Its time for a rebuild.

Well the hard part is behind me, too tired to finish it up today, will finish up everything tomorrow.

 

Now we wait for a good day to shoehorn this puppy in the car.

 

So past couple of weeks the weather has been completely uncooperative, if the sun came out then it was cold, if the temperature went up it was raining, finally this weekend was nice enough to work on the car out in the elements.

I starting taking out the old motor yesterday, spent a couple of hours on the car then a couple today. No major hick ups but the salt up here hasnt been kind to some of the bolts. Couple of the engine to transmission bolts were deeply corroded and fused to inside of the holes inside the lower oil pan. One of them starting coming out but then sheered, another one sheered right at the head so the rest of the unthreaded part of the bolt is frozen inside the oil pan and is not letting the motor come off of the transmission and is acting like a frozen dowel pin. I have doused it with pb blaster and have left it to be worked on tomorrow. I dont really want to use heat, at least not just yet, any other ideas that might work on separating the two without damaging the oil mid oil pan and/or the transmission casing?

 

^^ Thanks you for the kind words @Montgomery

The old motor is out, didnt have to use heat, just tons of PB blaster and a bit of persuasion using a mallet and a wedge. I can install the new motor and not worry about the two mounting bolts that are sheared but that wont be me, so some time today would be spent taking out those sheared bolts, one has to be drilled out and the other one can just come out using vise grips.

 

Finally moving forward with the new motor transplant.

On the right, one of the good bolts.

Middle one sheared right at the base of the head, got taken out by using some heat and small pipe wrench.

Left one sheared in the middle, I had to weld a nut to it as it was sitting flush with the transmission and then unscrew it out after heating up the area around it a bit.

 

She lives again with a new heart, short video of first start; car is back on the road and have already put 100 miles on the new motor. Oil change to come around 500 or 1000 miles, should be soon.

 

^^ I bought a new timing chain tensioner and a new gasket came with the gasket set, spoke to a toyota tech and he said not to apply anything on the metal gasket, if leak ever comes back, just change the metal gasket but I should be fine for a few years. The leak is due to the high pressure oil that is supplied to the tensioner though a oil passage hole in the block and a corresponding cut out in the tensioner.


300 miles so far and everything is copacetic. Just a occasional P0420. Prior to the rebuild I never had the p0420 CEL. I am pretty sure the upstream O2 sensor is bad as I am using the sensor that came with the used motor I bought. The previous owner did mention that he had installed a new O2 sensor when he put a used motor in his car to replace the old one. Rather than installing the used sensor from my old motor I am just going to order a new one and install that, my catalytic convertor never threw the CEL before so the only variable that has changed is the used O2 sensor.

 

I did not disable EGR, still mulling over that idea. The old EGR cooler that I had cleaned a year or so ago was almost fully plugged again when I pulled the old motor out. I gotta talk to my diesel tech buddy on how they eliminate EGR systems on the 6.9 cummins. I can fabricate stuff and if it makes sense I might make something to delete the EGR system and have the intake use fresh air rather than recirculated exhaust gases; need to pick his brain first.

BTW the fuel efficiency of the car has gone up by about 20~25%. I use to get 38~40MPG with the old motor and 48mpg with the new motor, still riding on dedicated snow tires as they are on their way out, ambient temps are still sort of low here in New England (lows are 40s, highs are 60s) and I do 80%/20% driving split(highway/local).

Once the all season tires go on and average temps climb I am hoping to yield low to mid 50s.

 

Most of the parts can be reused but would require tons of cleaning. I'd say 60% of the time spent on this project was on cleaning and prepping all the parts to go back together, I am sure a lot of this work could be cut down by at least half if only the mating surfaces were cleaned and the rest were left as is, the head gasket can be done in the car.

I am actually helping my brother soon who picked up a 2010 with blown head gasket. Here is the parts list I have told him to order

- Gasket set from Toyota ($160).
- Fel-pro gasket ($42 I think from Amazon).
- 2 O-rings for the oil filter attachment ($9).
- Couple of tubes of Mopar gasket maker ($14 each).
- Head cleanup is going to be $100.

Both the sets of old head bolts I have are within the acceptable stretch range recommended by Toyota, so either we'll use one of my old sets or the old one from his motor if its within spec.

The video I posted on page 1 is very helpful, I feel like if you have access to some decent tools, patience and a helping hand you can take care of this job in a couple of days.

 

Couple of updates: I installed the old O2 sensor from my blown motor to the new one to check if the o2 sensor is the issue before buying a new one, no more CEL and the car passed state inspection as well as I was due for one and was holding off till the new engine was installed.

I spoke to my brother and told him a head gasket install will cost about $500 in parts and machine work where as a complete engine rebuild will cost about $1000~1200 in parts and machine work (same that I just did to my motor). He wants to go the same route that I chose i.e. new pistons/rings etc.

My old motor is getting pulled apart in the next few days so I can inspect the insides and see if its worth rebuilding, either that or I'll be pulling out the old motor in his prius to rebuild.

For some reason this situation reminds me of a quote from movie "contact"; "First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price? "

 

Ughh I should have done a better job at maintaining this motor. It doesn’t make sense as this motor has an oil change every 4K miles and the oil that I took out was almost like I took it out of a diesel motor.