aLostDawg

Part I (pictures and more details to follow)

Well, here's the scoop. I just finished my 3.0l to 3.4l conversion (with auto tranny) in my '93 4Runner. Actually I finished it about 5 weeks ago, but I didn't get to start it until 2 weeks ago. That's another story for later. For now, I'll get into some of the details. First of all my impressions. Now that's what a vehicle is supposed to feel like when you want to accelerate. This is an excellent swap. Here are a few of the reasons I did this swap. These are in no particular order.

1. more power
2. when done the truck is still almost 100% Toyota parts
4. easy to work on (3.4l is the Toyota tech's engine of choice to work on)
5. Toyota reliability/longevity
6. better fuel economy
7. even more power, can we say supercharger

Now lets get away from the opinion to the facts. It turned out way better than I thought it was going to. I had several hurdles (some small, some large) in the process, but now that I'm driving it (I've got near 1000 miles on it) the swap was well worth my while. Purchased a '99 4Runner Limited with 60k on it for the donor vehicle. First hurdle was that the engine harness was cut. I attempted to locate an engine harness and after 4 days of calling I found one in GA. (I guess they are rare.) Shipped out and 3 days later I'm over that hurdle. I had ordered the conversion harness from Mike at ORS and was told that it would take 3 weeks. Knowing that this was one of the first retail ones he was selling I had a hunch that it would be late. I had been bugging him about this for 3 months prior to when he finally took my order. Eight weeks after I ordered it the harness was in my hands. Don't get me wrong, Mike did an awesome job. He custom builds each of the harnesses after he has the specs of the donor and recipient. Each one is a little bit different and this is how he can make sure that it will work with your specific application.

In this eight week period I was bored stiff ... er ... I mean I pulled the 3.0l, cleaned the engine bay, pulled the 3.4l and auto, noticed the 3.4l intake was a bit dirty, pulled it to clean it, pulled the pan to see sludge in the bottom of it, also noticed 70% of the pickup screen was clogged, pulled a valve cover to see about .5" of sludge covering the valve train, uggggggghhh!!! Hurdle number 2. I thought this thing only had 60K on it! I guestimate that the owner just added oil when it was low. Maybe 3 or 4 oil changes in 60K.

OK, pull the heads and send them out for a clean and check. Two valves on one head, and 3 on the other were leaking. Full valve job and valve adjust. Pull the pistons and crank and inspect the block. Cross-hatch was mostly gone. Light hone to put the cross-hatch back in. New rings, rod bearings and main bearings. Put the pistons back in. Plastigage the rod bearings and it's just at the top of the clearance range. I decided to go with the next tighter bearings. Taking the pistons back out I break the head off of a rod bolt. Wow am I glad that didn't go at 5000 RPM. This sure is getting interesting (and expensive). I'm thinking that I bought Murphy's truck. Ok, pistons back in, heads back from the machine shop, heads on, and finish assembling the engine. Plug the dipstick hole. New baffle and pickup tube, swap on the 3.0l pan and motor mounts. New (used) harness on engine.

Still waiting for the harness, so install the 2" body lift.

Still waiting for the ORS harness, so I pull apart the t-case. It was an early gear driven one and it needed a 23 spline input shaft. I had weighed the options. Purchase a new 23 spline input shaft or regear it to 4.0:1, 4.7:1, or 5.0:1 gears. I decided that since this was going to be used for off road that the 4.7:1 gears would work nicely. The 5.0:1 seemed like a bit of an overkill with already having an automatic so I went a little on the side of moderation. I grind out the case and install the new 4.7:1 gears. Slap Marlin's t-case adapter on the t-case. A couple of bolts in the kit are ~.0625" too long. They were bottoming out in the holes before they were getting tight. Install the new seal, bearing and spud shaft on the transmission. Test fit the t-case and the spud shaft was .25" too long. Great! You gotta beat this thing just to get it on. It won't go on any further. I contemplate modifying it so that it will work. Do I void the warranty if I do that? Measure the depth of the female splines, measure the t-case input shaft. Sure enough, if you cut off .25" it should go together without any forcing. Pull out the angle grinder with a cut-off wheel in it. Wet rag inboard of the cut to keep it cool and keep any debris out of the trans. I take my time so that it doesn't get too hot and three minutes later re-test fit and it works great. I do enjoy that cut-off wheel in my angle grinder. (SIDE NOTE: Marlin has had some issues with the spud shafts being too long. I was told that this issue had been rectified prior to mine being built. Obviously not. They offered to send out another, corrected, spud shaft but I had already installed mine, and modified it. They compensated me for having to modify it.)

