“Don’t Scrap It-

JB Weld It” is the tag line on the packaging. Well, I don’t have much choice since the part is discontinued from Toyota, and is specific to the FWD 4AGE so harder to find at junkyard. So time to test out the this metal filled epoxy that is JB Weld. I got the stick putty form instead of the classic liquid stuff, since I was going to be creating a lot of missing flange instead of just filling some cracks or holes. The specs shows its not quite as strong as the liquid, but hopefully it’ll be strong enough. Cut off a piece of the ‘tootsie roll’ and mushed it up good, then squished it onto the cleaned fitting and molded it into rough shape. Let it set up for day and half and here it is. I then took the Dremel to it and shaped it. So far it looks pretty good. Hopefully when I put it all together it holds!

I don’t have the hoses yet to connect it up, but if I can find caps to cap these off temporarily I might try that. But I couldn’t find any at City Mill, so that’ll have to wait for now.

I also run into a problem with that thermostat housing that I was so happy to find at the junkyard. There was one less threaded sensor/valve fitting but figured I would be ok since I’d be deleting EGR and wouldn’t need one of them anyway. What I didn’t notice was that one of the threaded bung’s shoulder was shorter. I didn’t realize it would be a problem until I removed and tried to switch the sensor from the old fitting to this new one. The sensor is too long! Cr@p! I dig through the service manual to figure out what exactly this sensor is. Hm, it’s the cold start timer switch. Do some research online, it looks like I could delete this and run a manual switch. It would be like the electronic equivalent of the manual choke knob on the ‘Cruiser. That timer switch is actually a clever little bit of analog electronics for the EFI. When the coolant (and engine) is cold, the switch is closed, which grounds the cold start injector and allows it to squirt, richening up the fuel mixture for better cold starting. When the coolant is hot, the switch opens shutting off the injector. However, the injector only needs to squirt for a short time and really doesn’t need to keep injecting, but the coolant takes longer to warm up than that. To solve that there is a second wire in the sensor that is hooked up to a heater. So when its first cold the heater comes on, warming up the sensor faster than the coolant would, so it turns off faster. Nowadays this is probably all computer controlled. I’m going to have to figure out something, but worse comes to worse I can probably do without it.

Oh well, at least Monroe got back to me and sent me the proper gland nut. The nut that came with the front strut cartridge I ordered did not have the proper thread to match the fine thread of the OEM FX16 cartridge. I guess the FX16 is a freak size. Maybe that’s why its so friggen hard to take off and I needed to get the monstro adjustable wrench. It is quite large. Really. Anyway, I got one side changed out, I’ll try and tackle the other tomorrow morning. That’s it for FXing for now!