Carlos Who? My ST185 GrpA GT-Four Rally car
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Well, sadly as far as I know the car didn't Christine herself back to health during the week so time to get into myself I guess. First steps get the bonnet off & get the car up on some axle stands.
Water to Air intercooler drained & removed
Water to Air intercooler drained & removed
I'm not going to bore you with every step, but the Air intake, Alt, shock tower bracing, coil, Fuel lines, gearbox linkage, clutch line, & a heap of vacuum lines & electrical connectors all get removed or unplugged.
Then I went under the car, first step was to pull the front drive shafts out.. I didn't have a socket to fit over the hub nut, it's a 30mm nut but you need a deep socket & the majority of my tools are imperial for obvious reasons.. so a quick dash to the tool shop was needed.
Then disconnect the steering arm from the front & unbolt the hub from the coilover, this allows you to pull the hub down & at just enough of an angle to let you slide the axle shaft out of the hub. Then you just yank on the shaft like you're in a shake weight advert & it will make a noise that you inner child will once to laugh at when it finally pops out of the gearbox
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Next do the other side & then I removed the front section of the rear drive shaft
There are two braces that live under the engine/gearbox & they need to come off to... the first is an east-west brace that ties into the lower control arms
The north-south brace also has a front & rear engine & gearbox mount fitted to it
Oh & if you've ever wondered what an FIA turbo restrictor looks like, it's this cute little bit
By now it was getting late on Sat night & the exhaust had a nut that really hard to get a spanner onto to, was very tight & has been rounded off slightly by a previous owner for my convenience... as I was starting to get frustrated with it, I just used a torch to heat it up & then quenched it in WD40 & decided to call it for the night before I just damaged it. I'll deal with it with a clearer head on Sunday morning was the thought process.
Other than the exhaust the only other two things to do are... figure out how to disconnect the power steering unit, not sure if I'll try & remove the pump from the engine whilst it's in the car or leave the pump on & just drain it remove the lines & the reservoir. I also have to work out how to disconnect the wiring from the engine, the loom is so entwined through the engine I'm starting to think that it might be easiest to disconnect the whole loom from the car & remove it with the engine now.... I'll think about that as I'm cursing the exhaust nut this morning.
Once I've done the above then it's just attach the engine crane & undo the two engine mounts... still haven't fully decided if I'll pull the engine up & out or lower it down & out... thinking my preference is up & out but that will be bloody tight by the looks of it.
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Had a fresh start Sunday morning & got that exhaust undone without any additional damage to the nut & bolt... always good to start out with a win, no matter how small.
The next mini nightmare was the wiring... the manual says to unplug the ECU under the dash & to pull the wiring through into the engine bay via this neat little hole & then remove the engine with the wiring attached...
Nice idea, but this car has had a second piggy back Motec ECU wired in & the connection plug & additional wiring for that make the loom too big to fit thru that hole on the firewall, so short of unpinning the Motec connector or cutting the wiring with the death wheel on the angle grinder (I did briefly smile at this thought) I was going to have to take the wiring off the engine
Why was this an issue, because in Toyota's wisdom the wiring passes through some of the dumbest & tightest places of the engine, I lost a lot of blood & some of my mind getting this all off without breaking anything.. I had to remove the throttle body in the end as the wiring passed under it tucked super tightly against the curve of the intake in a hard plastic cover that made it a nightmare to get out
After an appropriate amount of time picturing what I'd do to the Toyota engineer who dreamt this up if I ever got the chance & generally questioning my life choices I ended up with all the wiring now off the engine & in a big messy pile on the side of the engine bay... reinstalling this is of course future Dave's problem & feck am I'm glad I'm not him...
There was a lot of swearing for the next hour & not a lot of pictures taken but man for car from the dry state of Western Australia some many of the nuts & bolts where rusted & seized on.. I was only just able to get the pipe fitting for the gearbox oil cooler off without damaging anything, the hard line for the clutch sadly left this mortal coil, the power steering pump bolts where so hard to get too & torqued to... well all the torques I guess that I almost took to the power steering lines with the death wheel.. but they finally came undone. Then the engine crane was attached so I could test the tensile strength of everything I'd missed in operation disconnect everything from the engine
Also the lead technical advisor I'd brought in had lied on his CV clearly... I no longer believe he worked for TTE in the early 90's & he refused to get under the car due to his floof being an attractant for oils & other fluids he said
I knew more bits would have to come off to get the great big lump out of the car but I waned to take off as little as possible but some stuff was obvious, like the turbo & manifold setup... bugger me is this a heavy lump
Both engine mounts & brackets came off as did the rear output housing of the transfer case
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Then I figured that was enough & this stupid lump should be able to be lifted out... this was the late afternoon of day two of this mess & I'd had two different mates pop over across the two days to help & that was so gratefully received... but to quote the Knight from that Indiana Jones movie, I chose well... Mrs_XB was there 100% of the time & not just standing off to the side making sarcastic comments but up to her armpits in gear oil & road grime.. I'm very lucky that she doesn't just accept my hobby as the mental illness it is she actively encourages & helps me in the madness.
Jesus this engine, gearbox & transfer case lump is huge.. it'll be fun figuring how to break this down without damaging anything
I wonder if I could get a 6ltr LS in there......
Tonight's job now will be cleaning up the massive mess I've made, cleaning & putting away all the tools & bolting any bits that came off the car than can go back on back on so I don't have to find a spot to store them & I can't forget where they go. Then I'll start googling how to pull the big oily broken bit apart I guess...
