Whatever that is, it is in an unusual orientation.
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I'm looking forward to your updates. Glad you caught it before the block ventilation.
- Thread starter
- #203
Turns out the crank was indeed cracked. I took in my other crank and we got real lucky and that one was already cracked on the #1 main in the same fashion!
They checked the block and the 1-2-3 mains are a bit loose at 45deg, #4 is .001" tight, and 5-6-7 are fine. I'm having them line hone it.
That leaves me in the predicament of what to do for the crank. Aftermarket cranks are extremely expensive, the cheapest one is from Eagle for $2k but it's a stroker so I would need new rods. Anything else is knocking on $5k, including all stock stroke options. For the stroker crank I would be $3k in all said and done, for something that won't really gain me anything.
For stock replacements, a couple options:
#1 is a machined crank in Las Vegas (5-6 hour round trip) that comes with bearings for $400, it would need to be balanced
#2 is machining the original crank with the cracked #4 main and see if the crack goes away, or at least smooth out the crack and just send it
#3 is a somewhat disassembled engine 45 minutes away, but he wants $500 for the long block and the cylinders are rusty so who knows the shape of the crank, I offered him $100 for just the crank
#4 is a complete 2JZ up near Salt Lake City (7-8 hour round trip) for I think $500
I feel like the Las Vegas crank is the best option. The bearings are from Engine Tech which from reviews aren't terrible but are cheaper bearings, debatable if they should be swapped out. If I can get the crank 45 minutes away that would be by far the most convenient, but I'm not paying $500 for a short block---first that's more money than you can get an entire engine for, and second I would end up with another block and a bunch of other parts that I already have spares of. But if I can get just the crank for $100 and it's in decent shape (the surface rust on the cylinder walls makes me nervous) then that would jump to the top option. Machining the existing crank I think would be fine, but just rubs me the wrong way of putting in the effort to machine it and a good chance the crack is still there after machining, and while I think if the crack is smoothed over it'd be fine there would be the eternal worry of it opening up and then eating the bearing.
Regardless, any crank I end up with will need to go to the machine shop. Hopefully I can grab the nearby one for cheap and then it only needs to get balanced and saves me spending half a day driving around. If I could find a brand new crank that was ready to rock for a grand I'd have a hard time ignoring that, but 2JZ cranks are like gold compared to LS stuff.
They checked the block and the 1-2-3 mains are a bit loose at 45deg, #4 is .001" tight, and 5-6-7 are fine. I'm having them line hone it.
That leaves me in the predicament of what to do for the crank. Aftermarket cranks are extremely expensive, the cheapest one is from Eagle for $2k but it's a stroker so I would need new rods. Anything else is knocking on $5k, including all stock stroke options. For the stroker crank I would be $3k in all said and done, for something that won't really gain me anything.
For stock replacements, a couple options:
#1 is a machined crank in Las Vegas (5-6 hour round trip) that comes with bearings for $400, it would need to be balanced
#2 is machining the original crank with the cracked #4 main and see if the crack goes away, or at least smooth out the crack and just send it
#3 is a somewhat disassembled engine 45 minutes away, but he wants $500 for the long block and the cylinders are rusty so who knows the shape of the crank, I offered him $100 for just the crank
#4 is a complete 2JZ up near Salt Lake City (7-8 hour round trip) for I think $500
I feel like the Las Vegas crank is the best option. The bearings are from Engine Tech which from reviews aren't terrible but are cheaper bearings, debatable if they should be swapped out. If I can get the crank 45 minutes away that would be by far the most convenient, but I'm not paying $500 for a short block---first that's more money than you can get an entire engine for, and second I would end up with another block and a bunch of other parts that I already have spares of. But if I can get just the crank for $100 and it's in decent shape (the surface rust on the cylinder walls makes me nervous) then that would jump to the top option. Machining the existing crank I think would be fine, but just rubs me the wrong way of putting in the effort to machine it and a good chance the crack is still there after machining, and while I think if the crack is smoothed over it'd be fine there would be the eternal worry of it opening up and then eating the bearing.
Regardless, any crank I end up with will need to go to the machine shop. Hopefully I can grab the nearby one for cheap and then it only needs to get balanced and saves me spending half a day driving around. If I could find a brand new crank that was ready to rock for a grand I'd have a hard time ignoring that, but 2JZ cranks are like gold compared to LS stuff.
Any junk yards near you that might have a donor car sitting in it/them?
- Thread starter
- #205
Dude down the hill replied, $250 for crank with block and head, I said let's do it so picked up a block with quite the surface rust. Head is in decent shape. Just got home and tore it down in the bed of the truck.
And the crank looks decent, don't want to jinx myself! One of the rod bearings was spun and majorly squished onto the crank, but I don't see any cracks or that much wear on the journals!
Drop it off at the machine shop tomorrow and get it in the que to be worked!
And the crank looks decent, don't want to jinx myself! One of the rod bearings was spun and majorly squished onto the crank, but I don't see any cracks or that much wear on the journals!
Drop it off at the machine shop tomorrow and get it in the que to be worked!
- Thread starter
- #206
It's that time again ladies and gentleman! It's winter/early spring and that means it's time to work on 2JZ things apparently. My goal is to someday have this vehicle running through a winter when I can actually enjoy the one climate control of using the heater.
Not a lot of photos, but where we left off was two crankshafts were cracked and I had just picked up a 3rd. Well the 3rd was majorly ****ed and also cracked. It had spun a rod bearing, which isn't a big deal, except that journal was then cracked too. The machine shop tried to grind the crack out but it wasn't going anywhere, and after inspecting the very original crank I had which was cracked on the #1 main, you could clearly see the crack had propagated about 1/4" all the way through the journal and was getting into the bulk of the crank, so it wasn't just a surface level oddity. Strangely, I called three big 2JZ shops in the US and every single one said they had never seen such a thing? Very odd, so odd I made a thread on a Supra forum just so that future generations would be aware if they found a crack that they're not alone. Three shops that specialize or work on a lot of 2JZs and never seen one with a crack, and I have three!
