I took it for it's first road test. It felt great to FINALLY drive this truck. Got about two miles in aaand....a drop of coolant hit my foot. Weird. Then steam came out of the defrost vents. Oh crap. I turned it around and got home without any further leakage. I checked all my hoses. Clamps are tight. The only trail of coolant I could find underneath was coming out of a seam under the passenger seat area. So with some fast advice I'm supposing I rallied my heater core somehow when I took the hoses off. Sucks, but oh well. Not too expensive, just time consuming.

Aside from that she ran great!!! Super happy with the rebuild so far.

 

Got the old heater core out!! I have A/C so it was a lot of fun. Makes me want to delete it. Still have an issue though!!! I have brought home 2 heater cores now, one from Oreilly's and another from Autozone. Oreilly's was a Murray, too big, doesn't even fit in the unit. Autozones was a Spectra, no foam on the outside but the bigger issue with that one was that the old pipes didn't match up with the holes on the core, pipes I have are too big. Called Toyota. Discontinued part. Napa is my last option before I have to start looking online. I'm going to browse the forum for part numbers. If anybody knows where to get one that ACTUALLY works, let me know. I've looked on rock auto but there's no way of knowing whether or not it will work until it gets here.

 

So NAPA's option for a heater core was the same as Autozone's only $30 more. So I ended up buying the Spectra again. To get the old pipes to fit, I took some 80 grit sand paper and took a little off of the ends fit to the core till they fit nicely. Installed the C-clips and they didn't fit right. The flange on the end of the fittings on the core were too thick and too big of an OD for the clips to work right. Some light filing finally got everything to work how it should. Fired up and NO LEAKS!

Took it out for a road test and all is well!!! Had to add some coolant about a mile into it.

The Toyota is at last in running shape. Many, many more projects to come. Flatbed eventually. All new bushings for suspension and steering. So on so on so on.

Current issue. It won't get out of 4WD. Hubs ARE unlocked. Not sure, but I haven't looked too deep into it yet so we'll see.

IT'S ALIIIIVE!!!!

 

After getting about 150 miles on the motor and getting a good feel for everything, I've come up with a few points to pick at.

FIRST - Right around 2000 RPM's, whether in gear or not, the engine gets a little noisy, a slight rattling sound. I know these motors don't exactly purr, but it doesn't sound right to me. From my (limited) experience I would take a guess at a noisy valve train or possibly a pulley ready to go bad? Point is, I'm not sure. I'll have a look over all the pulley's to try and rule that out. Unfortunately, I think I'm looking at the valve train, in all my childish excitement to get this thing going, I slapped the rocker assembly w/o doing any fine tuning with the new cam. I know, sloppy, I've apologized to the truck already.

SECOND - Low oil pressure. As the truck warms up throughout a drive, oil pressure gradually goes down, which is normal, to a certain point. At it's lowest point, fully warmed up at an idle, the needle is just barely above the bottom line. It comes up to maybe halfway to normal range with increased RPM's. To me though, it all seems lower than it should be. I'll be getting a manual gauge from Harbor Freight to see what the numbers actually are. I'm hoping the gauge in the truck is just a little wonky. Or maybe I'm just a little too new this motor to know what I'm talking about.

THREE - Again, I am new to these motors. Is it normal to have a pretty significant...uhhh, (I'll call it engine breaking to try to paint the picture), when you let off the throttle? Basically just on and just off of throttle can be "jerky". Maybe I am being too picky, but I'm trying to get this thing tuned in as tightly as I can though so she runs for another 200K++.

I could really use a local Toyota guy.

In other news, some IFS parts could use some replacing. There's a really awful grinding when the wheels are fully turned either direction and my breaking is WAY uneven, pulls hard to the right. Gotta check out the calipers. PO did a break job from the Master cylinder forward. I'm under the impression that the calipers were just rebuilt and not bought new/reman.

Yes, one day I WILL do a SAS on this thing. However, I don't even own a welder and I'm pretty sure I'll get in trouble if I spend that much money anytime soon.

 

Got my new oil pressure gauge in. Of course it didn't just plug right in. The NPT fitting that it came with it to go to the block wasn't as tapered as the threads on the sending unit that was there. So with the some filing and running the new fitting through an M10 1.0 die and some teflon tape it threaded in with no leaks. Oil pressure seems normal, I'm just relieved I can see the real numbers now. At operating temp. it runs at about 10 psi at idle and around 30-35 psi at 2500 RPM.

In the process of changing that out I found a tiny coolant seep at the block heater. Just decided to buy a new one. Sealed right up.

Finally tightened up the valve train. With ENGBLDR's 261 cam I set the intake at .007 and exhaust at .009. Soooo much quieter. Idle right where it's supposed to also.

 

Also, I finally got it off the road....it was good for both of us. It also served as an encouragement to get some beefy tires. I can't wait!

 

With about 600 miles on the rebuilt motor, I almost want to say that it's running great. Oil pressure is good, no leaks, good fuel mileage. Everything seems to be working just as it should, except for that ticking sound. I mentioned it in a previous post, comes in around 2000 rpm. I have listened closer and found that it is happening full time, it gets louder at that speed though and it gets worse at the engine warms up. Metal expanding and all that.

