ES300NZ

great idea, .. not sure I'll do it but are they known to blow around a certain point ? I could always leave this a few services (5,000km intervals @ two per year cos we do about 10,000km a year).

artbuc

No, they are designed to last the lifetime of the vehicle. I have never heard of one failing. I replaced mine at 110k miles because I was in there replacing VC gaskets. It looked brand new, inside and outside. If you do replace it, I strongly suggest using an OEM hose. After-market will not fit exactly right and be a royal PITA to install.

PS I replace my coolant every two years using only Toyota factory red. I am sure this contributes to the excellent condition of my coolant hoses.

ES300NZ

So I started the service today,

I jacked the car up.


Then Drained the oil / black sludge from the sump.


The while I waited for that to finish I started on the cam cover seals replacement and so I started with the hardest part first the rear one.

I started by releasing the coil over plug's (COP's), ..


.... and very carefully unpluging the brittle electrical plugs. No breakages, but that's just experience and luck really. The conduit fell apart in my hands ... no wrap ...thats odd ... I think someone's worked on this car before me, small things seem wrong.


Then I moved to looking at what needed to be removed to give me the space to remove the cam cover. At first it seemed like the entire manifold had to come free. It doesnt'. Just the top one. So working on that basis I undid the obvious bolts / nuts.

At either side of the manifold ...


and at the front.


I then set about idenifiying all the lines and things to be released. I marked them, and where they went. Mostly this went something like "Vac 1" to "Vac 8" with a corrosponding masking tape on the thing I seperated it from. I seperated the ERG (exhaust recirculation thing). I had to remove all the 10mm nuts (5x) attached to the cast iron stuff. Including the ones under the throttle which sit on a flange.

The only reason I had to do this is because
a. a crappy memory
b. I might have to stop at any second for the rest of the day (winter rain/weather, new born baby, cbf anymore)
c. it's past lunch time already ..

I ended up removing the throttle because it's a path of least resistance, it had water lines too it by the looks of things and it was easier to just remove it. (damn .. that's ~nasty~).


I then moved to release the engine electrical harness to enable me to move it around and free from the rear cam cover.

I started at the front. and unclipped this.


I then moved to the rear. I released the two brackets (black) which support the upper manifold from the rear along with some electrical wires (earths) for the engine sensors probably At this point it was only the breather holding it in place so I removed the entire upper manifold and placed it on the rolling work bench I use.

Then I removed the gasket, cleaned the surface and sealed the manifold (nuts/bolts are attracted to holes like this).

I freed the engine harness by undoing all the nuts on the rear cam cover and the ones on the battery side of the engine (two) and working it free, there are some plastic ties to cam cover bolts, and a complex attachment system on the battery side of the car. Ultimately it all came free. One released it can be moved around, so I was only trying to free it.

I discovered a single wire plug attaching to something low on the rear bank and unplugged that (and marked it). I detached the o2 sensor for the rear bank, and the harness floated freely. I was able to float it to the centre of the motor. Well free of the cam cover. I can then cable tie it out of the way when I remove the cam cover and replace the seal and o-ring seals for the spark plug holes.



It was nice to see that cam cover seal is not actually leaking and neither are the rear spark plug seals. But I've alreay paid for the parts, and they will eventually; so I might as well do it now.

At this point I went in for lunch, it was late enough in the day that light would fail in a few hours so I packed up and the wife and I went for an afternoon walk in the park with our son.

ES300NZ

the toyota special service tool I made some years ago is apparently going to arrive today. My friend and I both have 1uz-fe projects. His is a AE111, with custom rear suspension, 3/4 race cams, and custom tunnel, front sub frame & so forth. Mine is a Ford Capri with a 1uz-fe + ITB's and Turbo.

Anyways, I gave it to him cos he was mucking around with timing and stuff, but I need it for a while to do this. It's just a flat 6mm plate and tube welded together.

ES300NZ

oh damn it! my friend lost the tool. oh well the local mechanic's coming the rescue, to rattle off the main nut.

ES300NZ

I found about five hours to work on it today.

1mz-fe Cam Cover Seals
I did the front cam cover seal, spark plug seal, and plugs first so I dropped the coil packs back in. then I turned to rear cam cover. It's all pretty simple, get everything out of the way, undo the bolts in the usual cross pattern (one from one side, then from the next side and so forth). Both covers required a careful levering at one end to free them, I did it with a screw driver, very gently.

Nothing about doing the rear cam cover was comfortable, or particularly easy, except the top bolts in the centre, those went super well. The rest was a ******ing c**t.


