Toyota Supra MKIII 26/09 - Action! Intrigue! Suspension!

[MikeKnight]

But a car deal isn't fun unless it's dodgy as hell! 

 

Hayfever has been kicking my arse lately (one time it hit me so hard my eyelids turned inside out, no, really, I get it horrendously bad) so I've not been able to do much, but I had a tinker today.

 

Removed the exhaust manifold and all the wiring on that side of the engine (loom comes from the other side and drapes over the cam cover). No evidence of any oil leaking from the head, thank god, as this was something I was genuinely worried about. The manifold has no cracks and looks in good condition. Missing a few bracing bolts from the bottom which I'll replace. Looks like the stud holes in the head have been repaired before, but to a decent standard. I'll still have to be careful putting them back in, with plenty of thread lock and a very thin smear of exhaust gum on the gasket to assist in sealing it should any of the studs not go quite as tight as I want.

 

 

Did find one of the major leaks when I removed the CPS (Cam Position Sensor) cover, this is a holdover from the naturally aspirated version as the turbo version obviously doesn't use a distributor. So they re-purposed it as a CPS. Unfortunately as there is no oil seal on the internal cog it relies on a rubber seal and a plastic cover to stop it leaking. Needless to say my plastic cover was cracked and the seal came apart in four pieces when I removed it; rock hard. I have another seal and cover to go on direct from Toyota's spare parts catalogue. You can get expensive alloy metal covers for bling purposes but honestly you can barely even see the CPS amongst all the wiring so there's really no point.

 

 

As long as heyfever stops kicking my arse so badly by tomorrow I'll remove the thermostat housing (seen on the right in the picture above) in order to get it vapour blasted and polished up as it's one of the major things you see as soon as you open the bonnet. Then remove the intake manifold and finally get onto splitting the turbo.

 

Also have to go through all the coolant hoses, old and new, and tag them correctly to their old counterparts as there are around 29 hoses on this engine and I can't afford to get them mixed up as some are impossible to access once components start going back on.

[MikeKnight]

Did a bit more today. Found more bodging. Also stuck tissue up my nose and left it there to stop it dribbling all over the paintwork.

 

Removed the intake manifold. Will likely also remove the lower half because of how fucking disgusting it all is, just have to separate and catalogue all the removed parts first otherwise this will get very confusing. Also going to remove the fuel rail and clean it up as it's supposed to be alloy but you can barely tell that under all the horrific black crud. If I can find LS400(500?) injectors I'll put those in at this point as it gets around fuel cut at full boost, as long as it's paired with the correct air meter sensor too. Only problem is finding some cheap as the American crowd vacuum them all up.

 

There's also a strange pipe leaking oil here with a screw stuck in the end. Have to investigate that closely. It's next to the orange auto box dipstick.

 

 

It's not shading because of the camera, the intake manifold is literally black with oil. Glad I'm addressing the oil re-circulation problem now and not later. This is horrible.

 

Apologises for the upside down picture, I literally can't be arsed going back into Photoshop.

 

 

Removed the Cam Position Sensor assembly and the full thermostat housing. Oil was leaking pretty badly here. This side of the engine is all ready for degreasing and cleanup.

 

 

Aforementioned stat housing and CPS removed from the vehicle. The CPS has a thick rubber O ring on the back that helps it remain leak free, it's rock hard and a likely leak culprit so I'm going to replace it. Standard stuff.

 

Decided to powder coat most items like the stat housing as keeping them polished will be very difficult in a car that's used all spring and summer round. Even white powder coat, which they'll be, will be easier to clean as powder coat is glossy and easily wiped down.

 

 

Plugged holes and removed cam covers. Central cover requires a very large allen key which I'll have to pick up, I don't have one that large, so that's staying in place for now. There is evidence of wear on the cam lobes due to poor maintenance but it's not excessive, if they ever wore out I'd replace them with higher lift ground cams anyway.

 

 

That's all for now. Hope to get all the removal stuff on the other side completed tomorrow. Really need to get the stuff in to powder coat as some customer items are going with them and the customer has been badgering me about it non-stop, despite me telling him I get it cheaper for bulk in the same colour and I'm saving him money.

[bub2006]

It don't look so bad in the flesh if I'm honest mike. Always liked that shape.

