Builds Last of the BJs: 1989 BJ60 restoration, 15B-T swap

[Eurasiaoverland]

15B-T engine build 22

Injector fitting. In this close-up, two of the five injector ports are visible.

Rebuilt injectors with new rubber body seals (strangley enough, these came in the 3BII gasket kit which I've been using on the engine, even though the 3BII uses very different injectors which these seals do not fit. There are also the critical injector seat crush washers, which need to seal in the combustion pressure in the cylinder, and eight copper crush washers for the leak off banjo bolts.

Looking down one of the injector bores in the head.

All four injectors torqued down. Yes, that's a piece of cereal packet blanking off the inlet manifold.

And with the leak-off pipe fitted.

EO

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

15B-T engine build 23

Flywheel time. I got a flywheel with the 15B-T. It was behind a 15B-FT (all 15B-Ts were mated to slushbox autos as far as I know) and it had clearly been ragged by some 'off roader' with the sort of mentality to rag a clutch to death and damage the flywheel rather than replacing the clutch when it starts to slip. The flywheel was cracked and had heat patches. I could not find any machine shop around that would do Blanchard grinding, but I took it to a very weel renowned and well equipped shop in Sipitang, Sabah, Malaysia where they machined it in a lathe.

However, the machinist informed me that although the thing was flat, there were hard patches. I estimate that he took off about 0.5 mm, but the patches remained, as well as some of the cracks. The cracks do not worry me, but the hard patches may lead to rough clutch engagement as they have different friction coefficients to the unhardened parts.

So I decided to buy a new flywheel. I got a Daihatsu unit from IMPEX. Much cheaper than Amayama, and much, much, much slower. But it got to me undamaged in the end.

Front (non-friction) side.

Looks like a lathe finish from factory. Certainly not Blanchard ground.

EO

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

15B-T engine build 24

Clutch parts.

I got a set of eight flywheel bolts - they are different from the flex-plate bolts which came from the Mega Cruiser (longer and with a 12pt. head).

I'm using clutch disc 31250-60432. It's the 11" clutch disc currently fitted to 1HZ-powered 70 Series Land Cruisers. Many Toyota clutches supersede to this part, including those fitted to the BJ74 and 11B, 13B, 14B, 15B-F and -FT-powered Dynas.

I'm using AISIN clutch cover CTX-133. This is a stronger clutch cover than that used on the BJ74 or 1HZ-powered Land Cruiser and is equivalent to covers used in 14B-T Dyna applications, 1FZ-powered Land Cruisers, 1HD-T applications in the Coaster (which has an 11" clutch), 1HZ-T (yes, they exist), 15B-FT-powered Coasters and 1KD-FTV and 1KZ-TE-powered 120 and 150-Series Prados. I got a new set of clutch bolts as someone had chewed the originals from my BJ60.

Test fitting (on the living room table) to make sure all these parts work together - that's a pass.

EO

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

15B-T engine build 24

Clutch fitting.

With the engine lifted from the stand a final time (I hope), time to fit the clutch. First, the rear end plate goes on. I was planning to use the rear end plate from the 3BII, but the 15B-T has the retainer bolt going into the rear crankshaft seal, rather than into the block as on the 3BII (I assume because of the wider bores). So I need to use the 15B-T retainer plate. Coming from an auto, it has an access cover in order to do something to the torque converter, and I had to get a new blank as the guys who sold it to me fogot to give it to me with the engine.

I could have bought a rear end plate from a manual, but that seems a bit excessive.

Flywheel mounted and bolts torques to 160 Nm. I put a breaker bar on the front crank pulley bolt and ersted it on an axle stand in order to torque up the flywheel bolts with the engine hanging from the crane. I kept losing track of which bolt I had tightened in sequence, so ended up marking them with paint pen once I had reached and the confirmed the final torque.

Placing the clutch cover and friction disc on, with the six bolts screwed in until they just touch the cover, I can get my old input shaft in there and spin the clutch, to get it properly aligned.

Finished and ready to fit. Feels great to have manualised the 15B-T. Right after this, I dropped it into the chassis... but to cover that, I need to start the chassis building!

EO

 

[bj70bc]

epic

 

[aztoyman]

Nice work! You're very thorough, methodical and you definitely do not cut corners. Following this thread brings back memories of the old Caterpillar engines (and others) I used to work on way back when.