Not tempted to go 2GR with this or wrestle 2hardtop's engine off him? Has he got it in a car and running yet? It's a real shame he hasn't come back to this forum to share his knowledge.

Jaemus
Thanks Nik_Lee! BTW I tried following the link in your signature and it doesn't work. But I found your thread anyway!

Thanks for letting me know, I have now updated it.
 
Will be watching yours to see what you do with it and hope to see it on a run some day.

Hey Hey! nice pick up Jaemus

Thanks Trav!

So, some stuff been happening;

As shown above, the car has a replica '98 wing. I've noticed a lot of mould and moisture in the boot, so I investigated, and found that the screws are letting water into the boot frame (the triangle braces under the skin) which were filling up this frame and also leaking directly into the boot, and then draining out of the little holes at the bottom of the frame when you open the boot!

So I removed the wing, all of the screws were rusted, and one looked like this;



And i removed all the insulation and carpet (the former I will replace, the latter I will wash)
 

 

 
Then arranged to dry the water out of the boot floor. No rust was detected, so that's good
 

 

 

 
Apparently, this wasnt enough sealant :P
 

 

 
You can see here clearly where the rusty screw has been turning to iron oxide dust and running away with any surface water



Not having an entire week to deal with this mess, i removed the sealant from the areas around the screws
 

 

 
 
And reamed out the holes a smidge to clear off the rusted edges
 

 

 
Then, I applied some real man's sealant to both sides of the holes
 


And used stainless screws with fibre washers on both sides to secure the wing. This was mostly successful, but one of the screw holes had stripped out (probably because of all the rust / moisture damaging the fibreglass around the hole), so that one will have to be replaced with a larger gauge screw when I can find one.
 

 

 


Otherwise though, successful
 

The next job was to try to track down the source of oil leaks on the engine. I found a lot of oil just under the cam cover, so I decided to remove it and replace the seal.

It turned out the seal was OK, but the engine hasn't been as well looked after as I'd like, even when considering the 240k on the clock


 

 
Someone's missed an oil change or two somewhere I reckon.

Anyway I changed the seals, and took the opportunity to paint the cam cover, inspired by RobK



Getting it back on was trickier than taking it off. I got it off with the throttle still in place, but to get it back on, considering the sealant packing in the corners of the seals where it makes sharp turns was there, and I didnt want to mess that up, I had to be able to drop it down level, so I had to remove the throttle. Something to remember for next time!
 
I took the opportunity to change the dizzy rotor and cap seal as well. The posts in the cap were a little worn but not too bad, just removed the built up crud off them. 

And I also painted the intercooler hoses black which were an odd burgundy colour before



Just need to get a black silicone coupler at the throttle body to complete the look.
 

And then we move on to the clutch job, currently in progress! Big thanks to the gentlemen lending me a hand with this.
 


Upgrading to an Xtreme aluminium 4.7kg flywheel and Xtreme full face organic HD clutch. Changed the rear main seal as well for good measure. Was going to upgrade to ARP flywheel bolts but got sent the wrong ones so the stock ones were still in spec and went back in. 
 

 

 
Had a few setbacks along the way to getting the engine out;

- LH Axle boot was slightly split and tore completely when removing the axle. Both axles are currently being rebuilt
- Had to go get a 6mm hex socket for the rattle gun to undo ONE of the 16 axle cap head screws :P
- Didnt find the bolt holding the dust cover plate between the engine and gearbox behind the starter motor until we tore it off trying to pry the engine and g/box apart :P
- Missed a few wires when lifting the car off the engine, resulting in having to make some repairs, and replace entirely the speedo sensor plug. Thanks to RobK's info I can match up the colours from a Camry E53 speedo sensor plug and splice that back in to my harness. So a $2 entry fee, a quick 10min snoop through Pick N Payless, and one snip with the cutters later I had this:


 
Engine and gearbox are not wanting to make sweet intercourse and mate together atm, but I shall force them. Stay tuned for more updates as this goes back together!

Hardtop and in red! What dreams are made of.

Dudeman
Not tempted to go 2GR with this or wrestle 2hardtop's engine off him? Has he got it in a car and running yet? It's a real shame he hasn't come back to this forum to share his knowledge.

