Let me start off with–the leak is fixed! It took us (Dad and I) four days what Toyota said would take 5-6 hours, but we have our reasons. We ran into a couple snags…
- The passenger side motor mount had a bolt that would just spin–we couldn’t take it out. This caused access issues down the line because everything in this 2ZZ-GE motor is jam packed in the engine bay. My Dad managed to work around the stuck bolt by simply moving the motor mount around in the bay. The suspicion is that someone before us managed to break the welds for the nut that was in the frame, meaning that when we tried to unscrew the bolt, the nut was just spinning in the frame with no resistance. If I need to get that out, I will either need to cut the head off the bolt and let it fall into the frame or cut an access panel in the frame so I can get access to the nut. I opted to cover my eyes and leave it how I found it for now.
- One of the bolts for the water pump is stretched/damaged. We didn’t have another bolt lying around so my Dad put some thread lock on the end and called it a day. He mentioned that he accidentally overtorqued the bolt.
- Toyota changed the water pump design so the old bolts no longer fit. I needed new bolts which I had to order and it took a few days. Instead of leaving a half-disassembled engine in my Dad’s driveway for a couple more days, we decided to put the old water pump back since it still worked.
- Toyota’s cooling system was unfamiliar to my Dad and I. We ended up with an air pocket in the system which lead to the engine overheating. We troubleshot to find that we needed to “bleed the coolant” of air by raising the coolant reservoir above the engine and letting it run to temperature (so the thermostat opened).
General tool issues and access issues as well my lack of experience (to be quite frank) lead to this job taking considerably longer than expected. But–no leak!
I ended up ordering a Competition Clutch lightweight flywheel, Exedy 16800 (Racing Stage 1 Organic Clutch Kit), qty:8 flywheel bolts, and a rear main seal. I’m looking to hook up with my long-time colleague (who is especially mechanically inclined) to get these installed as my Dad intimated that this was a larger task for a shade tree mechanic to handle. Since my buddy’s shop is full at the moment, I’m waiting for the next opportunity to get these installed. After my Dad and I fixed the leak, my clutch issues, although apparent, lessened in intensity. I’m curious if it was possible that some oil was getting onto the flywheel? The bright side is that this bought me time to wait on this clutch/flywheel swap.
In the meantime, as it has been several weeks since my last update, I spent the past weekend (after my Dad and I fixed the leak) to give the car a good detail. With no oil leak, I’m good to bring my car in my garage or park in my driveway without fear of oil leaking on the concrete. First thing I did was place a tarp under the engine and firewall and attempt to degrease where the previously leaked oil sprayed all over the firewall and passenger side CV axle. I managed to destroy a couple brushes to remove oil from the firewall but had problems reaching the CV axle. I will probably try again to get oil off the CV axle at some point. I also tried getting oil off the bottom and back of the oil pan to some success. I suspect the degreaser I chose (Griots engine cleaner) was weaker than expected. I also tried cleaning oil off the valve cover of the engine since my Dad and I managed to get it greasy but again the engine cleaner did not do anything. At this point, I’ll just say the oil stains added character to the valve cover!
I spent a whole Saturday working on cleaning up oil. I spent the following Sunday detailing the interior and exterior. I was brimming with anticipation to see how this car cleaned up–especially the Motegi Wheels, which I identified as discontinued Motegi RT5 18 inch wheels. So I pulled some tunes up and got to work with a regular wash, intending to follow up with a wax. The car and wheels cleaned up OK. The car’s color is “carbon blue mica” which is commonly confused with black. The wash caused several paint chips and scratches to appear, which I should have expected, so I now need some touch up paint to protect the metal until I can paint or wrap the entire car. As for the wheels, I knew they were in sorry shape when I bought the car. Pretty much all the wheels showed some manner of curb rash, and the center caps also showed some level of damage. That being said, the silver paint shined through after washing off what could have been years of brake dust. It certainly gave the car a new lease on life–I was happy with the result. I was not able to wax because within minutes of washing the car, I saw a layer of pollen had already settled on the paint, so I left it at that. I also wanted to wash and apply a layer of water repellent on the windows but again, with the pollen, I left that alone as well.
With the exterior looking good, I was ready to attack the interior, which showed similar signs of neglect. The car looked like it needed TLC when I bought it, and honestly, I feel like I am bonding with the car with every minute that I spend working on it–including the many, many hours my Dad and I opened up the engine. My hope is that all these hours of TLC give me satisfaction into the future. I even see myself potentially swapping the motor in the future if catastrophic failure were to occur.
