22re remanufacture from a machinists perspective (1 Viewer)

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.

Joined
May 24, 2015
Threads
32
Messages
361
So I let the snowball get away on me and am remanufacturing my 22re engine.

The engine was my daily driver for years with 5.29's and 35's and I live in a mountainious city. The engine basically idled at 3k rpm and shifted regularly at 4500. Albiet some occasional hot ratttle clatter start up noise that I didnt figure out and #4 hole was lower compression, and all exh valves failed a leak down, it still ran strong, didnt smoke, and had good power.

A cold compression test showed holes 1-3 were all 165-170psi compression with #4 at around 145. A wet test on hole #4 came up to the 165ish mark. Leak down showed holes 1-3 leaking down at around 20% all notable through the exhaust. Around 35% on hole #4, notable through the exhaust. Couldnt tell whether or not any noise was coming from the bottom end. The oil pressure was 7psi HOT idle on 5w30 conventional oil. Tons of cold pressure and tons of cruising pressure.

Roughly speaking there was 150k miles on this engine. Its not factory to the truck with 256k miles on the dash, and word was it was a 88k mile engine that had the head gasket, cam, and timing chain done on it....the extra 62k miles is best guess.

I wasnt originally going to do much of anything to the 22re as I have motor swap plans in the forseeable future, but I did want to atleast semi-address the engine in the interim. What was going to be a quick valve service, timing chain kit, and head gasket got turned into a full remanufacture job pretty quick for no other reason than I'm in the right line of work to make it happen cheapish and the engine was already out of the hole.

I blew the complete engine assembly apart in record time, hot acid tanked the block and crank, washed it, decked it, and started punching it.

The deck took .012" to clean up. It was pretty straight and square around the #1 hole, didnt touch the middle much, and hit half of #4 hole. Lots of pitting and erosion around the water jackets. Didnt take a picture of the first pass, but thats it ready to come off the machine. I have no idea how this thing ever held a head gasket. Possibly lowish compression from a slightly lifted compression ring around #4 hole?

The timing chain guides were perfect. Best guess on the clatter is worn out tensioner.

All the intake valves vac'd like freshly machined valves and seats, and all 4 exhausts were roughly the same leakage rate.

All the bores were atleast .0015 taper and out of round. And .0015" larger than max spec. Cleaned up pretty quickly in the Sunnen Ck10.... no problem cleaning up for a .50mm piston. Aka roughly .020" over.

The bearings looked fairly good but just startimg to show some wear on the thrust sides. The crank measures standard and perfectly. The finish is just about as nice as it would be coming off the crank grinder, a polish will get it there. .0001" under max on the rod journals and .0003" under max on the main journals. Usually dont get this lucky when it comes to the crank. Toyota set this motor up pretty tight at the factory. It will go back in with standard bearings.

Thats all for now...

20230107_180901.jpg


20230107_213906.jpg


20230112_210249.jpg


20230112_210305.jpg


20230112_210320.jpg
 
Last edited:
It's definitely gonna run better now. Are you going to be able to control yourself or are you making mods?
I sure hope it runs better! New engines usually do, lol.

Not a problem controlling myself as I firmly believe in theres no replacement for displacement. Well, 20lbs of boost is a replacement I guess. But I'd take a cheaper more powerful small block v8 over a boosted 4cyl.

Mostly shooting for a standard stock engine. Mods are going to be an engine balance, and a cam.... little more duration, little more valve lift.

I realize you can gain a few extra hp from stainless undercut oversized valves and port work, but it doesnt fit my budget or application. It seems one could spend a ton of money and time on a 22r and still be behind the curve.
 
I finished honing the block today. You can remove a lot of material fairly quickly to get it to a roughed oversize, but finishing to size takes time. For a .020 piston you would cut out .017 with roughing stones while avoiding cutting a taper, hour glass, or barrel shape into the bore. The last few thousandths to finished size are done with finer stones. Being mindful of heat, the bore gets taken to final size while keeping it round and straight. It takes several attempts to creep up on the final cold bore size. Heat generated from cutting will make the bore measure larger than it is and its cruical to let the bore cool down and go back and give it a few more rubs to get the final dimension.

The coated skirt cast pistons I chose came out of the box with a .0003" variance in size and a minimum clearance of .001" required. I blue printed the bores to the pistons to end up with a final skirt to wall clearance of .0014" for each hole.

I will be resizing the rods, small end and big end. The original piston pin bushings looked worn and 1 of them was too loose. The other 3 were tight enough but I failed them on a visual... likely not far behind being worn out. I pushed the old bushings out, pressed in new ones, and sized them to the pin supplied with the piston. This takes time to rough size and come back to the cold rod for final cold pin bushing size. The big end of the rod measured fine vertically but was showing distortion and was out of round. I cut the caps and rods and roughed them to size...again need to creep up on final cold bearing bore size.

I mentioned earlier that the crankshaft rod journal measured .0001" off max. size. The rod bearing bore measured .0003" off min. size. With a brand new aftermarket bearing, that would put the rod oil clearance at .0009". The oil clearance spec is .0008-.0037. Toyota set this engine up at the factory threading the needle on squeaking the rod bearings when it left the showroom floor. Now thats not to say the OE factory bearing didnt have a couple more tenths clearance in it, but its quite impressive to me how good the crank looks after 150k miles. It is my opinion that Toyota truly set this engine up at minimim oil clearance to let it wear in over many thousands of miles.

