Headlight harness installed and everything is working perfectly! Also got the intake harness cleaned with electronics cleaner and connected to everything under the lower plenum. One bolt and the MIA fuel rail washer are all that's keeping me from finishing getting the intake completely installed. And then I get to revisit the fight with the spaghetti monster that lives on top of the motor. *shudders*
oh well, been here once or 6 times before. I'll figure it out.

Relays mounted. Whats this weird reddish brown crap under the battery tray? Is that what the guys on the east coast call rust? Eeeeewww. Never seen that stuff before.

wiring harness tucked under the core support.

we have low beams AND high beams now! Hooray!

 

Rust?
that’s not rust...you can paint right over that.😁

 

I'd recommend you return the Moog suspension stuff while you still can. Boots are junk which will quickly lead to play in the joints. Seriously, buy OEM, there is no equivalent. Moog stuff will last months, OEM parts will last decades.

 

considering that upper balljoints alone would cost me over $100 even with my discount...ill take my chances. Ive used moog parts on all of my other cars and havent had a failure, so i dont forsee an issue here.

 

Okay. Could you post pictures of the Moog parts before assembly? I'm curious if they've updated their design or switched suppliers since I bought them.

 

yea, no problem. I was thinking i could also compare them side by side with the parts i take off, but then i realised that these parts have probably been replaced several times on this truck. i know the idler arms been replaced because its got the dreaded L stamped into it.

from looking at some of my pics i took, looks like most if not all of them were manufactured in the USA. i know thats not saying a whole lot, but still nice to know.

i am still debating if i should install these parts now or wait for the other order i have on its way to arrive before installing. hmmmm...

 

Got you your pics of the parts, @arlindsay1992 . All of the boxes say made in USA if that counts for anything. And they all FEEL plenty strong. Guess we will see.

As for working on the truck, we got the lower intake fully bolted in place, the wiring almost 100% sorted the upper intake, installed the pulleys, fan, shroud, and new water pump. And then I proceeded to cross thread the cold start injector. So I had to spend a bit of time getting that fixed.
I'm tired. Here are the pics.

 

Looks like the parts are the same as when I bought them years ago for my 4Runner. I remember having a heck of a time getting the boot onto the upper ball joint. I think I sorta figured it out and the second one went easier but I don't understand why they're not installed at the factory.

The lower ball joint is the worst part out of the four pieces. The seal isn't a seal, it's more like an umbrella. It will not keep water out. Maybe if you were to pump grease in every couple weeks it would work, but it's literally the worst design I've seen available for these trucks. Mine were loose within literally 3 or 4 months.

The upper ball joints seem okay. The boot is a pain to install. When installed and all tightened up in the truck, the boot is bent at some weird angle (not just compressed straight) and eventually the rubber tears and the boot is worthless. I think this took under a year.

The inner tie rod end boots both tore after about two years.

I had no problems with the outer tie rod ends. I had them on for about 6 years and 100,000 miles. I removed them when I SAS'ed my 4Runner and they were still tight. Boot had some cracks but none were all the way through and the joint was still tight.

After each of these failures I replaced the parts with OEM. The OEM parts I bought new for my 4Runner now have over 100,000 miles on them over salt, mud, dirt, and a lot of pavement. The OEM parts were still tight and the boots were squishy. I transferred them to my Pickup with 230,000 miles where the original lower ball joints had just developed play. It's also worth noting, the original ball joints in the Pickup with 230,000 miles still had the plug bolt in the grease fitting hole, so it's pretty safe to assume they went 31 years without greasing and had only just worn out. Good luck getting ANY aftermarket part to last that long.

I strongly encourage you to return the Moog parts.

 

well, this is what I've got for now. if they last, they last. if not, theyll get replaced with OEM. I just cannot afford to replace all of these items with OEM units at the moment. OEM is out of the budget until tax return. but i do appreciate your insight and concern. Its nice knowing that yore still around these parts. Not too many "OGs" still haunting here.

plans for the immediate future is to get the motor running CORRECTLY, get the steering system rebuilt and get new tires. We will be going with 33x10.5 BFGs (not sure yet if we will go with KMs or KOs) and to make sure they fit, a 2.5" balljoint spacer in the front. For the rear, since its sagging so bad, we are doing a 63" Chevy swap with the Skys Offroad Design kit. That should bring the rear up and clear the tires and allow me to drop the front to match.
When taxes come in, I'm going to possibly pull the trigger on a blazeland kit with 2.5" FOA remote reservoir coil overs. Possibly even a rear aussie locker, but we will cross that bridge when we get there.

 

Well, this was a long weekend with small victories and setbacks.

