1997 FZJ80 Rehabilitation

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I didn’t end up polishing the VC or painting it. Don't have the time to fool with it right now. I did clean it and wire brush it and I think it turned out just fine. Not showroom quality but this isn't a show truck. Now I just need to clean the rest of the engine bay. :rolleyes:
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Finally, I connected the wires to the distributor. I put a coat of dielectric grease on the rubber boots (not on the actual contacts) to help keep moisture out of the cap. I decided not to replace the cap and rotor because as far as I know, there's no issue with the ones that are on there. I have the parts to swap out later if I need to. I found a thread on water proofing the distributor and I'll look more into that when I have time.
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Made some progress today. Removed and tested both VSV's, VCV, and check valve per FSM. The EGR VSV (blue) was bad, the fuel pressure VSV (red) checked out just fine. The VCV and check valve were fine but I had the parts so I threw new ones on while I was replacing the EGR VSV. Then I spent about twenty minutes pulling off old vac hoses, cutting new ones, and replacing them before I bolted the VSV brackets back to the bottom of the intake.
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Fuel VSV (the not broken red one)
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EGR VSV (broken blue one that got replaced)
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I went ahead and filled the VSV connectors with dielectric grease (the rubber seal area, not the contacts). How much sense does that make? I'm not sure. I am sure that if I have to remove the intake because one of these corrodes or gets wet, I may throw a wrench through the windshield of some other vehicle I value less than this one. So, in the grease went.
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And here is the rat's nest with all new hoses and bolted back together
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Unfortunately, I don't have the aluminum crush washers for the fuel rail banjo bolt - and neither does the dealership. So now I'm waiting for those to show up sometime next week. When they do, I should be able to button it all back up and see if I royally screwed anything up while I was "fixing" the 80. :worms:
 
Ok so yesterday morning I got my hands on a new EGR gasket and fresh aluminum crush washers for the hard line to the fuel rail.

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Went ahead started reassembling the fuel rail in preparation for install. Everything went fairly well except for re-torquing the rear banjo bolt on the fuel filter. Hard to reach but fortunately I had the upper intake off. A 17mm ratcheting wrench is your friend.
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I found that the engine wiring harness near the EGR valve had the fabled crispiness. It wasn't to the point of any visible damage but the previous wrap job was falling apart. With that in mind, I decided to wrap that section in some metallic tape in the hopes of keeping the wiring harness happy and unmelted for many a mile. It's not the prettiest thing in the world but hopefully it works.
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I was also missing the factory clips that hold the wiring harness away from the EGR valve and off the valve cover so I wired the harness to the existing brackets.
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With the fuel rail torqued to spec it was time to install the intake. It went back on easier than it came off, mostly due to me being a little more patient and now knowing where the bolts and studs go. Removal was a bit of a treasure hunt. My only real complaint was hooking up the two vacuum hoses that go to the bi-metal valve on the block. If you don't have the pleasure of knowing what I'm talking about, it's this little gem.
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I bought a new one just in case I broke the plastic nipples where the vac hoses mount. Apparently it happens all the time and I didn't want that kind of headache. Well, after further reading I realized that this little doodad is just a thermal switching valve for the evap system. That being the case, it has few moving parts and nothing in very real danger of corroding. Furthermore, they appear to be a royal pain to switch out given their location directly below where the lower intake mounts to the head and the presence of said plastic ports which prevent the use of a normal socket. All of that to say that I opted to gamble and leave the old one in. It's removal won't be any more difficult with the engine fully assembled because you can't get at it except from the driver's side unless the entire intake is removed.
 
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Then on went the throttle body. Not bad as long as you remember to hook up the coolant hoses on the bottom side. You can't really reach them after it's bolted up.

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Finally got the air hose and top of the filter can back in place.
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The only missing piece was hooking up the accelerator cable, cruise control cable, and transmission cable. Maybe I'm just a special case but installing the new accelerator cable was the simple job from hell. Getting the old one out was a cake walk but getting the new one bolted back to the fire wall was an hour long adventure in finding new swear words 🤬

Actually attaching the cables to the throttle body wasn't as bad as I expected after the fiasco I had stuffing myself into the driver's side floor board. Just make sure you put the cables in the correct places: accelerator closest to radiator on top, cruise control in other slot on top, transmission cable mounted on the bottom slot.
 
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After a few seconds cranking to prime the new filter and injectors, she fired right up on the first try and proceeded to rev through the roof....cable was too tight. Shut her down and adjusted the cable. Tried again, same thing. Out comes the 12mm wrench. After a couple of rounds she was running fine.

Took a few laps around the neighborhood and everything was fine except my coolant temps were rather high - like an idiot I had forgotten to top off the radiator after leaking coolant from the loose hoses under the TB. Came back, parked, let the 80 cool for bit and then burped the system with fresh Toyota red and some good ol' Wally World distilled water. Problem solved.
 
Now that everything is back together I'm going to go on a couple test drives and make sure nothing weird is going on. I'll continue to adjust the cables as necessary. Then, once I'm satisfied that I didn't break anything I'll move on to rebuilding the brakes and then replacing the suspension bushings. I'm looking forward to learning more about this vehicle but I hope I can make a little bit better time than I did with this engine "refresh". I got interrupted more often than I would have liked and it wasn't optimal but now it's done.
 
Drove the 80 for about two hours yesterday. Zero (new) issues. Coolant temps were back down in the the 180-190 range. Never higher than 190, which is exactly how they were pre-refresh. Happy with that. Still have a bit of a tendency to dart at highway speeds. I'm hoping the caster plates and new bushings will correct this. I've tightened the steering and adjusted toe prior to this so I think the main issue is caster and worn bushings but we shall see.
 
One thing I did notice while driving was a bit of a dead spot in the tach. When I really pushed it on the interstate the engine would rev smoothly up to about 3100 rpm and go no higher. I held the pedal there for a few seconds as I was going up a mild grade - then I guess the transmission decided it needed to downshift and the engine reved up to 4500 rpm momentarily before an upshift where it went back to 31-3200 rpm. Is this normal behavior or am I missing something?

It just seemed like there was an invisible wall at 3100 rpm in terms of the pedal - almost like I ran out of throw in the mechanism but I'm fairly certain it's installed correctly. Maybe the spring is getting old?
 
Wrencher93 said:
One thing I did notice while driving was a bit of a dead spot in the tach. When I really pushed it on the interstate the engine would rev smoothly up to about 3100 rpm and go no higher. I held the pedal there for a few seconds as I was going up a mild grade - then I guess the transmission decided it needed to downshift and the engine reved up to 4500 rpm momentarily before an upshift where it went back to 31-3200 rpm. Is this normal behavior or am I missing something?

It just seemed like there was an invisible wall at 3100 rpm in terms of the pedal - almost like I ran out of throw in the mechanism but I'm fairly certain it's installed correctly. Maybe the spring is getting old?
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Might need to adjust your transmission kick down cable. Might be too tight.
 
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