from the twisted minds of snm
Saturday, I’d gotten the 4AGZE starter motor to replace and relocate the balky starter. Relocating the starter requires changing out the bellhousing splash plate. Somehow I was able to install the transmission myself.
Here you see the old plate, the hole for the starter on the front/exhaust side of the engine. The new plate you see the hole on the other side. It’s a little hard to see, but the starter is now buried in there to the left, under the intake side.
To catch up on the FX, Scat and Chucky came over Thursday evening after work to help me out with the tranny reinstall. After spending the morning in Maui for work, my boss told me to take off work early, so I got home early and started on trying to get the tranny in.
Here’s pics of the stuff that was going in. The Exedy clutch came with bonus stickers that aren’t quite as weak as the Magnaflow ones.
And here’s the flywheels:
Wow! I managed to break $100 while filling the tank in the work van today! Glad it’s not me paying the bill!
For people who wrench on their bike & car equipment, there’s certain parts that for some reason are just plain stinky. SPD pedal bearing grease is a famous one for us. On your car, differential oil is another one. Transmission oil is somewhere around there too. I just discovered another one today, removing the flywheel/crank bolts released some stinky funk. I wasn’t expecting that!
Anyway, to sum up progress on the FX, I finally got the crazy idle to stop for now. It turns out one of the new silicone vacuum hoses wasn’t tight enough and was “leaking” vacuum. What a pain. I took the “blacktop” 4AGE flywheel I bought of the net a few months back in to shop to have it resurfaced and it’s ready & waiting. Today I dropped the tranny on the 20 valve so I could get the bellhousing plate so i can relocate the starter when I change the flywheel and clutch. After that, I can change the header over. Whew, lots of stuff, being held up waiting for the new Exedy clutch to come. Sorry no, it’s only a “stage 1”, one step up from OEM clutch. It’s constructed like a normal OEM clutch. Their aluminum pressure plate one was nice and pretty, but at $1000+, yikes! Might as well go for the multi-plate clutch as long as your breaking the bank already!
Spun by Checker and bought a foot of 5/8″ Good Year heater hose yesterday. The leaky section was inaccessible from the engine compartment, and blocked from below by the front axle, lateral link, and steering telegraph rod. I managed to squeeze my arm between the axle and lateral link to get a 10mm ratcheting box wrench on the Toyota hose clamps and undo them. I knew very well that whem I popped the old hose off, the remaining coolant would spill on me, and as predicted, it went in my eyes, nose, and mouth. Continue reading ‘Hose’
On the way home from the Ditch ride with Chris and Root, my temperature gauge went up toward the “red” zone. At home, the reservoir hose was bubbling furiously into the tank. I let it cool overnight then checked around. There was a small puddle under the front axle. Orange coolant was dripping from somewhere mid-block. Oh no! Head gasket! The coolant was clear and the oil was not milky. Whew. A careful examination revealed a leak from a small hose section between the block-mounted oil cooler and the coolant pipe from the water pump (Land Cruisers have integrated oil-to-water oil coolers, not those sissy add-on mini radiators).
Hopefully I can get it fixed today. I dropped by Toyota Parts and Clyde got a new thermostat and associated gaskets rolling – I figure I’d just as well change those since the last time I had an overheating problem it was that component. It was not readily apparent if the thermo was dead and the overheating blew the hose, or the leaky hose dropped the coolant level to the point where the truck overheated. The FJ80 is 17-years old, so the current thermo is about 10-years old. I’ll spin by the generic car parts store and get some hose – the bad section is just straight, so I don’t need a proprietary Toyota part.
Oh, and Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!
Sheesh. Taking a dinner break here. Getting case of vibro arms.
So here’s a tip for all you car monkeys, when you sit around grinding and cutting metal bits, try to keep away from your car, or rather your car paint. I have just spent all day buffing and picking out rusty metal filings from the paint of my car. I’m pretty sure it’s from when I was cutting those vacuum pipes a few weeks ago and I didn’t realize it was getting all over the car. After getting the nice pretty wheels on yesterday and waking up early on a Sunday (how’d that happen? Let’s just say wine has an effect of putting me to sleep & had some with dinner last night), I decided to wash the car. That’s when I discovered the tiny little rusty specks sticking all over. Ugh. Thank budha that I have the power buffer, there is absolutely no way I could have done as much in this one day without it, and I would seriously have had jelly arms. Sorry Miyagi-san, I fail, turn-on, turn-off.
Okay, time to go back outside for the final buff on the hood, then sealant the finish.
Parts order came promptly from Summit Racing. In the order was exhaust parts, and the ARP extended length wheel studs. After much digging around & asking at local parts shop to look up the measurements, I figured the ARP stud set listed for Celica was a good match. The key thing is to find a good size for the knurl since these are press fit. The Celica ones here were just slightly bigger in diameter. The whole reason for this is with alloy rims, the stock studs are just barely long enough, as seen here with my old rims. 
Looks a little iffy, but it just makes the general rule of thumb that there should be as much thread engaged as the stud is thick. Now the deal is the new FX came with some nice Rays rims, but it’s sizing required the use of spacers on the back. I think I mentioned before that we discovered that the rear wheels were being held on by only two threads. This was no exageration, two revolutions and the lug nuts were off. 
Pretty lucky there wasn’t a disaster. Yikes! Continue reading ‘Studly’
Update on car work. I spent last weekend working on the intake of the FX. If you remember, I’d complained about the gutless low end during the SCCA Test&Tune, so I figured I’d check out the intake system. My guess was something was wrong with the TVIS system. TVIS stand for Toyota Variable Induction System. Each cylinder has a pair of intake runners and the TVIS is a set of butterflies that close off one set at low rpms. What this is doing is tuning the intake size. At low rpms, since the pistons are moving slower and sucking slower, closing half the runners you get a narrower intake tube, increasing the air velocity getting better mixing and charging of the cylinder. Once the rpms get high, the piston speeds are high and sucking in faster, the narrow intake becomes a restriction so opening up the second set lets in more air. When you’ve got it floored and the throttle wide open, you can actually hear when this happens. Toyota put this into the GE performance engine cars during the 80’s, and then it went away in the 90’s. It’s come back in a different form in Lexus’ with ACIS, kind of similar concept, but it varies the length of the intake. Continue reading ‘Sucky Sucky’
The brake parts I ordered came in. Discovered I ordered the wrong front EBC rotors, or perhaps it was a subconscious desiscion to upgrade? What happened is I ordered the later year ones, which are larger. The good thing is that if you order the same later year calipers, they bolt right up to the older hubs. The only thing is you need to either modify or remove the dust shields. I removing them is the easiest to do. Cut with Dremel and wrench it off.