ORS harness arrives with instructions on how to install the harness.

Slap the trans on the engine (on the floor). Put the new trans pan on while it's still out of the vehicle and on the engine hoist. Yes, you can install the engine and trans in one piece. I think I've got a picture somewhere of my friend Sam standing on the transmission, hanging on to the engine hoist and balancing himself with the other hand on the windshield just to get enough angle to get it in.

Half an hour of making sure everything is in the right place. Motor mount bolts in, PS lines on, fuel high pressure hose ... uh, it's male to male, that won't work. Hurdle number ... well I think I stopped counting. I'll stop there for now and leave the solution for that hurdle for the next part.

JC

anthony1

iTrader: (1)

thanks for the detail play by play install.
Look forward to more...

Cebby

Great writeup. Can't wait to see pics and hear the other issues along the way...

rimpainter.com

Despite an excellent maintenance record on my rig, this scares me a bit.

Nice work BTW!

aLostDawg

Thanks for the compliments. As far as the sludge issue goes. I think this is an isolated occurance caused by a lack of maintenance. When I was working at Toyota I never saw a 3.4l with this problem. Several sets of head gaskets on the 3.4l and never saw anything close to this. On the other hand I did a couple of rebuilds and a couple sets of heads on Sienna's under Toyota's SPA. One tell-tale sign is to pull the oil filler cap and look inside of it. Sometimes sludge will even build up in there. I wouldn't worry too much though. This will happen if you don't change the oil. Regular oil changes will prevent this in a 3.4l.

JC

Flygtenstein

Not sure about reading all the way through, but I have a couple questions.

What auto are you using?

Is your case filled with ATF rather than gear lube?

Does your tach work?

aLostDawg

ANSWERS:

I'm using the trans out of the '99 4Runner.

The t-case is filled with gear lube. When you install Marlin's adapter there is a new seal that keeps trans fluid in the trans. The spud shaft also has a freeze plug epoxied in there to keep fluid from transferring through it.

No the tach doesn't work yet. I have a gauge cluster from a '99 that I'm considering transplanting the tach from into my '93 gauge cluster. I'm also working on an alternate solution.

Thanks for the questions. If you're ever down in the Springs I'd be glad to show it to ya.

JC

aLostDawg

I left off where I was attempting to install the high pressure fuel line. I ordered the ORS high pressure fuel line. This is an extention that attaches to the stock 3.4 high pressure hose coming off of the fuel rail. Each end has a double male adapter. The one end fits nicely into the 3.4l high pressure hose end and seals wonderfully. The other end requires the stock union that goes between the 3.0 hard line and the 3.0 flex hose. I had left this on the hose when I pulled the engine. Tie up the trans so I can push the truck all the way back into the garage.

The engine was gone and I ended up having to order a new one from Toyota. Ok, over that hurdle and to the next one.

I had spoke with the exhaust shop I had planned on using about a month prior to dropping in the engine. I told them what I had and what I wanted. He asked if I had all the flanges. I told him I had both the '99 and '93 exhaust systems. He said he had done another one just a few weeks earlier and knew exactly how to do it. He said to keep the 3.4 crossover and we'll use the flanges and run it off of them down the passenger side with the cat and back over to the driver side for the muffler and out the back. So I get it all in there and the 3.4 crossover output flange runs within' .125" of the right rear of the upper A-arm. That flange also hits the fuel high pressure line. OK, decision time.

Do I

1. re-route the fuel line to the outside or top of the frame
2. pull the crossover and see if they can make a new one
3. call and see what they suggest.

So I pick number 3. I called and told them the issues I was seeing with using the stock crossover. This time he said that you can't use the stock crossover because it would burn up the firewall. Huh? if that's where the stock crossover went in the '99 then why don't they have a bunch of fires in them? Oh well, I didn't want an argument. He said that they'd cut the flanges off of the stock crossover and use them to make a new header pipe. Ok, so another hurdle, I get to take the stock crossover off while the engine is in the vehicle. That looks like fun. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Loosen the motor mounts, drop the t-case as far as possible. The 2" body lift helped.

The fuel line union came in. Test fit it to see if it is correct, but leave it off temporarily. More about that later.

Next I spend several hours figuring out the proper routing of the heater hoses. This 4Runner has the rear heater so there's a couple of extra hoses that need to be re-routed to retain this functionality. Some creative use of the heater hoses off of the '99 (it was great to have the whole donor vehicle there to rob stuff off of) and a couple of pre-formed hoses from PepBoys and we've got heat front and rear.

