Great news! Good for her!

 

Happy BDay and glad you had a good time and got lots of things done, Richard!

Congrats to Faby, Rich!
Next project: SAS the scion


Thanks for sharing pics of that speaker. Good to know that a quality 4-inch would fit there. Worst gripe I have with my stereo is how tinny vocals sound. (I'm trying not to drill holes into the doors) I think a quality 4-inch in there would make vocals sound more human. Are you running that 4-incher straight from your stereo, un-amplified?

You got that right! Freakin'Rap! \m/ Maybe I'll mount horn speakers facing either side of the truck playing "Eruption" next time those guys drive up next to me - LOL!

 

I thought about putting speakers in my doors but theyre so thin you couldnt put a very deep speaker in without interfering with the window regulator and all that crap. It would be cool to build a fiberglass enclosure that fits against the door panel towards the front lower part. Hold like a 6.5 and tweeter. You can do it, you built the bumper!!

 

Got lots to reply to you guys. But I gotta post this up for today's knock sensor installation first.
Plenum removal
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f128...cement-233708/
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/show...252426&page=10

Manifold removal
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f128...cement-233708/

Vacuum hose diagrams.
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/show...252426&page=12

 

Yo!..... sup? Haha. ... I figure you're dead center in the middle of a knock sensor marathon... Hope it's going well man.

By the way, looking at that one link, that was some good back and forth we had on some of your repairs!

Take care buddy

 

Great news. I'm glad you can enjoy them. I really liked them as well and would still be using them if I didn't want some other features for road trips.

Next try and hack some 6" rounds into the door.

I also love my Sirius receiver. I think it's my favorite mod. Having music in the middle of nowhere is awesome.

Your missus looks pretty fun. Mine does sweet stuff for me usually as well. My Bday is tomorrow so I've had a bit of a complex about it because of its proximity to Christmas so I really like it when she can.

 

Hey rich i acquired a inclinometer with the dash pad and by the looks of yours you have leds in it for the lights. Is that the same bilb that the cluster takes?? I was just going to save myself the trouble and put them in before installing it.

 

Not sure if i replied to this already but i'll reply again.
Thanks for the props dude. I am satisfied with how they came out. and glad it was a simple fix vs having to weld and make brackets and junk.


Thanks Mark. I will actually be needing to go over there sometime soon. I need to buy a new egr. i think that is what its called. The part that connects to my intake plenum and the exhaust. Also gonna need to grab a few nuts, bolts, screws, possibly buy a new fan for the 3vze. My dad did a temporary fix but i dont wanna use the truck like that. It's almost asking for trouble. lol I'll explain that in the knock sensor post after these replies.

Thanks johnny. Some day we will be able to get up there. Hopefully sooner then later. get a bit of wheeling in too. As for the rotor i am not sure. I think they looked at the indented numbers on the rim of the rotor. i cant remember.

HA i feel bad for you guys and your cold weather. I have had really good luck with warm weather lately working on my truck. Only problem is the sun goes down by 5pm. and man it gets cold out at night.(well for me; im sure it would be warm for you lol)

Thanks buddy.

Hahah Sorry didnt mean nothing by it. I really meant i just upgraded from that one to the other. The Sony xPlods are pretty good too. But i seriously prefer the higher end stereos they make. Kenwoods also make really good ones. I'm a musician though. I cant live without my music. and im always playing something while in my carss. Having a stereo system in my rigs is a must.

Getting those brakes fixed definitely made me happy. (that was actually my birthday wish haha.) i was so fusterated with my brakes that i actually wished to be able to get these brakes fixed. and by the next day we fixed them. lol might have just been perfect timing lol

It does need some work. but what can i say. After all it is a salvage title, and it is used. there is bound to be fixes here and there right? We did a tune up on her car last weekend, and also changed the Valve cover gasket that was leaking all over the back side of her engine. I'm sure you saw the insagram picuture of us doing this job.

SAS scion! lol
Oh dude go the extra mile and avoid cutting holes. You'll thank me later. Spend the extra 20-30 dollars and buy yourself a good pair of 4" speakers like JL, or Polk audio speakers. There are a lot of decent 4" speakers out there. I definitely recomend upgrading to a cheap brand. Anything is better then the stock speakers. but if you want some good sound quality you should definitely spend that $120 on some quality 4" speakers. Definitely want something that is going to be able to keep up with your bigger rear speakers.

As for my speakers. Yes i am running the speakers straight to the stereo. Most stereos now days have a small amp built into it already. I usually just wire them up like this and use the RCA cables to to the the amp which powers the sub. This is enough for my truck.

Though i do have 2 amps for my corolla's stereo system. one for the 4 speakers and one for the subwoofer. All kicker speakers and sub. That car sounds great.