So I made a chair.
And if one were to spend the time, the crack on each crank is oriented outward to find.
Only one of the shops I called, XAT, even knew where a stock crank was (ie they had one they would sell). At this point I hated the idea of spending more than I had spent on an entire engine on just a single crank, but if they could confirm it was okay, plus they could sell me the correct size bearings for it, at least it would show up with some guarantee of being functional. There weren't any complete 2JZ within 3 hours that I could fine (for <$1000) and one guy had a crank in Las Vegas that had already been reground for some reason, and it was only $100 cheaper than the XAT one. So I forked over the $500 for the XAT crank, which evolved into $1200 after polishing, bearings, shipping, and taxes. A lot of money considering my first 2JZ was $1000 total, and my second 2JZ was $300! But again, somewhat of a guarantee this one is fine and still cheaper than a $5000 aftermarket crank....
I am hopeful that ships this week, so I started putting together my engine assembly tent. A building inside of my building.
I had all the 2JZ parts laid out on the ground originally hoping for a quick solution, and eventually was forced to move them, and they had already become covered in a nice dust of grinding and welding and dirt from around the shop. Additionally they have lots of bearing material all over them, so I bought this Harbor Freight car port to act as a temporary pseudo clean room since I have the 2JZ and then a 3UR to build afterwards, and once those are done I can pack this up and throw it on a shelf.
I have some LEDs hung from the roof, the parts cleaner, and two tables that are essentially dirty side and clean side parts, and then can zip up the door when I'm done and not worry about things getting dirty after cleaning them.
Currently I am only waiting on the crank and bearings. I have everything back from my machine shop. It cost $780 and they line honed the block, light hone on the cylinders to get fresh cross hatch, cleaned the block, built up some cerakote layers on the pistons to get them smooth again on the skirts, and applied a heat dissipation coating on the bottom of the pistons, and then charged me for grinding the single rod journal. I'm not sure if it was said before, but one of the failure modes we found was the ARP main studs were clamping the main caps so tight they were squishing the crank on the first three or four mains as I recall. This is not an issue per se of the ARPs, just a byproduct of using them, and I was not aware of that and they didn't realize I was using ARPs the first time the block was machined which is how it got through. The block being line honed was to fix that by torquing the mains down with the ARPs and then honing it so everything is matched.
Additionally there was at least one ring that was broken in half somehow, so I ordered a whole new set of rings and then a new head gasket.
Today I started working on the engine just cleaning everything, I didn't get super far but I pulled all the valve buckets and cleaned them and then dunked the head and power washed it in the parts bin to try and flush everything out. I saw a video where someone had made some 3D printed parts holders so couldn't resist and did the same for the valve buckets.
I have started measuring the pistons and cylinders, and then will start grinding the new rings. I'll put a spreadsheet together to track everything this time. I will be fairly anal this time on measuring stuff since that's ultimately what bit me last time was assuming since I was using stock parts that everything should have stock clearances which wasn't the case. The next few days and weeks will see the 2JZ come together for the 3rd time? It's kind of the engine of Theseus at this point, but will be the second full rebuild of the engine and the 3rd time it'll be started fresh in the truck, fingers crossed 3rd times the charm!
Luckily this is (obviously) a project vehicle, although that is a bit ironic considering I put more miles on the Hilux in a daily driver capacity than anything else in the fleet---so I am looking forward to getting it back!
Not a lot of photos, but where we left off was two crankshafts were cracked and I had just picked up a 3rd. Well the 3rd was majorly ****ed and also cracked. It had spun a rod bearing, which isn't a big deal, except that journal was then cracked too. The machine shop tried to grind the crack out but it wasn't going anywhere, and after inspecting the very original crank I had which was cracked on the #1 main, you could clearly see the crack had propagated about 1/4" all the way through the journal and was getting into the bulk of the crank, so it wasn't just a surface level oddity. Strangely, I called three big 2JZ shops in the US and every single one said they had never seen such a thing? Very odd, so odd I made a thread on a Supra forum just so that future generations would be aware if they found a crack that they're not alone. Three shops that specialize or work on a lot of 2JZs and never seen one with a crack, and I have three!
So I made a chair.
And if one were to spend the time, the crack on each crank is oriented outward to find.
Only one of the shops I called, XAT, even knew where a stock crank was (ie they had one they would sell). At this point I hated the idea of spending more than I had spent on an entire engine on just a single crank, but if they could confirm it was okay, plus they could sell me the correct size bearings for it, at least it would show up with some guarantee of being functional. There weren't any complete 2JZ within 3 hours that I could fine (for <$1000) and one guy had a crank in Las Vegas that had already been reground for some reason, and it was only $100 cheaper than the XAT one. So I forked over the $500 for the XAT crank, which evolved into $1200 after polishing, bearings, shipping, and taxes. A lot of money considering my first 2JZ was $1000 total, and my second 2JZ was $300! But again, somewhat of a guarantee this one is fine and still cheaper than a $5000 aftermarket crank....
I am hopeful that ships this week, so I started putting together my engine assembly tent. A building inside of my building.
I had all the 2JZ parts laid out on the ground originally hoping for a quick solution, and eventually was forced to move them, and they had already become covered in a nice dust of grinding and welding and dirt from around the shop. Additionally they have lots of bearing material all over them, so I bought this Harbor Freight car port to act as a temporary pseudo clean room since I have the 2JZ and then a 3UR to build afterwards, and once those are done I can pack this up and throw it on a shelf.
I have some LEDs hung from the roof, the parts cleaner, and two tables that are essentially dirty side and clean side parts, and then can zip up the door when I'm done and not worry about things getting dirty after cleaning them.
