Builds Project Bluebird and the tale of an engine rebuild (1 Viewer)

[maxbob002]

Mid may I got my blue 1984 FJ60. It was mostly stock and had 170kish miles. I drove it home from Nashville and enjoyed it for the next few months. My little girls named her Bluebird.

July 30th on the way to work it began to make popping sounds intermittently at idle. After some diagnosing I found a couple pushrods had lost their tops and were eating the adjusters.

This resulted in fine metal shavings in the oil. I considered just dropping the pan and doing the best I could to clean it. However, several other pushrods had notable wear. I read a tone about LS swaps and almost went down that route. In the end I decided to keep the 2F. The process of pulling the engine for a rebuild began.

I am totally copying wngrog’s build and wanted to say thanks to him and Cam and everyone else that contributed to his thread and this forum. I did a ton of research over the last few months and this forum has been awesome. I bought the AFI kit when it was on sale. I went with the DUI distributor and am putting in all OEM hoses and clamps, aside from the few no longer available. For those I went with Gates ones from Rock Auto.

 

[maxbob002]

Given the Rube Goldberg-esque vaccuum and Smog system, it has to go. I don't know how anyone could actually put it all back to together honestly. There were a million hoses and valves. I got the JimC desmog parts.

Pulling the engine went easy enough despite everything being covered in 1/8” to 1/4” of grease. Several of bolts required a screw driver to dig the bolt-heads out. In hindsight, I should have at least given an engine bay cleaning a shot. I left the powersteering pump and AC compressor connected since it worked fine and was full of R12. The condenser swing out of the way without issue.

I used sandwich bags with index cards and tons of pics to keep track of attached lines and bolts. A brass wheel on a drill press cleaned the bolts and water pipes, etc.

I had to cut the bolt on the air pump because that sleave had gotten stuck on the bolt. I’m not sure if this is the stock bushing or not but I ordered a used bracket off ebay and a new bolt from amazon.

 

[maxbob002]

I ordered an Aisin water pump, Aisin clutch kit, a/c idler bearing, and universal throttle cable from Amazon.

I dropped the radiator and alternator off locally to have them rebuilt. I also disassembled and painted the alternator after I got it back.

 

[g-man]

good work going on there.

 

[OSS]

That's unfortunate about the push rods. In the future, if the valves are kept adjusted, that won't happen again.

 

[Garrissey]

Respect for not doing an LS Swap!

 

[maxbob002]

Thanks Garrissey!

OSS, I wondered about that. It's possible but my engine builder said a couple of the bearings were bad and he thinks it was all a low oil pressure situation. The valves were supposedly adjusted shortly before my purchase. However the two adjusters for missing tops one were way in compared to all the others. It may have been a bandaid to a long term issue.

 

[maxbob002]

For an air filter adapter I am using the Mr. Gasket air filter adapter set 6411G. It works but needs to be turned upside down. I haven't ran the engine like this yet but it should work. Just in case, I pulled an old chevy TBI air cleaner from the junk yard as a backup.

The small end of the adapter fits into the stock breather. I then sanded of the step and ridge from the other end. It was messy with a dremmel. I am going to use a real sander to level everything out. This lets it sit down onto the TBI which has a gasket available from any autoparts store. Wngrog was kind enough to let me measure the height of his aluminum adapter that is no longer available.

 

[maxbob002]

For the throttle cable I drilled a hole in the firewall and used the plastic hand throttle adapter courtesy of wngrog to connect the cable to the pedal arm. First I bent down that small piece of metal with an unkown purpose. It seemed too flimsy to be a true pedal stop. Of note I had tons of trouble trying to drill from under the dash. I ended up measuring from a reference bolt and noted there is a corresponding dimple on the engine side of the firewall. I also drilled out the cable hole on a cable stop from the help section at Advanced Auto. Thanks cam for posting your throttle cable pics. Note the "custom" clearancing on the booster shield courtesy of a hammer.

To connect to the TBI, an S10 a the junkyard donated its cable bracket.

At this point we are pretty close to the point in time where I ended up moving. The truck stayed since the house hasn't sold. So the good part is now every few weeks I have headed back to just work on the cruiser. The bad part is I am about 90miles away so no quick hops over after work. These projects also happened in pieces because I would hit a roadblock on one part and just work on another aspect of the build.

 

[maxbob002]

Mounting the fuel pump was a bear and took way moer hours than I care to admit. It also reaffirmed my hatred of crimp connectors. Pics make it look so simple. I used a hacksaw to take out a section of hard line.

Used a nutsert as well to make a threaded hole in the frame. Wear your eye protection folks. The drill bit caught and broke into big chunks.

Then used wngrog’s flare tool to make a flare on each hard line. The flares looked crappy and it’s an art form for sure. However, the fuel psi is low so they should work ok. I used a NAPA coil mount with a piece of old radiator hose to mount the filter.

I also ended using some "fuel injection" clamps because they were smooth and looked less likely to cut the fuel line when tightening.

 

[maxbob002]

Here is the final product with wires ran and crimp connectors on and ground wire in place. I ran wiring loom over the wire and ran the wire on the top part of the frame rail up to the passenger area. I had to drill our the supplie clamp bolt holes and get some long bolts to reach the frame rail.

Also put on some replacement fender liners courtesy of trail tailor. They were nice and thick but the plastic clips took some encouragement (pressure) to stay locked in place. I ended only replacing two with longer ones from Advanced Auto.

Thermostat housing came off the block ok but was a bear to separate. The BVSV’s were good and stuck also. One came out after letting penetrant spray sit for a week. The second refused and boogered the threads up a good bit on the way out. I got an NPT tap and die set from Harbor Freight to fix the threads and put in a JimC plug.