So I took a video to get some ears on it that know these motors well. One buddy of mine thinks it could be a valve tapping a piston. I sure hope not. I wouldn't know how that could happen with a fresh rebuild. It comes from the back of the motor. I've pulled the valve cover and checked everything that could be loose on the valve train and found nothing. I checked my timing chain and guides, nothings broken, no excess play in the chain.

I would love to get this figured out so I can move on to the really fun mods. Knobby tires, brush guards, bushings and many more.

Any and all helpful thoughts are appreciated.

 

I will post the video as soon as I figure out how....

 

Figured out the video. Hopefully that link works.

https://youtu.be/3E-YiJIeqOU

 

So the noise is rod knock due to installing undersized bearings. Half my fault for not checking, half getting wrong parts fault. It happens.

So I proceeded to pull the oil pan out from the dreaded IFS cluster. Which I succeeded in after some trouble. I plan to post some pictures detailing the simplest way I found to get this done. I found out there are a lot of Yotaholics out there who have struggled with this, so I'll do what I can to help.

I got my correct bearing set ordered and en route tomorrow to get it done right.

 

New rod bearings are in and she is back on the road!!. I hope I don't need to drop the oil pan again anytime soon. It wasn't as bad as some reports I read. But I would rather not have to work around all the IFS

Next parts to put in are the add-a-leafs from pro comp. From reading around, I do realize it's not a fix it but more of a band aid. BUT a band aid is about all I can afford for now, I need to haul wood and winter is on. I'll be excited about all new spring packs one day and $500 later. When I do that though I would like to just get in there and get a 3" pack. Then what to do about the front??? A SAS would be great, but again, things and stuff are expensive. I'm not sure how much money I want to put into an IFS lift. These are my struggles.

I am happy that she is moving again and without any extra noise!!

 

Just read through your thread for the first time. Nice truck you have there. Glad to see that you got the bearing issue sorted out before things got worse.


As for the front lift...... I would look into a ball joint spacer kit.

 

I appreciate that! Darma's not so bad underneath all that rust.

Once bigger tires finally happen, the BJ spacers probably will too. Going for 33x13.5 LTB. I think it will fit without adjustment ( I plan to cut the fenders, glamour is not Darma's strong point) but the extra room would be nice. Who knows when that will be though. New tires are wicked expensive and so is shipping.

Is install for spacers pretty cut and dry?

 

Got the AALs put in last night. Picked up the back end quite nicely. The back end now sits higher than the front slightly. Besides the fact that the threads on the new U-joints were short by a few millimeters and needed to add some washers, it was an easy install. Unlike most of my other projects.

 

I drove Darma about 80 miles yesterday. It was wonderful. Temperature started to climb too high a few miles in so I shut it down, cracked the radiator cap for just a second or two (with a rag over it) to "burp it." No issues after that.

During that stop I found out I need a new fan clutch. Thankfully, it's winter here in Alaska and the motor hasn't overheated at all. Natural cold air intake.

I got my snorkel on! I'll get some pictures when it's all buttoned up but it is not quite finished and water worthy. Got some sealing up to do where it goes into the MAF box. I should not start a body shop by the way.

 

Here are a couple pictures to show after the add a leafs and the snorkel.

Not so saggy in the rear anymore. Definitely stiffer, but I honestly didn't notice any difference in ride quality. It was not very comfortable pre-AAL install. I'm hoping new body mount bushing will help that a little bit until new suspension happens. Maybe something will break.......won't that be disappointing.











Darma stares off into the sunrise.

 

Looks good with the AAL in there.

As far as the BJ spacer. Yes they are pretty much cut and dry. Not a very difficult install at all.

 

Through a series of unfortunate events that are entirely my fault, I had to pull the connecting rods and get them to the machine shop to be checked and fixed up. Don't take shortcuts or let impatience get you to make bad decisions. Thats all the detail I care to disclose. I learned my lesson.

I got her all back together (again) and went to fire it up and she started, ran for a few seconds then died, she will stay running if I give it some throttle. However, there is an AWFUL high pitched whistle that sounds like it's coming from the back of the EFI box area. The only thing that has changed is I installed the LCE EGR block off plates. (About where it sounds like the whistling is coming from.) I covered the old vacuum ports. I don't know of any reason why this would keep it from running. I'm going to run through some tests today and I'll try to get a video of the whistle.

The good news, I picked up a good, old welder. I need some practice, I have not stick welded before, but I'm pretty happy I was able to find a good deal on one.

 

I reinstalled the EGR, it ran a few seconds longer, then died like normal. The whistle sounds like it's coming from the charcoal canister. Also I found there is a little leak coming from the bolt at the front end of the fuel rail. Maybe she isn't running because it isn't holding fuel pressure? I changed out the copper washers, it still leaked.

 

The whistle is definitely not from the charcoal canister. I unhooked the vacuum lines from it and tried again with no luck. I'm running out of ideas. I may end up taking things apart again to see what I missed.

I cannot get the banjo fitting on the front of the fuel rail to NOT leak. It's probably a seap by definition. How these two problems are related but I have no idea. I'd love some other opinions.