Engine bay refresh project

ToyotaBrah said:
Great work, sir. I share your enthusiasm to clean up the engine bay. My northwest truck has developed some oxidizing of the aluminum bits from midwest salt.
I have been buying an array of zinc plated bolts when I go to the salvage yards to replace my oxidized ones. Have found them in other older makes too (Honda, Acura). Those valve covers look terrific. I will follow suit and powder coat mine as well.
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Thank you, I sure hope it's going to be worth the effort!

I think I'm giving up on trying to "restore" aluminum, it's too much work and unless you get it blasted, it's always going to look "old". And I could not find anyone in LA to do media/glass bead blasting. So I'm just going to paint all the aluminum parts.

As for the bolts, I started out by trying to replace the most corroded ones with new ones (not Toyota), but I realized that they didn't look "OEM" enough, not to mention that I couldn't get enough fine tuning in terms of length, head/washer style, etc, to truly match the OEM look. That's why I ended up taking all the OEM bolts in for replating. I needed to replate many brackets anyway.
 
WeakSauz said:
Nice work, and it'll pay off.

Ask your Powdercoater how the VCs were prepped. Unfortunatley, if they were sand blasted, I would proceed with extreme caution. The sand really likes to hide in the nooks and crannies *underneath* the baffles, making it nearly impossible to clean out. Then when the engine heat cycles and the metal expands + oil hits it, the sand breaks loose and eats bearings.

Have seen it time and time again.

Just wanted to provide the heads up! A solution is to drill off the baffles, re-clean, and either tack weld back in place or tap in tiny button-head screws with red loc tite and/or JB weld.
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Thanks for the note, and I did discuss it with the powder coater ahead of time. He said that the parts were clean enough to not need any blasting - just a clean with acetone, bakeout, then powder coat. I'm not 100% sure that's the ideal approach (i.e. without blasting of some sort), but I took his word for it. See no evil type of thing.

So bottom line is - I don't need to worry about trapped blast media (which was mentioned as a concern earlier in the thread).
 
I finally got around to checking the valve clearances, they all turned out to be in spec. Here's Timmy's handy dandy spreadsheet, all filled in:

thcDe81h.png
 
A bit of a milestone today - I (think) I tore down as much of the engine bay as I plan to do for this project. So now it's just a matter of cleaning, painting, waiting for parts to arrive from Japan and the plating shop, and bolting it all back together.

All down hill from here :).

ugpZG1o.jpg
 
Spiker Engineering said:
A bit of a milestone today - I (think) I tore down as much of the engine bay as I plan to do for this project. So now it's just a matter of cleaning, painting, waiting for parts to arrive from Japan and the plating shop, and bolting it all back together.



All down hill from here :).



ugpZG1o.jpg
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Top end looks clean my man. How many miles do you have on your rig?

I haven't had my valve covers off since around 200K. Currently at 324K. I'd be curious to see mine now.

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Strut clearance

Hi,

Just had a question about the hood struts. Will the increase in height of the hood after installation clear if I have some ditch lights installed? (Specifically Rago Fabrication bracket and Baja S2s)
 
Jenmuel said:
Just had a question about the hood struts. Will the increase in height of the hood after installation clear if I have some ditch lights installed? (Specifically Rago Fabrication bracket and Baja S2s)
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You can set the hood open position to any height between stock and +8".

So in your case, you'd set it to just below where there might be contact with the ditch lights. Then that'll be the height to which the hood will open every time.
 
Making some progress refinishing the old corroded and rusted parts.

Here is the cruise control actuator (I decided to skip trying to clean up the aluminum body, and just painted it with DTM satin black):

S1de0AH.jpg


The brake booster had some rust on it, but the more I cleaned off, the more rust I found, so I ended up sanding it all to bare metal, and painting with DTM satin black:

O8SM4Td.jpg


The last piece to be painted, the main electrical harness holddown, was fun because I had to paint it without taking it out of the engine compartment. So I wrapped plastic all around the engine bay, leaving just the harness holddown exposed - I felt like a surgeon doing open heart surgery:

Tn0mDr7.jpg


IuNkMI3.jpg


bFub0mt.jpg
 
Spiker Engineering said:
The last piece to be painted, the main electrical harness holddown, was fun because I had to paint it without taking it out of the engine compartment. So I wrapped plastic all around the engine bay, leaving just the harness holddown exposed - I felt like a surgeon doing open heart surgery
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Seems like you went the hard route? You can pull the harness into the bay and remove the metal piece, I believe... This is what i did when wiring in my 4WD wires:

vzJkbrX.jpg


-Charlie
 
phattyduck said:
Seems like you went the hard route? You can pull the harness into the bay and remove the metal piece, I believe... This is what i did when wiring in my 4WD wires:

vzJkbrX.jpg


-Charlie
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Ha, I was wondering about that! I looked under the dash, even pulled out the glove box, but could not get anywhere near the connectors. I decided it must require some significant disassembly for the HVAC ducting to get the to the connectors. No?

The open heart surgery approach wasn't all that hard, just tedious.
 
At least you didn't do what my po of a 1991 camry did. They decided to cut the harness and then connect all the wires back together, crossing a few. That was fun to trace and fix....:/



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brillo_76 said:
At least you didn't do what my po of a 1991 camry did. They decided to cut the harness and then connect all the wires back together, crossing a few. That was fun to trace and fix....:/
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Pulling the harness into the bay itself is harder on the gen2 Camry (I've done it a bunch...) but getting the dash apart is just a touch easier. I've seen people completely unplug the engine harness rather than pull it out from the interior, which is also a bit crazy. The main fuse box has plugs for all the wires on the bottom, so removing the engine with harness attached isn't too bad.

On the 4Runner, you just have to remove the upper panel at the top of the glove compartment to access all the connectors. It is a bit of a pain to find remove some of the clips, but it isn't too crazy. Then just 3 of the 4/5 connectors at the ECU and two to the dash to pull it into the bay

The previous owner of my 4WD parts truck cut the harness there at the firewall too, which was annoying...

-Charlie
 
I actually did that. My first engine camry. I completely unplugged the engine harness off the engine and dropped it over the passenger fender.

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