Current Status: 160,000 miles and the most everything on the engine is original. It's time for a complete timing belt and valve cover job.
It took me nearly a month to get all the parts together and find time to get this big project started. There are a lot of parts that should be replaced, and ones you wouldn't even think of such as the crankshaft pulley bolt. I am not known to be the fastest worker but it took me about 2.5 hours to get the skid plates off, the coolant drained and the supercharger off the top of the engine.
You can see that the starting point was pretty clean. For being an original 160,000 mile engine there really wasn't much in the way of an oily mess. I found some oil near the bottom of the engine in the vicinity of the oil dipstick tube, otherwise it looked pretty good.
I am finding that the valve cover gasket job is nearly as time consuming as the timing belt job. Most of that is taking the time to clean up the valve covers, install the spark plug grommets and mostly cleaning up and re-sealing the half-moon washers and the rear cam plugs.
Other than some initial confusion about where to place the FIPG on the half-moons and the cam plugs, the valve cover gasket job was fairly straight-forward. I simply followed Toyota's recommendation on where to put the FIPG, although I know some people add it in other places too.
Beyond the items I mentioned above and the valve cover gaskets, I also did a new PCV valve and grommet, new spark plug tube gaskets, new valve cover rubber washers, new Denso Iridium IK22 plugs and new Toyota plug wires. I will be cleaning the throttle body on reassembly. I'll leave the IAC alone because it's working fine and is reasonably accessible if it does foul up.
Everything internally looked really good.
As for the timing belt job, removing the crank pulley bolt (217 ft lbs) is often something people struggle with. I had no issue. I borrowed my buddy cool tool he made to align with the pins in the crank and allows you to wedge it under the frame rail while you reef on the breaker bar. Worked perfect. All the timing covers, idler bearings, hydraulic tensioners, water pumps, etc removed relatively easily. I did fight the cam sprockets a bit. Even with a friend's help, we didn't have the right tool to lock the cam sprockets into position while we loosened the bolt. He ran home and grabbed his impact wrench and it did the trick almost immediately. I don't own air tools but it goes to show that the impact action is invaluable at times.
I got the cam seals replaced as well as the crankshaft seal. I used an inexpensive tool that proved invaluable. The new water pump went back on. It's amazing, the internals of the original water pump look so new that I was afraid I would confuse the parts with the brand new one, it looked that good. Same with the thermostat--it was dated 2000, so it was original but looked completely fresh like the new one. Amazing.
I don't have the full day to work tomorrow but hope to get the idlers and hydraulic tensioner on, timing belt set with everything at TDC and start getting the front covers reinstalled. I plan to change the oil in the supercharger and may have to button up the front and the top of the engine another day.
Successful first day of my "maintenance sweep!"