Currently I am only waiting on the crank and bearings. I have everything back from my machine shop. It cost $780 and they line honed the block, light hone on the cylinders to get fresh cross hatch, cleaned the block, built up some cerakote layers on the pistons to get them smooth again on the skirts, and applied a heat dissipation coating on the bottom of the pistons, and then charged me for grinding the single rod journal. I'm not sure if it was said before, but one of the failure modes we found was the ARP main studs were clamping the main caps so tight they were squishing the crank on the first three or four mains as I recall. This is not an issue per se of the ARPs, just a byproduct of using them, and I was not aware of that and they didn't realize I was using ARPs the first time the block was machined which is how it got through. The block being line honed was to fix that by torquing the mains down with the ARPs and then honing it so everything is matched.
Additionally there was at least one ring that was broken in half somehow, so I ordered a whole new set of rings and then a new head gasket.
Today I started working on the engine just cleaning everything, I didn't get super far but I pulled all the valve buckets and cleaned them and then dunked the head and power washed it in the parts bin to try and flush everything out. I saw a video where someone had made some 3D printed parts holders so couldn't resist and did the same for the valve buckets.
I have started measuring the pistons and cylinders, and then will start grinding the new rings. I'll put a spreadsheet together to track everything this time. I will be fairly anal this time on measuring stuff since that's ultimately what bit me last time was assuming since I was using stock parts that everything should have stock clearances which wasn't the case. The next few days and weeks will see the 2JZ come together for the 3rd time? It's kind of the engine of Theseus at this point, but will be the second full rebuild of the engine and the 3rd time it'll be started fresh in the truck, fingers crossed 3rd times the charm!
Luckily this is (obviously) a project vehicle, although that is a bit ironic considering I put more miles on the Hilux in a daily driver capacity than anything else in the fleet---so I am looking forward to getting it back!
- Thread starter
- #208
Wow it was a lot longer ago than I thought when I updated I had started on the engine! Life has been extremely busy and not often I've even had a chance to go into the shop. Multiple times the past few weeks I'd say I'm going to work on the Hilux today, and that seemed to initiate every client needing a fire put out at work and putting in long hours. But I've been able to eek out some time finally and got the engine together!
This time I was very diligent measuring things, could've measured a few things more but I think this is good enough.
All of the oil clearances are within stock spec, albeit pretty universally on the looser end of things---but still within the max limits and that's all that matters!
After measuring and cleaning things it went pretty fast. I was a bit slow putting the ancillary items on since I thought there was more to it. I do absolutely love the simplicity of the 2JZ, couple generic sized O-rings, couple spots for some RTV, alignment pins for everything, timing belt is just line up a dot on each pulley with a mark on the engine, and it goes together really fast.
With the engine together, got the clutch and transmission attached. One of the exhaust studs was tearing out of the head so I helicoiled that, and then one of the studs for the turbo was also ripping out so helicoiled that too and now everything is nice and tight.
And after months and months got the truck rolled into the shop!
Engine went in without too many hiccups, just have to really crank the front up to tuck it under and then lower down into the engine mounts. The engine mounts were wickedly out of alignment, at this point the engine is clearly a stressed member and most likely keeping the front of the frame from collapsing. I had to use a 6ft breaker bar to spread the frame and engine mount apart to get the bolt holes to line up.
Getting everything installed without using the lift was easier than I thought. The exhaust was a bit of a bitch, and I decided to throw out the stupid fiberglass heat shield----the nastiest s*** ever, can't believe anyone recommends that s***---and in the future I might redo the exhaust down to 3.0" tubing, though that sounds really small for a 3.0L engine running at 2.5 bar....
Yesterday I finished hooking everything up. Coolant lines, driveshaft, harness, fuel lines, power lines, etc. so today I was ready to start it. I found the XAT Racing break in procedure, which is more akin to oil change guidelines and I liked, so today started through that. I got some 15w-40 oil (little thicker since the bearings are a bit on the looser side) and some Lucas break in zinc additive, and then I got to use this little Summit oil primer that I bought a couple weeks ago. Filled it up and pressurized it to 100psi and turned on the dash and got to see it build pressure and then spend probably 15-20 minutes slowly pushing 40psi of oil through the engine. It was very slow, but when I started it it was fully primed and made pressure instantly! A far cry from previous times starting the 2JZ which is somewhat notorious for being hard to prime the oil.
I then had the wife come and vary the throttle from 1000-3000rpm for ~20 minutes. I also had the truck jacked up until the rear of the engine was ~1.5deg high and it seemed to bleed the coolant great right away, again a far cry from before trying to get the engine and rear mount radiator to bleed but I think I got it figured out. The engine absolutely purrs (course I thought that last time too....) and came up to temp, oil pressure came down as the oil warmed up, and by the end of the 20 minutes the engine would idle at 40psi of oil pressure. I hope once it breaks in more that it will maintain that, the last time it eventually settled around 20psi of oil pressure at idle----the 2JZ minimum spec is 11psi, which seems insane.... the original 2JZ I had in the truck idled at 40+ psi of oil pressure which was awesome, if I can get back to that I would be much more confident (though lots of people say 20psi for a 2JZ at idle is fine since it's at zero load).
Next up is to change the oil now, get fresh oil and filter in, I'll do 100 miles or so of chill driving and then change the oil again, then let it rip and probably change it a third time at 500 miles or so. I would've gone for a drive today, but it started raining so that'll be a tomorrow goal. The clutch should also get bled, and probably flush the brake fluid since it's looking pretty gross after sitting with the clutch line exposed to air for the last few months (clutch and brakes share a reservoir).
Fingers crossed I take it for a rip this weekend!
This time I was very diligent measuring things, could've measured a few things more but I think this is good enough.
All of the oil clearances are within stock spec, albeit pretty universally on the looser end of things---but still within the max limits and that's all that matters!
