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So I've been in contact with the eBay seller of the head, but his responses have been one liners and not very clear. First was "Sorry about that do you have pictures"...of course I responded and sent pictures (for the 2nd time), and then I get "I'll have to talk to my head guy", and then after me repeatedly asking what is going on, I finally get "Did you install the head", to which again I tell him the complete story, head has of course not been installed, I never made it that far. This is a week of back and forth, and even though I asked about 5 times if he was going to send me a replacement head or if he was going to refund my money, I never got an answer, so today I initiated a return on eBay, no idea if eBay will make him refund me or what, but hopefully at least eBay can force him to resolve the situation. I have not left any feedback, I was hoping the seller would make good on his 3 month warranty especially given that this head was never even installed.
Anyway, moving on. Today I worked on cleaning up that lower intake that I bought, it was so greasy and the gaskets were stuck on there. After about an hour of degreaser, wire brushing, and a toothbrush scrubbing of the crevices...then another hour of gasket scraping and wire wheeling, it is finally to the point where I'm good with it.
Then I moved on to other tasks. I purchased a Throttle Body rebuild kit from LC Engineering, which really consists of these little shaft seals on either side of the TB. I used a small pic to work the old one out of there. This side has a 10mm nut holding on the pawl for the TPS, and then the other side has a 12mm nut holding down the throttle linkage. With all of that off, you can pry out the old seals, and then I did a degreaser, wire brush and toothbrush scrub of everything. Then I lubed up the new seals with a little Vaseline, and pushed them down in there with a screwdriver. I also purchased a new TPS which will be going on when all this gets back together.
The ebay seller of my head stopped replying to my messages, and so I tried initiating a return on ebay for the item, but within like an hour the return status moved to closed, with no information from ebay about what that means, but if these states mean anything, I certainly never got to the refund state. Anyway, I can't let this truck sit here forever, I decided to just rebuild my original head, so I called a few machine shops around here and ended up this morning dropping it off at one of them. They are going to remove the broken bolt in the back of the head for the EGR cooler plate and they are going to helicoil\timecert one of the exhaust stud bolt holes that had a large oversized bolt in it. The front desk guy was very friendly, the guy in the back doing the headwork came up and he instantly knew this was a 22re head, asked if it came out of a Celica or Truck, he clearly knew what he was looking at so I feel pretty good that this shop will do me right.
Finally some progress...the local cylinder head shop called last week and said my head was ready. Great little shop, very friendly staff, they helicoiled like 5 of my exhaust studs plus removed and helicoiled a broken bolt in the rear of the head on that EGR cooler plate and only charged me for 2.
Tonight I was feeling ambitious, so I sat that head on the block and then got it all torqued down to 58 ft lbs in 3 passes. I'll be installing the intake and exhaust hopefully tomorrow.
Good eye Thomas. Don't worry though I knew it wasn't in there, I was just trying to get the timing gear in place. Got exhaust manifold on, used that very thick Remflex gasket.... We'll see how that does. The intake is just sitting there, I need to get a few things hooked up before I bolt it down. Oh, bought a new dipstick, so nice and tight! Fresh sparkplugs gapped and installed, distributor is stabbed in, drained oil and put on a new oil filter. Just a little more on intake, adjust valves, fill fluids and I'll be running.
Only able to work for about an hour today, but I got all the hoses and electrical stuff plugged into lower intake and then got it bolted to the head. Then I sat the upper on there. I believe I have the little hardline to the cold start injector on wrong, so I have to pull upper intake off and flip it over. Inching my way closer.
Got the hardline to the CSI sorted out, got my new fuel pressure gauge installed, throttle body is on with my new TPS and Allen head bolts, all heater hoses are now installed, and filled radiator. Valve adjustment is next, then VC goes on and all vac lines hooked up.
Well, it's all back together, BUT it does not want to start up. Engine was at TDC from entire time that I removed everything, and I stabbed in the distributor and made sure it was pointing at #1 and that the bolt was pretty well centered in the hole, and then I cranked and cranked and to me it does not even sound like it is trying to start. So then I took off distributor cap and rolled the crank around to TDC timing mark, and the rotor was 180 degrees out, so of course I pulled it and restabbed the distributor, and still won't start. I have that fuel pressure gauge there under the hood, and not that this is related to my start problem, but I have like 35ish lbs of pressure while cranking, but it drops quick after I stop cranking, so hard for me to get a good reading. I did not see any fuel leaks or smell any fuel, so I don't think it is leaking externally.
I'm going to check for spark, and I guess see if any of the plugs are wet. What am I missing here? I have the EFI ground wire hooked up there on the upper\lower intake, I have the ground wire to the block, and the one to the power steering pump and the one from firewall to head.
Last night after posting that, I thought, how in the world was my distributor 180 deg wrong, when I know the cam timing gear was at proper position, and the crank, and I could see the #1 piston was up. Sometimes you get into a zone where you make silly choices because you are thinking about the problem and just have tunnel vision. Anyway, after posting and thinking more about it, I realized duh, every other revolution of the crank puts #1 at TDC, so I was just one revolution wrong when I checked it and because it didn't start I thought I had the distributor in wrong. I'll fix that today, and I'll check the fuses and then if fuses are good, I'll check spark.
My son had basketball game tonight so I only had a small window of time this evening. I rolled the crank around to line up the timing mark and then flipped the distributor 180 degrees to put it back where it originally was. And what do you know, it started right up. I did not have time to let it warm up, so I'll have to do that another day so I can adjust idle and set timing and then I plan to use Jimkolas method for adjusting TPS. Hopefully there are no coolant leaks, does not seem to be any gas leaks so that is good
Still think I may have a problem with the fuel pressure regulator, but that will be for later after I get it back to running shape.
I finally went out there and tried to set timing. I can get it to 5 deg base timing or at least pretty close, there is no mark for 5 deg and its hard to see, but I can get pretty close but I have to crank the distributor all the way counter clockwise as far it as it will go in the slot to get there. I think this means I am a tooth off on the distributor, I adjusted one tooth the way I thought made sense in my head, which was to pull it out, turn the rotor just a bit counter clockwise so that when I stabbed it back in, if it were originally at let's say 10 oclock, now it is at 9:45....but then the truck would not start, so I moved it back, and now it starts and I'm in this situation. I think maybe moving it clockwise 1 tooth might work, but its a pain, so I thought ok, let me run with it where it is, truck starts right up and idles fine. So the question I have really, is if I can get to 5 deg base, does it matter whether I move the distributor 1 tooth or not?
Well, I left the timing alone for now, probably off a tooth on distributor but it runs well so I'm going with it for now. I adjusted TPS by using Jimkolas timing light instructions and I took it out on a test drive. Seems to run and drive fine. Sound wise I hear much less exhaust noise, so I attribute that to the Remflex and the fact that I now have all exhaust studs properly installed. Also I hear more valve clicking, but I don't know if that is because I hear less exhaust noise or if that is because the valves need some adjustment or what.
04-06-2024, 09:16 AM