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Went out tonight to clean up the mess... I collected all the nuts & bolts & put them all back in their homes on the car or the engine. When I remove them again I'll bag & tag them correctly, I went through everything including the parts pile of removed bits removed & I know where everything goes... well except for one small bolt, buggered if I can remember where this part goes, so I've already improved om Toyota engineers work by adding lightness in the removal of this clearly unnecessary bolt from the car.
Put the wheels back on the car & dropped her back to the ground, I tossed around the idea of putting the bonnet back on but in the end settled for just resting it on the roof for now. It's safe enough there. It's a lot easier to push the car around now that I've removed what's probably close to half a ton from the front... there's your tech tip for the day.
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Went back out to the shed tonight... lifted the engine & gearbox unit back into the air so I could remove the inspection plate
Then remove the two brackets that bolt the transfer case to the side of the block
Then lowered it back down onto the dolly & undid all the bellhousing bolts & then wiggled the hell out of the gearbox to try & break it from from the engine.. it was a bit of a bugger but it broke free
I'll clean the gearbox & transfer case up now that they are off & free... not sure if I should paint it or just clean it & leave it raw?
Next step was pull the clutch & flywheel off.. the clutch looks fine, but I guess it would be pretty stupid not to change it out now whilst everything is apart...
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I drained the oil out & it didn't look too bad there was only the tiniest hint of sliver to it, it you weren't looking for it you probably wouldn't have noticed it. I then removed the filter & got my opener out to see what was in the filter.
Even looking at the filter it doesn't look like its covered in metal, there is some glitter there for sure but I'm starting to think it's not catastrophic inside this engine... maybe, hopefully, fingers crossed etc...
I used my magnetic wand to pull all the metal fragments out of the filter & I'm thinking that this really looks like it's all bearing material... if I've only destroyed bearings maybe scored the crank a little then I'll call this a win
I didn't have the right size bolts to mount the engine to the engine stand & my local hardware shop didn't have them in stock either... so sadly that ended play tonight, I would have loved to pull the engine down tonight but now that will have to wait. I'm busy the next two nights so I think it'll be Friday evening at the earliest that I can get this engine stripped down to see just how bad the damage is.
Feel free to start a betting pool as to just how fecked you think it is....5 -
Got the correct bolts & now the engine is up on the stand
I've started doing a little research & it seems that the oil cooler that the filter mounts to is not something that should be reused after a bearing failure in one of these engines... sadly Toyota no longer make these, so I can go looking for a 2nd hand one & hope that it hasn't come from an engine that just had the same issue mine did or I can look to delete it completely & see what it can be replaced with.
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Right lets get into the engine tear down... first step was to remove the intake, this then allows access to the weird TVS or TVIS as I've seen it labelled elsewhere, this variable airflow system is to help with torque at low RPM I believe
Looks to be stock cams in the head & looks like no porting has been done, so there is scope here for some gains during the rebuild.
Can't get the distributor off yet as the screws are ugga dugga'd all the way on & I've bend my torx but trying to undo them. They will have a date with a small nut & the welder at some point.
I'll spare you all the pics I took during the teardown, it all went to plan other than needing a quick dash to the tool store to get a set of male spline sockets so I could undo the head bolts as I've never needed to remove this style of fastener before
The cams look fine, they have a little wear but I suspect that they are the originals & as such have 201K on them, the buckets in the head look fine too but I suspect that all of this stuff will be upgraded for the rebuild
I was happily surprised by how good the bores look with the head off, you can see that this was rebuilt not that long ago, you can still see the hash marks on the bores.. it looks like I got very lucky here & there is no bore scoring at all from the failure
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Now for the fun stuff... rolled the engine over on the stand so I could get the sump off... the bottom of the sump was full of swarf as was the screen on the pick up... clearly things have not gone well inside here
The end caps on Rods 2, 3 & 4 all look like this
But Rod number 1 looks very discoloured from heat
This video kinda tells you all you need to know
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There was not a trace of bearing shell left in the number one big end... the inside of the rod is badly scared too, the crank journal I think can be saved with a light linish as it's not too bad when I drag my nail across it
The big end bearing for rod number 2 was about sooooo close to failing, another few RPM run & it would have let go too
With the rods & pistons out a full inspection of the bores can be done & again I think I've dodged a bullet here & there is no real damage to be seen at all, the rods & pistons looks good quality & new but I'll probably look at replacing them all as I can't find any brand markings on them
The main crank bearings are another tale of a super close call... I don't think you can get much closer to a bearing failure than this with it letting go, I was so lucky that this thing didn't seize up on me sending a rod out of the block
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So that's it... one rod is dead nothing else seems to be, if I knew the brand of rod I could probably just order 1 replacement rod & rebuild from there. But I'm thinking that this failure was the racing gods way of telling me that they wanted me to upgrade the internals, so I think I'll be doing just that. The block is fine & I'm pretty sure that the crank could & would clean up too. I may end up reusing the crank, I'm not decided on that just yet.
I've already ordered a new Moroso baffled sump for the rebuild & I've gotten a new oil cooler just in case I opt to use that in the rebuild.
I think I've found an engine shop for the rebuild too, they are Toyota specialist.. Supra's mostly but they say on their site that they started with 3S-GTE's so I'll go & have a chat with them on what I want. I've also ordered a full set of replacement suspension bushes as this car is running on old cracked rubber bushes today & that's just not right. I have some other ideas for upgrades/improvements too so I guess this is officially a project car now... just what I **** needed... 🤔
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