spectre of a new, wider concrete driveway finally motivated me to do the leaking steering rack on my '99 Dodge Dakota (small cab, V6, sport pkg, no stickers, looks like a fleet truck) my deep hatred of working on it was a big motivator.

I ordered the following from autopartswarehouse.com:

Rebuilt steering rack Rebuilt power steering pump High and low pressure hoses Upper and lower ball joints Sway bar bushings and endlinks Urethane control arm bushings

It was a hideous pig of a job. The Mighty Mopar is an anglo-metric-torx disaster, so you never know what socket to reach for. The big special studs that hold the upper control arm pivot shaft to the frame rail resisted Aero Kroil and MAPP gas and my biggest f@#cking hammer for a full afternoon. I finally made a tool consisting of a 2' length of 1/2" mild steel bar with short lengths of 1" bar welded on the ends, one of which had a receiver machined in so it would go over the end of the stud. Even then, it took an oxy-acetylene torch and a 4# hammer before it's finally broke free.

Getting the bushings out and back in to the control arms was unpleasant. Burned 'em out, mostly, Had to make all manner of split spacers out of bits of 2" square tube on the horizontal bandsaw to support the whole mess in the press.

All told, it took a day to get it apart, one evening for bushings and ball joints out, another to put the arms back together, and a weekend day to reassemble the damn thing, change the trans fluid and filter and adjust the bands, and do oil and diff lube changes. And it was dark when I finished.

It do drive like a new really stiff truck (Kumho commercial light truck tires, some kind of KYB aggro industrial shocks) but jeebus, what a hideous, painful gig.

motomoron wrote: anglo-metric-torx disaster

So true...

I don't know. My son has a 1995 Lumina that I am going to do the coolant on today. I figured I should change the thermostat too.

Except it looks like I might have to remove some exhaust part to remove the t-stat? Do I tackle it today? Or wait until he has no heat in January?

^^and you have to pull the washer fluid to change the battery, right? Not to mention the fun involved in an alternor swap in one with the 3100.

neon4891 wrote: ^^and you have to pull the washer fluid to change the battery, right? Not to mention the fun involved in an alternor swap in one with the 3100.

yeah, this was my father-in-laws car and we got a call asking for me to help him change his battery since he was at it all afternoon.

REALLY? How hard can a battery change be? Hard.

Totally know what you mean, I hated the battery replacement on my 95 grand prix and I tried to replace the t-stat and eventually stopped and said screw it i'll just go cold. I hate working on cars I don't care about.

pete240z wrote: I don't know. My son has a 1995 Lumina that I am going to do the coolant on today. I figured I should change the thermostat too. Except it looks like I might have to remove some exhaust part to remove the t-stat? Do I tackle it today? Or wait until he has no heat in January?

You do as I did with my son-in-law's Grand Am on the same job. "Find somebody you don't like to do this job." He got his other father-in-law (he's married to my step-daughter) to do the job.

I once spent a week trying to get a siezed brake drum off of a 1970 F-100. I didn't spend hours upon hours on it, but I did spend enough time there with a hammer that I did eventually smash the thing to bits. All that was left was the vertical plane of the drum - the contact surface was completely gone.

My dad had to take the whole hub off and into work and smash the reminents with a press.

You would have to pay me to take a mid-size gm with the 3100...and when it dies, leave it on the side of the road and pull the plates