My measurements showed that the engine/trans/t-case would be about 1" longer than the original 3.0 engine/trans/t-case. I also had attempted to figure out where the t-case mount would land compared to the original and I came up with 2" behind stock. IIRC, my figures were off by about .5". Since I had done a 2" body lift I wanted to tuck the rear of the trans/t-case up a little for a couple of reasons. One being that it would be less for the shifters to have to be modified, the second reason being that it would increase clearance. Temporarily I made a set of adapters to move the original t-case mount up 1" and back the appropriate amount. IIRC that was about 2.5".

Now that the drivetrain was solid I moved on to install the computer, engine wiring harness, ORS wiring harness and charcoal cannister. I removed the original charcoal cannister and measured to see where the '99 cannister would fit. I considered installing it in the same place where it was on the '99, but the cruise control actuator resided there. I had planned on using the CC and I was told by ORS that there was a CC cable from a '96 4Runner that would bolt right on the actuator and work with the 3.4l throttle body linkage. I decided to leave the CC right where it was and put the charcoal cannister right where the original 3.0l cannister was. After lots of measuring and re-measuring I decided to put the the cannister close to the firewall on the right side. There was a minimal amount of re-wiring to be done; the hoses were close there also. I pulled the engine harness over through the original harness hole in the firewall. This makes for a tight fit, but works well since the hole is already there and the edges are rounded to prevent from cutting through the harness. Next I spent many hours creating a bracket that would fit in that area, be solid, hold the cannister and also be easy to replace the cannister if needed. This last requirement is one of the main reasons I stick with Toyotas. It's because they are designed to be worked on if needed. As an aside, when I put the Chevy 350 in my '72 Land Cruiser that was one of the things I was disappointed with the Chevy engine. Yes it is a great engine and it has a lot of things going for it, but ... well ... it's not a Toyota. I then placed the ORS harness in the cabin and started to route the wires where they are supposed to go. OBDII hookup to left side; speed sensor and 4wd indicator wires through the firewall, down the transmission to the t-case. Connect the ORS harness to the 3.4l engine harness and the '93 body harness. I then situated the computer so that it fits behind the stock kick panel. Connect the ORS harness to the computer then the engine harness to the computer and install the kick panel.

Back out to the engine bay to work on situating the battery. Since the battery and airbox get to switch places there is some fabrication to get them both to fit and stay in their new homes. I had purchased the battery tray that ORS sells. No offense, but this is just a piece of steel that has two bends in it. It looks good, even unpainted, but I guess I was expecting a little more than what it was. I installed it and added a piece to it to keep the battery from sliding to the right and into the alternator. Battery I had was on it's last leg and since the battery posts are on the wrong side it would have required lengthening the battery cables so I broke down and purchased an Optima. It's smaller and the posts are near the center, so they can be used in either configuration. Besides it's red top matched the color of the 4Runner. The only thing that I did different than what the ORS wiring instructions is where I routed the battery/starter/alternator wiring harness. I routed these inside of the steering shaft. They suggest to route them outside of the steering shaft, but I found that the steering joint cover would rub it's sharp edge on the alt wiring eventually eating through the wires.

That's enough for this second edition of this conversion. Next we will install the electric fan, rad, airbox, and much more.

Enjoy,
JC

Flygtenstein

And I would indeed be happy to show you mine. I have more than 5k on the swap so far and there are some uber issues.

Right now I am in the hunt for a third and hopefully correct seal on the coupler. The first blew up on the way to Wisconsin. The second is on the way out and has resulted in 2.5 qts of ATF in the crawler, but no leakage like the first time.

The first seal blew because the coupler was incorrect. The second has the right coupler but is still not holding.

aLostDawg

I have not had any of these issues yet. The seal fit the coupler firmly. I did have an issue with the bottom two bolts on the t-case adapter leaking gear oil. This was even before I ever started it up. I think the adapter may be warped a little.

JC

Cebby

Are you guys using MC07's or MC08's?

914runner

I have a fix for the tack that is supposed to work butI have yet to test it, I should get around to it in the next week or so. I have about 15,000 miles on mine and love the power!

aLostDawg

I'm using neither at the moment. Hopefully in the future I'll be able to do that. Currently I only have a single 4.7:1 case. Electric locker is the next big upgrade. That should do me for another 3 years until I can scrape up some more funds.