But my older brother wired his eclipse like my truck. Powering his kicker sub with a 800w crunch amp and using 5 polk audio speakers all connected to the stereo itself and his system sounds a hell of a lot better and cleaner then either of my cars. Just something to think about thats all. I would much rather choose quality when it comes to speakers.

Noooo Dont do it. Our door panels arent made to hold the weight of speakers. This is actually the only reason why i upgraded my doors to power windows and rebuilt those door panels. The door manel material is only abotu a 3/16 masonite board like material. After so many times of opening and closing the door eventually your speakers will wear the panel and cause a bucnh of damage like it did to my door panels. If you wanna get even more sound do like what i told Radrunner. Get a really good pair of speakers. At lteast for the front. you dont have to spend a bunch for the rear. but at least spend the extra money for a good pair of 4" speakers. this way you dont pop them when you turn it up. Or i would highly reccomend doing something like Mark(chefyota) did. hey got 2 speaker boxes and has 2 oval speakers in them. he just placed them in between the back seats and the back of the front seats. and his stereo system sounds great!

Mark u were right i was right in the middle of the job. This knock sensor job took me 2 days. ran into so many problems. I will post pictures and videos later. All i can say is im glad this nightmare is over(or so i hope) i gotta wait and see. once i drive the truck about 50 miles or so for the ecu to read everything again. Hopefully my Code 52 is finally fixed.

Andrew I will avoid 6" in my door panels at all costs. Bought my new door panels and upgraded to power windows all because the last owner ruined my last set of door panels by installing 6" speakers in the doors. I will most likely do something like what mark did and get 2 boxes with oval speakers in them and sent them behind the seats. His stereo system sounds clean.

She is a great girl. She is super girly. But at the same time she isn't afraid to get a bit of oil and grease under her nails either.


Yes the lights are the same ones as the speedometer. I believe that altimeter takes 2 bulbs.

 

I was gonna type up my knock sensor replacement experience tonight but after 2 days of getting my butt kicked for that job and typing up all the replies. I'm just exhaused. I will go ahead and do a short write up of my experience and post pix and videos tomorrow. Good night people.

 

Thanks, Richard.
Yeah, now that I know I'll just power fronts and rears directly with head unit. So far, my plan is:
(Polk audio seems to get good well-balanced reviews in terms of efficiency and sound quality (SQ) so I'm going for that.)

First replace fronts with 2-way, 4-inch Polk audio db401 like yours, to make vocals sound more human-like.

When budget allows, get Polk Audio 6.5-inch rears. My ideal "un-amplified" setup would really be Polk Audio 2-way component set DXi6501; mount mid-sub driver in rear and IF tweeter can mount on to A-pillar, I'll do it to bring treble to ear-level.

 

Looks like you had a great birthday. On your brakes, I disconnect the lines and use an air hose and flush them with fairly high pressure air. It can make a mess but it does knock alot of loose crap out of the lines. I have seen fluid that was probably the same that came from the factory in some of these trucks.

Good job on the Knock Sensor. I hear it can be tough on a 3.0.

 

Hey man, I haven't been able to keep up with anybody at all but noticed Faby had picked up a tC. I loved mine and then saw someone joked about an SAS on one. While I don't know of anyone SAS'ing one (of course), I know of some guys that have definitely abused a few. Here's one of my favorites if you ever want to get a laugh.

Zombie Apoc tC

Happy belated BDay and hope all is well.

 

Hahaha, I knew it, almost like I had a second sight as to where you were leaning over the top of the engine with the truck all lifted and on a ladder... Scary! Lol. Sorry it was such a pain in the ass, & I really hope it solves every issue that you need handled before smog... Great job buddy!

 

You've been busy Richard! Happy Birthday! Glad to see Faby a part of your life again! Didn't she buy a Taco side-step bed truck not long ago? now she's getting a Scion?

Text me if you need help at the yard or anything, I've been going pretty consistently because I have another project to do on the Camry...auto to manual swap.

 

I would say to do the same.

never thought of doing something like that but if it works then hey i guess thats not a bad method right lol
as for the knock sensor. Oh boy you have only heard of the drama. but let me tell ya, all thouse people in the write ups and always complaining about the dreaded code 2 knock sensor. They are most definitely in the right to be mad about it lol It was a very hard job.

Not bad. I have also thought about building a box on the top side of my roll bad so i could mount 2 speakers facing the front. but that's a bit extreme.
Thanks for the birthday wishes.

Yes you are right! she did buy a black tacoma but she says insurance was killing her and although it was a 4 cylinder she said it was using a lot of gas. but after all she is used to driving her moms tiny chevy aveo with a 1.4 or 1.6 liter 4cyl. so of course that seemed a lot to her. So She sold the truck and did her research on the type of cars she liked and found that that a Scion Tc is what she wanted.