Started out friday night with getting the motor buttoned up got everything put back in place and wired up. went to go start it and i hear an electric sounding pop. rechecked the wiring harness and doomy and i got the starter wire and the oil pressure sensor wire mixed up. fun fact, you cannot start the truck by supplying ingnition power to the oil pressure sensor. once that was sorted out tho, we got her fired right up!! HAHaHa just kidding. She cranked for a minute and then backfired so loud and made me and my buddy deaf. we couldnt figure out what was going on until we started wondering if the dizzy was off for some reason. although i had put it back in right where it was when it was pulled out, i still had to rotate it 2 full teeth clockwise in order to get it running and stay running. After fiddling with the timing, i noticed more smoke than normal(greasy hands on the exhaust manifold when taking it off) coming from the exhaust side of the engine bay. a quick check underneath confirmed that it was in fact pouring oil onto the shop floor. after cleaning that up we found that when the manifold and turbo assembly was leaned away from the head to make clearance to get the head out, the worm gear clamp cut the silicone for the turbo oil drain line. we spent the better part of an hour getting the 3" section of hose out and then new hose installed. After that, we fired her up again and were in the middle of setting timing when....surprise surprise, and oil fountain erupted from the engine. right on the front side of the valve cover by the intake. at this point we'd had enough. it was midnight and we were frustrated. we figured that the valve cover gasket was bad from the cheap gasket kit the shop bought. the half moon seals were shaped weird. so we called it.

Saturday morning i got up bright and early to go to the dealership to get a new valve cover gasket and half moons. got home and started tearing into it. replaced all the seals aaaaannd.....still a geyser. so we did some critical thinking and searching, inder acceleration it would fountain the oil out, but idle it would seep. also, under accel it would balloon out the PCV hose. that threw up for the biggest loop. what would cause that to balloon out so bad? massive amounts of crank case pressure. i pulled the breather to the intake and it wsa like a hair dryer. Hot air was blowing out crazy fast. we checked the PCV valve to make sure it was still good and it was. we then started fearing that the valve seals were shot allowing air to bypass them into the head. but that didnt make sense because the compression tests showed solid numbers. and thats when my buddy keith postulated that the valve cover was possibly not creating a good seal and allowing the air to go out there instead the PCV. so, off the valve cover comes again to check the gasket for damage and to check the mating surface for obstructions. what did we finally decide the issue was? well, the head was shaved to ensure a flat surface. we dont have the numbers on how much they actually removed, but we know its a lot because of how thick the shims need to be. The ARP head studs we installed were for a stock motor with a stock head. there are a set of ribs that were sitting on top of the head studs keeping the valve cover from being tightened down completely. so, ut comes the air grinder and i clearanced the valve cover. we double checked the head studs, making sure they were at 90 lbft. and then slapped the valve cover back on. after letting it run for a few minutes and not experiencing any leaks, we backed her out into the fading sunlight for final timing.

heres the rub...even after the .020" shim and .045" Cometic head gasket and having to rotate the dizzy 2 teeth clockwise, the timing still isnt happy at 5* BTDC. it likes 10-12*. does anyone have any insight into this?
also, driving around to a few places on sunday morning, we noticed some oil spots under the truck, but we cant see any leaking on the block around the head. so we have cleaned the motor and front end with some gunk engine degreaser and will be keeping a close eye on it for leaks. we are hoping those leaks were just old oil still gathering and dripping off the frame.

Mess made from the turbo drain splitting.

the turbo like was cut by the upper wormgear clamp and was spewing oil everywhere.

Everything back together again.

the suspect half moon vs toyota half moon. ive never seen a half moon seal with a box/canyon in it.

all the oil that came out from an oil change looked like this. seems like a bit of water was getting in there, so...possibly a water jacket was compromised on the old HG?

gap where oil was spewing out.

if you look closely you can see where the ARP stud was hitting the valve cover. ill add some pics later of the section thta i removed from this rib.

first test drive was a....success? still a small amount of oil leaking from somewhere. i need to track it down and squash it.

 

Was that 5° timing you set, and then changed, with the jumper in the test connector beside the engine compartment fuse box? Also, was the ilde set to 800 RPM before you started setting the timing, IE: before you put the jumper in, and then checked again once the timing was locked in, but without the jumper in?

The timing should be 5° with the test jumper in, 10-12° when the jumper is pulled, and the idle at 800. The jumper, I believe, "removes" the ECM timing adjustments. Thus, the timing should be 5°. When it's removed, it allows the ECM to set the timing, thus, 10-12° at idle.

