15B-T engine build 1
If you've read earlier posts on the engine, you'll know that it appears to have been left drained (down to the drain plug, which is not the lowest point of the coolant system) for what I believe was a period of many years, during which the block became filled with a sludgy precipitate of rust that choked the oil cooler and completely blocked a coolant passage from the water pump to the oil cooler. It was so firmly blocked that even a pressure washer and compressed air line did nothing to shift the blockage. I had to knock out a small bore plug and scrape out the precipitate with a pick.
I gave the block a full flush with warm citric acid for several days and drained a lot of sticky black liquid, followed with a very thorough flush with water. But I still had reservations about what lurked at the bottom of the block and would get chunks of soft, powdery deposits coming into the water pump port every time I inverted the engine to work on it.
So, to be really sure, I wanted to knock out some core plugs. I didn't want to knock out all of them as some are deep in the engine, reached by knocking out outer plugs which give access to the pushrod galleries from where the inner coolant jacket plugs can be reached. The tricky to access plugs are not near the bottom and I don't think will have an issue with rust.
The lowest plugs are a series of four 35 mm plugs adjacent to each cylinder, on the intake side of the engine. I knocked these out. Or rather, I knocked them in as they are all too small to flip over in the bores, so I had a fun hour fishing around for them and working them forward to the water pump port where they can be easily picked up.
The 35 mm plugs show surface rust which has advanced in places to small pock-marks, some of which go quite deep. I would say that they were no about to rust through, but were definitely on the way. They also show deeper corrosion along old fluid level marks, where the remains of the coolant must have sat for years slowly evaporating off.
I also knocked out two 50 mm plugs; one at the back of the engine and one at the front, behind the water pump. These plugs were the highest in the block that I removed, and showed minimal surface rust. This is the bore at the back of the block.
In 11/1994, Toyota switched to stainless steel for these core plugs in the B engines, so my 05/1994 block has the older mild steel plugs (with cadmium plating). Much as I dislike stainless steel as a material, they are clearly a better choice for core plugs and so I went with the later style stainless plugs. Here you can see the old plugs vs. new genuine stainless plugs for the seven plugs I have chosen to replace (the tiny one is for the water pump to oil cooler bore, not technically a 'core' plug).
I knocked in new core plugs with a bit of Loctite 638, which is a strong retaining compound with good filling/sealing properties. There seem no end of opinions on what to use on them online, so I used what I had to hand. Looking good with the new block paint.
EO