[MikeKnight]

Wasn't aware of the cracks in the turd blower housing. I would be dubious re using that housing for the long term and maybe worth investigating repair/replacement?

 

Been told by others with the CT26 turbo that "they all do that sir" and as long as it isn't cracked between there and the turbine spindle it's probably been that way for years and will be fine for years more. The turbo is also really easy to access so changing it later for a different one will not be a problem at all.

 

Oh and I found out what the thing in the inlet manifold that was disconnected was, it's not a boost injector, it's the cold start injector. No wonder it was so angry when starting from cold, the fucking thing wasn't even connected.

 

Also found out what the oily pipe with the screw in the end of it was; it was the vacuum valve for the EGR system, which is not needed and has been removed from this engine at some point in the past, so makes sense it's blocked off. I just pulled the screwed pipe off and put a proper bung on the vacuum connector instead. Do the job properly for fucksake.

 

ANYWAY.

 

Not much visible has changed on the exhaust side of the engine, mostly stuff you can't see, I removed the remaining coolant pipework and all the turbo intercooler pipework which lives in the wheel arch and can't be photographed very well with my crappy phone camera. All ready for degreasing tomorrow. I bought a few stiff toilet brushes and a lot of Jizer (*childish teehee*) to do the job, toilet brushes are cheap and bloody awesome for cleaning hard to reach items with lots of ridges like engines still in situ in the engine bay, just don't use them in the toilet first.

 

 

Also pulled off the full inlet manifold on the inlet side of the engine. It was properly manky so I thought ah fuck it may as well do a full job else it'll play on my mind. The wiring loom that runs across it was a right arse to untangle from it. The loom itself is intact but the plastic 90's sleeving is falling apart so I'm going to pull it off and re-wrap it in modern oil resistant loom tape (the cotton kind, not PVC household wiring tape which should never be used on a loom as it's utterly unsuited to the task) then re-route it so it makes more sense. Most of the vacuum tubing here also needs replacing, it isn't cracked yet but it's stiff and I don't trust it at all.

 

 

Nice new silicone pipework and new jubilees to go on once all the degreasing is done. Yes, all the jubilees are the same make and match. I'm a sad twat like that.

 

I had to spend an hour today just going through and tagging them so I don't get mixed up as to where each one goes.

 

 

 

Boxes of crappy tat ready to go off to the vapour blasters and powder coaters. Have to get the worst of the oil off them tomorrow as the guys I give them to will shout at me otherwise, as it means they have to throw all their shot out after doing my items. I get on really well with them so don't want to get on their naughty list.

 

[purplebargeken]

Nowt wrong with matching jubilee clips!

[Slartibartfast]

Love reading all of this.

[CreepingJesus]

Nowt wrong with matching jubilee clips!

Agreed. Saves arsing about with fitting the things and worrying about tools, when you're elbow deep in an engine bay, or hanging upside down with engine fluids dripping on you. Sound plan.

 

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out. It's one thing to get a dog running, quite another to make it nice.

[MikeKnight]

Not much to report today, dropped off some items at the powder coaters today and dropping some more off tomorrow for blasting.

 

Should have a better report tomorrow as I'm changing some hydraulic lines and belts. 

[vulgalour]

[MikeKnight]

Mostly yes, vulgalor. Money black hole, never mind just sink.

 

Did a lot of tootling about today (technical term there) so not a huge update. Mostly prepping for when all the items come back from the powder coaters.

 

I did remove the old high pressure hydraulic line for the power steering, which is an odd twisty turny contraption considering the distance from the pump to the rack can't be more than ten inches. The following pictured pipe has not been twisted or bent in any way, this is how it came off.

 

 

Normally it sits on the inner wing and is a right eyesore. So I swapped it for a softline specially made for the pressure.

 

Much better.

 

 

Speaking of softlines, also fitted the softline oil feed and return for the turbo. Much easier to handle and install than the hardline. Mostly just a test fitment to block the holes for when I scrub-a-dub-dub the block.

 

 

Then did a lot of small things. Cleaned lots and lots of grubby items, polished some, de-rusted others, painted others still, general busy work that would make about 60 extremely boring photographs. So I did not photograph them.