Just a thought. I get so few of them any more
Pat☺

 

My responses in red above

 

i think im going to pick up a bottle of UV dye so that i can better keep an eye out for oil leaks and where they may be coming from.

 

Well, i found a UV dye at O'reiley's that worked with oil. Put it in and in the 15 mile trek home from the parts store, there werent any leaks. we will be putting more miles on the truck in the coming weeks and will monitor it closely.

My balljoint spacers also came in. So, the front end should be just about ready to put together. just waiting on the rear suspension to arrive and then taxes time i will go get new tires. baby steps.

 

I know you have updates. Better post em up!

 

Its been a helluva week. Got the dye in and drove a bit. But I didn't think it'd have enough time to lean out yet. Well had thunderstorms all last week and doomy had a flat tire so she parked it over by the shop at an angle and left it there during the storms. Well there was a large amount of oil under it. Kind of a head scratcher, actually. So we checked it out with a uv light I bought and boy that's crazy. It was like a rave under there.

I didnt gdidntpicture before wiping it off, but the ONLY place the uv dye'd oil was coming from was, oddly enough, behind the factory hook that covers/blocks off the mechanical fuel pump port for the carb'd version. "Awesome!", I thought. "I'll just check to see if maybe the 2 bolts that hold it in place are loose!" Front bolt was tight...like, TIGHT tight. The back one was loose. So I started to tighten it and it got tighter, and then looser....MUCH LOOSER. Like, the bolt broke. So, my theory is that the bolt has been broken all along and its been blowing oil past the bolt. Ok, pain in the ass, but easy fix.

When I removed the hook, there was no gasket. Just the thinnest amount of black rtv I've ever seen. And you can see the staining where the oil had been pushing around the hook the whole time.

Get everything moved out of the way to get a drill in there so I can use an easy out to extract the bolt. Liberal amounts of wd40 and a soft hand and the bolt came straight out...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...couldn't finish that sentence. No, the easily out snapped. Honestly, par for the course with this rig.

We tried everything to get the easy out out. Nothing worked.. we destroyed 4 drill bits including a hardened carbide drill bit. The things wouldn't even drill through the aluminum by the time we finished. We even got the Drexel in there an at one point had the air grinder in use. NOTHING worked.

So we did the next best thing. Drilled and tapped another hole for a 5/16" bolt we had that was perfect length. This time. We made sure to use a gasket and the one part where i had to modify the gasket for the new bolt hole i used a liberal amount of rtv to make up the difference. Short of buying a new head, this is the next best thing.

Anyways. Tonight ill putt around with her some more and see if she's still leaking. If not, then EUREKA! After 4 years we have finally plugged every leak on this truck and we can start to enjoy it. if not I might just set it on fire and push it into the pond.

Anyways, here's some pics including the pics of me using the air grinder to modify the valve cover.

 

I thought that the leak at the hook was the end of it. unfortunately i was wrong. after driving and seeing more leaking(oddly enough even more than the hook leak), i discovered that the copper oil drain bolt washer was MIA. yeeeeep, ended up finding it in the bottom of the oil pan. OOPS! so, i do the "dutch boy" and quickly stab my finger into the oil pan hole. unfortunately, i underestimated the flow of oil and ended up with it all over my left hand as well as my right. oh well, Doomy put the washer on and i did the whole switcheroo again, making less of a mess this time. spent about 20 minutes cleaning up all the (loose?) oil and we took her for a drive to get another quart of oil. took a look underneath with my UV light at the parts store and holy crap. the leak is about twice as bad as it was before!!! *SIGH*

take it back home and crawl under it(turbo downpipe is hot, btw) and take some videos with both the UV light and with the camera light. And i finally noticed something. Something that i SHOULD HAVE SEEN LONG AGO... The shop that built the motor used a damn CORK gasket on the oil pan! Quick research on YT and i see that most people who use one have leaks within 2k miles and we are at about 2.5k. Either that or its the rear main seal. *insert groan here*

So, plan for this 3 day weekend is to pull the transmission(need to do that because the torque convertor is having a vibration issue, need to replace the torn trans mount, and going to be installing my new filter, gaskets, transgo shift kit, and B&M trans cooler), as well as dropping the front diff and the pan to replace the cork crap with black RTV. im hoping that this will be the end the saga of the ever leaking motor. we have already conquered the coolant leak. tht was the mini boss in this adventure. the oil leak is the big boss thats gonna take some more work to conquer.

in other news, i got the Skys Offroad Design 63" spring conversion it in, so thas cool. parts are beefy and the only gripe i have is that the front spring hangars are not fully boxed, but i can snag some steel plates and weld them on after the fact so thats a small issue to me. Hoping to get those on sometime this month. Possibly next weekend if i can get the springs from the junkyard. we shall see.