As for things i need from the junk yard go. I do need a new fan for the 3vze. Im just wondering if the 1990-95 4door 4runner fans are the same as the ones found int he 1st gen. because if that's the case then i can find one at just about any pick your part. I also need the screws that hold on the distributer cap. I saw that i lost one of the 3 screws. and the 2 that i do have are mismatched. I want to hit up the yards sometime soon.

 

Good! Then when Faby feels like off-roading, she'd be riding with you , not in her own truck. Bonding time

 

Ohhhh my god..... I just had the entire knock sensor write up finished. All done through my cell phone here at work. Wow... can't believe that just happened.

Well I'm gonna have to do his write up when I get home. Dang that sucks

 

Been there/done that, buddy..... I refuse to do write-ups on my cell anymore. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! So Sorry Man!

 

oh man i hate when everything gets deleted! especially when your posting from a cellular, takes long enough as it is to type it out on the phone.

 

Hi guys. I think I have finally lagged it long enough with typing out my Knock Sensor Code 52 fix experience. So I decided to make you guys a write up this morning and I accidentally deleted the entire thing! I had just finished everything when I clicked the back button on my phone. That’ll teach me to not do any more write ups through my phone.
I just want to say that this knock sensor job has been the most difficult thing I have ever done on any motor. This is definitely one experience I don’t ever want to experience again. It was such a major pain in the ass to get it done. This job took me 2 days to complete; 11am-9pm on Saturday and 12pm-7:30pm on Sunday. Not to mention the worst experience of all was the fact that I have a 4-5” lift on this truck so I spent the entire job on a 1ft tall work stool hunched over my engine bay doing the entire job. Not to mention it was even worse considering how far out my bumper sticks out in front of the truck. This just called for making my experience much more miserable. I’m sure you guys can only imagine the back pain I had after this past weekend. It wasn’t so bad when the truck was at stock height but man…. This was too much lol The only thing that i had an advantage with was the fact that I had previously removed the intake plenum early last year to replace my BVSV so I more or less knew how to get to that point again which made up for about 1/4th of the entire job.
Anyway lets begin. I first made sure to wash the engine a few days before cleaning up all dust, mud, leaves really anything that could get in places you don’t want debris to get into such as the manifold. I then placed some plastic trays under the truck for when I pull the radiator hose, plenum, and manifold off the antifreeze can just drain onto those trays. I did my job in the drive way and I had our lawn to the left side and the neighbors lawn to the right. So I wanted to make sure I wasn’t gonna piss anybody off by killing their grass. Then I made some videos to show me where all my vacuum lines were connected to. I have all the vacuum diagrams already so I didn’t worry too much about labeling. I work better when I see things visually anyway. So I chose videos to refer back to. I then removed the fan shroud which was held together by 4 10mm bolts. Followed by removing the fan which is held on to the fan clutch by 4 small 10mm nuts. I removed the top radiator hose and drained the antifreeze onto the trays below. After unplugging the vacuum hoses I removed the throttle cable and removed all the bolts and nuts that hold on the intake plenum EGR, etc… Majority if not all these bolts were 12mm. used an adjustable wrench for the bigger egr nuts. When removing the plenum make sure you hold the plenum level. Don’t tilt because it still has antifreeze in it. You don’t want it spilling into your manifold holes. I unfortunately forgot about this and it spilt all over. Here I had Faby working hard wiping up all the antifreeze that spilt.

After the plenumn was off I removed the top portion of that radiator hose connector. They are 2 parts. Held together by 2 nuts. Once that is off you can remove the timing belt dust shield This is held on with many 10mm bolts and nuts. In order to get to the dust shield bolt behind the power steering reservoir you’ll need to loosen the tensioner on that belt to move it out of the way.. I then removed the fuel rails and fuel injectors. I was actually scared to break these but I found out it wasn’t so bad. I belive the bolts are 17mm sockets. Keep in mind those things have gasoline inside them. And it will leak gas when you remove the bolts. Its fine don’t worry. This will also leak A LOT when the injectors are removed. Its no biggie. They will fill up again once you try to start up the truck at the very end of putting it back together. They wont continue to leak so no worry there.

After removing the dust shield I made sure to mark the timing belt with the white markings that were already there; just in case. I later found out that by doing this I saved my ass BIG TIME! So don’t forget to mark the lines. I did this for both of the wheels to both heads.

I then unclipped the cluster of sensors at the firewall toward the back of the engine. There is a cluster of about 5 sensors. Just unclip them and move the wires to the side. REMEMBER BE GENTLE WITH THE CLIPS AND WHEN MOVING THE WIRES. These trucks are old and all those parts are very fragile. I broke one clip and the wires cracked and broke the outer layer exposing wire for the injectors. I had to rewrap everything to avoid both wires making future contact. Used high temperature rated electrical tape. That cluster of sensors is held on by two 12mm nuts. Once that is removed you can take off all the manifold bolts and nuts the just pop it off. You do not have to take off the center wheel where the timing belt is. I took mine off but I later found it was unnecessary to do. Either way works. Just get the manifold off.