When I went to initially buy the car, the previous owner showed me his dog. This is the same dog that had layers of dog hair I was looking at all over the trunk and seats. Fortunately, there was no dog smell so I assume there were no accidents or anything like that, if you know what I mean. Step 1 was to take a shop vac and begin to vacuum dog hair from the seats and trunk. So far so good, except some of the tight spots in the interior proved difficult to reach, ultimately requiring me to pull the front seats out entirely to vacuum. As for the trunk, I pulled out all of the carpeting and mats and vacuumed away. The vast majority of dog hair was on the back of the back seats. For those, I had to get a brush to agitate the fibers and vacuum at the same time since the hair was tangled in with the seat fibers. I managed to get most of the hair out, but I’m 100% certain some remains. I will need to come back to it at some point because I plan on installing an audio system anyway so I’m not too concerned. In order to install the system, I will need to pull the back seats out, I suspect.
On the topic of smells, when I pulled up the trunk carpet, I found a piece of cardboard covering a useless spare tire that appeared to potentially have mold that had grown on it. There was a smell associated with the trunk when the carpet was raised. It was clear to me that the trunk may have some sort of leak, but I’ll need to confirm buy washing the car again and checking for standing water on the interior. After the previous day’s wash, the only moisture I saw was in the trunk on the useless spare tire I found in there. So anyhow, I pulled the carpet, the moldy cardboard, and the useless spare tire out after a struggle with the spare tire bolt which had rusted into the frame. The spare tire was flat, and probably 18 years old. Fortunately, in this day and age, there are many, many services for towing including AAA and car insurance company services, so the spare tire is less important. That being said, I have a decision to make–to keep the spare tire or to dump it. I’m currently on the fence at this point, but since it was flat, it really was useless.
I found a layer of old faded out Dynamat on the frame already, which was interesting to me as it means one of the previous owners could have had an audio system. I cleaned out as much debris as I could from in the trunk and I am planning on how I want to handle the moldy spare tire cover. I looked at the dealership and the price they want for a piece of cardboard blew my mind, so I think I’m going to invest in some tools and some plywood to replace the dinky cardboard they had in there. That’s one of my next tasks!
After the interior detail I am pleased with the results–the car was in relatively good shape. I’m not sure I’m comfortable enough to bring passengers in there yet, but it does look good.
Moving on past the weekend, I made a couple opportunities to try to engage “lift” on the motor since the clutch appears to be holding better. It was hilarious to me, because in order to engage “lift” where the camshaft timing dynamically changes (VVTL-i similar to VTEC) I need to hit at least 6k RPMs. For those unaware… that’s really, really high RPMs, to the point that you pretty much need to be flooring the gas pedal to reach it. In one of my attempts to reach lift, I passed a highway patrol car and I was sweating because it looked bad. Then I looked at my speedometer… 80 MPH. That was not enough to get his attention although I was over 6k RPM at the time, because the car is that slow! The car may pep up with the clutch/flywheel replacement, but for now, I don’t really have to worry about tickets…
I also noticed that my front end (bumper) installation is irritating. One of the previous owners (or their mechanics) did not know how the front end was supposed to fit after removing the front bumper. They held stuff on with zip ties and left the install incomplete. This resulted in underbody panels catching air on the highway and ultimately tearing open and dragging on the road on multiple occasions. Aside from being embarrassing, it is a real nuisance. I plan on visiting the junkyard in hopes of finding a new lip for the front end as a result of multiple broken pieces I discovered on the front end. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but I need to be able to hit the highway and park afterwards with the front end in the same condition that I left with it in! Another task for future attention…
Lastly, on these same road trips, I noticed that when I needed to run the air conditioner, there was a smell associated with the air conditioner. My guess is either the cabin air filter needs to be replaced, or it is non-existent. In either case, I need to take a look at that. I also noticed that when the air conditioner evaporator cooled, it did drip water underneath the car. My hyper sensitivity to leaks lead me to notice this.
So to itemize the list, in addition to the aforementioned clutch kit and flywheel stuff…
- Touch up paint for various scratches
- Jigsaw, plywood, hole saw bits, and various tools to replace spare tire cover
- Replacement underbody panels since previous ones are dragged to Hell. May also need varying bolts and nuts for underbody fittings.
- Replacement door lock actuators since door locks do not seem to work properly
- Replacement cabin air filter
These items are just to get the car back to a reasonable shape. I will attack these items within the next week or two. Once those are sorted, then the big dreams start:
- Car audio system with dual amplifiers, leaning towards two 10 or two 12 inch subwoofers
- Adjustable coilovers in front and rear
- New wheels–leaning towards Enkei or Motegi
- Aftermarket intake–leaning towards cold air versus short ram
- I may or may not replace the exhaust–holding on that idea at the moment