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Car went into the shop today! Thanks to my brother while he is out of town for allowing me to use it.
Rotors off all four corners. Dropping these off in the AM at Toyota to be surfaced.
I ended up removing the front fender liner, did an oil change and replaced the hose clamps on the lower section of the radiator. Tomorrow I am going to drop the rotors off first, then harbor freight for a ball joint separator, and proceeding to do the upper and lower front ball joints. I also plan to do valve cover gaskets, PCV valve and work on my exhaust down pipe flange/gasket. More pictures tomorrow.
Started off this morning dropping the rotors off at toyota and picking up this harbor freight ball joint separator. Got it for 10 dollars off for 15.99, not bad if it can do the job!
Picked up the rotors, they look pretty good for OEM and have life left in them.
Using a 17mm impact socket, I removed the two bolts holding the caliper on, and set the calipers aside using something to prop them up to prevent the lines from being damaged.
Checkin out my new upper control arms with camber adjustment from SPC. These are version 2.
Time to get to work on the ball joints!
Remove the upper break line attached to the control arm with a 10mm.
Remove the cotter pin and castle nut, and then use the separator to pop the ball joint apart.
Next use a 14mm to remove the two bolts on either side of the coil over.
With these out the arm can easily be pulled out.
New arm on
Now to remove the lower ball joints you need to use the separator on the tie rod ends, then zip off the two 17mm bolts underneath either side of the lower ball joint. After this you can lift the upper ball joint and connecting arm to the side to have some room to work with. This lower ball joint can come out rather explosively!
New lower ball joints on. On the passenger side I had no problem getting the tie rod in, but the drivers side is another story for tomorrow.
Drivers side control arm and ball joint in:
Front caliper with the brakes pulled out. Its a pain to get these retainer clips in. I still need to open up the pads more to fit over the rotor.
So today I realized my driver side outer tie rod end is shot, and the threads not so pretty either. I tried getting a moog today, but they ended up delivering an inner tie rod *DOH* so I ordered the correct part and it should be here Tuesday or Wednesday.
In the mean time I went back to the shop to work on the brakes. I've never done this before, and couldn't find a write up nor' any useful information in the gs300 manual.
Pretty much to do this job, its best to set the rotors on the studs after tightening the lower ball joint to the hub well with loctite. Then use a 14mm to separate the caliper apart.
Make sure to use the toyota disc brake grease for the anti-squeel pads on both sides.
Install the new brake pads into the caliper slider like so. You will have to press little retaining clips back to get the pads in, but its easy.
Next is to set that section with the brake pads onto the rotor, and bolt it to the hub. At this stage you can push your rotor fully into place, and use loctite on these bolts with your pads attached. Also, the anti-rattle springs can be easily installed at this stage.
Next is to compress the caliper pistons. First remove the brake master fluid cover, and find a caliper compressor. This specific one is a mac tools, and it worked but there may be better. Your going to want to compress them evenly, and often go and check to make sure your fluid level is not above the high line. When you compress the piston enough that the fluid does, just suck some out with a dedicated turkey baster or syringe.
Last of all was putting the compressed piston caliper back on the brake pad section and bolting it on with loctite. I repeated this process for all four corners without breaking the lines open. Afterwards i re-added some fluid.
I put on my gates accessory belt, and then raised my rear coils 1" to help with tire clearance and allowing me to tow my quad. Tomorrow I plan on working on fixing my down-pipe and replace the exhaust gasket there, and then work on the transmission speed sensor conversion from electronic to a supra mk3 R154 wire version with a marlin crawler speed sensor adapter. And I have valve cover gaskets and pcv valve to do as well.
Few pictures from the local car meet today. My steering feels terribly sloppy from my blown out tie rod end, so it cut my day short but that's okay. My MOOG tie rod end came in the mail when I arrived home!
Still cant go WOT without hitting fuel cut and going into limp mode, and only making 8-10 psi..
So for those looking at the fuel filter replacement, here are some photos of the location. I sprayed liquid wrench on the threads, although it looks like my fuel filter has been replaced before because it is a Bosch and not Toyota/DENSO.
Replaced the drivers side tie rod end. Started by loosening the locking nut and marking the threads.