The oil build up inside this engine is concerning. Oh well, I own it now. Anyway, to get the old seals out I just broke the centre ring away, it was super brittle. Then I tapped a fine head screw driver under the outter ring, really gentle.


Here's a closer look. Try as I might I always managed to score the facing where it seats a tad. I wasn't too concerned by that, I just leveled it out later. The screw driver points to the keeper tags which need to be folded back before the seal will come out.


To re-seal both cam covers you need the cam cover seal, and six of these for the spark plugs. They go in this way facing to you, if the cam covers top is on the work bench.


To make that clearer, the seal on the right is upside down. The other two are correctly installed. The sealant is to ensure the scoring I did in the seals 'seat facing' is not a source of a leak. It's not really needed if you don't make that mistake.


I installed the cam cover seal for the rear bank (part number pictured), with a light glazing of oil on both mating surfaces, or rather sides of the seal. I'm not sure why I do this, I think it's something I picked in my teenage years and kept up.


Note: it would do more harm than good to try and clean these cam covers up. Unless they are 100% totally clean it's actually better to just remove the obviously excessive and leave the moderate/light build up alone. The reason why is, if you loosen up some build up and it goes into the oil flow and blocks a fine oil port like say one for a main bearing or a rod bearing the engine will fail and do so fairly quickly. It's best just to leave it all alone.


1mz-fe Sump Seal

Some previous owner didn't change the oil in this engine, for a very very long time. I think they did about 40,000kms just topping it up. Which is a horrifying thought, since I now own it. I did know about this issue when I bought it though (the car was cheap ok).

There are a couple of things I can do to help the car live longer. Here in New Zealand we tend to throw a car away around 200,000kms, so the remaing life of this car is around 60,000kms. To help it get there without needing another engine I drained all the oil. and removed the sump and oil pick up. they looked like this


The oil pick up is actually blocked up it's got about 25-30% of flow remaining. The wire mesh extends past the visible opening but that mesh it totally blocked up with a oil like grud. If I hadn't removed this and cleaned it, then engine would have failed for oil starvation fairly soon. And no wonder that happened, it's basically crude oil in the sump even after I drained the oil.
.

So I cleaned it all up with petrol and rags. (cotton).


The pick up was actually blocked in the tube as well, when I blew it up with an airhose it shot crud across the yard. The end result ... much better.


I actually propped the sump up, filled it with petrol and put the pick up in there and let it all soak while I got a coffee. When I came back things were softer so I scrubbed, wire brushed, ruined rag after rag until I was borrowing stuff from the kitchen (via the wife delivery service).


Note: if I didnt remove this sludge in the sump it would have 'infected' any future oil changes and fill oil filters within a few minutes of running. No doubt it contains alot of fine metal particles, and would prematurely wear the engine. That the oil pickup was also mostly (70% blocked) is merely good fortune for me (that I found it).

This is just from the sump, that was a disgusting job.

speedkar9

Wow an amazing story writeup. How terrible of the previous owner to not change the oil and have the engine in a condition like that!

At least your doing your maintenance and trying to clean up what you can from the top and bottom of the engine, but I can only imagine how bad the inside of the engine is sludged. Definitely change the PCV valve, grommet and give the intake throttle body, EGR and plenum a thorough cleaning before reassembling. Then look into an additive to add to the engine oil to help clean things up internally.

Your valve cover job reminds me of mine that I did last year. There's a writeup with pics here:
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/es3...placement.html

EDIT: You mentioned you coated the valve cover gaskets with oil before reinstalling. Your supposed to use some RTV sealant around the turns and cam humps on the cover to help it seal better.

Do you have any pictures of the engine head with the valve cover removed? How do the spark plugs look? Did the car drive rough, hesitate or performed sluggish?

Baking soda does wonders (especially on my light color interior) but be careful! Try it on a small area first before going all out. That stuff made a huge clean spot in a few seconds of rubbing on a black grease spot I had on my glove box. I ended up having to clean the hole glove box face to match. Follow up with a protectant, as the baking soda could remove the existing oils and conditioners on the surface leaving it exposed.

ES300NZ

Thanks for the compliment,

Yeah, the guy before us only owned it for 3000km's (we get that kind of kind of information from the government here each time ownership changes).

- all four wheels .. they were only hand tight, like someone had meant to come back and rattle them on but forgot too.
- oil filter: it was also only hand tight, it needed another full turn to actually be tight. small wonders only slightly leaking
- Every fitting on the intake plumbing was just sittting there, so all the plastic tubing was loose and flexible ...
- The negative on the battery was just 'sitting there' loosely.
- the boot light is missing, .. it's not a blown blub, somebody actually removed it.

It's bad, everywhere that's moving looks fine, but 'stained' so to speak. The cam lobes looked great. moving stuff looks fine. The head surface it's like the cam covers it's just got a brown stain that's about 1mm thick. But the drain valley out of the head (which is massive btw), has heavy deposits .. it's actually best just to leave it, if I try to clean lumps will fall away into the motor.

- The PCV valve is going to get replaced, I'll probably do either tomorrow or if I have to get it shipped in, another day.
- The EGR was fine. so far as I can tell, just carbon deposits in the tubing,
- I'm going to hunt around for a cleaning solution, I vaguely remember a company that did this kind of work and flushed the whole motor out for something like $125.
- To do the intake, and throttle body without doing the lower intake .... and I haven't got any reason other than cleaning, .. if I had another reason
- The intake will likely be a summer job I think (December - March-ish).
- Or I might just buy another intake, from the throttle body to the lower manifold, it will probably be cheaper in the end.


Wow, same job pretty much. It was interesting to see the different approachs we used. Clearly I'm a tad lazy, I removed alot less :P


Yeah I noticed the factory did that, If it leaks I'll fix it. (I'm actually thinking about re-doing that just to be sure, since the intakes aren't on yet).

- The car ran fine, quite good actually.
- The plugs looked about 40,000kms old, they were NGK Platinum's but the wrong kind for the car (single electrode). There were a good brown colour.
- They were so clean I kept them for my friends car, he's on a tight budget he'll probably want them.
- The deposits were generally the same colour as your car's actually (above link).
- Under the cam cover's looked alot like your car, but for the very heavy sludge near in the draining valley, strange that my intake system has so much more deposit that yours. I wonder why.

I've been told by the local supplier of 'leatherique' to leave it alone, don't wash it clean it or do anything until they've seen it. I think they want to sell me hundreds of dollars in product, I'm going to let him try, then talk him down price wise ..... massively :P

ES300NZ

I just couldn't do it; putting together an engine with the inlet and cam covers so sludgy is just not in me. I undid everything I did yesterday.

I removed;
- both cam covers, the seals in them (came out easily). the PCV valve & grommet (both so brittle they fell apart) : ordered new picking up in the am tomorrow.
- the lower inlet manifold, the vaccum switch on it, the lines on it.
- I cleared the upper inlet from all lines, bolts, etc.



(close up) The cams/under the covers looks like this.


The inlet ports look like this, I'll figure out a way to clean those up sometime over my weekend or next.


The upper manifold was really just packed with sludge, I removed an end plate with some kind of throttle in it. There was a rubber seal in it that didn't look replace-able so that stayed at home.


The rest went to a company that does chrome plating, they are going to immerge it all in a slow acting fluid that will take about two - three weeks to get the sludge off. It's called Mersol (MERSOL SOAK CLEANER Mersol has been developed for the pre-cleaning of components prior to the usual cleaning and plating sequence.). For $35 - 45 NZD ($30USDish). I'm happy as.


So now it waits, the engine all sealed up and I'm unable to proceed at least for the new few weeks.

(It's a pity that I sold my 1uz-fe throttle body, because it would make a great upgrade and I could easily tig the flange on / enlarge the piping to suit it)

ES300NZ

The wife picked the PCV valve and grommet up this morning, she got ripped pretty bad ($70NZD = USD $60USD), one Toyota Dealership in this town, that was with 15% off too.

We have a week of (really) bad weather coming, so I sealed the top of engine properly (with tape & plastic) today and removed the throttle body, to clean it up


When packing I noticed the sides of the butterfly were equally polished up so I guess the first photo was mid-process. I cleaned all the vaccum ways, blew them out with solvent.



Popped the little water/vaccum housing off the bottom, it was full of crap too.



the otherside was just as bad, I didn't take any photo's but this all cleaned up perfectly, just took a bit of time.



Then cleaned all the rest of the plastic, silconed it to make it shiney and packed it away in food wrap. Threw all the bags of bolts (marked) in too. All packed away.


I'll do the variable intake manifold vane / end cap tomorrow.

Hayk

iTrader: (1)

You're making some awesome progress at getting this engine back in order. Best of luck to you on the rebuild.

p.s.: That extra butterfly valve that you saw on the other side of the intake is called the ACIS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Control_Induction_System

ES300NZ

Thanks and thanks I had a bit of a read about that ... it was interesting.

ES300NZ

I found some time for the car today, so I jacked it up and put some axle stands under it.

I'd decided to take the no.1 & no.2 sump off, to clean both. Not just the steel one. It seemed possible the no.1 sump might be hiding more sludge
and the inspection and clean are free, it's just labour really. Can't hurt, then at least I know I've done my best to clean the crude/oil residue out of this
engine. I can't really do anymore than this without removing heads / rebuilding it which I don't need to do.

First I had to take this off. (front steel under panel)


So I could free these too bolts on the lower part of the AC unit.


then I removed the exhaust. First by removing the two bolts on the front header/manifold.


Then the rear manifold (stud came out)


out came this,


Now I can remove the no.1 sump. (after removing the steel one, and the oil pick up. I cleaned the pickup again to make it shine. & remove the old (new, not even properly dry) gasket.


The No.1 sump was actually kind gross too.


The bottom of the motor was not too bad really. No blocked pickups, drains all clean (I can see daylight because the cam covers are off and the plastic cover sheet allows light through).



the side the oil filter was on (which wasn't even tight), has alot of deposits.


The other side it's not so bad.


So I cleaned it up.


... and cleaned ...


... and cleaned ...


After about and hour or two


it looked like this.


So I cleaned the ACIS throttle, it looked like this.


then this .. (about as good as I could it).


Then I put it all back on, .. until it started raining, I got wet I kept going until exhaust bolts were the only things left and I stopped. It seems like the exhaust has a collaspable join at each point I should probably replace those.

so much for: "this will be a free job its only labour" .. I remember this kind of collaspable exhaust seal being about $35 each for the 1uz engine, so that's like $105 all up.

ES300NZ

I got the parts back from the company that cleaned them about 5 days ago. I'm so busy with a university work (law papers) than I just didn't have time to touch the parts at all. I got them back to early, they didn't have time to do the final clean up so I had to do it myself.

the cam covers came back very clean. ( I didn't have to touch these up at all).


the lower manifold needed only some minor wire brushing with petrol which tool about 10 mins. Now the ports shine.


The upper manifold took over an hour to clean up, it was pretty clean but there was still tar like deposits in some places. If I'd not taken it to that company it might have taken an entire day to clean this one peice.









I didn't have long, the light lasted only an hour and half from when I started and by 4pm it was well gone. (winter in lower New Zealand). The sunset was stunning, but too early far to early. All I managed to do was assemble the upper manifold, throttle body, etc.

ES300NZ

I made time to re-assemble the car today.

I started by re-fitting the new cam cover seals and spark plug seals. Including a new PVC valve and grommet.



Once that was done I turned my attention to car, removed all the plastic I'd put in place covering the engine and sealed each intake port with some cloth.


I cleaned up each port using a (very small) petrol dampened stainless steel brush


Each one cleaned up very nicely, I noticed the back's ports were FAR worse for deposits than the front one.


I then set about putting it all back together. Cam covers first,


Then I broke a cam cover bolt because I over tightened it. This is a rookie mistake, I know better. I attempted to remove the bolt before it broke completely which was my saving grace. It meant there was a tiny exposed part that I could grip with a very small pinch tool and turn to remove the broken stud. It took about 10 minutes in slow careful movements but once it was out, I have a box of spare bolts and I found a perfect replacement with a shank the same length. It was at this point I remembered being told, oil seals work by having oil on them, which is absorbed when hot and then it will swell. They are special kind of rubber. I stopped using my brand new torque wrench at just went by hand feel at this point.


Then the rest, nothing interesting about this, just I'd recommend doing the top manifold read braces and earth link before tightening the lower manifold.


On start up it refused to turn over. I heard 'flat battery', but my mind kept saying 'hydrolock', but it started so it can't have been hydrolock (from coolant).

White smoke poured out the back at first which made me quite concerned .. but I waited and it died away almost completely. I'm guessing it's just the various stuff used to clean things and coolant that made it into two the cylinders near the water bridge part of the lower manifold.

I'd forgot to put a clip on the lower manifold -to - heater hose join, it poured coolant. Didn't run out, car didn't get above 1/4 on the temp gauge. shut car down and corrected it. Getting a new radiator shortly. (plastic top tank showing age) so it got water on refill.

It runs very well, quite smoothly, no obvious leaks. didn't test drive, I never do that at night/near dusk, it's a bad idea. I'd like to look it over again and check everything first, see it warm up and hold temp in the driveway first.