Picked up the 3MZ yesterday and started tearing it down this afternoon.

 
It's sludged up alright!


 
Pulled the sump off to find a bag of parts and the oil pick up floating in the sump.... Someone has already had a look....

 
Found #5's big end cap in the bag, bearings have some marks on them.

 
Upper sump is pretty sludged.

 
Windage tray is moderately clean.

 
Yep, someone has had a look already, all the main bearing bolts are only a few threads in!

 
Bearing #2 is goneski.


 
Minor marks on #4

 
And we have a winner! #1 has spun a bearing and cooked the rod enough that I have to break one rod bolt off with a breaker bar and socket.

 
Half the bearing welded to the crank

 
This crank is probably a bin job, but all is good, the 1MZ crank, rods and bearings are a drop in for the 3MZ, so no real loss!

Par for the course with a kluger engine for my time at toyota - they were the worst serviced cars apart from toyota echos.

Make sure you put an m6 bolt in the scissor gear before you pul the cams out, they can be a fair prick to reset otherwise.

MCT_MR2
Make sure you put an m6 bolt in the scissor gear before you pul the cams out, they can be a fair prick to reset otherwise.

Ah yes, seen a fair share of forum/facebook posts with "I rebuilt my 3VZ/1MZ and now it has a horrible grinding sound coming from the head!".  The crank might still be usable as I was reading some information about someone reducing the crank big end journals down 1mm to fit a VG30 rods and pistons into a 1MZ.

Yeah, when I worked at toyota, I had to fix the scissor gears every rime the apprentice forgot to put the bolt in. VG30 rods would be a good option, there quite beefy, and open up options if you want to use forged rods.

Do you know if the VVTI mechanisms generally survive a sludging from hell. I've never had my hands a set of VVTI gears, so not sure on the specific internals or how easy it is to pull them apart.

I honestly can't remember in regards to the 1/3mz vvti setup, I did more work with other models, but in general, most of the toyotas ran a small filter in the feed to the solenoid, and the solenoid would usually gum up if the filter failed. As long as you clean up the solenoids, make sure they actuate freely with 12v, and you can get an idea of the state of what the internals of the gear would be like by popping the cam cap of with the oil passages for the gear and having a look.
The cam gears usually have 5 or 3 point security torx, and when you pop the top off, they usually have a rubber sealing ring. As long as you take your time, mark the orientation of everything and are careful you can pull them apart, service them and reassemble. I have a customer that actually modifys the beams cam gears to limit their range of motion to stop him clipping valves as his cams are so big.

Another project I have just kicked off, MultiGauge.
After my Innovate MTX-L **** it self recently, I decided I was going to make a CANBUS enabled gauge that will talk to the MegaSquirt and provide me with vital information as I need it.
 
Today the final parts I needed to start prototyping the gauge arrived and after a quick bread board assembly, I slapped this test together.

 
This is just a quick cycle from 80C - 100C, where it reaches the 100C coolant temp limit and the alert is set off.

Random thought of the day while looking at some xMZ data.
 
3MZ heads onto 1MZ block would give ~9.5:1 compression.
Adequate for some boosted detonation resistance and a little more boost to make up the power loss from the lower compression. Need to investigate to see if I can get some external oil feeds setup for the heads to support the VVTI, alternatively I can always use the 1MZ intake cam instead and remove the VVTI setup.
 
Would be a very quick way to put together a budget 1MZ turbo without worrying as much about the pistons failing. Although knowing that I have a 3.3L block waiting in the shed would be pretty hard to ignore.

Seems I missed a few days of progress...
 
Swapped out the factory fuel pump for a Walbro (AKA, BabyPump).


 
 
Then the angle grinder came out....

 

 

 

 

 
Then it was the other sides turn!

 

 
The point of no return has been reached...
 
 

Got busy this afternoon, V6 time!
 
Last mount was removed

 
Pulled the drive shaft solution out of storage, ST185 shafts with SW20 supported shaft.

Consists of ST185 drive shafts and an SW20 supported shaft.

Lifted it up using the trusty old engine crane


Slid the 1MZ under and lowered it down. Bit of a process getting things to clear, but it fits.


Then temporarily swung it to allow me to push the car back into the shed for the night


Will be making a frame and jig to hold the motor up with during the week instead of the straps and pipe.