I then used a 17mm to remove the castle nut, and tapped lower ball joint and tie rod end until it popped loose.
I counted the amount of turns it required to remove the old ball joint, and installed the new one identically and to the marks that I had made. Here's it all put back together. Rides great now!
Today my wiring harness guy Mark @ Panic Wire hit me up on email thinking he had a fix for my cut out issue and wanted me to stop by his house. Went over to have him check it out, and he created an obd2 harness and installed it for me.
Another customer of his with a vvt-i swap was having some back feeding voltage from the starter relay, and Mark thought this could be my issue if it was happening but no luck there, mine isn't causing the issue. So after installing the obd2 connector we took it for a test drive, hit limp mode and headed back. To my surprise he asked if I had diagnosed my TPS yet, and using and properly operating a volt meter has been something I have yet to learn so it was a great lesson learning about readjusting the TPS to be within spec! We discovered with the ohm meter that I was hitting over 5V @ 80% throttle, which was causing a conflict between the accelerator position sensor and the TPS, and creating a limp mode condition.
Once we adjusted the TPS and reset the ECU the car is now able to do full throttle pulls @ 8-10 psi without any fuel cut. FINALLY!!! Super happy about this and the time and effort Mark took out of his day to work on my car at his house, way above any expectations to have him offer some at home diagnostics to figure out my issue. Really can't say enough good about Panic Wire. Most people would've told me to find a shop or a mechanic, feels like Mark is a homie!
After relaxing a bit from the scorching heat, I ordered a OBDLink LX with bluetooth so I can connect it to my new port, run the Torque APP that is JOBD/ISO 14230 protocol compliant. This should give me the ability to view and clear codes, as well as have some real time information stream that I can broadcast with my android device. Would love to get a boost controller in the future, been looking at both the Hallman pro MBC or the HDI EBC.
Had a family get together today, hot sun in the 90s and BBQ! But when it cooled down I put my interior back together and mounted the OBD2 port. Looks great to me.
So starting off on my car.. I used the information from http://www.2jzgarage.com/2013/01/2jz...d-information/ that described I needed to purchase Torque Pro app for android to get this to work and enter in some information.
Buy a ELM327 scanner tool – ELM327 Interface Bluetooth OBD2 Auto Scanner V1.4 OBDII
Purchase and install Torque Pro Android software – Torque Pro Google Play
In the vehicle profile of the Torque Pro application add the following line in the VERY ADVANCED ELM327 section: ATIB 96 \n ATIIA 13 \n ATSH8213F0 \n ATSP4 \n 0100
Now from some reading those settings mean;
ATIB96 = Set the ISO baud rate to 9600bps
ATIIA 13 = Set ISO (slow) Init Address to 13
ATSH8213F0 = Set Header to 8213F0
ATSP4 = Set protocol to 4 (ISO 14230-4 KWP (5 baud init, 10.4Kbaud))
0100 = Start Sending Data
Now, with the car started I can get it to connect. But after doing some pulls and logging, I question some of the results and ask for anyone's input.
For the Vacuum reading, It seems to accurately read my vacuum gauge until -5.. at that point it doesn't go further while my boost gauge is reading 8-10 psi. The Tachometer seems to be accurate but shows a max achieved limit of 5500-5700 or so with the OBD2 port readout from the ECU, while the dash shows me reaching the rev limiter at 6500. Also, the throttle only shows to be reaching 76-78% when i go WOT.
These few things lead me to believe that either my ECU is bad, or.. my MAP sensor and TPS may be out of calibration even more. And maybe even my igniter?
last of all, I took a picture of how my rear end has settled with the new raised height and rear tires. I think it looks real good. Hope to tow my quad this summer!
When you had your alignment done after you installed your SPC adjustable upper control arms did you turn the camber eccentric so that it had no effect and then use the control arms for all of the adjustments or did you use a combination of both to get it exactly where you wanted it to be?
Honestly I am still waiting to have an alignment done again on the front end. We couldn't get it into alignment because the eccentric ball joints weren't checked before installing. Have a brand new set of front tires in the garage but waiting on money so I can get it done.
05-20-15, 10:41 PM
