Building Red October

[Scramble]

Holy crap Ive been missing Red! My wife has settled in way too well, lol. I was waiting for her to give up and demand the Tacoma back but so far no such luck. The only complaint Ive heard to date was when she started a new job and moved into a pretty claustrophobic parking structure. All she said was "the CB antenna hits the roof, can I tuck it under the rack?"

But have no fear I have a plan. China Motor is starting to leak pretty good, and that kinda sucks balls, but its giving me the excuse that I need to drive Red in order to get some "maintenance" done. And then she'll hopefully fall back in love with her Taco, muahahah. Maintenance probably means a new bottom end, because I only need a tiny excuse to get rid of China Motor once and for all, and Ive also been eyeing some gears :tongue:, since Red lacks in the low end grunt arena. But I gotta get her back. Maybe its all my wifeys plan to stop me from driving my money pit so that i wont spend money on it, hmmmm :der:

LOL You must get Red back!

 

[fourfive]

Holy crap Ive been missing Red! My wife has settled in way too well, lol. I was waiting for her to give up and demand the Tacoma back but so far no such luck.....But have no fear I have a plan.

...or buy another one like this guy -> [MENTION=7105]Scramble[/MENTION] :mullet:

 

[Scramble]

...or buy another one like this guy -> [MENTION=7105]Scramble[/MENTION] :mullet:

If I let my GF drive the Limited I'll never get it back!

 

[Red October]

...or buy another one like this guy -> [MENTION=7105]Scramble[/MENTION] :mullet:

If I let my GF drive the Limited I'll never get it back!

This is ironic because I tried to get another one instead of the Taco, and she wasn't having any of that, she said they were too old and had too many problems. HA! Well now she wont give mine back, so the jokes on me. But I would have been a ton of money ahead to just get another 3rd gen instead of putting all our money down and getting a friggin car payment!!!... / rant...

 

[Scramble]

This is ironic because I tried to get another one instead of the Taco, and she wasn't having any of that, she said they were too old and had too many problems. HA! Well now she wont give mine back, so the jokes on me. But I would have been a ton of money ahead to just get another 3rd gen instead of putting all our money down and getting a friggin car payment!!!... / rant...

She's got a nice Outback but when she drove the Limited she said, "I like sitting up high". LOL Her last 3 vehicles were a Dodge Nitro, Nissan Murano & a F250.:behindsofa: I have to keep her away from it!

 

[Red October]

Red belongs to me again, HAHA! Spent this weekend getting the Taco ready for wifey, and now Red is mine once more. I'm pretty pumped!

Already have plans too. Found a shop who is gonna be doing some machine work on the old motor to get it back up and going. Gonna be ditching China Motor for good (the bastard!). And I have some new armor/ changes planned. Ive been away for too long.

And wifey is on board, I mean she gave me permissions to buy LCEngineering parts for my rebuild! How cool is that!?! Boost here we come! (yeah, not that much permission...) But Im gonna be starting the engine tear-down asap.

Edit; We also test drove a really clean 2000 SR5 with a locker today. Shes thinking about trading her Taco! WTH is happening!?!

 

[Red October]

Well I've wasted no time starting this latest engine build for Red. This time I'm doing everything myself. It might take longer, but in the end I think it will be worth the investment in time. Hopefully I wontbe doing this again in the near future.

On to the rebuild! I got the original block out of storage and thew it on a stand.

Started the tear down, if you've never done this before my suggestion is to take lots of pictures as you go of the different steps and part locations. Ive had my hands in a pretty good number of engines and I still do this. The other suggestion; get a sharpie and some Ziploc baggies and label everything as you take it off. This makes it so much easier to know where things go back. Then at the end you aren't left with a handful of bolts and things, thinking to yourself "I must have done a better job than those engineers, look at these parts they didn't need."

Anyways some of the carnage. The head gasket was blown between holes 1 and 2. I also noticed some erosion on the block in the same area. My guess is the block was never surfaced when rebuilt the first time, leading to its demise.

Next I got the pistons out of the bores. Honestly the block looks very good inside, almost fresh. The problem is this...

I kinda wonder if the piston skirts came off around the same time as the head gasket or if the head gasket was bad way before the piston came apart?

 

[Red October]

Ive got a pretty good build plan going here. I would love to eventually boost this engine, but in all honesty it won't happen as long as this truck is still a daily driver. So for the next couple years its gonna stay NA. And even after it'll probably stay that way, unless wifey has a pretty big change of heart.

