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My rant for the night.

Russell

Russell

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05 Tacoma. Best friend's truck. Blew the head gasket over a year ago and continued to drive it regardless. Finally got bad enough that it was starting to run crappy and he was worried about it blowing up and hydrolocking.

Did some research and discovered that the head surfaces on the block cannot be re-machined due to the type of cylinder liner they use in the aluminum block.

So, we found a used engine from a truck half the mileage that found a tree with the center of his grille. Broke the timing cover and the harmonic balancer which also damaged the crank. No other damage that I could find.

Tore both engines down and swapped the crank from the old engine to the new one. Checked all the tolerances and everything was good according to the book. Re-installed the engine with the new block and turned the key.


aaaannd, she has a nasty valve train tick on all three DS cylinders. Reporting random misfires and misfire DTCs for all three DS cylinders. Ugh. Guess I messed up the camshaft timing despite my best attempts to make sure everything was right :(

I am hoping I can fix the cam timing issues without pulling the timing cover off the front of the engine again, which would basically mean pulling half the engine out again just to get it apart.

Sigh :(

The things I do for my friends :rolleyes:
 
Did you disassemble the heads at all? There are shims under the cams that are various thicknesses for valve adjustment.
 
Oh man, I feel your pain bud. Even though we often times put ourselves in these situations, people don't understand that we aren't just waiting around to fix their stuff for free when it breaks.

I'm not saying your friend is like this but for sure many people make the assumption that ppl. with mechanical aptitude just live to fix their problems for them with whatever lawn mower or family minivan won't run right!

BTW, is that motor an interference engine? :what:
 
Best I can tell it is not an interference motor. I definitely was turning it over by hand with some of the valves wide open and the valve train not connected to the crank without hitting anything.

I did not remove the camshafts or the heads, which is why I am a bit puzzled why it would be ticking if it came from a properly running truck before. I am pretty sure I didn't mess up the camshaft timing, I checked it a number of times to be sure I had everything right before buttoning it up.

It sounds like a lifter tick to me. Who knows what kind of damage may have been suffered in the engines introduction to that tree though. I just hope it is as reasonably easy fix and nothing something crappy like a bent valve which will require me to pull the engine.
 
How long did you let it run??..I have seen used engines that took almost 30 minutes for the lifters to finally pump up and get oil pressure and quiet down after being installed..more than one salvage yard engine my friend has installed was so noist at first we both thought it was junk,and he was ready to rip it back out..but he decided to get in the car and rev it up good a few times after letting it sit there clattering a good 15 minutes,and it suddenly started quieting down,one lifter at a time..

After an engine sits idle a long time,all the oil drains out of everything,and it can take more than a few minutes for the oil to get to all the lifter oil passages and them to pump up..

If your confident you lined the timing marks up right,I'd just let it idle for awhile,maybe rev it up a few times,see if it gets any better..

Also a lot of guys condem a good used engine when they start one up and see clouds of steam or oil blowing out the tail pipe too,we often got angry calls from customers at the junkyard often saying we sold them a junk engine,when we knew it ran sweet just before pulling it..they forget their exhaust system was full of coolant or oil from THEIR old blown up engine,and that can take a long time to finally burn off,and usually it wont until the car gets driven,and hot enough to burn it all out of the pipes and muffler..

We told them to just drive the car around,and if after a half hour it was still smoking,to drive it to the junkyard and we would arrange to get them another engine for free..most of them showed up with a coffee and donuts and an apology..:D..only a few engines had gone sour from sitting too long,that had been running perfectly before being pulled and stashed away..I think a lot of them had the oil pump lose its prime, and the lack of oil pressure killed them in a matter of minutes after being fired up..
 
This thing smoked like an old diesel freight train at first but I figured that was just oil and coolant in the cylinders / exhaust. It pretty much cleared up after letting it idle for 30 min. The noise isn't an impending failure kind of a noise so I figured I'd let it run for the very same reasons you said to haha!

Either way there is definitely something wrong with the entire even bank of cylinders so I am going to get into it again and verify my work. It could still be an issue with the VVT-i system or something too
 
fellow mech buddy had this kind of thing . some motors have spring loaded cam gear . if not set it will run but make noise.

could be that . but I don't do internal Toyota stuff my self .
 
Update!

It was indeed caused by bad cam timing. The good news is that it was easily fixed with just the removal of the valve covers... Engine runs like new now and no longer makes any unusual noise :)

I will finish the re-assembly tonight and haul it back to it's owner this coming weekend. Just in time for the next project to roll into my shop lol
 
Awesome! :thumb:

Really glad to hear that. I've been wondering where you were at with this situation and hoping it worked out for you. That's a best case scenario for sure!

Now the question is - did your buddy offer up a free year supply of beer!? :D
 
hahaha! I have no doubt that he would if I asked :)

For future reference, this IS an interference engine. The strange thing is that the ticking noise I was hearing was coming from the even bank, but it was the odd bank exhaust cam that was mis-timed.

The FSM tells you to set the intake cam lobes on their side pointing towards the exhaust cam and the exhaust cam lobes pointed straight up on cylinder 1 when you install the cams but failed to mention that you need to rotate the cams to a different position before installing the timing chain that ties the two together, also lining up the VVT-i's timing mark for installing the main timing chain that ties the two cams to the crank.

So, when I installed the timing chain for the cams I did so with the cams in the direction they were facing when installed. I then rotated the cams to line up the VVT-i timing mark and installed the main chain. In effect, the intake cam was lined up but the exhaust cam was out of phase. I just set the engine to TDC #1 on compression and removed the exhaust cam gear. I then lined up the chain timing marks for the cams properly and rotated the cam until it lined up with the gear.

The even bank I pulled both cams out and removed all the valve spring caps ("lifters") to look for broken springs etc. I am guessing that one of the cam bearing caps must have been a bit loose (removed em all with an impact wrench) causing it to knock.

Either way, no more noise and it runs properly! Even compression across the board now too, which indicates no valve trouble.
 
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