Nice truck. Always nice to see people putting effort into the 3VZ-E. My 3VZ-E runs like a top after 21 years and 228,000 km.

 

You mean you just do donuts all the time ?

 

been... cleaning! Seems like engine rebuild is all about cleaning.


saw this on a walk. Guess they left their calling card after they wrecked... :p



ewww, what is this?



oh, an AC compressor



more cleaning



took the alternator apart. Brushes are worn about halfway down. Traded them in for another set we had at school





'slip rings' are slightly worn too



found a small friend



...and some more groupies.

 

did some headwork this past week....and ....more cleaning!





found another little friend hiding in the heads.



the carbon built up on the seal and cut a groove on the cams. Same thing happened on the crank.






Probably not good to pull aluminum out with the bolt.



Every crevice in the heads was filled with carbon/sludge/crud. Took several soakings in cleaner and chipping away and hot tanking to get them sparkling again.



probably my least favorite tool.






buildup on the intake valves.



ground the valves. Didn't have to do much to the intakes, but the exhaust valves were pitted.



this is how I learned to back off on the machine before turning on the grinding stone. oops.



shim removed from bucket lifter. I liked the design.

 

Since you have the beast all apart, could you measure the diameter of the crossover pipe for me? I feel like its 1 3/4 inch but want to be sure before I order material to eliminate the crossover.

Thanks!

ps cleaning an engine is the most time consuming but it makes the biggest difference in a rebuild.

 

I'll get you the measurements tomorrow when I go in. Need anything else? want to make one for me while you're at it? :p I've been eying the 5VZE ones RBX keyed me into.
http://www.offroadsolutions.com/wp-c...CT2599-800.jpg

but I'd have to run down the junkyard to see if there's anything there instead of capping the existing manifold.

regarding cleaning, my best friends are the wire wheel and the parts washer. I'm hoping this build lasts for a while, but....we'll see.

more pictures! Today was valve seat grinding.


this isn't a valve or a seat, but it's the inside of the distributor cap. Guess I wanted lots of pictures with metal shavings today.



this should have been included in the last group...grinding the valve



carbide bits and cutters for valve seats. I ended up doing a 30/45/60 for the exhaust and 31/46/60 for the intake because that's what we had in the shop that fit and had bits. haha. Had to recut the intake valves to 45.5 though.



metal shavings!



using graphite as a seating/sealing indicator. Made a bunch of up-down marks around the valve....



gave the valve a whirl in the seat using a suction-cup twirly tool...



then looked for the seating/sealing surface. Lower arrow is pointing at a barely visible pencil mark near the margin. Upper arrow pointing at the gap in the pencil line. Once I was happy with this, I used the lapping compound



and there's 1 exhaust valve seat + valve done!

 

crossover pipe (it's a tube, not really a pipe, right?)
OD 1.658" (other side measured 1.774")
ID 1.585" (other side 1.519")
so does that make it 1 3/4" tubing?

 

ehh I would say closer to 1 5/8 lol, odd size for sure. If I get my crossover done before your truck is done I will make you one. My design idea for the crossover fix is pretty much the same, in the 3vz case you would want a second passenger manifold to put on the drivers side so both sides flow the same. I have been kicking around the idea of making a kit.....

 

You aren't going to change flow unless you change pipe size or go to headers. Those manifolds are stock. I don't know what the OD of the drivers collector is.

 

I can measure that tomorrow.
Got a few more things to clean. Pressure washed the engine bay this afternoon and thought I did a good job until I put away all the equipment and still saw grit sitting around. Most of the grease is gone though.

Pushed the piston pins out before our finals today.




you can see the piston pin being pooped out from the bottom of the piston head!

 

I'm not trying to improve the flow of the headers, I'm trying to improve the flow of the crossover, many Toyota engines use log style exhaust manifolds from the factory and make good power. The 5vz is a perfect example of this. It is also imperative to maintain a compact setup since there is very little room. Most people that put aftermarket headers on the 3vz say there are some gains but then complain about how hard it was to install the headers lol

I all so doubt the 3.0 will see much if any gains from custom headers, the limiting factor for this engine is the cylinder heads and the fact that its only a 12 valve engine. Without forced induction it will never be a power house, I would just like to make it a reliable and trust worthy engine.

 

^^ I asked my instructors if I could "CC" my heads and try to figure out how to install/use the flow bench (apparently no one there knows it exists!). They said I wouldn't see any noticeable change and wondered why I'd do such a thing to the truck, as it's not exactly your "performance" vehicle.

Gotta learn and practice somewhere though, right? You know, for when I DO build my performance... daily driver.

 

Its still good practice and you never know when you might discover something cool.

 

^^ I know! that's how I feel too.

I measured the driver's side manifold collector.
OD 2.191"
ID 2.175"

I don't know if I measured the right thing, so here's pictures.





I cleaned my intake manifold "surge air tank" today. No pictures because my hands were solvent-y and I didn't want to melt my camera. grease is one thing, solvent, not so friendly. There was so much black crud that came out of there. All the things (cold start injector, EGR tube, etc..) going into the intake were clogged and filthy too. Hopefully the truck will feel like it can breathe better after all this. Like blowing a big booger out of your nose!

just waiting for parts so I can take the block to the machine shop (yeah, we don't have anything at the school to do the boring.

 

Thanks for that measurement and the good pics too! It looks like a2'' or 2'' 1/4 pipe will do the trick, now to order the parts and get building lol

 

are you going to document all this so I can mimic your work, buy whatever parts you're using, and try welding mine too?

 

Something like that. I would like to build it and make sure it works without problems, I could document it for you. My biggest problem right now is time.....
Looking at your pics again I just relized that the down pipe dementions are not needed. If I built a crossover I would block off the down pipe portion of the driver manifold and use the rear exit.
http://www.mandrel-bends.com/catalog...l-16-gauge-35/

These guys sell pipe in 1.63 '' which is perfect for the new crossover pipe. I would build my own collector that merged the 1.63'' to 2'' and use a straight threw exhaust from there for free flow and maintaining high exhaust velcity ( think low end torque)

Actually that company makes the merge collector in that size too! so you can just buy it and not worry about making it lol

 

is there significant differences between blocking the back exit vs. blocking the downpipe (differences in ease of fabbing in addition to flow)? The downpipe has a slightly larger diameter, right? The 5VZE crossovers get rid of the downpipe and exhaust from the back end. RBX's (and others) capped the end and welded an addition to the stock crossover to dump into the downpipe.

I wish I had a mandrel bender and endless tubing... and time.

 

I hear you on having time to do stuff. money helps too lol. I feel it would be easier to usse the stock down pipe and block off the back of the drivers side manifold. In theory this would be most affordable way to fix it. In term of fabrication it would use less parts but now you need to have a flange where to crossover meets the down pipe.

Here is a post where a guy did this exact setup.
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...er-mod-275138/

 

Take the easiest route to fab the crossover. Won't make any difference to the engine performance. If you had equal length headers that might be a different story when trying to scavenge hp at high rpm