Excessively underpowered 1HZ + poor fuel economy

[Leitrum3]

Okay, I decided to finally go for it. Valve body is on its way back to Rodney at Wholesale and I've started dismantling the front of the engine. I'm taking my time (and a lot of pictures) since a full rebuild is a new thing for me. Prepping the last couple of nights to pull it out on Saturday.

My only question right now is, given the couple of threads on here already documenting 1HZ rebuilds, is it worth the effort to post my progress as well? I'm happy to as it's also good documentation for me, just not sure what/if it adds to the community. Either way, here's some pics!

 

[IanB]

People love pics. If some pics is a good thing, more pics has to be a better thing!

 

[esh]

People also love learning. And many of them are view-only lurkers.

 

[BreckenridgeCruiser]

Post away! I have found the info I need across many threads and rarely all in one. More info and experiences are always better than less.

 

[Leitrum3]

People love pics. If some pics is a good thing, more pics has to be a better thing!

I like your logic here! Sounds like I should start taking better pictures. I've got some on the camera that I need to download still, but I'm too damn tired to do it tonight having spent the whole weekend prepping and pulling the engine solo. It's probably a lot easier for some, but considering it was my first time...It's the fun kind of stress, but it's still stress! Fortunately nothing went wrong and no injuries or damage were sustained. Now that the first step is over, I'll take a little more time to dismantle, clean and measure everything, being sure to post up what I find along the way. Stay tuned for now!

 

[crushers]

hint
i have one of those levellers as well, i modified the end to take a socket.
cordless drill and modifing the angle becomes super easy compared to cranking that darn handle.
it will be interesting to watch the rebuild.

 

[Leitrum3]

So, after talking about rebuilding my engine for months, I finally started. I don't have the best working conditions, as illustrated by my truck sitting on the slightly sloped street in front of my very short garage, but where there's a will, there's a way.




I was hoping to get some help for this part since I'd never done it, but I was surprised that it really isn't that hard. It takes time, more than I expected, but totally doable on your own.




Eventually while the engine is out, I'll have that rust at the body mounts repaired, but really, I just need to learn to weld some time soon.




Did I mention the sloped street (you may not be able to see 3 wheels in the air here...)? How about the sloped curbs up to the sidewalk? Thank god for neighbors.




My little makeshift workshop in the tiny garage. At least it forces me to stay organized

 

[Leitrum3]

Pre-tear down documentation.




Quite a bit of green showing here. Now I know why the AC stopped working. Confusing though as I only used it a few times over the course of summer and I thought the compressor was fairly new since Torfab sourced it for me. Can these things be rebuilt? I don't know squat about compressors so if anyone has suggestions to look first, I'm all ears.




To look at this thing, you wouldn't think it was a mid 90's engine with the corrosion. I never managed to learn where the PO sourced this thing and I'm starting to wonder whether it was a mine engine. Or do those look worse??




I don't know what other people's intakes look like, but I'm assuming they don't have this much oil? Left side is clean, right side is as found. I know a little is inevitable, but this feels awfully wet and glossy.

 

[Leitrum3]

A little further down the intake, still pretty damn wet.




Intake at cylinder #2, the suspected culprit to low power and efficiency with its low compression.




And what the hell is this?! Found it stuck between the block and IP looking like it's supposed to be there, but for what purpose? This was originally from a MT truck if that has any relevance.




Getting to the fun part now. I haven't snapped a close-up picture of it, but the thrust plate/disc in front of the large timing gear in the middle measures out mid-spec with some wear facing the gear. These plates look like they are mirrored on both sides, can I just flip this thing around when I re-install or do I need to replace?




I read through Kevin Rowland's rebuild thread a couple of times before I started mine and I noted that he had some trouble with removing the IP as well. Mine took a fair bit of work and with a combination of careful hammering and the puller shown here. To my utter dismay, the puller's pointed tip ended up flaring out the threaded end of the IP…It looks like it's possible to run a die over the end and re-thread it. Advisable? Do I need to have a machine shop do this? I'll have this thing re-built anyway, perhaps they could/should do it there?

 

[Dougal]

That foam is a noise insulator pad.

 

[Leitrum3]

It's possible to actually read the numbers engraved, but is there any real info to be gained from them? I continue to wonder as to this engine's origin as I dig into it.




Everything in its place. I'm going to need to strategize how to clean all the parts I'm pulling off of this thing, it's got an incredible amount of grime. Small garage or not, is the harbor freight parts washer worthwhile? I can probably grab one off of craigslist here locally.




I need a micrometer before I know too much about the cam, but how does this look?




Finally getting somewhere. Moment of truth…




And there it is. Cylinder #2. Notice the metal crumbs that fell off the side of the cylinder when I pulled the head off.

 

[Leitrum3]

Cleaned it up a little, there's no doubting the EGT's got a little too high. Knowing is better than not knowing I suppose. Seeing this, I'm glad I'm digging into this thing when I am and not waiting. This does give me pause when I consider adding a turbo without upgraded pistons, an extra $1000 now could save many times that in the future I'm told. Oh, what to do, what to do.




Here's what the deformation is doing to the cylinder wall, but I can't feel it with my fingernails. Is it possible it'll only need honing and not a re-bore? You can also see where the exhaust valves sit over the pistons, almost all had what looked like metal deposits or solder concentrated at the valve's perimeter. Just a wild guess but I'll assume this is another sign of high EGT's.




Cylinder head at #2. Most had quite a bit of carbon building up around the valve seat, unlike this one interestingly.




Here's a shot of some of the more typical carbon buildup. I checked the valve clearances before I disassembled things and most of the intakes were out of spec by a good margin. I'm of the mind that everything has relevance to how I've gotten to where I am. Don't have the tool to remove the valves from the head yet, is there any substitute for the SST?




I know it's not a 3B and therefore supposedly doesn't have precup issues, but these are looking pretty bad. Almost all of them had cracks in 3 directions and most of the middle cracks are running well past the cylinder wall. I think replacing them will be necessary in my case.

 

[crushers]

take the engine and all the parts into an engine machine shop, they can deep tank the block, head, do the honing, some even install the rings and wrist pins for you. well worth the cost.

i have seen mine engines look like that, i have seen them look WAY worse. although the red dirt or "rust" on top of the plastic rocker cover seems to show red dust ... prevalent in Oz.

 

[Jan-78FJ40]

Wow, lots of progress.
Let me try to go through that systematically.

Your shop is fine and easily big enough. The truck that is outside might a little car. Cover the engine bay and all the openings, like exhaust, fuel lines, and soon. Also, your A/C drier will need replacement if the system sits open long and attracts moisture.

The A/C compressor can be rebuilt, all parts are available. It is just a dense compressor. Any competent A/C shop can easily do that. Clutch and pulley are available from Toyota still, but also from Denso.

The corrosion is not so bad. The exhaust manifold always looks that way. If you plan to separate the manifold, make sure you have new compression rings and O rings ready. The compression rings can not be gotten in north america. Akella can get you all parts you need. The water line in that picture might need replacement though. It is almost impossible to do that when the engine is still on, so now is the time. The part is available from toyota.

Yes, too much oil in there.

As said, the foam part is a sound deadener. Ditch it.

As long as the thrust plate is in specs, it is fine. I'd replace it if I could get it easily and it is not expensive though.

The injection pump flaring is not a big deal, IMO, unless it is really excessive. The pump is on there with 90ft/lbs of torque. But your rebuild guy can tell you. A new shaft is only about 120$ and can be sourced from Denso easily. And they have to tear it down completely anyway for a good rebuild.

As Wayne said, take your crank, cam, block, head (with cam journals and valves) to a good machine shop. Bring them the 1HZ manual as well. They will tell you what's out of spec much more reliably as you can do with a micrometer. They'll check your valves too. Don't even try to get those pre cups out yourself. They are trash, but probably the shop needs to weld something onto them to get them out. Even the Toyota SST has a very hard time with old pre cups and usually fails.

For the block, pull the main cap, pull the pistons (notice the numbers), and pull the crank. Take everything off the block that you can, including the piston skirt oilers. Then bring it all to your machine shop. Once they've told you what you need and how much to go over bore (0.5 and 1 mm is possible, 1mm is the max), get in touch with Engine Australia and tell them what you need. They can get you pistons with Alfin inserts, all bearings, pre cups, a seal kit, assembly lubes, intake and exhaust valves, everything.

My guess for #2 is that it burns much hotter, and the carbon burned off.

Cheers,
Jan

 

[Leitrum3]

Man, this place is the best. Great feedback and direction for an amateur like me.

take the engine and all the parts into an engine machine shop, they can deep tank the block, head, do the honing, some even install the rings and wrist pins for you. well worth the cost.

i have seen mine engines look like that, i have seen them look WAY worse. although the red dirt or "rust" on top of the plastic rocker cover seems to show red dust ... prevalent in Oz.

I love the idea of not taking on more tools, etc. than I absolutely need at the moment, and I can clean the small stuff easy enough. I'll have plenty of time while things are in transit from all over the world. As for whether it's a mine or Oz origination, I've started finding some interesting deposits in hard to reach places. Red dirt galore and in more than one spot.

The A/C compressor can be rebuilt, all parts are available. It is just a dense compressor. Any competent A/C shop can easily do that. Clutch and pulley are available from Toyota still, but also from Denso.

Yeah, I suppose so, it's just disappointing since It's fairly new. I'll have to ask Tor where he sourced it from.

The corrosion is not so bad. The exhaust manifold always looks that way. If you plan to separate the manifold, make sure you have new compression rings and O rings ready. The compression rings can not be gotten in north america. Akella can get you all parts you need. The water line in that picture might need replacement though. It is almost impossible to do that when the engine is still on, so now is the time. The part is available from toyota.

I am planning on a turbo now from Graeme (at least I think I am, I should probably get on the list if there is one!) so I'll probably put in an order for a few random parts and will put the manifold rings on the list.

The injection pump flaring is not a big deal, IMO, unless it is really excessive. The pump is on there with 90ft/lbs of torque. But your rebuild guy can tell you. A new shaft is only about 120$ and can be sourced from Denso easily. And they have to tear it down completely anyway for a good rebuild.

Well…Unfortunately the cap no longer fits on it so it'll be replacing or seeing if I can fix it. Since it's getting a rebuild with the addition of the boost compensator I got from Akella it may just need replacing. We'll see!

As Wayne said, take your crank, cam, block, head (with cam journals and valves) to a good machine shop. Bring them the 1HZ manual as well. They will tell you what's out of spec much more reliably as you can do with a micrometer. They'll check your valves too. Don't even try to get those pre cups out yourself. They are trash, but probably the shop needs to weld something onto them to get them out. Even the Toyota SST has a very hard time with old pre cups and usually fails.

I guess it didn't occur to me to let the machine shop do the necessary measuring, I was figuring I'd need to get the measuring tools myself. I'm happy to save some coin since going the turbo route is not something I'd call cheap! With the amount of cracking I've got on the pre cups, I'd already figured the machine shop would need to do that part, It would probably just shatter if I tried to do it myself. I can't recall if I've asked, but is there a good source for the tool for getting the valves out?



A little more progress this weekend. Got all of the gears on the front of the engine off, dropped the pan and removed the oil cooler. I'll try to make time to pull the pistons later tonight as well, I'm dying to see what no. 2 looks like. One thing that worries me though is one of the holes behind the oil cooler. Should the one on the right look like this??





Thanks again,
Leit

 

[Jan-78FJ40]

Yes, that hole always looks that way. It scared me too the first time, as it looks broken. But it is like that.
I've never bothered with the valves myself-I've always brought the heads to the machine shop with the valves in…

cheers,
jan

 

[Leitrum3]

Yes, that hole always looks that way. It scared me too the first time, as it looks broken. But it is like that.
I've never bothered with the valves myself-I've always brought the heads to the machine shop with the valves in…

cheers,
jan

Thanks Jan. Every time I look around that area, I still wonder why it looks like that and what it looks like from the factory... but at least I know I'm not the only one.

Had a busy last week but got some great news with work so it looks like I will be going forward with the turbo and upgraded pistons for this build! Fortunately my girlfriend and I don't share finances so I just told her I was going to make some upgrades while I was at it so it's more drivable and efficient for us when we go adventuring, and got a big thumbs up!

Anyway, back to serious business. Some more photos, mostly for the hell of it, some for documentation. This first one shows the remnants of a question I've had since day 1 of this rig. It seems like something happened to the coolant at some point in time because there has always been a significant amount of sludge in all the hard to reach places, not to mention a good amount in the bottom of the reservoir. I'll do a good cleaning of the heating system before I put it all back together.




All I needed was a good long weekend and now I'm ready for the machine shop.








I would say that now things are getting interesting, but to be honest, this is about what I expected. No broken rings, just this one indentation and broken section of piston. I think it was more the broken section that was rubbing against the cylinder wall than the upper section as that piece was completely shiny. I can't believe I drove it for so long like this, but it just didn't seem like failure was imminent or anything.

 

[Leitrum3]

And now for the bearings. Most of these looks pretty good, but a few of them had some significant scoring-- nothing like some of the melt down metal in the pan catastrophes I've seen posts of. Still, I'm glad these are getting replaced now.


This was from the no. 2 piston and is such a clean even line, I paused for a second to wonder if it's supposed to look like that.



However, most of them looked like this.




This was something that was curious to me, can you see the "bubbles"? I think it's coolant, but I found a few drops of semi-clear/white liquid coming off the bottom of the block once I'd separated it and pulled the crank. I have no idea on this one.







The worst offender on the lower crank bearings was #5, probably not terrible by catastrophic standards but pretty significantly scored. Those are all fingernail thickness.

 

[Leitrum3]

I remember reading in Surfponto's rebuild thread about his cracked crank and how impossible that seems. I get it now. This thing is significant!




A little light scoring from...the rear main seal? Some dirt stuck in there perhaps? Probably not something to be overly concerned with but is that an area they would machine and I would get an oversized seal for?




Did I mention that this whole process is fascinating for me since I've never done this before? I'm hoping that order and cleanliness will be my saving grace now that I've 100% dismantled my engine. I am going to try to get ahold of Lynchmob to see where he took his engines for maching locally, figuring that would be the best bet.

The injectors on these things are pretty simple so I'm thinking I will get these local guys (http://www.dfispdx.com) to rebuild the injectors. Though considering I have a boost compensator to add to the injection pump, I think I'll send this down to OrangeFJ45 or Powderpig, per Beno's suggestion.




At the end of the weekend, my little shop is feeling very full now. I'll be happy to take some things to the machine shop just to get it off the work bench!

 

[crushers]

that looks like the result of a glow plug end that has broken off and pounded up to dust.
usually if that happens the inner MIGHT show some dents but near the edge i could see it happening.
how was the cylinder wall?

I think it was more the broken section that was rubbing against the cylinder wall than the upper section as that piece was completely shiny. I can't believe I drove it for so long like this, but it just didn't seem like failure was imminent or anything.