JC

Flygtenstein

The adaptor the leaks on mine is the front one, not the dual case adaptor.

The one that puts a gear drive reduction box behind a new tranny.

If this is working for you, congratulations because you are exactly the second person who I have met who has no issues with the coupler and seal.

aLostDawg

Is Marlin working with you to resolve this seal issue? Or are you on your own?

Maybe I'll check the level of the t-case tomorrow night for kicks.

JC

Flygtenstein

ORS did the install.

There is no solution right now, I just check my tranny dipstick every morning and add a little bit.

aLostDawg

This is what I got on my server before I started having troubles. I've got more, just no server to put them on. I'll work on that.

JC

aLostDawg

I came to the fan and a point of decision. With the 2" body lift the stock mechanical fan is situated outside the center of the shroud. I had a few choices, I could lower the radiator, eliminate the shroud altogether, or run an electric fan. Considering lowering the radiator I've not been impressed with the brackets I've seen and most of them don't retain the ears that are used to hold the rad in place while starting the first bolt. The other thing I don't like is the look of the radiator lowered 2". It kind of gives away the 2" body lift. I know that these are somewhat petty issues. Next option would be to just eliminate the shroud and run without it. I did this in my '92 after I did the 1" body lift and the original fan blade cracked. I pulled the fan blade and the shroud and installed an 8 blade fan off of a '96 Land Cruiser. Never had a problem with overheating even without a shroud. I had considered this, but I had an electric fan I pulled out of the junk yard from a Taurus and had it laying around to put on my '92. Mostly to boost the power a little on the anemic 3.0l. It was still laying around because I had not had time to install it. I decided that because I didn't want to move the radiator it was time to pull the electric fan out and put it to use. Currently it's wired on the low speed only and it's run through an adjustable thermostat that's mounted just aft of the battery on the inside of the fender wall. In 1000 miles I have had no issues as to heat. Goes right to the middle of the temp gauge and stays there solid. I mounted the fan using the stock mounting nuts from the shroud. The left side I had to re-drill the lower hole (on the fan) and on the right side I built some pieces that when bolted down they pinch the fan (shroud) so that it doesn't go anywhere. Easy install/removal for future maintenance.

Once the fan was installed on the radiator I stuck the radiator in and bolted it down. Upper radiator hose (from the 3.4l) isntalled without any issues. Lower radiator hose that I purchased from ORS didn't work. It's an S and the section between the two curves was too long. I assume that this is because found one that would work for a stock (non-bodylift) or with a body lift where the user dropped the rad 2". So, it's off to the local auto parts place for a hose. I'm a fairly regular there so they let me rummage through the aisle of pre-formed hoses. Aha, I found it! It ended up a little tight going on (that's what silicone spray is for), but it works great and looks stock.

I forgot to cap the fuel hardline when I disconnected it from the 3.0l and so I wanted to test the fuel pump and clean out any dirt/grime that might have accumulated while the truck was sitting. 99% of the time it was sitting inside my garage, but I wanted to be sure. Key to the on position and fuel pump runs. Pumped out about 1/4 of a gallon, just until it started looking golden again. Good thing I did that, there were some debris in there that might have clogged an injector.

On to the airbox. My donor vehicle didn't have the airbox/MAF/tube. The silencer was missing also which was ok since I would have replaced it anyway. I could have purchased a FIPK used for about what I purchased the airbox for, but durring the time that I worked at Toyota as a Tech I had several fried MAF sensors because of the wonderful oil on the aftermarket filters. This may be due to over-oiling, but I decided to go with a stock filter and stock airbox for the time being. I read a little on YotaTech about the ISR mod so I went searching for something I could use in place of the silencer. Walking throught the aisles at the local auto parts store I found an exhaust tip. It was on the small end of the specs (2.625" diameter). It's chromed so it looks good. I'm not one for a lot of chrome, but some small accents are ok. I cut it to the correct length and installed it. I found a used stock airbox and started to size up the original battery tray to see how it was going to fit. Build two mounting points into the fender. Some small modifications to the original battery support. Move the relays for the stock AC aux fan and remove the front/top mounting point from the stock airbox. Next I measured approximately where the airbox intake would be up against the fender inner wall. Mark it and pull out the 2.5" hole saw. Five minutes and that's done. Modify the intake elbow to eliminate the elbow part. Mount the remainder of the intake elbow so that it will assist in holding the airbox in place. Mount the airbox in place so that it looks like it goes there. NOTE: I can't do the Deckplate mod because the airbox sits about 0.375" from the washer fluid bottle. I'm working on another mod that would get me a similar amount of air in the airbox.