 

This weekend I shall be scrubbing the block so it's dry for Monday and splitting the turbo housing which is being a right bitch at the moment.

[vulgalour]

It's true, he did do lots of scrubbing today, there were buckets of gungey... fluid... all over the workshop when I stopped in briefly between jobs this afternoon.

[Uncle Jimmy]

Good fred this, makes me want to take my Levin apart, spend daft sums of money and learn Japanese. Odd that the Levin was produced by the same company as it approaches making a sports coupe in a totally opposite way.

[Jim Bell]

Good thread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Needs more potato.

[MikeKnight]

Been a long while since I updated this, rest assured I haven't been idle, I was just waiting for the forum shenanigans to calm down before posting again.

 

ANYWAY

 

I had my alternator rebuilt as I was whining at speed and wasn't charging the battery very well. I know a bloke who has a proper old fashioned workshop and rebuilds alternators/starters/generators so I had him do it. He gave me these bits back which were out of the old alternator; the board was blackened and (not very visible in the pics) the mounting studs were becoming worn through and were burned at the tips.

 

 

Cleaned up the intake side of the engine.

 

 

Cleaned up the exhaust side of the engine.

 

 

Then polished the tits off all the brightwork that sits in the engine bay. Sealed with some metal lacquer designed to lay over a polished surface. It's good stuff. Slightly concerned that there's a hand growing out of my power steering fluid reservoir though.

 

 

Removed the old plugs. Nice colour at the tip which shows the engine was mixture correct, but otherwise these plugs are bloody shagged. Likely last changed by a T Rex.

 

 

The tensioning spring for the automatic timing belt tensioner was bent at a 45 degree angle! Christ. It would still work, after all, it's a coiled spring. But I changed it for new. This is the old one.

 

 

Top of the engine, one of the major oil leaks was coming from the cam seals here which had been incorrectly sealed. The circular seals themselves were absolutely rock hard, swapped for new.

 

 

At this point my new turbo CHRA arrived! Yay! Or rather.. the second one. Less said about that the better.

 

 

Did some painting at this point. Added black to the 3000 pipe.

 

 

Then the cam cover stripes in black using a sponge technique that chompy showed me. Felt silly after admitting I was about to mask the whole thing up just to do a few lines.. when a sponge is a million times easier.

 

 

Stripped down and cleaned up the entire front plate of the engine. This entire area was SOLID BLACK with decades of oil weeping down. The crankshaft oil seal and oil pump oil seal were both rock hard and changed out for new, too. Cleaned up nice. I like alloy.

 

 

New belt on, static timed and tensioned correctly, covers on and ancillary belts on. This engine is non-interference so it's not the end of the world if you make a mistake, it's pretty forgiving.

 

 

Exhaust manifold on, the bolt right at the back of the engine just spins in the breeze but I think I can get away with not retapping the thread as it's a cast iron manifold (very little flex), I'm using the proper Toyota metal crush gasket and the rest of them torqued down nicely so there shouldn't be any problem. We'll see.

 

 

New centre channel (spark plug cover) gasket installed.

 

 

JUMPCUT

 

Most of the intake side bolted on, alternator fitted, fuel rail bolted on, cam covers fitted.

 

 

Thermostat and outer housing fitted, all sensors connected, power steering reservoir fitted.

 

 

All intake side gubbings installed, Idle Control Valve and most of the vacuum connections.

 

 

New Magnecor competition leads and coil packs installed. Why pay all that money for Magnecor? Because they were HALF THE PRICE of the OEM Toyota leads and far superior.

 

 

Upper intake pipe fitted. What a ball ache it was getting this thing lined up. Next time I'll just put a hard line on.

 

 

Turbo rebuilt and fitted. Few pictures of the rebuild because I was mostly swearing and throwing things like an enraged chimpanzee. Honestly surprised I wasn't climbing the shelving and throwing my poo at chompysnake too. Fitting the turbo was the single most awkward 'oh god this is fucking heavy it's very sharp everywhere and tearing my arms to shreds' install I've ever undertaken. The Xantia gearbox was easier. There is almost no tolerance for error in the oil feed and oil drain lines, if they're not precisely lined up to the nearest god damn atom they won't go on.. and they're on the bottom where the only senses you can rely on are your shredded fingertips. Anyway.. got it done.