Sure im tempted, and I feel the 3s-gte will inevitably explode, so there will be an opportunity :)

Not sure Greg is willing to give up his project yet / at all, and the point of the whole thing was that i don't have to pull it apart (current clutch job was the result of a regrettable oversight), start a massive project, or get it engineered. At least for the time being. Just want to enjoy driving it, and for me the turbo motor is a novelty as I've never had one before :)

Not sure why he hasn't come back to the forum but he could be lurking in the shadows :)

Some more updates;

* Clutch is done, and I'm very happy with it! 4.7kg flywheel is awesome too. It's great to be finally able to give the car some stick and have it respond appropriately! Changed rear main seal while I had it apart as well.
 

 
Some more things went wrong along the way, in no particular order
- Managed to drop all the greasy bits out of the inner CV when reinstalling the same axle, was able to repack it tho with much irritation
- New flywheel interfered with the other (lower) sandwich plate causing an unholy grinding sound when the engine was first started. Thought it was curtains for the motor for a second. An angle grinder gave me some clearance near where the flywheel bolts to the crank boss. This is a tip for anyone wanting to use the Xtreme 4.7kg aluminium flywheel!
- eBay store sent me 4AGE flywheel bolts instead of 3SGTE :(
- Had to chase down three separate coolant leaks from heater hoses after I got it back up and running. Heater hoses seem bad, need to replace, but its OK atm
- Saved the best till last; had what i thought was huge difficulty bleeding the clutch. Spent most of a day pumping an entire bottle of coolant through it with a vacuum bleeder and it still wouldn't disengage. Then eventually found the clutch pedal clevis 'dampener' was worn out and was allowing the clutch master cylinder pushrod to bend upwards at the dampener instead of pushing it into the master cyl. Would never have thought to look at it! Some quick work with the MIG welder and a small fire later I had welded it solid and problem gone, along with the squeaky pedal sound! Suspect that it was like this all along, but the previous clutch plate being worn down to the rivets was half the thickness and thus required less pedal travel to disengage it from the pressure plate. It probably contributed to it wearing out! This is the fun of DIY, people. You can see the wear on it from the rectangular part hitting the cutout in the front of round can part that the rubber damper is in. There was also wear on the can from it hitting the pedal arm.
 

 
* Since then have installed my clear indicator lenses, deleting all amber from my Kouki rear lights. These were installed on a spare set of Kouki's and was a fairly simple matter of melting the glue in the oven, remove old lens, and reflow the glue in the oven again, install new lens, allow to cool.
 

 
I also added some red LED's in the reflector triangles (like USDM spec). However, I feel the 'smoked clear' lenses are too dark for my liking, and I would love to sell this set to fund buying another set of fully clear lenses. Have a thread up in the buy sell section here: http://www.mr2australia.com/mr2play/tm.aspx?m=132345 

NOTE: in most of these photos I had the USDM red corners installed, but the first photo shows the clear triangles with red LED's in them.
 






 
* Ordered some new number plates :) Will post about that when they arrive.

* Installed a stereo head unit, not that I really wanted one that badly, but mainly for filling the hole in the dash, bluetooth for phone calls and keeping milady entertained if I can convince her to come near the thing at all. However, the stock speakers sound crap and are probably flogged out to buggery. So I may have to consider replacing them. I did find there is amplifier wiring already run to behind the passenger seat, so I can add a sub (if i can find a nice slim one) or 6x9's if I choose to.
 

 
* HVAC controls are out so I can pull those apart too, as half the illumination doesn't work at all, and, really, it needs LED insemination surgery as well

* Replaced the instrument cluster lights with LED's, similar to those RobK used. I dont know if my standards are slipping or im just getting old, but I expected hotspots and an annoying lilac shade from not having sanded the backs of the gauge faces, and I found traces of both issues but neither are sufficiently bad to motivate me to do anything further about them... The lilac actually looks quite a bit worse in the photo than it does in reality.



* Temporarily deleted the boost gauge as I am working on installing a custom one that actually works (more on that soon) 
 

You have been a busy lad.
I often wonder how many gearbox, syncro troubles are caused by that spongy worn out old pushrod and the nylon bush the clevis pin passes through in the clutch pedal.  Well done.  Bitch of a place to work too.
I've taken to making solid replacements.
Can you elaborate a bit more on the area in question of where exactly the problem was regards flywheel to crankshaft boss.  Thanks.
PS.  Most people don't use coolant in hydraulic systems. Innovative !