Now that the airbox is in place I route the hoses. I've got evap, PVC, vaccuum lines and heater hoses. Evap, PVC, and vaccuum lines are easy. Heater hoses are a different story. My 4Runner is like many in the colder climates of the US. It's got the rear heater. This is wonderful for those who occupy the rear seats while wheeling, on long trips, or going out to view Christmas lights on Christmas Eve, but hard when it comes to routing the new heater hoses to both the front and the rear. Back to the parts store and rummaging through the pre-formed hoses. Two more and we're set. I replaced some of the original hoses since they were cracking internally. Having the '99 donor vehicle sitting right there next to me was nice because I borrowed some of the pre-formed hoses off of it to make everything work correctly and cleanly.

Alright, now it's off to the exhaust shop. Flat tow the '93 with the '92. I give them a general idea of what I want and what I don't want. I get an estimate of what it will cost and I head off to work. Then the phone call comes ... I'll leave that for the next edition.

aLostDawg

It's off to the exhaust shop. Explain what it is again, and what I don't want. Let them know that I still have to rewire the O2 sensors. I don't want it loud, I want to be able to supercharge it and not have to re-do the whole exhaust. They said they'd re-use the cat if they could and the new quote was for $130 more than the first quote. I asked why and they said that the original quote was only for the header pipe. OK, I had figured another $50-$75 for a cushion, so that's ok. They said that IF it was going to be more they'd call me. I said OK, but I really didn't want to hear from them. I left for work. A few hours later I get a call. "Sorry, but we can't get the cat to work. We've ruined 2 sticks of pipe trying. We'll need to do a new, smaller cat." How much is that going to cost me? They normally sell for $280, but we'll take some off since you're doing a complete system, so That'll be another $200 Ok, since I don't really have much of a choice, go ahead. Later that day I go to pick up the truck and inspect it. They only put one O2 sensor in it and they put that one in front of the Y-pipe. They couldn't figure out where to put the other one because they couldn't find the wires for it. I asked them why they put the O2 sensor in front of the Y-pipe and they said that they called the Toyota dealership and talked to a technician and over the phone that's where he told them to put it. I asked them who they talked to and then I knew there must have been a misunderstanding. Whatever ... Ok, a little more inspection uncovers that the tailpipe is about .625" from the BLPV. That's not going to work. It might even hit just towing it home. Ok, so they agree to re-bend the tailpipe and install the 2nd O2 sensor. I went ahead and took it home to work on it some more and get it closer to running.

Got it home and pulled the running boards and the rear bumper off. I guess there was one good thing about having to re-bend the tailpipe. I was able to remove the rear bumper and get them to pull the tailpipe up about 3 inches from where it originally was.

Then it was into the interior to install the shifters. Make a template from the '99 transmission tunnel. Transfer this hole pattern to the '93. Cut one hole and enlarge the other one. When I went to re-wire so that the '99 shifter would work with the '93 wiring harness the parts truck payed off again. I snipped off the harness pigtail from the '99 wiring harness and the pigtail from the '93 shifter and spliced the wires so that I had a short sub-harness. This way I don't have to do any other modifying if some of the shifter parts fail. It's basically plug-n-play. T-case shifter still needs to be raised 1" for a couple of reasons. Shift pattern is a bit big and it sits really low in the hole due to the 2" body lift.

Ok, all that's left is to wire the O2 sensors. Since I'm not going to do that until they put them both in (the right places) it's back to the exhaust shop. This time I didn't tell them what I didn't want, I told them exactly how to do it and where each piece should go. Maybe that will work better. So they cut out the section where the O2 sensor was in front of the Y-pipe. They spliced a piece in place of the section they cut out. They stuck the section with the O2 sensor between the Y-pipe and the new Cat. Then they re-bent the tailpipe so that I could get full articulation and it was tucked up near the body.

Get it home and wire up the O2 sensors. This involves extending the wires to the rear O2 sensor since it is further back and on the opposite side. I think it ended up being extended about 6" to include some slack. Once that was done it's ready to fire up.

In the next edition we'll fire it up and more.

TeamShiftPoint

so did you get it started up???

I'm gonna post up a new thread with the 3 swaps we finished awhile back (first one -90 4runner- finished over a year ago, already have 40-50k miles on the 3.4, also 93 truck just about year old, and another 90 4runner).
I need to get all 3 rigs together for some pics. also might be posting up a write-up over on http://www.T4R.org in a week or so.