My Need For Speed

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Not sure if I would go 167 in the Honda. Nice job on that engine. Are you weighing all the rods and pistons ?

No i never did weigh any of my pistons and rods, The shop i brought it to weighed them and balanced everything accordingly

 

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Well time has come to start putting the bottom end together!

The story why everything took forever was because i ordered new OEM main bolts instead a month later OEM head studs showed up. Was not impressed…. So rather then waiting another month for the proper part i forked up the cash for ARP hardwar at 3 times the price…. Anyway lets begin

Oil squiters to go in first



Next is to drop in the crankshaft and check our clearances. To whoever is mechanically incline should have heard about plasti-gauge which is the method im using to check my clearances





Once checked we got 0.0015" which lands in the middle of the regular tolerances. So thats fine with me and we torque everything back up



Spun the crankshaft a few times and it spins perfectly smooth. With that said time to install the pistons!





So i eventually got all of them in with the help of a friend. Time to check up on clearances on the connecting rods with plasti-guage.





Once again 0.0015" which is on the loose(er) side of the regular tolerance which is fine with me. Once everything is torqued up is was hard to spin with the pistons in now but everything spun smoothly with no bidding of any sort.
So with everything all said and done with a solid days work gone by this was the finaly outcome

* * * *​

So aside from the getting the block on the go finally got all the right shims for my diff. Here's an example with what was done with a blueing dye.

So in the pisture below you can see the pinion gear was to far and we didnt have that optimal mesh with the gears meshing in the midde of the teeth





So bumped the pinion gear ever so slightly ahead and here's what we've got now





So managed to get the teeth perfect despite the amount of custom home made shims haha glad i found all my right thicknesses now so i can order the correct size of shims!

 

[Gadget]

Very nice. Keep them coming!

G

 

[Gators Taco]

Nice job, keep us updated :canada:

 

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Very nice. Keep them coming!

G

Nice job, keep us updated :canada:

Oh there's still ALOT more to be done, plenty more to come! :smile:

 

[Torspd]

Good job with the lash. :top: Looks perfectly in the middle. So......up and running next week right?

 

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Good job with the lash. :top: Looks perfectly in the middle. So......up and running next week right?

Well from how late a replied to this that sure didnt happen haha

* * * * * *​

Latest Update here
Now its been an easy 2 months and still waiting for my head to arrive. They've had a 2 week delay due to valves being out of round so hopefully in the next coming weeks it will soon arrive to my door!

Still continued to little bit i can with my block with some baffle plates and some accessories

The difference the cleaning can do!


Then installed


And now where the block has stayed at



So in the mean time ive been making my permanent shims for my front diff. Gotta love my old man teaching me how to use the grinding table


So once they were all finished up it was time to assemble everything for the final time. This time without forgetting to install all the seal and o-rings! Even put in a TOMEI baffling plate for those launches and hard corners!



Couple of hours go by and next thing i know its all together ready to go!

 

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Here's a good update. Lets start with a bit of assembly on the car

1)New intercooler! New vs stock



Assembled on the car with new intercooler hard piping to replace the old rubber piping & painted bumper bar



2)Relocate power steering reservoir! Basically cut the old hanger off



and "jb weld" the old hanger for the charcoal canister uses to the front of the power steering reservoir



Then simply test fit *Mental note for a longer hose needed when the engine goes back in*



3)Start slapping parts on the block!

-Tomei oil orifice for the head! Simply punched it in on top of the OEM one


-Water pump install!


-Last but not least the diff/oil pan can go back on!




Some decent progress anyways, im STILL waiting for the head to come back. Maybe someday….

 

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Well it sure has been a while for an update. Good news though! I finally received the head after 4 months… cams already installed and pretty much good to go



So with an inspection of the head i found there was a gouge in the corner of the head where the valve covers sit. Easy fix on my part but with the cash ive spent on it figured it would have came here perfect condition.



Anyways it was an easy fix either way, filled it down close and stoned it back flat with the other surface. Good to go for putting it on the block after cleaning and putting ARP studs in. (Yes there's a TOMEI MLS headgasket installed)



So then thats one day gone out of the weekend. and it lays like this till tomorrow



* * * * *

The next day i woke up pretty early eager to get this engine rolling, so spent quite the morning and afternoon getting the turbo's ready for install and wrapping up the headers and down pipe.



Once i got back to the garage temporarely installed the valve covers and installe the new cam gears.



after this was done on come the headers



Then this was pretty much rest of my day installing the turbos with all the new oil and coolant hardlines As well hard to tighten up one of the nuts on the manifold holding the turbo. Here comes some home made tools.



So it ended bing quite a weekend for me with quite a bit of progress. The only thing i didnt do yet was install the turbo drains because i meant to drop a bit of oil in where the bearings lay. Probably go get a syringe or something for i can do that so there not completely dry even with them beaing a ball bearing turbo. Next up the timing belt, but thats for another time!

Just a note if you guys are wondering why i keep every possible hole blocked, its to deal with dust. Im not at my parents garage all the time and when they have to move any of the cars, tractors, lawnmowers etc to do some chores around the house its picks up the dust ALOT. This is just a preventative thing i do.

