She lives. At least she ran on her own for 30 seconds lol. The VAFM some how failed and was causing the no start issue. Luckily I had picked up a 7MGE unit from a supra that another member was running on his 3VZE 4 runner. I was going to hold off on upgrading to it until we had the truck dialed in with the stock VAFM but it looks like the Toyota gods had other plans. I will need to build another intake to support the larger unit but that should be only a miner issue.

The FPR is pushing a lot of fuel out of the over flow. About 6 oz in 20 seconds on start up. This may be normal for cold starts so I will monitor it more once she is 100% and warmed up.

Now we can focus on the exhaust leak and putting the rest of the accessories back on (alt,ps pump, and fan)

 

 

Fixed the exhaust leak and caped off the radiator with just water (calm down only to flush and check for leaks) I ran her for about 5 minuets and her is where we stand.

small heater hose leaking from hose clamp (easy fix)

tons of smoke coming from tail pipe (probably from all the old oil/fuel in the exhaust)

adjusted base timing to 10 degrees (will continue to adjust after test drive)

still need to hook up the AC belt and PS pump.

So what's my impression? Well it's to early to say but you can definitely hear the cams. The engine seems to rev faster and valve train noise has been reduced significantly. I did pull the truck out of the garage just to make sure the clutch was operating and so far so good.

 

Took her for a small test drive and with in 1/4 mile she started getting hot. The temp gauge jumped to about 1/2 way between normal and the red zone so we shut her down. It looks like the thermostat is not opening since the lower radiator hose and radiator are ice cold.

The short test drive definitely shows positive gains. The truck is much smoother and seems to have a lot more power at part throttle. I expect we will see bigger gains once she is dialed in and we can really get on her.

So so far no oil leaks however I do have a coolant leak on the drivers side around the middle of the engine. I am betting it's a clamp on the oil cooler hose or somthing like that.

I should also note that base timing is only set around 8 degrees right now but I am keeping it back until we really get the break in and bugs out of the way.

 

Probably just a big air bubble cbr, needs a good buuuurrrrrpppp. Hopefully since you drove it and let it cool the radiator is probably about empty. Easy enough to test the thermostat if need be.

Glad you got it running though, hope to have mine in that condition shortly.

Cheers

 

Looks like the upper cooling hose on the oil cooler rubbed on the exhaust flange just a hair. Ordering a new hose today.

 

Holy hell that oil cooler is a pain to deal with when its in the truck. I just pulled the hole thing down and out of the way but still had trouble getting to the clamps.

Really need to to finish booking up the power steering system and need to build a make shift intake today.

Also need to put a turn down on the exhaust so it's not dumping strait into the bumper (no bumper was on it when I did the exhaust)

 

Started working on the fan shroud. I will need to use my friends plasma cutter for the center section.

 

Finished the fan and mounted in the truck. Also fabed up the most jacked up intake ever using a combination of Toyota, ford, random exhaust and intake parts, and a sock. It will work for the test drive at least but expect a better intake real soon. I will probably do a full 3 inch intake necking it down to the 2.75 throttle body.

 

Took her for a longer test drive today. Still not 100% ready since we are still working on some miner issues but here is the official update.

At idle the cams are definitely noticeable. They idle smooth but have a aggressive sound to them. Power off idle from 800-2000 rpms is much smoother especially at part throttle. The motor really wakes up from 2000-4000 rpms and keeps pulling even past that. Before any thing past 4000 rpms was useless. Over all I think the motor is much stronger and considering this is basically a stock motor I think a larger throttle body and headers would show even bigger gains.

 

Found the coolant leaks. All at hose clamps lucky for me. I re used the old clamps. I suggest any one doing this project to just bite the bullett and spend the $20 to replace your stock ones.

Any ny way I have the cooling system pressurized at 10 lbs right now. I am going to let it sit for a hour and then double check for leaks. So far so good.

 

As Mr Burns would say "Excellent."

 

30 miles on the set up today and so far she is looking good.

On the to do list.
Finish intake pipe and start building new air box.
Bleed power steering system
Hook up AC belt
Finish wiring on electric Fan
Attach front splash shield
Adjust TPS and throttle body.

Low to Mid range power is drastically better. Probably not 3.4L better but I can now accelerate up hills in 5th gear that used to require down shifting to 4th gear. I am also not pushing the pedal to the floor nearly as often and the fuel gauge is not dropping nearly as fast as it was. Right now we still have some fine tunning left and also running the open air filter until I can build a air box for it. I will keep every one updated.

 

Working on the intake a little today and got the AC up and running. I realized I make a stupid mistake on the PS pump. I used regular PS fluid instead of ATF. The PS fluid is a little thicker so I don't think it damaged any thing. I am going to flush the system with dextron tonight and bleed the system.

 

When doing a compression test its best to do a dry and wet test. Do you normal compression test to get the results ( dry test ) if you find a low cylinder pressure compared to others tested add a tablespoon or so of engine oil via the spark plug hole . Retest the low cylinders ( wet test ) if the compression increases the problem it is piston ring related. If the pressure does not increase you should look more closely at the valve train ( valve to seat leakage , sticking valves , improper valve clearance , incorrect valve timing ) I would also invest in a leak down tester its worth the money.
good luck.
.

 

With low compression in two cylinders we knew the heads had to come off. We verified the heads as the main issue by doing a vacuum test at the machine shop. I knew if the heads did not give us a smoking gun then it had to be the rings. Lucky for us the vacuum test confirmed what we had assumed.

 

So it's been a while so let's add a small update.

We had a significant hesitation/miss at about 10% throttle. It turned out the old owner had installed a cheap TPS sensor from rock auto. A local member gave me a spare throttle body with a Toyota sensor installed and it cleared the issue up.

I was lucky to score a set of manual hubs from another member by trading a light bar I had laying around. I hope to get them installed this week.

The intake has come along significantly. We found a 2002 Isuzu rodeo 3.2 air box in the bone yard for $15. The box is massive and required a little trimming on the box to fit in the factory location. I used a 3 inch to 3.5 inch connector from a mustangs intake to connect the air box to the VAFM. Followed by misc 3 inch piping from misc projects. I still have some adjusting to do with it but will post some updated pictures latter.

Speaking of the VAFM from the 7MGE. The old owner was running it on his auto 3VZE with a snorkel. Lucky for me he knew to mark the AFM gear and had written down the factory setting. I was shocked to find out he had adjusted it 7 clicks CCW (rich) I have now turned it back to factory 0 and it has smoothed out the truck dramatically and now I no longer smell raw fuel when I stop.

This week will hopefully allow us to really dial in the AFR and timing. After that it's time to buckle down and take care of some of the smaller issues.

 

So here is a little update.

with 2000 miles on here she is definitely much stronger now. Base timing is set around 14 degrees and we have the VAFM dialed in for the most part. The truck definitely pulls hard from 1500-5000 rpms compared to before where the power band use to be much narrower.

We also finished the intake using the 3.2 Isuzu set up and it seems to working well.

 

Looks alright. About 20% larger filter area, just using finger calipers?

 

How's this little project turning out?