 

continuing the never-ending hunt for oil leaks has led us to a very long 3 day weekend. We started out by knocking some of the fresh oil off the underside of the truck and then waiting for it to dry. when we got it into the shop, we started by working on getting the transmission out. I can say that this will be the LAST time i pull this damn transmission. it is a complete pain in the ass and Ive had it. lol. we also pulled the front diff out of the mounts so we can get the oil pan off the motor. we started around 1pm and by about 10pm we were pulling out the nasty bacon looking gasket from the oil pan and resealed it with black RTV. got it bolted in and torqued to 9 lbft and called it a night. sunday brought a lot of cursing and extremely greasy hands(drivers CV boot ripped recently and everything is coated). The transmission install, while smoother than the 2 previous times, was still a pain in the ass. the thing is so long and tail heavy that it takes absolute precision to get it installed correctly. before installing the trans, i pulled the torque convertor from my spare trans and threw it in. after fighting and wrestling with the trans fluid lines, they too were installed. future plans call for removing the hard lines all together and replacing with braided steel lines because the hard lines are just too much of a PITA to deal with especially with greasy/oily hands.

after installing the transmission, we went to replace the mount and realized that i had bought the wrong mount...so i have a spare manual trans mount if i ever go to swap to one. :rolleyes: We decided not to mess around with dropping the trans pan and messing with that for now, so we just got everything else bolted back in. after topping off fluids, we took ther for a test drive and i can honestly say that the new/used torque convertor is making a world of difference. she feels more powerful and no vibrations when you hit 50 mph. and now the torque convertor locks up at 50 as well. so small win there. as we were pulling it back into the shop to check for oil leaks, we started to hear the dreaded clanging from the transmission bellhousing. we suspected that the torque convertor bolts had started to back out again. So, there we left it for sunday night.

Monday was a school holiday here so i had no work and allowed myself to sleep in/relax a bit. in the afternoon, we got out to the shop and doomy re tightened the torque convertor bolts and gave it the onions this time. i dont think theyre coming loose again. then we moved onto the oil leak. after lying under the truck with it running, i noticed that the top drivers side bolt for the oil pump was weeping oil when Doomy rev'd it. so, i got to work with the ratcheting box end wrench. plan was to pull the head of the bolt out far enough to apply some RTV to the underside of the head and the washer. well, i had been fighting a sinus headache all morning and clearly wasnt thinking since the ratcheting wrench only went one way and that bolt was long. basically, i got the wrench stuck on the bolt without the ability to remove it. So out come the belts and the breaker bar. we use the breaker to remove the crank bolt and a block of wood and a breaker bar to wiggle the crank off just enough to be able to get the wrench off the bolt. after that, we slap everything back together(the crank bolt as tight as possible using a metal pipe and twisting a belt around the crank to hold it). start her up and...a new leak has appeared! :angry:

so, im torn on how to proceed. originally, when we did the head gasket and ARPs we swapped over to synthetic oil, because its better. unfortunately i fear that it is so thin and slippery that it keeps making its way through all the little cracks that werent leaking oil before. so, the question i have now is, do i tear down the front of the motor and replace the timing cover gaskets(basicaly another weekends worth of work and necessitating pulling the oil pan again) or should i switch back to conventional oil and hope the leaks stop?

pulling my hair out chasing all the oil leaks and im just tired of it. come to think of it, i believe the timing cover is the only seal i havent personally replaced on this motor besides the front and rear mains.


side note, we also deleted the front sway bar. yes, the truck is more tippy and leans into corners more(barely noticeable) it also drives a lot smoother on the street. Also messed with the timing more. the miss is still there and still noticeable at idle and at higher RPMs. still not sure whats causing that. Last bit of info, I had to pull the front steering stabilizer in order to get the oil pan bolts torques and...it moves just like a slide whistle. this thing is competently devoid of fluid and is doing nothing. i left it hooked up for.....reasons. :shrug: Im going to be ordering some shocks soon as well as a steering stabilizer in preperation for the new tires coming soon-ish.

as always, any input is helpful and appreciated! Ill see if i can get some pics up soon, hands were so greasy/oily i didnt get many, but doomy did.

 

I hecka know you got lots of updates from last night. Better post em!

 

actually, i have a lot of info to update of from the past week or so.

for starters, the few pics from the last post from removing the trans and swapping convertors and chasing the oil leaks.

trans going back in.

old pan gasket was cork smeared with a little orange rtv. looked like bacon.

oil pimp pickup halfway clogged with rtv from the engine builder. more and more disappointment with this shop.