You can see here the Knock sensor is now exposed in the center of that engine block along with the wire.

Close up

Then I had this happen….

I was so scared when it happened. I had just leaned on the gear/wheel whatever it is called and found out it is spring loaded. I was crapping my pants I was so scared I had totally messed up my timing. But I found that I was able to just grab onto it with both hands and just twist it in the correct direction to align back up with the lines I had made earlier. THANK GOODNESS FOR THOSE LINES! I recommend to anybody doing this job to use pressure clamps like I did here from the get go. Don’t risk what happened to me. Just a note those wheels are a bit hard to turn. But with enough elbow grease you can move them just enough to put back to where you had them.
I used these pressure clamps.



I then unclipped the knock sensor wire and then used a 17mm Deep socket to remove the knock sensor. If your truck has the original knock sensor like mine did the chances are your knock sensor is going to be extremely seized on that engine block like mine was! I used my big ratchet wrench with a thick pole as a breaker bar and that sucker still wouldn’t budge! After messing with is a couple of times the damn thing finally let loose but it didn’t give up a fight. Here we have both new and old Knock Sensors and their connector wires next to each other.


I installed the new knock sensor afterward.

Close up

I installed the new knock sensor wire. Make sure it is under the gasket. There is a small groove made for the wire to fit in.


After this it is pretty much the reverse of taking everything apart. But this is also where I ran into the most problems!
Before you put the manifold back on make sure to use that gasket silicone sealant on the 4 ports where the antifreeze passes through the heads and into the manifold. I used the grey gasket stuff, then put the manifold on. And as I tightened the cluster of sensors back onto the back of the manifold I accidentally overtightened one of the nuts to the stud that comes out of the manifold and I broke the stud right off! I immediately panicked. I thought my only option was going to have to replace the manifold with a junk yard manifold or take it to a machine shop to get removed and have a new stud installed into it. BUT luckily when I removed it I found the stud still had about 1/8” sticking out so we used our wire welder and welded a small ball to the tip of the stud so we could get a grip on the stud with some pressure clamps then we used my dads torch to heat up the manifold on that side to expand the metal. Once heated up the vise grips were able to turn the stud out with no problem. We removed it with no damage at all. Here is the picture. You can see the stud with the ball welded on the tip.

This happened at about 5pm on Saturday and I drove to a bolt store where id definitely find a replacement and then found that the store had closed about 10 min before arriving. So I checked Autozone, Oreily Auto parts, pepboys, ace hardware, even home depot and they were all CLOSED! So I drove back home and called the Toyota dealership. And they just so happened to have the ones I was looking for but they were all out of stock! My last choice was to call my girlfriends uncles shop. And lucky for me they had what I needed! So I made the drive to east LA and bought the pack of 3 studs and installed it there at the shop and used some high strength thread lock to hold it in the manifold Once we got home we installed the manifold and just left the job as it was. I continued the job on Sunday.
Sunday I installed the fuel rails only to drop a rubber washer tat goes to the fuel rails into one of the manifold holes. DARN IT so I took it apart again. to retrieve the rubber hose from the cylinder. And when I had it removed I found that I hadn’t noticed that I had dropped another one in the other side lol. So I took them both out then installed the manifold once again. and carefully installed the fuel rails, dust shield, wires clips, everything! Then the plenum and vacuum lines. I then installed the fan and the fan shroud and put the radiator hose back on and refilled the radiator with antifreeze. After tightening the belts all back up and rechecking everything twice I started the truck up. she worked fine. Then the truck began to smoke for a few minutes. But it wasn’t anything to be worried about. It was just the remaining antifreeze evaporating off the engine. Drove the truck around the block and pulled it back into the drive way. When I parked it I heard it was making some weird noise. So I checked and found the alternator belt finally messed up. so I had to remove the shroud, fan, power steering and ac belts to get to the alternator belt. After replaceing the belt again I re tirghtened everything once again and BAMN I broke yet another bolt. It was the bolt that for the tensioner to my alternator. And this one broke inside the hole. LUCKY for me my dad managed to get that one out using a 14mm spare nut and welding the inner part of the nut to the part of the bolt that was stuck in my alternator. Took it out easily after that. I used a small 14mm bolt with the same thread to replace the alternator bolt. It is holding on good so far. But I definitely want to replace that bolt with an alternator bolt because the head of the bolt is longer. Good for a socket wrench.
Oh yea I also changed out the spark plugs and spark plug wires. And swapped in a clean air filter while I was at it because mine was filthy.
Anyway that was all guys. Its like I said this was a pain in the ass job. I don’t ever want to go through that again!