 

[Slywhitty]

Looking good man. Can't wait to see some vids of this thing running. As for plugging every hole I do the same thing. Even the simplest task can become a headache cause something went in the wrong hole lol

 

[lingenfelterm]

I'm such a sucker for a straight 6... and it's even better with twin turbos!

 

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Looking good man. Can't wait to see some vids of this thing running. As for plugging every hole I do the same thing. Even the simplest task can become a headache cause something went in the wrong hole lol

Oh yeah I hear ya, you should have seen how careful I was when installing the head washers and nuts. Would suck to loose one and hear it drop in the engine when the oil drain is back to the pan. Made me nervous

 

[Torspd]

Dude. Bravo! This thing has taken a while, but it looks great! You are soooooooooooo close at this point.

All I can offer, is have a battery tender or another car jumping your car, while cranking it for a long time. With the fuel pump relay removed. That way you can easily build up oil pressure, prior to light-off.

That car is going to be unbelievable. :top:

 

[Gadget]

Very nice!!!

G

 

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Dude. Bravo! This thing has taken a while, but it looks great! You are soooooooooooo close at this point.

All I can offer, is have a battery tender or another car jumping your car, while cranking it for a long time. With the fuel pump relay removed. That way you can easily build up oil pressure, prior to light-off.

That car is going to be unbelievable. :top:

For sure, thanks for the heads up, I don't want to end up with a dead battery after either haha

 

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Here we go again, and i mean this in a bad way…… Long story short i found a bump in the sealing surface of my head through the other gasket so the turbo's and head had to come off…… ugghh was not impressed with this AT ALL



So you can see that its on the edge of a coolant jacket. Sure i could have left it but when i measured this bump it was 0.005" which puts the head right out of spec. So stoned this one back down and got it under 0.0015" with my smallest shim and puts it back into spec. I'm sure it will be fine but jeeez, make me nervous.



Back with putting the head on again, with a new gasket



At least now with that solved we can really get this engine on the go now. Turbo's were no problem with all the lines still there, had to modify the drain with the fitting because of the turbo's then came the intake side of things. The intake manifold got installed then the fun part….. (sarcastic here lol)

The way nissan engineered this engine makes it look like the vacuum and coolant lines a complete mess and figuring out where verything goes is not the simplest task. Had to grab a friend and go through the manual quite a bit to get everything right. The picture below is just a start of it.



Next thing you know the instake is on with the belt and crank pulley.



I wasnt kidding about this mess under the intake plenum lol i do plan on doing some kind of "smoke" test just to make sure all my lines are sealed before dropping it into the car



With the engine looking pretty it was finally time to get this off its engine stand but there was one catch….. I have either misplaced my flywheel bolts or they never got returned to me from the machine shop. Either way i cannot find them here at home so instead i ordered a new set.

So this is where the engine sits for now until those come in. There are a couple of things to take of first before fitting it to the transmission because of the clutch i have for it. Requires a bit of modding on the bolts themselves and on the shaft of the transmission. With that there's a connector to be replaced so i'm gonna learn how to solder in the next couple days lol should be interesting

 

[Torspd]

Bravo for taking the head apart and fixing the issue. How did you end up finding that anyway?

Aside from that, it looks beautiful!

 

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Bravo for taking the head apart and fixing the issue. How did you end up finding that anyway?

Aside from that, it looks beautiful!

Well here's the story

1)Inspected the head for the first time and i thought i found that slight bump. This was the day before the first time the head went on and it was getting late since was in the mist of cleaning everything still. The next day came and i couldnt find it again so i didn't think of any of it. Mistake for my part there

2)So that was one weekend down and i couldnt stop thinking about it with this unknown bump to which i swear i found the first time throughout the week so i took the head off. Well the gasket proved it was still there so i had to fix it. A bit of redundant work but i do plan on hoping to do this build ONCE.

 

[ToyotaTacoma4Ever]

Back at this once again with the flywheel bolts coming in! Funny though the first thing I had to do with them was trim them down because of the aftermarket flywheel. Did not expect that!



So that went fine with my dremel and few cutting disks later. Time to go install it on the engine.



ooooo, that twin plate goodness! borrowed a friends alignment tool to line up the clutch plates and torqued down the cover.

So the next step reading in the instructions wanted me to modify the shaft cover in the transmissions bell housing. By modifying they mean more cutting! Another one I didn't expect to do!



So all went well and I never did touch the main input shaft. So now comes the next part of the fork lever. Pretty interesting what OS GIKEN did here to make it a pull converted to a push style.



Now came the fun time of trying to fuse the two together



Spent a solid hour trying to get the two together. Man what a pain trying to get that. I did manage to get it and ive got myself my drivetrain 80% together!



That was some good progress now time to play around with my broken wires. The soldering was a hell of a lot easier then what I expected and so everything turned out pretty good.



Now I know its not a OEM style of plug but I just needed a two way, this will work fine once its all wrapped up and protected from moisture. Had to do the same thing on the solenoid wiring in the car. So for now that's how things are going to stay till I can get a hand to put the engine back in the car. Dropped the car back on its 4 wheels and let it sit till next time.

 

[shawnb1043]

Damn this was a fun build thread.