 

 

More ancillaries on and a general overhead shot of everything.

 

 

Air cleaner, turbo accordion and intercooler piped fitted. Fitted an old Blitz SuperSound BOV (Blow Off Valve) which is period correct and from Japan, just so I can annoy the tits off people with FWEEEEE noises. Fitment for everything is very tight indeed.

 

 

Oil catch can fitted. Made sure to get a decent branded one, nice and heavy/chunky. Literally the only place it would fit, for such a large engine bay there are few open spots.

 

 

Oil catch can feed and return lines correctly routed and plumbed in. Absolutely have to have these for correct positive crankcase pressure, otherwise the piston rings don't fully seal, and it has to run to both the turbo AND the throttle body otherwise it doesn't work properly.

 

 

Diagnostic port jumpered into diagnostic (error checking) mode, which is the correct mode for setting the timing properly as I've had the Cam Position Sensor out and it needs resetting.

 

 

That's all for now, it was past 5pm and I was ready for my tea. I did start the engine and it started fine, but won't tick over by itself and dies quickly. Likely an air leak, or I have the throttle position sensor set up wrong, or the idle control valve isn't work correctly. I'm not too concerned as it will run if you put your foot on the accelerator, just runs like a bag of spanners, so if all those check out I'll start checking spark/injectors etc. Considering I've had EVERYTHING out minus the head itself, it's pretty standard to have to set absolutely everything back up again.

[Honey Badger]

This isa top thread, really impressed with the attention to detail on the engine rebuild.

[dollywobbler]

Great stuff. These things are hilarious when it comes to turbo lag, but I really like them.

[RoadworkUK]

So many aspects of greatness in this project I'll consolidate all my grunts into one word.

 

Gosh.

[Rocket88]

Looks so much better without Kermit jizz everywhere.......................top bombing...................

[tooSavvy]

Hmmm... I have 2less pistons, no turdblowwa, 2 extra doors + 'moon hole'.

 

Its the 90's Toyota 'free' archlightening I'm happiest living without

 

Mine will never outshi[t]ne this M8

 

 

TS

[fordperv]

Good fred this, makes me want to take my Levin apart, spend daft sums of money and learn Japanese. Odd that the Levin was produced by the same company as it approaches making a sports coupe in a totally opposite way.

A levin i love 86's, i want to see, show me a picture

[MikeKnight]

Its the 90's Toyota 'free' archlightening I'm happiest living without

 

It had holes I could fit my entire hand through on the rear arches when I got it.

 

Fixed that but one is starting to bubble too.. and there are large plastic pieces that could hide horrors.

 

Also there's a hole in one of the sills.

 

Ruh roh.

 

I'm taking it off the road over winter in order to do all the bodywork and properly underseal it before it gets any worse, or all my hard work will fizz into the ground.

[Slartibartfast]

This is just pornography. You should be ashamed, corrupting innocent minds like this.

[Uncle Jimmy]

A levin i love 86's, i want to see, show me a picture

Ha! No AE86...This is autoshite, an AE111

[fordperv]

Even though it's not what I jumped the gun and presumed it was, i still think it's nice

 

I was holding out hope that someone on here has an ae86

[MikeKnight]

Did a little more work. Waiting on a few bits to arrive.

 

Thought the Idle Control Valve was broken, it wasn't, I almost broke it, got it working again, but may be actually broken as the car is "surging" at idle. May just be timing and a confused ECU though. Time will tell.

 

Did I mention a new Idle Control Valve from Toyota for this car is between £450-£700? Yeah. FUCK THAT. I'd rather blank it off and install an aftermarket remote one if it truly is knackered.

 

Anyway.

 

I took the FWEEEEEE BOV off because of reports that dump-to-atmosphere BOV's cause these cars to stall, went back to the old dependable stock dump-to-recirculation one instead.

 

 

I then removed all the plumbing for the oil catch can I'd put in, because like a moron I realised the pipe size was far too small and wouldn't create the necessary crankcase vacuum. I was using 10mm ID pipe when it should've been 16mm ID throughout, so I bought some more but had to order 16mm ID T piece connectors as no one around here had any. Just blanked the PCV system off for now, it's okay for testing but should not be left to vent to atmosphere for a long time as the piston rings don't fully seal with no crankcase pressure present, so it goes down on compression and down on power.

 

Got it running though! I reinstituted the stock factory pipe for the idle control, it was stopping it running correctly otherwise as the ECU was registering it as a vacuum leak. No biggie. The stock pipe isn't horrendous looking.

 

http://vid76.photobucket.com/albums/j6/Sentarum/Toyota%20Supra/VID_20160815_203317_zpse2fgoi54.mp4

 

I turned it off and back on again, wherein it began surging, but it was late and I didn't fancy faffing about with the timing without the PCV system being correctly plumbed in so I called it a day. Will go back to it once I've got the PCV hooked up properly.

[fordperv]

Mike I forgot to ask how exactly did you paint the stripes on the cam cover, you only say sponge technique, tell me more, I want to freshen up the cam cover on my saph and was considering masking the whole damn thing up

[MikeKnight]

Mike I forgot to ask how exactly did you paint the stripes on the cam cover, you only say sponge technique, tell me more, I want to freshen up the cam cover on my saph and was considering masking the whole damn thing up

 

Sorry that I missed this when you asked it. I tend to disappear from the forum for long stretches at a time.

 

Buy any small sponge, I got mine at an art supplies shop, synthetic is generally better to use over natural as you get a nice flat edge. You dip it in the paint (enamel is generally best for toughness), get the excess off on some paper so only a little paint is on the sponge, then wipe it over the raised part you want to paint.

 

You'll only get a small amount of paint on it on every coat, so you end up needing like four or five coats, but it means you don't get it everywhere and don't have to faff about with masking tape or a surgeon-level steady hand.

 

You still have to be careful because it'll still try to run a little if you over load the sponge, but it's certainly easier than the alternatives.

[MikeKnight]

The car is now running and I'm driving it about, but it has issues, mostly with idle speed.

 

Anyway.

 

First job was taking the fuel rail off, which was leaking fuel all over the place, and finding that the culprit was the rather expensive Toyota o-rings which had all but dissolved. The fuck? Can't be arsed complaining to Toyota about this so just chalk it up to experience. Replaced with basic Silverline o-rings and leaks all stopped.

 

 

I was having major issues with the idle skyrocketing to 3000RPM as soon as I turned the key, so I split the idle control valve to find what was going on. It's a basic rotating metal core with a thread running through it with the outer part being two powerful magnets which rotate it in two directions; in and out.

 

 

The reason for the troubles was soon discovered, the internal thread is plastic (I suppose to stop it rusting solid) and had snapped. A part of it was wedged inside the thread and stopping it moving.

 

I removed the broken piece, put it all back together and it seemed to work fine after that.

 

 

With chompy's help I managed to work out a way to get the Blitz SS BOV working without it hitting anything or causing any problems. So glad I did this, it sounds absolutely amazing and I make a note of blowing it off when I go past people in the street. The blast is basically car language for LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME OH GOD PLEASE VALIDATE MY EXISTENCE LOOK AT ME.

 

 

The problem I have now is the idle control seems to have jammed again, this time in the almost fully closed position, so I'm lucky if it'll idle above 500RPM. It's a straight six so it can handle this without dying, but it DOES die if I turn the AC on as that puts a tiny bit of extra strain on it, just enough to make it die.

 

I know for a fact that a lot of Toyota's and Lexus' use the same idle control valve internals, just with different bodies, so I'm going to check with the supramania forum and see which one I can swap over then everything should run perfectly.

[MikeKnight]

I would just leave the AC off, but I can't put the windows down either as the outer rubbers are fucked and it scrapes the glass up.. so I'm just sitting there sweating like a chav in Halfords Ripspeed section.

 

Basic money shots here after I gave it a (desperately needed) wash. Was losing the light and on a crap phone camera, but better than nothing. I'll use my dads super swish expensive camera some point after I power polish and wax it.

 

Having trouble stopping the passenger side front indicator/sidelight unit from fogging up inside, despite sealing it so much it now rivals Fort Knox. I'll get it eventually, just have to find where the hell the water is coming in.

 

 

 

 

[Supernaut]

It's very nice, but those wheels...