After measuring and cleaning things it went pretty fast. I was a bit slow putting the ancillary items on since I thought there was more to it. I do absolutely love the simplicity of the 2JZ, couple generic sized O-rings, couple spots for some RTV, alignment pins for everything, timing belt is just line up a dot on each pulley with a mark on the engine, and it goes together really fast.
With the engine together, got the clutch and transmission attached. One of the exhaust studs was tearing out of the head so I helicoiled that, and then one of the studs for the turbo was also ripping out so helicoiled that too and now everything is nice and tight.
And after months and months got the truck rolled into the shop!
Engine went in without too many hiccups, just have to really crank the front up to tuck it under and then lower down into the engine mounts. The engine mounts were wickedly out of alignment, at this point the engine is clearly a stressed member and most likely keeping the front of the frame from collapsing. I had to use a 6ft breaker bar to spread the frame and engine mount apart to get the bolt holes to line up.
Getting everything installed without using the lift was easier than I thought. The exhaust was a bit of a bitch, and I decided to throw out the stupid fiberglass heat shield----the nastiest s*** ever, can't believe anyone recommends that s***---and in the future I might redo the exhaust down to 3.0" tubing, though that sounds really small for a 3.0L engine running at 2.5 bar....
Yesterday I finished hooking everything up. Coolant lines, driveshaft, harness, fuel lines, power lines, etc. so today I was ready to start it. I found the XAT Racing break in procedure, which is more akin to oil change guidelines and I liked, so today started through that. I got some 15w-40 oil (little thicker since the bearings are a bit on the looser side) and some Lucas break in zinc additive, and then I got to use this little Summit oil primer that I bought a couple weeks ago. Filled it up and pressurized it to 100psi and turned on the dash and got to see it build pressure and then spend probably 15-20 minutes slowly pushing 40psi of oil through the engine. It was very slow, but when I started it it was fully primed and made pressure instantly! A far cry from previous times starting the 2JZ which is somewhat notorious for being hard to prime the oil.
I then had the wife come and vary the throttle from 1000-3000rpm for ~20 minutes. I also had the truck jacked up until the rear of the engine was ~1.5deg high and it seemed to bleed the coolant great right away, again a far cry from before trying to get the engine and rear mount radiator to bleed but I think I got it figured out. The engine absolutely purrs (course I thought that last time too....) and came up to temp, oil pressure came down as the oil warmed up, and by the end of the 20 minutes the engine would idle at 40psi of oil pressure. I hope once it breaks in more that it will maintain that, the last time it eventually settled around 20psi of oil pressure at idle----the 2JZ minimum spec is 11psi, which seems insane.... the original 2JZ I had in the truck idled at 40+ psi of oil pressure which was awesome, if I can get back to that I would be much more confident (though lots of people say 20psi for a 2JZ at idle is fine since it's at zero load).
Next up is to change the oil now, get fresh oil and filter in, I'll do 100 miles or so of chill driving and then change the oil again, then let it rip and probably change it a third time at 500 miles or so. I would've gone for a drive today, but it started raining so that'll be a tomorrow goal. The clutch should also get bled, and probably flush the brake fluid since it's looking pretty gross after sitting with the clutch line exposed to air for the last few months (clutch and brakes share a reservoir).
Fingers crossed I take it for a rip this weekend!
You're past it now, but have you tried one of the vacuum coolant system leak-checker / filler tools? An ASE Master Mech friend of mine swears by his, won't fill a coolant system any other way any more.
Like this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BW39HJS?tag=ihco-20
Like this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BW39HJS?tag=ihco-20
- Thread starter
- #210
I've never tried one, it actually sounds like the perfect setup for this and my buggy (though the buggy is far easier since the engine isn't angled up like the Hilux). I might have to get that, good idea!
FWIW He even uses it to fill his '69 Gran Prix's coolant system. Doesn't get much simpler than that, but he uses it because he says it saves him a bunch of burping time even on that car. I bought that kit, but have yet to need it so no idea how well it works. But it is the kit that was recommended by a couple sharp guys on GJ so its what I bought.
- Thread starter
- #212
And she's on the road again!
Fresh oil and filter, get the shifter in, hood on, grille, the heater core heat valve decided it wanted to leak so entirely bypassed it (which it seemed marginal at turning the heater "off" to begin with), and then she was ready!
I will admit, when I pulled up to the gate to leave the valvetrain seemed to have a weird noise but I just prayed to the engine gods and it seemed to go away (it wasn't happening yesterday so whatever was making noise hopefully wasn't critical). The follow on noise after a few miles was the transmission being really loud. I'm hoping it's just low on fluid, I didn't drain any fluid out and it hardly holds anything so didn't think to check it, but the gears were sounding mighty loud in all but 5th which as I recall is the 1:1 gear in the CD009. Worry about the trans is what cut my drive short, I'll pump it full of fluid tomorrow and see if that fixes it.
The oil pressure is wickedly high, like so high I'm going to swap in my higher pressure transducer so the gauge isn't just pegged at 100psi the whole time. At idle it's currently holding about 35psi at 900rpm. By 2500rpm it's at 85psi and pegs 100psi by 3000rpm. The idle pressure "only" being 35psi makes me think the 15w-40 is fine, but I'll be curious to see what a data log shows with the high pressure sensor and see if I should go to thinner oil. I'm also concerned cold pressure is insane with 15w, maybe I'll want to swap to like 5w-30. Though I don't know if too high of pressure is really a thing, and in the past I remember reading 2jz at cold idle are like 150psi commonly.
Anyway, besides the transmission being loud everything seems inline so far. I did grab a video of the ASMR of the Hilux, it's so raw and insane. This whole video is a max of 18% throttle and the turbo is just coming up and making crazy noises and it's not even in boost yet. The experience of the truck is just so raw and peak automotive, I love it! I want a bigger turbo but if it loses any of the emotion of this turbo I would probably go back. So msny cool noises at just low throttle and not making any power yet
is so cool!