The old bearings are in the dumpster but I'm going to dig them out and see what its oil clearance was at the 150k mile mark.

20230113_190105.jpg


20230113_200252.jpg


20230113_200316.jpg
 
Wasnt originally going to balance the engine, resurface the flywheel or get a new clutch because there is lots of disc left but I needed a new throw out bearing and the bearing was $35 which wasnt koyo. A new pilot bearing at $8. A new Aisin clutch kit that came with a koyo T/O and koyo pilot was $137... kind of a no brainer to get a new clutch out of the deal for $92. Grinding the flywheel is free.

Seal surface on the stock harmonic balancer was no good.... bought a new H/B.

So I figured never a better time than right now to balance the engine.

Being an inline engine I didnt need to make any bob weights. And theoretically the FW PP and HB are all neutral... not quite. Balanced the crank then started adding and zeroing out the Flyhweel, PP, HB. This crank was really close right off the show room floor. 10 grams on the snout and .7 grams on the tail. The fly wheel can go on in 1 of 6 positions, at a minimum it was out 0 grams and at a maximum it was out 17 grams.... I chose the 0 gram position. Harmonic balancer only goes on 1 way and was 5 grams out. The PP can go on 1 of 3 ways. In the best position it was out 15 grams and in the worst position it was out 35 grams. I chose the 15 gram position.

bit of drilling and flapper wheeling on the PP and HB and I called it a finished balance at 1 gram. Seems slapping it together all willy nilly at best I'd have been out 5 and 15 and could have been out 5 and 50...plus whatever the 50 transfers to the snout.

20230117_190044.jpg


20230117_190056.jpg
 
Grandad taught me to always, always, always have a rebuild balanced. I've never regretted it.

When it came time to do my 22R we found that the previous clutch surface grind on the flywheel must have had some grit between the machine and the crank mating surface because the whole clutch surface was tilted. I knew something was off because it would rattle the dash like my old Rabbit diesel at about 4500 rpm. The two shops that I've used would zero balance a flywheel that can go on multiple ways. On my 170 slant 6 they neutral balanced the flywheel, then put the PP on it, marked an orientation with some center punch marks, and then neutral balanced the PP while mounted on the flywheel.
 
Washed the block. Some blasted parts. Block ready to assemble; frost plugs in and paint.

20230114_155036.jpg


20230119_194500.jpg


20230120_171532.jpg


20230120_190819.jpg
 
Cyl head casting was shot. Possibly repairable but not worth the time or effort. Exhaust seats were pounded out, heavy pitting into the firing ring and deep into water jackets. The guides and valves stems were minty though. New fully machined castings are available cheap. I bought a bare casting and assembled it with refaced and polished OE valves, springs, a OE cam ground to .430 lift .213° @ .050.

The seat contact position and guides on this head were perfect, dead flat. Couldnt ask for it to be any better.

The "miled out" stock springs were still in spec and had 5lb more pressure than a 300 mile set of aftermarket replacement springs.

20230121_171530.jpg


20230121_182500.jpg


20230121_182508.jpg


20230121_182834.jpg


20230121_190153.jpg
 
New valve adjusters from Toyota.... spendy at $10 EACH, lol. I trimmed the valve tips, and had the rockers refaced when the cam got ground. New head bolts.

Knocked out the plugs in the intakes and cleaned em up real nice.
20230122_173143.jpg


20230127_192625.jpg


20230123_173435.jpg


20230123_173504.jpg
 
New injector O rings and coolant lines are pretty well standard while youre there items. Had the injectors cleaned and flow checked. Fixed some wiring loom and dried up stuff.

And thats pretty much it. Ready to go in the hole minus a dozen small things left. I'll try and get a video of its first fire up.

20230128_173432.jpg


20230128_175715.jpg


20230128_161211.jpg


20230128_220841.jpg
 
The Right Stuff. It's not just any old silicone. Remember that old Crazy Glue ad with the guy hanging by his hard hat glued to a skyscraper beam? I'm sure that they could redo that ad using The Right Stuff.
 
The Right Stuff. It's not just any old silicone. Remember that old Crazy Glue ad with the guy hanging by his hard hat glued to a skyscraper beam? I'm sure that they could redo that ad using The Right Stuff.

So how's the Right Stuff rate against the Ultra Grey? I've read a lot of pros and cons on each and honestly don't know what to believe.
 
If you're asking me in particular I've never compared those two specifically, but I've also not experienced any of the old school silicones working anywhere near as well as The Right Stuff.
 
I dont use anything except The Right Stuff... everything else is the wrong stuff. Ultra gray falls apart on tear down. The right stuff likely could run the oil pan without bolts. The "high torque" claim for ultra gray I dont really understand... the right stuff makes such a strongly bonded seal, I cant see anything even coming close considering how easy wrong stuff comes apart. If I'm tearing a sealed major component apart, how easy it comes apart is the least of my concerns.
 
Looks great. Going together with clean parts feels good. Cleaning them.... doesn't feel good.

Did you buy an OEM bare cylinder head? If not what did you get?

Thanks, I cant stand dirtily assembled parts... and I especially h8mud :cool:

Enginetech cyl head casting. Seems theres atleast 3 claims by 22re builders claiming their casts arent junk but they arent OEM either. They also wont tell you where they got them or who's name is on them except claim "buy from me for X reason". I have no reason to believe their cast source is any better than what enginetech will sell me for half the price. Time will tell. OE cast is around $1000.... 3-4x the price of anything else available.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom