welcome to my basket case.

[qwakers]

ive just finished stripping my block down to put it in the back of my car and ive discovered the root cause of the blowup.

oil starvation.

some monkey had been in there before me and the oil pump was full of silicone, on top of that the big end bearing had been fitted wrong on the two end cylinders. theres bluing to the crank where the bearings ran dry so there my answer. it got too hot, span a bearing and boom, bye bye conrods and pistons. also confirmed by the fact its the two pistons furthest from the pump that imploded. oh dear oh dear. well i never did do things by half. the heads are ok and ive salvaged 4 pistons and con rods. but thats about it.

[Draven]

Wow. that is not good news at least you saved some bits.

[qwakers]

so thanks to a very kind donation from a guy on twobrutal, i now have a replacement crank, block, pistons and conrods (and a fair few other bits including a set of head gaskets...) so i am going to start the rebuild soon. well, once ive waited 6 weeks for the little end bearings to arrive from japan.... yeah, that IS from MR T and yes, that is the best they can do... with a full set of big end bearings, crank thrust washer, crank carrier bearings and piston rings on the way from the good ol USA im well on my way to having a working engine again. and am a few hundred quid poorer....

[qwakers]

well look what just arrived from the good ol' us of a.



so just need the little end bushes to arrive (could only find one set in usa and he wanted $13 x6 for them plus $60 postage... cheaper from MrT... problem is its a 6 week wait for em. but well get there in the end. at least i can put the crank in now and get it back on the engine stand...

[qwakers]

crank now fitted clearances checked and found to be ok, oil pump stripped, i then inspected and replaced the failed pressure relief valve (seized solid slightly open, yet another reason why it went bang) and fitted replacement rotors and re assembled. (tricky one that, it looks like you can shove it together any which way but it has to be timed just like you would do the crankshafts.)


so engine is back up on the engine stand, water pump fitted, oil filter housing fitted, hard coolant pipes refitted and now its just a waiting game until the little end bushes (official toyota wording... ) arrive and i can then reassemble the conrods and pistons, change the piston rings, refit the pistons put the heads on..... the list is still quite long then

[qwakers]

so with so long to wait for the engine bits ive been fiddling with a few items on my to do list....

number 1 was my wet bum every time its parked outside in the rain. i was assuming the problem was with the t bar seal but i wanted to know for sure. a smoke machine turned up on facebook nearby for not a lot of money so i bought it and stuck it in the footwell to find out where the leak is. ive seen it done (as im sure most of us have it was on wheeler dealers years ago) so...










well that didnt work did it...

just to prove it works in theory...

[androo007]

On the contrary I think it does prove that it is your t bar seals! The rain has to run over and down the gully to go through to leak.

Was the smoke machine more than a quid? Because that's all a tube of silicone is at poundland

[qwakers]

about a fiver and silicone is free, i nick it off work

i always thought it was the tbar seals, two reasons, its always the tbar seals and also because the LOOK knackered. i was just making sure i aligned the door right when i put it back on. it would have been annoying to 'fix' the seals then find it was the door.

[qwakers]

2 and a bit years ago i bought a house that needed renovation. as such i could only get a small mortgage on it and i still had do do about £10ks worth of work to it. this month i finished paying one of the loans off so i thought id treat myself to a congratulatory present.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/232164376251

its only a cheap one but its good enough to teach me how to tig and the plasma cutter will be handy too....

[qwakers]

bit of progress this afternoon....








all timed up just need to fit all the accessories and loom. and make a baffled sump...

[thomp1983]

Little ends arrived then?

[qwakers]

yeah. it turns out that a 6 week or so lead time is just to cover their ass if there wasn't any at the factory. was here end of last week. then i had to take the conrods over to plymouth on monday to have them reamed out to the correct clearance. then tuesday through thursday i worked 20 hour days so nothing got done. all is well now.

[qwakers]

has anyone got a link to the pinout diagram for the 3vz ecu? ive found a couple on google but the pics are tiny and low quality.,.

