When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Antifreeze lines rusted on donor, how bad is the block?
So I blew a hole in my 3.0, picked up a donor truck with a running engine for $200. Just started tearing into the truck and I have some concerns. The PO ran straight water as coolant for God knows how long, and as a result everything is crazy rusted.
Some nasty rust goop coming out of a bypass line under the TB. I haven't gotten to the block yet, I've only taken off the upper manifold so far.
What I'm mainly concerned about is the condition of the block which is what I'm mainly going after. Everything else I can swap over from my other engine. If it looks this corroded from the top, how bad will it be in the block? If it's bad, would it be ok with just a good cleaning? I'm just a little concerned if it's worth the effort of pulling and tearing down this engine.
BONUS QUESTION!
I wasn't going to ask about this but might as well if I'm on here. Doesn't matter too much but it might affect if I can sell or just scrap the trans. The donor is an automatic trans. It will only drive in 4LO. Nothing will engage in 2HI or 4HI. Didn't do any further diagnostics. Any thoughts?
I'd pull the water pump and see what it looks like behind it. That should give you a fairly good idea of what the rest of the internal cooling system looks like.
As far as only running in 4 LO, that sounds like a transfer case issue. There's a neutral between HI and LO on the t-case, and it sounds like it's not able to transition past that neutral for some reason.
Good idea, I'll pull the pump and post some pictures. Won't be till this weekend.
And about the transfer case, when I was moving the truck around I was trying to engage neutral on the t case between hi and lo and I couldn't find it, so that sounds like you're on the right track.
I'd expect the block to clean up ok. As Millball mentioned, hot tanking would be ideal, assuming you can find a machine shop that is allowed to have one. Our local machine shop (in Cal.)used the phrase "tanking", but they were really using a parts washer, which isn't the same.
Yea I'm in California too, I know they're trying to get rid of hot tanking, or phasing it out or something. There's quite a few machine shops pretty near me so I might be able to find someone
It's the only thing that can really clean any rust scale out of the water jackets that might cause hot spots or flake off later, plugging the smaller coolant holes in the head gaskets.
It’s not so much being phased out as much as regulated out. A good hot tank is just a toxic mess both in terms of liquid and fumes. When I needed to get a shotgun barrel blued it had to be sent out of state.
There are some chemicals to remove rust you can run through the cooling system when the engine is running, but they can be difficult to neutralize, and if they break off anything substantial you could wipe out your radiator. So ideally there’s a shop that can address it as a bare block.
Oops! Well, lesson learned eh? Good luck with your rebuild!
Yup, big expensive lesson. Definitely adding a snorkel as part of this build. Thanks! Almost ready to pull the donor. Unbolted from the trans and mounts but it's kinda stubborn. Think I'm gonna undo the torque converter before I seperate, heard it can make it a little easier.
Yucky!
Gonna be fun getting all that gunk out of everything. Especially all the little water passages throughout the block.
I wish you the best on this project! Keep us apprised (big word for the day ) of your progress!
Pat☺
Ok, here’s a possibility if you can’t find a bonavide hot tank.
my dad used to repair restaurant equipment. For the huge Bunn coffee makers he often had to clean the copper lines of scale deposits. Like a car engine, the coffee maker ran scalding water, so the stuff was pretty baked on.
He had these long 3-4’ springs that would fit inside the copper tubing and he could just run the springs back and forth and roto rooter out all the deposits. Maybe if you ran something that breaks up scale and ran that spring back and forth you could break up the majority of the deposits. You could then take a pressure washer and power flush the various passages. Just a possibility.
it would be nice to deck the block, but I’d ask the machine shop to make sure it hasn’t been done before. Back when the headgasket campaign was going on there were three ways it could have been fixed:
1. Remove heads and replace gaskets. This typically happened when the original gasket hadn’t failed yet.
2. headgaskets did blow. R&r block, have blocked decked, install new rings, gaskets etc.
3. headgaskets blew, block damaged beyond repair. Replace short block assembly, new headgaskets.
maybe if you called Toyota’s customer service they could tell you. Each of the three operations had different codes, so by the code they should be able to tell which repair option was done. If the block has already been decked once it doesn’t give you much leeway, if any on the second go around.
Not likely. They're just a bunch of young kids that know nothing about older engines. I called them about looking up my 5vz-fe block serial number and they were completely stumped.
Well, if you want, you can email me your vin number and I can contact my friends who still work at the dealer, and if they can’t do it I’ll contact the ones I still have at the factory.
07-02-2020, 08:35 PM
) of your progress!
