Take a bit of steel wool wadded up and put it in your PCV can. Not that you have a ton of blow by, but without something in there to keep the oil from being able to mist, you're still pulling oil past the can. Think of it like the venturi effect. Not tryin to sharpshoot ya, just something that I don't think a ton of people know unless they've ran a catch can before.

Thanks! I got some of those copper-coated scrubby pads and stuffed one in there. We'll see if my rate of oily fluid crap collection increases now.

"Having a rear window that rolls down is great!"




"Having a roof rack is great!"




"What's one more?"




"I think 3's the limit!"

Driver's door overhaul project
271k miles

I had a couple of issues cropping up I wanted to deal with at one time.

- Door actuator motor going out
- Door holder-open mechanism totally worn out

For the actuator I followed @mtbtim repair video to a T an everything went perfectly. @habanero has a nice writeup that gave me extra confidence. I utilized the motors from MOPS electric on eBay and the one I installed worked great.

Door panel removed


Actuator with gearbox removed


Gearbox case split open with new motor shown


It took a significant amount of razor blade work to get the halves to separate. Once I got it apart I noticed that the seam does not appear to be simply glued. The joint is a tabbed slot that is either adhered or possibly vibration welded in place. To get the sides apart you have to actually cut through the 2mm of hard plastic. I used some loctite plastic glue that is basically superglue to bond the halves back together. I think it will be sufficient.

The project went perfectly and every tip and trick Tim provided made it very easy. I went slow and carefully and it took about 2 hours.

Project 2 was the door holder mechanism. This is the rod with some bumps in it to hold the door in position at half and full open positions. You can buy this mechanism new for Toyota for about $100 per door. I opted to try out a rebuild kit offered by a Russian eBay seller "plasticauto". It was $30 shipped and services four doors.



The kit comes with eight slider pads, a handful of shims that may or may not need to be used, and some dry lube compound.

Summary: the kit worked great and now the door opener mechanism works very well. It holds the door open with authority and requires a bit of force to get it past the stops. But the action is smooth and I am very happy with it. Here are a couple teaser shots and I'll put in more info in my next post.

Door check repair (aka the door holder open thingy)

Armed with the aforementioned eBay kit from Russia I repaired the door check mechanism on my driver's door and have the parts to eventually address the other doors. The seller has good instructions on their for sale ad which I followed with success.

Door panel comes off. Speaker box comes out with four screws


Here's the check mechanism. Take the clip on the body off by pulling the round part toward you


Plastic cover on the door side gets pried out


Here's the mechanism


A look from the inside. I noticed the outermost bushing is partly eroded but it doesn't really matter so I'm not worried about it.


Take off the 10mm bolt on the body and the two 10mm nuts on the door and out it comes.






First we gotta drill out the spot welds that hold the two steel housings together. Since the studs clamp these back together once installed it doesn't matter that this material is removed.



Step up the drill sizes until the front steel piece separates




Here's the friction mechanism inside. There are two hard plastic wearing pieces backed by chunks of rubber that act as springs. These plastic pieces are what wear down over time and reduce the friction on the rod.



Pry those suckers out with a screwdriver. Easy



Comparing the old ones to the new ones. This explains why my door check basically does nothing.



Clean the mechanism and the rod. Coat the rubber parts, the new plastic parts, and the rod with the provided dry lube. The manufacturer states this is a lube and a lapping compound which means it will help the parts wear in correctly so we should expect after a couple hundred open/closes it will get to a lower holding force and stay there.



Slide the housing to the thin part of the rod and stuff the new parts in there. They are a tight fit. I had to squeeze them in with pliers but it was not hard.



I opted to reinstall the nuts to hold the parts in and squish them to their final resting place. This allowed me to pound the rod back through the mechanism to its fully open position for reinstallation.



Finally the freshened mechanism is reinstalled with the two nuts and one bolt. I added a bit more lube to the rod at this point.

The door now opens with some force when it goes over the stops and is held at the stop locations very well. The actuation force is slightly more than I would want long term but I expect it will settle in over time. It's way better than having the door be all loosey goosey and I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Door holder-open thingy repair, so need to do this. I did not know there was a kit out there.
Thanks for the awesome write-up to go with.

Agreed. This is on my to do list.

Thanks

Durwin

I've got three toyota's with non funcitonal door checks. At 100 a pop I didn't want to drop $1200 for new parts. Thanks for posting this. The ebay seller has kits for other models as well!

Edit: I just ordered some, and they should be delivered in the middle of February. Oh well. It'll be a nice surprise when they show up.

Good information about having to actually cut the plastic to separate the 2 plastic halves of the actuator. When I did this a couple summers ago, I was under the impression that the 2 halves just had to be pried apart & mangled the plastic casing in the process so I ended up getting new "toyota" actuators from amazon. Another area I got hung up on was trying to figure out how to remove the plastic housing for the door lock rod. Eventually figured it out but took a little while.


Thanks for sharing about the door stop rebuild kit & describing the action after it was installed. Let me know how it holds up. This is something I'll probably do when I get around to replacing my door speakers.

Go ahead and order the rebuilt kit now since it takes 1+ month to ship from Mother Russia

Somehow I never got around to mentioning this mini-mod that I did over two years ago. I refer to these extra wheel well tie downs all the time. The motorcycle straps make the tie downs easy to find when the cargo area is full of crap.

I installed these when I had a reason to pop the back panels off. Peel back the carpet a bit, drill holes, spray paint to stop rust, and install with a nice big fender washer.

I wanted to improve my dashcam mount and get it off of the window. This will allow me to install some UV film on the inside in the future -- apparently you can't hang stuff off the film or it will pull away. Stickers and transponders are OK.

Let's borrow these mounting holes under the rearview mirror



Jogged to the side a couple of inches puts the cam behind the stalk of the rearview mirror, more out of sight for the driver



Got the bends just right, squeezes in nice under the RV mirror



It even holds the cord in the right place



A little felt tape on the back will be easy on the glass

I like that! Good positioning!!

Thanks! If I was cool like @4Runner4Leon I'd perfect the design and have a pile fabricated for the masses.

Do it! . I may be looking for a dash cam at some point soon, and this would be a great way to mount it.