Fresh oil and filter, get the shifter in, hood on, grille, the heater core heat valve decided it wanted to leak so entirely bypassed it (which it seemed marginal at turning the heater "off" to begin with), and then she was ready!
I will admit, when I pulled up to the gate to leave the valvetrain seemed to have a weird noise but I just prayed to the engine gods and it seemed to go away (it wasn't happening yesterday so whatever was making noise hopefully wasn't critical). The follow on noise after a few miles was the transmission being really loud. I'm hoping it's just low on fluid, I didn't drain any fluid out and it hardly holds anything so didn't think to check it, but the gears were sounding mighty loud in all but 5th which as I recall is the 1:1 gear in the CD009. Worry about the trans is what cut my drive short, I'll pump it full of fluid tomorrow and see if that fixes it.
The oil pressure is wickedly high, like so high I'm going to swap in my higher pressure transducer so the gauge isn't just pegged at 100psi the whole time. At idle it's currently holding about 35psi at 900rpm. By 2500rpm it's at 85psi and pegs 100psi by 3000rpm. The idle pressure "only" being 35psi makes me think the 15w-40 is fine, but I'll be curious to see what a data log shows with the high pressure sensor and see if I should go to thinner oil. I'm also concerned cold pressure is insane with 15w, maybe I'll want to swap to like 5w-30. Though I don't know if too high of pressure is really a thing, and in the past I remember reading 2jz at cold idle are like 150psi commonly.
Anyway, besides the transmission being loud everything seems inline so far. I did grab a video of the ASMR of the Hilux, it's so raw and insane. This whole video is a max of 18% throttle and the turbo is just coming up and making crazy noises and it's not even in boost yet. The experience of the truck is just so raw and peak automotive, I love it! I want a bigger turbo but if it loses any of the emotion of this turbo I would probably go back. So msny cool noises at just low throttle and not making any power yet
is so cool!
- Thread starter
- #213
Top off the transmission with more oil than it's rated for so that's good, but she's quiet again! Swapped in my high pressure transducer, oil pressure mostly chills right around 100psi, cold start was around 120psi. Warm idle is still at 35psi which I'm really liking----this is the first time since the original stock 2JZ that warm idle is over 30psi so that gives me some confidence. Ran into town and everything is looking and sounding like I remember!
- Thread starter
- #214
I did about 60 miles before getting into boost, then a 40 mile drive with increasing amounts of boost though keeping it below red line.
Changed the oil again at 100 miles. Got a little freaked out though my neighbor thought it wasn't anything to be worried about. I also pulled both valve covers, and there was no signs of debris in the puddles in the head, and popped a couple cam caps and they all looked good.
The oil looked fine and couldn't see any glitter, but the catch pan showed some chunks but I think most of that was residue from the past and no matter how much I clean the catch pan it always has s*** in it. Because of that I plan to buy another catch pan for the next oil change in another 100 miles just to confirm everything is looking good and maybe send off an oil sample then.
I did my bi- or tri- annual visit to the car meet, though didn't take any pictures. The truck seemed to be leaking a lot of oil in the driveway and I couldn't see where it was coming from, and then it did it again at the meet and some kid saw that it was leaking from the dipstick tube. I fixed that (presumably) today, the coolant line was pushing against the tube and then I think the O-ring I had put on the tube was one size too small, the ID of the ring was fine but it wasn't a thick enough O-ring so wasn't sealing in the pan. I also drained out a little oil from the pan since it was overfilled a bit, but I think the O-ring barely sealing and then the coolant line trying to bend the tube over was the real culprit.
I did some tuning updates yesterday too. In higher boost areas the truck was getting extremely rich, got that fixed up and it's running pretty nicely into the low 11s in boost now. I also made some tweaks to the spark acceleration table to try and make the throttle a bit snappier and had some good progress there. I somehow deleted my digital dash layout so had to make a new one, but somehow in that process ended up with a gauge that says boost and actually seems to match the truck being in boost or at least close enough---probably MAP-14.7 which would be 2psi off or so but not enough to matter--so that's a fun "upgrade". I also ordered a GPS antenna for the Raspberry Pi to hopefully get speed into the dash, currently just have my phone on a mount for speed.
The truck pretty consistently is idling at 30+ psi of oil pressure, but I do notice if I get it hot that the oil pressure at idle can drop into the mid or low 20s. I think I need an oil cooler, what I'd like to do is get an oil/coolant circuit to help heat the oil and cool it. The engine once warm will make 100psi of oil pressure at 3000rpm, but before it's warm the oil pressure will be up at 120 or even 130psi at 3000rpm. I kind of use that as a gauge if the oil is up to temperature, but it takes a really long time for the oil temp to come up. If I get a heat exchanger that'll help heat it up faster and then help keep it at engine temp when I'm pushing it. I'd also like to get an oil temperature sensor, but all of this won't be for awhile.
And then today the juicer went for her first ride in the truck and seemed to enjoy herself!
I've been trying to get dimensions of the PRP bench seats, they have a UTV bench seat that essentially combines the two seats I already have with a center section and it's coincidentally the same width as my seats already are and I know has some amount of trans tunnel clearance. But PRP has been pretty useless getting me dimensions or even pictures let alone CAD files. It's a real shame I can't take my wife in the truck anymore, but if I can shove a bench seat in all three of us should be able to go for drives. We'll see, that might be one of the few upgrades that'll happen in the near future.
- Thread starter
- #215
Slowly improving things here and there. First I 3D printed some brackets that bolt to the back of the dash screen to hold the Raspberry Pi, and then I bought a capacitor bank that also bolts in the back, as well as wired up a CANBUS module and then lastly hooked up a USB GPS device.
