What would you do? - Wear on cylinder question - 1GR-FE 4.0 V6

No special tool needed. It can only go on one way. Actually technically I think there are two ways. Meaning for every rotation of the oil pump gear it will match up twice with the crank.

What’s tricky is once you line up the oil pump gear it tends to want to slide downward and cause issues with alignment.

 

Make sure you check your valve clearances if the shop didn’t do so.

 

@zguy1 Thanks for being so helpful throughout this process! Your write up thread has been very helpful through the process and I plan to write some quick learnings/tips on your thread once I'm done. Valve job included checking/adjusting all valves to factory spec .

Aligning the crankshaft and oil pump on the timing cover:
I fortunately have access to a cheap ear camera. Something like this on

YEOUEOZ Electric Ear Wax Removal Tool, Ear Camera with 1920 HD Camera, Smart Visual Ear Cleaner Kit with 6 LED Lights, Rechargeable Otoscope with 6 Ear Pick Replacement for Kids/Adults - Purple

amazon. It allows me to see into that tight space and I was able to rotate the gear with a pick once the timing cover was almost on. It made this so much easier and faster. I highly recommend if anyone is stuck with the same issue!

Indents on the surface of the timing chain cover:
Is the surface of the timing chain cover completely flat? Mine has like two indents a few millimeters. It looks almost intentional but I noticed I have a lot of oil coming from that side and I assume it's because of this. None of the videos I looked at mentioned this. I assume it's supposed be flat but so odd that its indented like this and only at those areas

 

I'm glad to hear the thread was helpful. I'm sure others would appreciate the tips and insight from your own experience.

My timing cover might have had some slight imperfections but nothing that I can recall. I was not too concerned about it since you are using FIPG here. As I was told, FIPG is very forgiving once applied. So much so that you will see just how much it squeezes out once the cover is put in place and torqued to spec. This can be observed at the top of cover since the valve covers are not on yet. I would suggest you still apply the FIPG as specified in the SM. It should be fine. Don't forget to put FIPG where the heads meet the cylinder block as there are imperfections in this area as well.

 

If you want an opinion or experience from someone who is also pretty modest about his ability to work on an engine, when I had my car's engine apart I saw some staining on one cylinder wall that was similar but quite a bit worse than yours. I didn't have a chance to do a compression test because I bought the block used. I was like "f___ it" and assembled the whole engine with all it's after-market goodies, got it tuned and it's been running great for 6 years since.

So in other words, I'm personally not worried by what I see on your engine.

 

I forgot to mention in my last post. That area you are pointing to on your cover looks to be right next to the inspection cover for the main timing chain tensioner. This is typically the area where most folks find their timing cover leaking. Mine was not leaking excessively here, but I had oil in this spot too. This also lines up with where the block meets the cylinder heads. The FIPG you put on the cover itself plus the extra you add on the block as mentioned in previous post should seal the cover up nicely. I'm almost 5K miles since my repair and everything is bone dry so far. Knock on wood.

 

@zguy1 as always thanks for the tips!

@athalos glad to hear it!

Indents on the surface of the timing chain cover:
I really didn't want to take everything off again if I discovered it leaked so I jb welded (steelstik) the indents and sanded it down for good measure. You can see here that the indents were significant enough to old a decent amount of jbweld.



Aligning crankshaft and oil pump:
Here's what the cheap Amazon camera I previously mentioned. It has been super helpful as I needed to align this a few times.

 

@tacomage, no problem. Glad to see you are making progress. Looking forward to you getting this thing back on the road.