[qwakers]

so wiring loom repaired sump baffelled (plasma cutters are ACE!) cleaned out, painted and fitted, so the next job was to make the engine mount, my (bulkhead side) gearbox mount had collapsed(quite some time ago actually) so i neded to do something about it. so i made a polymount for it. total cost about a tenner and 3 hours of my time and i still ballesd it up

my idea was good, weld two rings round the outside of the mount (tack welds only so they can easily be removed) and then fill it with pu rubber to give it a lip. any shrinkage will then just make those lips smaller which is no problem.


the mistake i made was not going to enough trouble to seal the gaps. i used duct tape around the edges but nothing at all on the bottom edge, so it leaked. a lot. i stuffed blue roll in it to bung it up but i lost quite a lot of pu so i may have to do it again anyway. if i do, i will use silicone sealer around all the gaps and a ring of it on the bottom edge, let the silicone go off and then fill it with rubber.




pics:





all the same, for a first attempt, i think it came out all right. would have been better if i sealed it properly and didnt waste a load of the pu rubber so it was filled to the top.





i think the rubber compound is quite soft. maybe too much so IMHO, its certainly more pliable than the other poly bushes in the car... maybe itll get harder its still a bit tacky to the touch.

actually my idea of using duct tape to seal it worked quite well, i just needed to use more of it.

then i got a snapped bolt out of the flywheel. tomorrow i have a late start to my day so ill get bu88er all done but thursday i want to put the engine back in...

i might make tregheran hill climb after all.....

[qwakers]

ive got the engine back in but i have a running problem courtesy of damaging my Dizzy cap. so its not quite done yet...

so whilst i waited for various parts deliveries over the last month i've been sorting out some issues with the paint.

when i painted it i knew that the green paint was probably white spirit based and therefore not compatible with normal solvent based primers etc. no problem says i, i wont need to go back to bare metal, ill just use a barrier coat, itll be fine....

HAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAA!!!

the result was a few weeks after painting it this happened...


cracks and sinking galore. appalling and very annoying.

so ive been taking panels back to bare metal and doing them again...

both the boot and engine cover are now spot on, the spoiler i repainted for a different reason and ive done some localised repairs on the b pillars and wings.

all in all much better.







just the bonnet left of the really bad panels and then i can do a couple more local repairs and itll be passable. not as good as respraying the entire car but it is after all just a track toy (if i ever get it to a track...) so im expecting a few bruises and id be pi$$ed if it was mint and i scratched it....

[qwakers]

so she's a runner again!

couple of niggly oil leaks and i think the alternator has taken this opportunity to start to die, it charges but the battery warning light is on.

i just have to drive it for 100 miles or so and change the oil again to make sure all is well.

i went over to my parents in it as it was a nice day on saturday and my dad surprised me by asking if he could have a go. he never asks to play with my toys....

he took it out for a play... and brought it back with a broken windscreen.... thanks dad

still he seemed to enjoy himself. the satnav said he'd hit about 120

so autoglass are coming to sort the windscreen sunday morning and ill go oil leak chasing soon. i think its the oil level sender in the sump. i had issues getting it to seal.

[craig]

Good stuff, you've got some determination, I'll give you that!!

[qwakers]

aaaaand... back to the red one


i replaced all three handbrake cables so the handbrake works now, which is nice, so i thought id finish the exhaust off..


i put the tubular manifold off of my 3sge engine on it to tidy the engine bay up a bit and make it more appealing to buyers then i modified the link pipe so that it all married up, i also took the silencer and cat back off cleaned them up and painted them so they look MUCH more presentable now.






last job was to sort the leaking sump, so off that came and it got attacked with a wire wheel in the grinder. 4 or 5 holes appeared in the expected place so a patch got welded on (id have rather welded the patch on the inside but it has baffles in, who knew!) then i welded the holes up on the inside (with difficulty) the idea of the patch isn't to seal the leak but to provide a decent amount of metal to weld to as the pan has gone rather thin in the areas i needed to weld, so, ideally, you weld (or just tack) a patch on the inside, then fully weld up all the holes on the outside, then flap wheel it smooth and jobs a goodun. as i said, baffles made that not a option so the repair is visible, but hey ho...


so thats rear rust sorted, brakes sorted, exhaust sorted, all oil leaks sorted, engine serviced and a new alternator.

just left to do is the paint on the sills and wheelarch, and then move on to the front...

getting there

[qwakers]

oh and this....




turned out to be a bad idea and didnt seal at all. so i ran new pipes all the way back to the splitter. so no leaks and a much better repair all in all....

i hate running new brake pipes

[qwakers]

one sill completed yesterday one more to do.






all undersealing done, undertrays back on. just gotta sort out the front issues (brake calipers, suspension and inner wheelarches) the itll be mot time!