This solved a lot of issues, first being everything is cleaned up drastically. Before I had a USB outlet going to the screen and RPi, now there is a single plug that hooks directly to the ignition and powers up the capacitors and that then distributes power to everything else. The capacitors I added because when cranking the RPi would lose power and turn off and it takes maybe 20 seconds to boot up, so at start up I wouldn't have any gauges. Rigging up the capacitors though caused the opposite issue though, the RPi would power down after a minute or so with the ignition off but would seem to go into a low power sleep mode where it was off but had enough juice going to it to not think it had just been plugged in. Originally I had the RPi setup so when it saw any power it would turn on, but that was assuming it was totally dead to begin with. Now my issue was if I turned the truck off and then on again, the RPi may go to sleep but never get a signal to turn back on so the gauges could stay off if I had to cycle the ignition. I was able to solve this by soldering to some ports on the RPi and adding a momentary switch, which I mounted just under the dash. This would let me manually turn the RPi on or off.
I also wired in a CANBUS module, though I thought I had the CANBUS wires running near the dash already but apparently not so it's not currently plugged in. The issue with the current setup which is bluetooth CANBUS is that it has a decent lag to it, maybe a full second even. So for general reference it's good, but for things like AFR it's pretty slow to react. I need to throw together a CANBUS hardness to run from the ECU to the module and then I should be able to get the RPi and dash program to recognize it.
The last big dash upgrade was plugging in a GPS antenna, and then after quite a bit of ****ing around with codes and troubleshooting I was able to get the dash to see the GPS signal and now we have speed for the first time ever!
Because the dash is literally just a small Linux laptop, I can actually pull up Google maps, have the gauges, and even have YouTube or Spotify all running side by side in the dash itself which is really cool. And for a fraction the price of the fancy digital dashes that are also 1/3 the size! The GPS speed also updates faster than my phone GPS speed, I was worried it might be a bit laggy like the CANBUS but it's actually quite snappy and dead nuts.
The next thing that popped up was a coolant line starting leaking....again. This is literally the last small section of the s***ty Vibrant black braided hose I have on any vehicle, and it started leaking just like every other piece on everything else. Random pin hole halfway down the tube where nothing was touching it and no bend.
At least this was only a 3ft piece, so I grabbed a section of I think Russel Performance hose which I've swapped everything out on so far and got that in today.
And that should've been a quick fix, except AN fittings are trash and somehow even though it was sealed fine before and nothing looked messed up I could not for the life of me get the engine side fitting to seal. I got to drain the coolant twice, then ordered a new weld bung, vow to never run AN fittings as long as I can help it, and then decided I would try to convert the fitting to an O-ring style. After chopping up the thermostat piece, getting the AN fitting off, opening up the bore to get it to fit on my 3 jaw chuck, flip it around, then I machined a groove for an O-ring into the sealing face and then also did a fresh pass on the threads. Probably spent too much time on this, but the lathe is always fun. The thermostat housing is kind of a bitch to install and align with the hose, so I actually have more confidence in this setup because the thermostat seals with an O-ring and now the AN20 seals with an O-ring so there is some degree of misalignment allowance which is maybe what was preventing it sealing before?
I then welded everything back together and bolted it in and so far after a drive seems to be sealing finally!
And then since it seems to have it out for me today, one of these (admittedly s***ty) boost clamps had the tab rip in half
Which is a first for me, I have ****ed up plenty of these hose clamps usually crushing them or stripping the threads but it actually failing was a new one on me.
A couple other tweaks too, I changed the transmission fluid since I had put in GL5 gear oil before which apparently is bad for bronze/brass synchros, so I got some GL4 fluid and it does seem to shift nicer into 1st which was a bit clunky on the downshift before. I also made some tweaks to the cranking parameters and maxed out the cranking timing which was at 6deg advance and is now at 25deg advance, the truck starts a lot nicer now and roars to life versus stumbling to get going half the time. I need to mess with the fuel prime settings a bit I think, but huge improvement just from that. My next goal is to get the knock sensors actually tuned which I think is a pretty large feat, but I've been doing some research and did some testing today. I'd really like to get them working for obvious reasons, but my goal is to see about cranking the boost up higher so the truck will continue pulling hard past 5000rpm. I'm worried going to a larger turbo will just move the powerband, and if I can just increase the boost to increase the powerband and still let it pull hard at 3000rpm that'd be awesome. I also realized I am running on the ECU Masters V2 software and there is an updated V3 software that is heavily reworked with updated strategies and logic across the board, so I might move over to that and it also gives a lot more specific knock tuning at an individual cylinder level which would be cool.
And that wraps this up, lots of little tweaking and getting it dialed in but she's still running good and making a lot of headway!
This solved a lot of issues, first being everything is cleaned up drastically. Before I had a USB outlet going to the screen and RPi, now there is a single plug that hooks directly to the ignition and powers up the capacitors and that then distributes power to everything else. The capacitors I added because when cranking the RPi would lose power and turn off and it takes maybe 20 seconds to boot up, so at start up I wouldn't have any gauges. Rigging up the capacitors though caused the opposite issue though, the RPi would power down after a minute or so with the ignition off but would seem to go into a low power sleep mode where it was off but had enough juice going to it to not think it had just been plugged in. Originally I had the RPi setup so when it saw any power it would turn on, but that was assuming it was totally dead to begin with. Now my issue was if I turned the truck off and then on again, the RPi may go to sleep but never get a signal to turn back on so the gauges could stay off if I had to cycle the ignition. I was able to solve this by soldering to some ports on the RPi and adding a momentary switch, which I mounted just under the dash. This would let me manually turn the RPi on or off.
I also wired in a CANBUS module, though I thought I had the CANBUS wires running near the dash already but apparently not so it's not currently plugged in. The issue with the current setup which is bluetooth CANBUS is that it has a decent lag to it, maybe a full second even. So for general reference it's good, but for things like AFR it's pretty slow to react. I need to throw together a CANBUS hardness to run from the ECU to the module and then I should be able to get the RPi and dash program to recognize it.
The last big dash upgrade was plugging in a GPS antenna, and then after quite a bit of ****ing around with codes and troubleshooting I was able to get the dash to see the GPS signal and now we have speed for the first time ever!
Because the dash is literally just a small Linux laptop, I can actually pull up Google maps, have the gauges, and even have YouTube or Spotify all running side by side in the dash itself which is really cool. And for a fraction the price of the fancy digital dashes that are also 1/3 the size! The GPS speed also updates faster than my phone GPS speed, I was worried it might be a bit laggy like the CANBUS but it's actually quite snappy and dead nuts.
The next thing that popped up was a coolant line starting leaking....again. This is literally the last small section of the s***ty Vibrant black braided hose I have on any vehicle, and it started leaking just like every other piece on everything else. Random pin hole halfway down the tube where nothing was touching it and no bend.
At least this was only a 3ft piece, so I grabbed a section of I think Russel Performance hose which I've swapped everything out on so far and got that in today.
And that should've been a quick fix, except AN fittings are trash and somehow even though it was sealed fine before and nothing looked messed up I could not for the life of me get the engine side fitting to seal. I got to drain the coolant twice, then ordered a new weld bung, vow to never run AN fittings as long as I can help it, and then decided I would try to convert the fitting to an O-ring style. After chopping up the thermostat piece, getting the AN fitting off, opening up the bore to get it to fit on my 3 jaw chuck, flip it around, then I machined a groove for an O-ring into the sealing face and then also did a fresh pass on the threads. Probably spent too much time on this, but the lathe is always fun. The thermostat housing is kind of a bitch to install and align with the hose, so I actually have more confidence in this setup because the thermostat seals with an O-ring and now the AN20 seals with an O-ring so there is some degree of misalignment allowance which is maybe what was preventing it sealing before?
I then welded everything back together and bolted it in and so far after a drive seems to be sealing finally!
And then since it seems to have it out for me today, one of these (admittedly s***ty) boost clamps had the tab rip in half
Which is a first for me, I have ****ed up plenty of these hose clamps usually crushing them or stripping the threads but it actually failing was a new one on me.
A couple other tweaks too, I changed the transmission fluid since I had put in GL5 gear oil before which apparently is bad for bronze/brass synchros, so I got some GL4 fluid and it does seem to shift nicer into 1st which was a bit clunky on the downshift before. I also made some tweaks to the cranking parameters and maxed out the cranking timing which was at 6deg advance and is now at 25deg advance, the truck starts a lot nicer now and roars to life versus stumbling to get going half the time. I need to mess with the fuel prime settings a bit I think, but huge improvement just from that. My next goal is to get the knock sensors actually tuned which I think is a pretty large feat, but I've been doing some research and did some testing today. I'd really like to get them working for obvious reasons, but my goal is to see about cranking the boost up higher so the truck will continue pulling hard past 5000rpm. I'm worried going to a larger turbo will just move the powerband, and if I can just increase the boost to increase the powerband and still let it pull hard at 3000rpm that'd be awesome. I also realized I am running on the ECU Masters V2 software and there is an updated V3 software that is heavily reworked with updated strategies and logic across the board, so I might move over to that and it also gives a lot more specific knock tuning at an individual cylinder level which would be cool.
And that wraps this up, lots of little tweaking and getting it dialed in but she's still running good and making a lot of headway!
True AN fittings are expensive, much more so than "Evil Energy", Russell, and what-not. They're also a much better fitting, but even those aren't made from one of the high strength alloys. At least not those that I've had cause to modify.
- Thread starter
- #217
It's Friday, weather is cool for probably the last time for months, found a shop down the hill and said let's see how weak the 2JZ is
Did only one pull which told me everything I wanted to know
292whp hahaha
And to reiterate from a long time ago, stock warn out NA the truck made 125whp.
It's not far off from what I was expecting, I was hopeful it would be over 300whp but figured there's no way it's over 350whp. I wanted to confirm that before going to a different turbo, which is probably still many months out. The truck felt about as fast as my Tundra at best (which made 500whp), and it literally weighs half as much, which meant the truck had to be below 400hp. Additionally the truck has 650cc injectors, and they are at 70% duty cycle, where as my Tundra is at 90%+ duty cycle with 725cc injectors plus has two extra cylinders, so the truck just wasn't consuming enough fuel to be making much power.
On the one hand it's pretty pathetic that a 2JZ at 20psi of boost isn't even making 300whp, but on the other hand it means there is tremendous growth potential (should be able to about double the horsepower on the truck safely). The fact it's so fast for making such little power is impressive too, the benefits of weighing 2500 lbs.
The curve is obviously very weird. I started at 2500rpm in 4th and floored it, it hit the full 20psi by 4000rpm, then the waste gate came in trying to control the boost and held it within 3psi for the rest of the pull. Around 4200rpm it started richening out way too much.
Essentially the truck made a good bit of torque, and then when the wastegate came in to stop the boost that then completely killed the torque and it running so rich didn't help things. Even though the truck was still making 17-20psi for the rest of the pull the acceleration dropped considerably and the rpms were slowly climbing so I let out at 5600rpm. This mirrors driving on the street pretty well, it pulls hard and then when the wastegate comes in I short shift at 4500-5000rpm since it just falls on its face.
There was no point doing any more pulls and adjusting things, I'll spend more time dialing in the fueling on the street and didn't want to waste the shops time. Talking to the dyno guys they thought the exhaust on the turbo was choking the truck out, which is what I had been suspecting in the past. I didn't really care what the numbers were, I just wanted to know the starting point so when I change the turbo I have an apples to apples comparison. This exact setup should be making around 500whp or more on pump gas. This confirms how much power is on the table and I'm not insane how "slow" the truck is so I think going to a bigger turbo is all but guaranteed now. I do think there's a few other things I'll need to setup first though, I want to have a boost dial to control how crazy I want the truck to get and then probably should figure out a way to get wheel speed or a gear position indicator to the ECU so I can run boost by gear to prevent it just lighting up the tires in the lower gears.
Ultimately all I really want is to be able to rev the truck to the full 7500rpm and have it pull the whole way, it feels quick now but having to shift so early is annoying for something built to rev so much higher.
Did only one pull which told me everything I wanted to know
292whp hahaha
And to reiterate from a long time ago, stock warn out NA the truck made 125whp.
It's not far off from what I was expecting, I was hopeful it would be over 300whp but figured there's no way it's over 350whp. I wanted to confirm that before going to a different turbo, which is probably still many months out. The truck felt about as fast as my Tundra at best (which made 500whp), and it literally weighs half as much, which meant the truck had to be below 400hp. Additionally the truck has 650cc injectors, and they are at 70% duty cycle, where as my Tundra is at 90%+ duty cycle with 725cc injectors plus has two extra cylinders, so the truck just wasn't consuming enough fuel to be making much power.
On the one hand it's pretty pathetic that a 2JZ at 20psi of boost isn't even making 300whp, but on the other hand it means there is tremendous growth potential (should be able to about double the horsepower on the truck safely). The fact it's so fast for making such little power is impressive too, the benefits of weighing 2500 lbs.
The curve is obviously very weird. I started at 2500rpm in 4th and floored it, it hit the full 20psi by 4000rpm, then the waste gate came in trying to control the boost and held it within 3psi for the rest of the pull. Around 4200rpm it started richening out way too much.
Essentially the truck made a good bit of torque, and then when the wastegate came in to stop the boost that then completely killed the torque and it running so rich didn't help things. Even though the truck was still making 17-20psi for the rest of the pull the acceleration dropped considerably and the rpms were slowly climbing so I let out at 5600rpm. This mirrors driving on the street pretty well, it pulls hard and then when the wastegate comes in I short shift at 4500-5000rpm since it just falls on its face.
There was no point doing any more pulls and adjusting things, I'll spend more time dialing in the fueling on the street and didn't want to waste the shops time. Talking to the dyno guys they thought the exhaust on the turbo was choking the truck out, which is what I had been suspecting in the past. I didn't really care what the numbers were, I just wanted to know the starting point so when I change the turbo I have an apples to apples comparison. This exact setup should be making around 500whp or more on pump gas. This confirms how much power is on the table and I'm not insane how "slow" the truck is so I think going to a bigger turbo is all but guaranteed now. I do think there's a few other things I'll need to setup first though, I want to have a boost dial to control how crazy I want the truck to get and then probably should figure out a way to get wheel speed or a gear position indicator to the ECU so I can run boost by gear to prevent it just lighting up the tires in the lower gears.
Ultimately all I really want is to be able to rev the truck to the full 7500rpm and have it pull the whole way, it feels quick now but having to shift so early is annoying for something built to rev so much higher.
I know nothing about tuning turbos, so keep that in mind. Would a BOV allow you to hold at whatever boost that stops the waste-gate from opening? OR are they pretty much like a waste-gate where they're either open or closed?
- Thread starter
- #219
I'm with you, I know nothing either. I have a BOV but it's essentially open or closed and only opens when the throttle closes fast.
The turbo and boost stuff really confuses me. People say a larger turbo will flow more air at the same pressure, sure that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is if the intake manifold is pressurized to 20psi, how is that any different regardless of the turbo setup? I thought the ideal gas law said PV =nRT, so if volume and temperature are constants, and pressure is the same, then how does "flow" change at all? It's the same amount of air in the manifold at the same pressure? But that doesn't seem to be the case or I'm missing something and no one can explain it in a way that makes sense.
And that's what confuses me about the dyno graph, the wastegate came in and dumped exhaust gases to keep the pressure side from presumably spinning more and keeping the boost around 20psi, but why did the torque drop if it was still seeing 20psi of pressure on the intake side? And turbo people usually say well it stopped flowing so much because the turbo speed started to drop, but if it's not flowing as much then how is the pressure staying the same when the volume is still the same??? I don't understand hahaha
There is the part where a bigger turbo will have more rotational inertia (heavier "flywheel"), so I'd expect that the boost would be slower to drop off during a shift. It will also likely spin slower for the same amount of boost. That's a guess on my part though. One thing that I have experienced with a turbo is that with the throttle plate closed the compressor wheel stalls and effectively puts a brake on the compressor at the same time that the EGT has dropped significantly, removing the driving force on the turbine side. A BOV will simply vent the throttle closed, excess boost air back into the world. Which might allow the turbo to stay up to speed, essentially free-wheeling, and not cause the lag after a shift. Or at least reduce it to some degree or other.
The other thought is that a larger turbo may need more RPM before it reaches max boost. In my limited experience turbos aren't purely driven by exhaust gas volume. They're also driven by the heat in the exhaust gas. High heat, low volume flow won't spin it very hard, and neither will low heat, high gas flow. They need both to really do any work.
There is an aspect of turbos that I've little understanding of. The "Compressor Map". Folks who can read those things can do a lot towards being able to match a particular turbo to any particular engine. Finding a turbo guy who knows what he's doing to consult with should shorten the learning curve drastically.
The other thought is that a larger turbo may need more RPM before it reaches max boost. In my limited experience turbos aren't purely driven by exhaust gas volume. They're also driven by the heat in the exhaust gas. High heat, low volume flow won't spin it very hard, and neither will low heat, high gas flow. They need both to really do any work.
There is an aspect of turbos that I've little understanding of. The "Compressor Map". Folks who can read those things can do a lot towards being able to match a particular turbo to any particular engine. Finding a turbo guy who knows what he's doing to consult with should shorten the learning curve drastically.