 

[maxbob002]

I was having heater problems before all this. I had barely warm air from the front and no blower in the rear. This was as good a time as any to address them. I had hoped the oring was gone from the thermostat but it was there when I finally got it all apart. I went ahead and flushed both from and rear heater cores using a brass garden hose sprayer and old heater hose. Some junk came out of both but it wasn’t impressive enough to explain my front no heat issue. We will see when I get everything back together I supposed.

The rear heater core worked great but the blower didn’t work. I bought a used unit from Ebay and swapped the motor out. I tested for power before and it had something like 8 volts on high so I figured it was the motor. However both the old and new motor work fine when hooked to 12v. I’ll have to see how everything goes when I get it back together.

After seeing another thread that showed how easy and inexpensive a new muffler and tail pipe were, I ordered them pretty early on. Since my project has dragged on a bit I later ordered a header from JT outfitters. It looks good and the REMFlex gasket should help sealing it up. For some reason I don't have a picture of the header. I'll have to get one. My only complaint about the tail pipe is that it hits the bumper so I will likely have to get a slight bend put into it.

 

[maxbob002]

After seeing the stainless battery trays, I really wanted one. However the costs of this project just kept adding up. Then my birthday came. Spent some cash and got one a couple weeks ago. It's awesome and I can't wait to install it.

I dropped the engine off in early September but the builder went through some employee issues and as a result things have slowed way down. I put a deposit down in December for parts. Essentially it needed everything. A couple cam lobes were wiped. The head needed to be redone. #1 rod and #1 main looked like crap and were spun or about to spin. He diagnosed it as a low oil pressure situation which is what probably destroyed the push rod end. I don't really have an ETA at this point but a few weeks ago it was being machined. I'll post some more tomorrow thanks for the time.

 

[maxbob002]

Next came ECU mounting. Like others I chose to mount the ecu in the glovebox with the harness running through the firewall in a stock grommet pn the passenger side under the washer fluid reservoir. Cut one side of the grommet and passed the harness through. Of particular note, the ECU is too wide for the glovebox. I haven’t cut the back of the glovebox yet but am considering using fiberglass to hold everything back together in the end. One of the relay's pin moved in and out so I got a replacement at BestBuy. That’s one of the things I really like about the AFI kit. It uses common parts so replacements are easier to source.

I spent a fair amount of time reading about wiring and took some shots of wngrog’s setup. I made a jumper to T into the starter wire and AC wire. Both of these go back to the ECU. Next I made another jumper to the coil power wire to go back to the ECU as an ignition power wire. These flat blade terminals don't stay well connected so I may use some safety wire to make them hold together.

For the evap system I pulled a Chevrolet charcoal canister and got some longer bolts to mount it in the stock cruiser bracket. They are supposed to have an integral valve butnone of the ones I saw looked very special compared to the Toyota one. To plug the catalytic sensor body hole I got a basic 1” body plug from amazon. I left that grease because it’s hard to get off and it surely won’t rust under there. Maybe later I’ll address it.

 

[maxbob002]

I pressed the throw out bearing off with a my press and a 36mm socket. Interestingly my old TOB was the 1F one. I guess some previous guy did a crappy clutch job. I have a set of new OEM flywheel bolts and am having the engine builder resurface the flywheel.

 

[maxbob002]

A pressure washer with degreaser concentrate was sprayed on the engine bay, transmission, driveshaft, and skid plate. Degrease gel was then used on the trans, rear driveshaft, and skid plate. The grease was crazy thick and not completely gone but it’s acceptable. In the future I might keep trying before some paint. I then used some rubbing alcohol to degrease the frame rails. BlackStar rust spray is awesome. It smells terrible but I wish I had some better before shots. It turns rust black and paint ready. Cures for 48h then just paint over. Finished with some good old Rustoleum gloss black.

Finally here is a shot of the big box of parts. Hoses, clamps, bolts, etc. I'm excited about this stuff and cant wait to see it all come together on the engine.

This pretty much brings you up to where I am, waiting on the engine. I still have some to-dos andwill psot more pics as I get stuff done. Next thing up is to finish cleaning the bolts and clean/paint the water pipes. Thanks for reading.

 

[SteveH]

I had an '87 FJ60 in that color - great color!

Wow - this is the best (or most applicable to me) AFI TBI conversion thread I have seen on Mud. I'm converting my '78 FJ40 and you validated some of my thoughts and ideas.

Was the 'Mr. Gasket' air cleaner kit complete enough to make the spacer, or did you use some other material to make it tall enough? Hard to tell from your photos. Thanks - Steve

 

[maxbob002]

I had an '87 FJ60 in that color - great color!

Wow - this is the best (or most applicable to me) AFI TBI conversion thread I have seen on Mud. I'm converting my '78 FJ40 and you validated some of my thoughts and ideas.

Was the 'Mr. Gasket' air cleaner kit complete enough to make the spacer, or did you use some other material to make it tall enough? Hard to tell from your photos. Thanks - Steve

I ordered an extra ring that was 2" tall. It's part number is 9343. Then stack them all together. I'll probably jbweld them together to make it one piece. It's all just plastic but mr gasket says they are stackable so should work out.

 

[SteveH]

Great - very helpful. I may use your trick, and figure out how to fabricate a metal one. I would be super-careful about using epoxy inside the collar, in that if a chunk of JB weld breaks off and goes through the engine, it won't be a good thing.

 

[2mountainfish]

Nice job. I remember when I did my engine and how much work it actually was. Amazing how replacing all the little stuff adds up $$$$. If you are assembling the engine yourself, I have some info and pics in my build thread you can check out. It is a lot of work but so worth it in the end. Thanks for sharing the journey.