I wanted to get forged Pistons from LCE for eventually boosting. But in the interest of being able to keep burning pump gas and driving my truck everyday I'm probably gonna just go with LCE Hyper-eutectic pistons instead. They cost about 1/3 of what the forged ones do, and Hypers are a bit stronger than stock, and should suit my needs nicely since they maintain the stock compression ratio. That also means Ill be able to fit a couple other things into the build too.

This should be a pretty mild NA build with a couple little tweaks to bump performance a little

Some things on the list are;
- LCE adjustable cam timing gear, will allow some valve timing adjustment for tuning
- Balance shaft delete
- LCE under-drive Crank Pulley
- Balanced and tuned injectors
- Resurface block, to remove erosion and give the engine a slight compression bump

 

[Red October]

Lately I have been needing to find a way to mount my phone. Ive tried a couple things that didnt work very well. So I saw a mount for 2nd gen Tacomas that I really liked, and figured I can make something like that for my truck. So this is what I came up with. Obviously still needs some finishing touches...

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

 

[Scramble]

Nice work on the engine, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that you are forgoing forged pistons & a boosted application. I wanted to see my future here! :sad:

 

[Red October]

Nice work on the engine, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that you are forgoing forged pistons & a boosted application. I wanted to see my future here! :sad:

I'm sad too, but I'm pretty sure this will end up better for me anyway. The Hypers will still handle mild boost levels, and last much longer while doing it.

From everything I've read, non hyper-eutectic alloy forged pistons are very short lived things. Generally they are for "race only" engines that get rebuilt on a regular basis. They piston slap like crazy because of the expansion rates of softer aluminum alloys and generally make bad noises and wear very quickly.

If you can find a hyper-eutectic alloy forged piston you can get the best of both worlds. I couldn't find alloy information for the LCE forged slugs, but I would hazard a guess that they are of the "race only" variety.

Moral of the story is you have three choices when building an engine; 1. Affordable, 2. Long Lasting and 3. Power.... Pick any two :sad:

 

[Rockdawg84]

good luck on the rebuild. I can tell you that whoever built the motor the first time used a cheap kit. That motor should have had a MLM headgasket from the get go. I made the mistake of letting my machinist put my 5fvze together instead of doing it myself. He bought the cheapest kit he could find and put composite head gaskets in as well as steel core plugs. lasted about 20k and I was back into it. find a good kit and you will get a lot of years out of the motor. :trophy:

 

[taxed760]

Nice build, I've always love building engines myself because you know exactly what has happened to it!

 

[Red October]

So, its been a minute since I started this project. And I'm finally getting things lined up to get it together. I spent the last couple days finally getting some assembly done.

You wouldn't believe how difficult its been just to get correctly sized freaking bearings, in the quality level I want.

Anyways, got it mostly assembled. Found a couple things I forgot to order, as is always the case. So got those ordered, and now just waiting for those to come in.

But for now, its almost a long block...

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

 

[Red October]

Nice build, I've always love building engines myself because you know exactly what has happened to it!

Absolutely! This time its gonna end up the way I want it, fingers crossed.

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

 

[Red October]

good luck on the rebuild. I can tell you that whoever built the motor the first time used a cheap kit. That motor should have had a MLM headgasket from the get go. I made the mistake of letting my machinist put my 5fvze together instead of doing it myself. He bought the cheapest kit he could find and put composite head gaskets in as well as steel core plugs. lasted about 20k and I was back into it. find a good kit and you will get a lot of years out of the motor. :trophy:

They were super cheap when they did this motor, and it shows in multiple places. Junk pistons, cheap gaskets, they didn't even surface the head or block, which caused the head gasket failure, leaks and other problems that shouldnt have been present in such a "new" motor.

Shame on me I guess for not being picky enough. I guess if you want it done right you gotta put in the time.

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

 

[Red October]

I finally got my poop all in a group and I decided to use this long weekend to get the new motor in the truck.

Its running pretty good so far, except I got excited and forgot that I should have adjusted the valves while I had it out of the truck. Derp. So now I get the pleasure of doing it in the truck.

Also, Wifey's not scared...

 

[Red October]

So I measured all of my valve clearances this morning, and to my surprise all of my numbers are good.

I'm just concerned about the amount of valve noise this engine is making. It rattles like a diesel!

 

[Red October]

Also changed Reds look a little.

The covers throw light backwards, so when I have these lights on the ditch light brackets I don't use them. Yeah I know, take the covers off, but that's just too easy.

 

[Chuckles89]

Looks great! Good luck on the engine