Head Gasket Repair Questions (1 Viewer)

[zapatius]

Agreed. My own position is that I would not want anyone working on my 1FZ-FE unless they had worked on other 1FZ-FE's before, preferably recently and often. As Joey said, there will be complainers, and I'm willing to try and suss those out as I can. But what I don't want to be is the guinea pig for a shop, or a tech, to take apart and put back together his first 80 Series motor. Similarly, I have heard that there is a far higher incidence of complications from medical procedures done by doctors who perform the given procedure less than 50 times a year. Just my two cents.

Oddly, there's a lot more places I trust to work on my heart than I do for my Land Cruisers.

 

[COYS]

I have several customers that have used AAA engine out of Chatsworth for the turbo. No issues. But everytime I mention them someone sends my a private message complaining about them.

I’ve done 19 gear box builds from Red Head. Every time I mention them I get private messages that they suck.

I’ve gotten messages from customers complaining about Cruiser Outfitters and Valley Hybrid and Land Cruiser Specialties and all the other big guys. I guarantee all of them has had some of their customers complain about me in one way or another.

My point being is who do you trust? I can’t answer that for you. But you will always find detractors if you go looking hard enough.

I don't trust anyone in the auto vendor ecosystem because every single one of them disappoints in some fashion.

AAA Engine - Four-figure spend with five-figure implications (heck naw, not with those reviews)

Red Head - ~$700 job for a part that's still available new from Toyota (low risk)

Shops - Services-oriented, e-commerce types variable (good help is hard to find these days)

Until I can wrench on my own (someday), it's all a game of risk mitigation for me aka finding the good enoughs.

To the OP, I'm actually right now in the midst of going through a preemptive engine transplant so did some researching and strategizing the past few months for my '97 LC:

• Money and time be damned, I would've shipped my jalopy to Robbie in CO, OTRAMM in DC or Georg in Stockton, CA and have them do a full engine rebuild
• I only want to go through an engine out project once so I'm essentially replacing my og 1FZ-FE with a "new" OEM long block 1FZ-FE (short block + head/internals)
• I'm enlisting one shop to pull out og engine, another well regarded machine shop to do the actual new engine build work (thx @NLXTACY), and before installing the new unit doing a bunch of while in there stuff

Whether reusing the block/parts or going whole hog like me, it's equally important to have a 1FZ-FE Yoda provide sagacious counsel because no two 80s nor its owner expectations are alike.

May the ih8/goog force b with u!

 

[MKinMT1996]

Lots of helpful info here! Don't want to hijack the thread but I'm thinking the headgasket on my 96 is starting to go bad. I've read about all the different symptoms. I do occasionally get some white smoke out exhaust and on cold mornings it really struggles to run. Is smell another tell tail sign? It's a difficult smell to explain but kind of a nasty gas/exhaust smell. It's at 265,000 miles and to my knowledge the HG has never been replaced. Thanks

 

[pgmatt]

I always prefer OEM Toyota parts but at the end of the day the 1FZFE is not a particularly complicated engine and any respectable machine shop can rebuild one. I find it odd with the age of these trucks that no common Land Cruiser vendors have started stocking rebuilt 1FZFE’s. Most trucks are now pushing 2-300 thousand miles and are going be to in need of a engine in the near future. Maybe it is tough to find good cores?

 

[bhsdriller]

@MKinMT1996 just get something like this and test

Amazon product ASIN B06VVBSFTF

 

[MKinMT1996]

Will do! Thanks for the advice. If gasket is going bad and no further issues is it around $1500 to replace?

 

[bhsdriller]

When it comes time to do mine I won't do all the extra stuff along with it. Like strictly head gasket +valve job and that's it.

Those parts aren't super expensive, curious how much it would cost but depends on the machine shop

 

[jsloden]

Last year I did my own for under a grand. I bought the gasket kit. Watch the OTRAMM videos and be methodical about it and you're good. The only thing you have to worry about then is getting someone to deck the head. I had never done one on an fj80 before and it was straight forward. Honestly, the hardest part was getting the wiring harness out of the way and getting the upper intake off. I would at least watch the videos first before you pay someone five grand to do it. That way you can asses the situation for yourself.

 

[COYS]

Here's how mine looks after tearing into it the other day:

The only symptom I noticed was a sudden material loss of coolant in the radiator and expansion tank. Once I saw this I stopped driving it immediately and proceeded to dial Mr T to order a bunch of parts as documented in my thread above.

My trusty lad was putting me on notice that it's time to boogey.

 

[jsloden]

Nice leak you got there. I bet this is considerably easier to do outside of the truck.

 

[tmxmotorsports]

Nice leak you got there. I bet this is considerably easier to do outside of the truck.

Most definitely easier I did mine with the hood off and stood inside the engine compartment

 

[vegasfj40]

4k is not a bad price if you are getting OE parts. As others have said, I would have your injectors sent in to have rebuilt. I sent mine to RC engineering. Probably better to buy new ones. Also its a great time to replace the fuel filter and ALL of the hoses including PHH. When I did mine last year I accidentally bumped into the timing gear which broke one of the guides. Glad I did because they were fairly brittle. I replaced the chain and guides and tensioner. I also went crazy and replaced my main engine harness as I had some issues near the EGR valve. If you have the time and more important, garage space and tools, its really not too hard to do. Oh, I'd also make sure they have a FSM to work from. Either let them borrow yours if you have or buy one and let them use it.

 

[simpsoap]

Just wanted to give an update to this thread that I created some time back......I decided to bite the bullet and get the truck repaired as I love driving it and its in fantastic shape. Took much longer than expected to get the work completed, but overall, I'm extremely happy with the results. I've only put 140ish miles on the truck since getting it back a few days ago, but it drives better than before.

Head was machined and cleaned up by a local shop. Exhaust manifolds were pulled and cleaned as well. Decided while it was apart that I would replace the timing chain and guides as well, as the timing chain had stretched a little when compared with a new chain. Also replaced the engine wiring harness as a few others in this thread suggested. We did a bunch of other miscellaneous parts as well and things seem to be running well.

Really hoping to get some serious mileage on it in the next couple of weeks, but happy that I decided to move forward with repairing the truck, given the fact that things are hard to come and with the rising prices of everything!

Thanks again for all the advice, it was much appreciated!

-Andy