97 Tacoma Partial Restoration Engine/Paint

wow, very nice shop! and the engine looks great! and one more vote for chain over belts. stupid idea for a critical part.

 

is this what it's going to look like?
http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/1st-gen-tacomas/213948-pics-your-ride-detailed-out-post-up.html

 

As far as color? Yes. But no, I am not modifying my Tacoma to look like a Viper! hahaha

 

For those who have never seen the shop, here are two pics. It is hard to show it's true size, but I am at 4600 sq-ft. The last picture is the frame-up of the spray booth for my paint job, and our upcoming spray in bedliner product. My nephew and I knocked this out in about 2 days of after work frame work.

 

OK, I have finished building the new head. I lapped the valves to the valve seats and installed the new guide seals, as well as checked the springs. Installed the head and she is starting to really look like an engine! I was considering painting the head to match, but I like the two-tone look of raw aluminum v/s painted black.

 

That's one sexy looking engine!

 

paint it red. It will look awesome then. damn, already put together. UNLESS!!!! you can paint it still.

 

Ummmmm Bill.... How are you going to get your truck in there and paint it???? I have stared at this picture long and hard and cant figure it out!!!! (That might end up in someone's sig...)

 

Oh and your truck is dirty... well the frame is.... haha

 

why not? that would be awesome.... lol jk

 

If you look on the left side, where the door is, the entrance is framed up on that side. There is a brace that is just keeping things straight in front of it. the brace will come off when the rest is completed.

 

hes gonna drive through the door...

 

i don't know if you know but you're missing a door knob....but thats really all you are missing haha

 

OK, I have been busy working, so I haven't updated too much here. So here we go. 2 posts, but that is because both are much different.

Once the cylinder head is in place, it it time to torque the bolts. this engine, like so many other engine of the past decade, have what are called "torque-to-yield" bolts. what this means is that the bolts are torqued down tight enough that the bolt itself "stretches" a tiny amount. What this results in is that if you ever loosen the head bolts, they MUST BE REPLACED. If you do not replace the bolts, you risk failure of the head gasket. In order to properly tighten these bolts, you do what is called "torque angle" You tighten them down a small amount with a torque wrench (in this case, 26 lb-ft) in sequence, then you come back in 2 more steps in sequence, tightening them down again to a specific angle (again, in this case, 90 Deg.) So you first tighten all 10 head bolts to 26 lb-ft, then again 90 deg, then again 90 deg MORE. Make sure that you do each step IN SEQUENCE! Don't tighten the same bolt in all 3 steps! You do EACH step once for every bolt, then start over.This creates a very even torque pressure to be applied.
If you look at the below photo you will see a torque angle meter that digitally shows you what angle you are at in tightening. There is even an alarm that beeps when you reach the programmed angle!



Well after we got the cylinder head bolted on, we have to now get ready for the dual camshafts. If you have ever looking under the valve cover on these 2.7L babys, you will have noticed that instead of a chain driving both shafts, the chain only drives ONE shaft, where the other shaft is actually driven by gear from the primary shaft. When you set up the camshafts you first must make sure that the #1 piston is at TDC. At this point it still does not matter TDC compression or exhaust, because when you install the cams, YOU will set up the compression stroke. If you look from the rear of the engine, where the camshafts mesh, you will see marks on the splined gears. You will take the intake shaft with the larger mark, and line it up with the exhaust camshaft where it has a double mark as indicated in the photo.



once that is done you can carefully place the camshafts into position and install the caps for the shafts. You must pay close attention here to the proper tightening sequence here for each shaft so that you do not bind or damage either shaft! Once you get them tightened down, you will verify that the marks are still aligned as in the above photo. If they are not, you can carefully turn them to get them in the exact position. remember, since they are splined you only have to turn one, it will turn the other.
Now you will install the chain and sprocket for the primary camshaft. If you look at the top of the photo you will notice that there are 2 chain links that are a slight brass color, different from the others. This is the timing indicator, and they must be on opposite sides of the mark on the FRONT of the sprocket. Then you install the sprocket onto the camshaft, being sure that the mark is perpendicular to the cylinder head, and that the pin on the camshaft is in the same position, and splined to the sprocket. You can see all of this in the below picture.



It may appear that the mark is not perpendicular, but that is because of the angle of the photograph.

So recapping, the crankshaft timing mark is aligned with the mark on the crankshaft, the camshafts are properly aligned to each other, and the sprocket timing mark and timing chain are properly installed. To verify that everything is in it's proper place, you can rotate the engine with a ratchet on the harmonic balancer by hand through 2 full revolutions to make sure nothing binds. you do this over 2 revolutions in order to now bring the engine to TDC of the compression stroke, which you just created when you installed the camshafts and timing gears. After this you can install the valve cover, and the rest of the components. that is shown in the next post!!

 

Well now that we have the valve cover on, we reassemble the engine to get it ready for install. Then in it goes! I am happy to see the last photo in this post!!!


















Now it is time to install all of the electrical connections, fuel lines, and upper intake manifold. It was not installed prior to sticking the engine in because of the need to access certain parts of the bell housing of the transmission for bolts, and because I am waiting on new injector seats for the injectors.

MORE TO COME! I hope SOMEONE is still watching this!!!

 

i iz

 

I was just there getting my parts!! Haha. Great work!!

 

Awesome Bill!

Getting so close!

We expect a video of it's first start up.

 

Awesome!!!! Cant wait to see it when everything is finished. Hope you take this many pics when you finally get to work on mine lol!!!

 

Love this thread, nice work.

Couldn't you just kinda guestimate 90* when tightening down the head, not needing that very expensive looking little gauge? Seems like the difference between 88* and 92* would be pretty minimal as far as torque goes.