Having to pull off the crank pulley to get the wrench off that i trapped.

twisted belt and used a large pipe to hold the crank still while i applied as much torque to the bolt as possible.





So, after that fiasco, i decided to continue onto the steering rebuild so that the truck will be more street friendly and usable while we get the leaks sorted out. We started out by using superclean and a pressure washer to clean the front end. Then used a blower to dry everything off before getting her back in the shop. once there, i tossed on an OME steering stabilizer since you could move the old one around with a pinkie and play it like a slide whistle. Friday night we got working on the steering and it went pretty well...except that this truck hates us and fought us almost every step of the way. we ended up breaking a tie rod end removal tool and a pitman arm puller and spread the tines out on our pickle fork. But in the end, we conquered it. the idler arm had no bushing in the bottom of it, and the top one was broken. The shaft for the idler arm was pitted towards the bottom, so we had to hit it with the hand operated cheek poker and get it smooth-ish. we packed the tube full of grease and then tightened the nut and filled the cap full of grease before reinstalling. The tie rods went smooth-ish after we finally got them out. The passenger side was a BEAR. We took our measurements before pulling them apart and tried to get them as close as possible to where they were but the old ones were missing the grease boots so the measurements were just a little off. Good enough for government work. We decided to pass on the balljoints for now since we didnt want to mess with the T-bar adjusters(I have new to me Sway-A-Way T-Bars on their way---Thanks Melrose!) and since i have a lifetime alignment from firestone, going back for alignments doesn't cost me anything. We wanted to get the alignment done on saturday, but the local firestone didnt have an appointment until the 21st. a firestone deeper into the city had availability on saturday. So, we got the toe as close to straight as possibe and, honestly, it was decently close. steering wheel was angled about 20* off and it pulls to the right a bit, but low speed all the way to the shop on saturday worked out. Unfortunately, firestone wouldnt align it(not even correct the toe for me) because the balljoints were bad, the wheel bearings were bad, and the control arm bushings are shot.

So now we are back in the shop working on getting these things taken care of before sunday. Last night we got the drivers side wheel bearing repacked and retorqued. luckily, i dont think this truck has ever actually seen offroad because while the grease was dark, it didnt have any chunks in it. the bearings were very dry tho, so good thing we did it. also, i scored because i found a set of front inner wheel seals on my shelf in the shop. im not sure why i bought those or when i bought them, but i was happy nonetheless! while we were there with the hub off, we swapped out to the brake rotors and pads ive had sitting on the shelf for 5 years....yea, i know....they look great tho! only downside is that we need to bleed the brakes BADLY. fluid looks like syrup and there are black chunks in it. we turkey basted as much out as i feel comfortable with and then we will put in fresh DOT3 and bleed the crap out of them. hopefully it gets rid of the sguishy and then hard as a rock feel these brakes have.

Tomorrow we will be doing the passenger hub and rotor and hopefully getting the T-bar adjusters undone and the upper control arms out. The bushings arrive tomorrow, and the t-bars on friday. We still need to torch out the bushings and install them(energy suspension poly bushings), install the balljoints, and t-bars, and get the rancho 5145 shocks(got em on clearance from rockauto for 69$ a pair!), then she should be good for her appointment for an alignment on sunday. I might also fab up some 6 or 8" shackles to lift the rear so the they can set the toe and caster correctly. Darkfairytales has agreed to burn in the SORD 63" spring swap(just need the springs) but that will be a little down the road.

anyways, onto the pics.

Doomy waiting for the superclean to do its job. i thought this was a nice pic.

Getting the old stud out for the steering stabilizer was a bear. 24" breaker bar leveraging the wrench to get it broke loose.

looks good up there. you can see how bad the old one is.

much better

after pulling apart the steering linkages. this idler arm was bad, you can see the chunks of plastic from the upper bushing. the lower was MIA completely.

cleaned up, repacked, and now working on the TREs

all back together!

starting the wheel bearing/rotor swap. you can see the failing upper BJ.

i think these pads were a little past their throw away date.

hub off. spindle looked great with no odd wear marks or gouging.

packing the bearings with fresh grease. our parts cleaner wasnt working, so i cleaned them as much as possible with a towel before packing in the new grease.

Doomy Pulling the bolts to swap the rotor. That thing was stuck on there good with rust!

Smile for the camera!

Old and busted vs the new hotness.

Hub reinstalled and back home.

we are trying to use antiseize on these little bastards this time. tired of fighting them

everything reinstaled, wiped down with cleaner, new brake pads and hardware installed(except for 1 spring clip, the brakes only came with 2 new ones instead of 4. :shrug: