Build Another Prado in Montana

[JDM Journeys]

You don't have any snow left either eh? Sounds like we might get some white stuff this week along with a temperature drop?

Looking forward to seeing this one come together.

 

[AirheadNut]

… working outdoors in Montana in February…

… they breed ‘em tough up north …

Sadly it hasn't taken much toughness this winter, I've lived in Montana my entire life and cannot recall a winter anywhere near as mild as this one. Been around 45-55ºF most days.

You don't have any snow left either eh? Sounds like we might get some white stuff this week along with a temperature drop?

Looking forward to seeing this one come together.

Nope, no snow of any significance since the end of December. Really hoping we might get at least some precipitation later this week, though the forecast seems to change on a daily basis so I'm not holding my breath. Hoping to get this engine swap wrapped up by mid spring, thinking the mountains might open up early this year and would love to get out and enjoy them before fire season kicks off.

 

[AirheadNut]

Ordered a pile of parts today, hoping to get the engine ready to install by mid March.
- Balance shaft delete kit
- Dipstick and dipstick tube
- Oil filter cap
- Cam bearings
- Cam bearing cap bolts
- Rocker shaft bolts
- Tandem pump gasket
- Nitrided lifters
- Valve cover gasket
- Valve stem seals
- Coolant hard line o-rings

About to pull the trigger on the adapter plate as well, then I'll need a new flywheel to go with it.

 

[AirheadNut]

Almost all the parts arrived, still waiting on a couple of little things for the balance shaft delete.

I started reassembling the cylinder head this evening, got the new nitrided lifters in, new cam bearings, and cam reinstalled.

I need to dig out the new cam seal and get that installed, put on the injector rockers, stick the new valve cover gasket on and then the top end of the engine will be all sealed up!

 

[AirheadNut]

All buttoned up! Cam seal in, new valve cover seal and bolts, tandem pump reinstalled with a fresh gasket. Put on the new oil filter cap, but when I went to install the new dipstick tube it broke. I seem to have about a 50% success rate installing those.

 

[AirheadNut]

 

[AirheadNut]

Pulled the oil pan off this evening to have a look at the balance shaft module.

When it came free something fell out, looks like the pivot for a chain tensioner. Oddly, the oil pump drive chain and its tensioner (which is the weak point in this setup) appear to be complete and in reasonable condition, and I don't believe there are any other chains and tensioners in this engine. Not sure where that part could have come from.

 

[AirheadNut]

More progress on the engine. Got the timing belt installed just so I could break the crank bolt free and tear it all off again.

With the crank sprocket off I could pull the front crank seal retainer and oil pump sprocket cover, where I found the rest of the original oil pump chain tensioner. Someone must have dug in to just replace the tensioner after it disintegrated, but not pulled the covers to clean out the remaining debris.

The tensioner that was installed in the engine was fully intact, but definitely showing some wear.

Pulled the balance shaft module off the bottom of the engine and then steeled myself for yanking the oil pump drive sprocket off the crank.

 

[AirheadNut]

I had to modify my small three jaw puller to get purchase on the sprocket. Pulling from the outside edge of the sprocket risks shattering it, there is a special tool made to grab the sprocket through the holes but I don't have it. It took a nerve-wracking amount of force on the puller before it finally popped loose.

With all the balance shaft related parts removed I prepped the engine for the new oil pump and windage tray. Scraped the old sealant off the bottom and front of the block, then tapped and plugged the oil supply port for the balance shaft.

Once that was done I could install the new oil pump and windage tray from an ALH engine code TDI.

Tomorrow I'll bake the new oil pump drive sprocket and install it on the crank, then I can slap the rest of the engine together and it will basically be ready to install next week!

 

[JDM Journeys]

Good that you found the pieces from the PO's incomplete work.

Did the sprocket make any ominous noises or did it just suddenly pop? Those are always the worst. Until they go good and then they're the best.

"See? I KNEW I didn't need that tool..."

 

[AirheadNut]

No strange noises, but the sprocket had a definite potato chip shape before it came loose!

 

[AirheadNut]

Cranked up my little propane camp oven to bake the oil pump drive sprocket, this needs to be at least 400ºF but no more than 464ºF in order to slip on to the crankshaft. With an IR thermometer reading of ~430ºF it slipped right on!

A little closeup of the wear on the front of the block and inside the front seal retainer, caused by bits of the previous tensioner being lodged around the chain.

With the oil pump drive sprocket installed I could throw the rest of the parts on the engine.

Oil pump chain and tensioner, front cover and crank seal, ALH windage tray, ALH oil pump pickup:

 

[AirheadNut]

Next up was the timing belt and torquing the crank sprocket bolt.

Timing covers and ALH oil pan on, I have misplaced a few of the timing cover bolts so I'll need to pick up a couple of them.

I also test fitted the intake manifold along with the original ASV, which I was going to delete but am now considering keeping. Depending on if I can figure out how to independently control it I'm thinking it might work nicely as a supplementary engine brake for steep hills.

 

[AirheadNut]

Friday afternoon and evening was a mad rush to try and get tools, parts, the engine and the Prado all loaded up on the truck and trailer to make the 300 mile drive to @SnowVersion's shop Saturday morning.

I was trying to thread a needle between two winter storms making their way across the Rocky Mountain Front, the first passed through on Thursday/Friday and the second was due Saturday afternoon. Fortunately I timed it just right and only had about 15 miles of unpleasant road conditions.

The Prado was pretty snow-encrusted by the time I arrived, though. Took quite a while to melt off in the shop and required a quick wash to get rid of all the mud and grime.

I decided to take advantage of the nice, fresh snow for a bit of skiing on Sunday and then tore in to the Prado on Monday. Got the old engine out in a little under three hours, then pulled the engine harness and cleaned the engine bay with degreaser and hot water. It had gotten really grimy after several years of constant coolant, oil and exhaust leaks combined with mud and dust.

 

[AirheadNut]

One of my goals with this swap is to tidy up some of the loose ends I never got around to on the first swap, and to make a cleaner, more serviceable engine bay. Once I had the engine bay empty I started to sort out some of the original 2L-TE engine wiring that I had never taken care of. A few sensor wires were cut back to the main harness, capped with heat shrink tubing and tucked inside the harness. The original alternator cable had to be cut and re-spliced to provide power to the accessory power box.

The next task was to bolt all the accessory brackets, accessories, manifolds and coolant pipes to the new engine so everything would be in place when I drop the engine into the vehicle.

At this point I discovered I had left behind some of the hardware for the adapter plate, so I couldn't test fit the engine to the transmission today. I should be able to pick up the necessary bolts locally tomorrow morning, so hopefully motor mounts will get fabricated tomorrow.

 

[AirheadNut]

Well, today was one step forward and two steps back. I spent the first half of the day running all over town trying to find some M12x1.25 socket head cap screws, only to find out that was the wrong thread pitch and I actually needed the much more common M12x1.75. Once I had the correct bolts in hand I was able to install the adapter plate on the engine, along with the crank spacer, flywheel and clutch.

A brief test fitting of the engine in the vehicle revealed that both frame side motor mounts needed to be cut off to even get the engine close to the transmission. With the mounts cut off I could get the engine pretty much lined up with the transmission, but several of the bell housing bolts turned out to be the wrong thread pitch. I'll have to make another trip to the hardware store tomorrow morning.

Despite the new adapter plate being almost 1.5" thicker than the old one, there is not enough room to fit a downpipe between the turbo and firewall. Hopefully there is enough space in the shifter holes in the floor to move the transmission forward another inch or so.

In addition, the power steering pump has almost 3/4" interference with the frame when the crank pulley is centered, so I'm researching various other TDI accessory brackets to see if there is one that fits everything tighter against the engine toward the bottom. It looks like a BEW bracket might be just perfect, will need to take some measurements on one in the morning. I'll also need to get a different intake manifold, I was hopeful that the rear-facing manifold would work but it puts the charge pipe right where the heater core outlet is so it will need to be swapped for a forward-facing manifold. If necessary I can steal the manifold off the old engine for the time being.

At this point I think the game plan is to shift the transmission forward, by 1.5" preferably, then build motor mounts to locate everything in the engine bay. Once the mounts are in place I'll know exactly how much space I have to work with for accessories and can get the appropriate bracket.

 

[AirheadNut]

I finally made some visible progress over the last couple of days. Some quick measurements revealed that I had about enough room around the shifters to move the transmission forward 1.5", meaning I could just swap my driveshaft spacer from the front diff to the rear and not have to worry about modifying driveshafts for now.

With the Prado on the lift I blocked up the transfer case, supported the transmission with a stand and pulled the crossmember.

After hours of measuring, deliberating, rechecking measurements, making drawings and measuring again, I started fabbing up a new crossmember. I discovered that the crossmember I had made previously put the transmission slightly offset to one side, which really threw me off at first. It may also explain why I had endless problems with driveline vibrations.

Installing the new crossmember and moving the transmission forward was not super fun when everything was just kind of balancing above my head, but slow and gentle persuasion got everything in place.

 

[AirheadNut]

Once the transmission was installed in its new location I stuck the engine back in and started building motor mounts. I began with the frame side mounts, using early 12-valve Cummins isolators due to their compact size. Everything is made out of 1/4" plate, partly because my previous mounts were made with 1/8" material and broke twice, partly because I have a massive supply of 1/4" material left over from other projects.

Next I moved on to the engine brackets, I'm using a set of Doomsday Diesel mount plates and building off those. Careful placement of a couple of ratchet straps kept the engine centered between the frame rails. By late afternoon today I had the engine resting on its mounts.

With the transmission moved forward there is now plenty of room for a 3" downpipe, and loads more room between the engine and firewall than I expected. I haven't done any test fitting yet, but I suspect I may be able to keep the rear-facing BHW intake manifold after all and put a tight 90º hose on the heater core outlet to clear the intake pipe. There is no longer enough room in front of the engine for my intercooler, radiator and fan shroud setup, but I am thinking I may be able to fit a decent sized water-to-air intercooler core behind the engine and move the radiator forward about 2.5" to its original location. Access to the tandem pump and injector harness should be a breeze, if that ever becomes necessary. Overall really happy with the way things are turning out, the BHW looks like it was made for this engine bay in a way that the ALH never quite did.

 

[AirheadNut]

Haven't done much actual work on the Prado over the past week, but have been busy trying to find or design a water-to-air intercooler core that will fit in the space between the engine and firewall. There don't seem to be any decent options that are thin enough, so I am leaning toward building one myself. I can source a W2A core of approximately the correct dimensions and would then have to design and build the end tanks for air and coolant. This is what I've come up with so far, thinking about trying out a couple of other shapes. The core is 6"x3"x6", which should be sufficient for this engine based on some loose calculations. Inlet and outlet are 2.25". Some cardboard models are in order to make sure everything fits and my measurements aren't way off.

I've also been looking at air filter housings, one of the non negotiables I set myself was that there can't be an exposed style filter this time, I always hated the cheap, "temporary" cone filter I used before. Scouring the Donaldson catalog I've found a few models that have sufficient airflow specs and dimensions that are about right. Some more measurement of the engine bay will be necessary to confirm fitment, but the G090219 is on the shortlist. It is rated at 5-10m^3/min airflow, or 175-350cfm, which should be ample for a 2.0L turbo engine running up to around 4000rpm at ~28psi boost.

 

[AirheadNut]

Been teaching myself to TIG weld aluminum over the past week, I'm improving but still have a lot of practice to do before I'm ready to start burning together an expensive intercooler core. No work on the Prado this evening, didn't really feel like battling the snow and wind out there.

Yesterday when the weather was a bit nicer I had a quick test fit of an old W2A core I had made for the 2L-TE in my first Prado, turns out it is pretty much the right size, just needs some tweaking for inlet and outlet placement. This one is a 6"x2"x6" core, I can fit a bit thicker of a core so I'll be getting a 6"x2.9"x6" core and building off that.

The coolant outlet will need to be shifted more toward the middle of the top tank to avoid conflict with the heater core outlet.

The air inlet will be angled instead of straight so that the charge pipe feeding into the intercooler will go between the oil filter housing and firewall. The two heater hoses running down the firewall to the Webasto will get rerouted to make a little more space for the charge pipe. If I have the inlet about midway down the core instead of at the top then the injector harness plug on the back of the cylinder head should have plenty of space.