My old truck. 1987 Toyota 4x4

I spent my 20's killing her with no success, lets see if I can do better if I spend the rest of my 30's bringing her back.

This is the truck I bought after I got back from my first deployment aboard the USS Constellation. That was 2003. In the years that followed I tried every trick in the book to kill this thing. Don't get me wrong, I loved the truck. It looked brand new when I bought it. But I was broke, I was a boy trying to impress girls, and I drank a lot in the garage...

When I bought it, it looked very much like this (aside from the tint, lock box, and wheels. I had chrome wagon wheels)

After about 5 years, it looked more like this:

I decided after 3-years of letting her sit while I was in Hungary that I'd sell her.

Now that I'm back, I decided to track her back down.

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/finding-an-old-truck/100629/page1/

Here goes:

The hunt.

My craigslist search actually got results right away. Three owners, the last of the three still had her. I sold her in Mount vernon (an hour and a half north of Tacoma) and I found her in Bucoda (an hour south of Tacoma)

The owner traded a jeep wrangler with lots of problems for my truck and on the drive home noticed that "oil was pouring out of everywhere".

He parked it and attempted (unsuccessfully) to replace the head and head gasket.

Then it sat until...

I came along!

First up, it needed to roll. So a tire had to be changed:

Then comes the exercise:

That look she's giving in that last picture? That's "hope".

Home sweet home:

The truck came with an extra set of rims and tires with about 50% tread (back wheel of last picture). I think they look better than the chrome, now painted black (poorly) wagon wheels so I'll keep them. Plus their center cap says "Toyota" so that's kind of cool

The truck came with the new head installed, weber carb installed, and a magnaflow exhaust with pace setter header not installed.

The old head is in the cab of the truck along with some misc gaskets, etc you would expect from doing head work.

The new head comes from a machinist of unknown reputation, but they were told it had been planed true, and all that other good stuff. All the same the compression is 90-60-40-30 with the head installed. I'm crossing my fingers that it's just a valve adjustment.

Also this new head is 1/4 inch taller than the old head... interesting

It Looks like the subsequent owners followed in your footsteps tryingto kill it. Good luck piecing it back together, we'll be watching!

A bit off subject:

After a year of dating I took my (then) girlfriend to Corpus Christy, Texas for the weekend. We lived in San Antonio at the time and I got laid off earlier in the day. Instead of canceling plans, we said "screw it" and went camping anyways.

We drove down the beach until we couldn't see another camp fire and made ourselves at home. A bit anxious, I proposed the first night.

(you can barely see the tailgate in that last picture

7-years later

On subject:

First night home I was up at 3am. Couldn't sleep, so I went out to the garage.

In the spirit of "keeping it simple" I checked the valve clearances and adjusted them.

Old Compression (as reported by previous owner): 90-60-40-30 New Compression: 100-80-100-0

I double checked my work and got #4 to read 40psi once, but most of the time it was dead nuts zero.

I backed out the head bolts (in the "removal" order) cleaned out the holes, and retorqued them, but the numbers didn't change.

I put my thumb over the plug hole of #4 and rotated the engine by hand. I never really felt any pressure, and I thought I heard gas escaping from the exhaust port so it was off with the head!

I saw Ed China do a trick once where he poured gasoline into the combustion chamber of a suspected bad head. The gas leaked through a bad seat and out the associated port. I figured I'd do the same:

New head

and there's Cylinder #4 for ya:

it turns out that all the cylinders leak out the intake port, and #3 leaks out the exhaust port as well. Cylinders #2 and #4 leak the most, and #1 and #3 leak the least.

So I checked the old head:

Boom baby! Tight as a drum. This picture was taken at the 5-minute mark easy.

There's just one problem with the old head...

Shortly after discovering LCEngineering in 2007 or 2008 I ordered one of their catalogs and drooled over it endlessly. After about a month of looking at things and planning builds I couldn't afford a bright light came down from heaven and made a sound a LOT like rod knock.

I was on my way home from work when all of a sudden: clack-ita-clackita-clackita. I pulled over into a HEB parking lot.

Trying to hide my excitement, I called my wife. "Honey!" I said. "Get out the credit card, and listen to the noise this truck is making now!"

"wir wir wir VROOM clackita clackita clackita" went the engine while I held the cell phone out the window.

"clackita clackit clack sputter sutter cough" then nothing. Just a rough idle.

"vroom vroom" went the engine.

what happened to the rod knock? Turns out my #4 spark plug core got tired of its place of residence and decided the exhaust was the hot place to be.

So much for the credit card and the LCE stroker engine I had planned. If there is a silver lining though, it's that after all these years I FINALLY got to see what a dropped core did to my head!

I don't think it's going to be much of a problem though. The truck ran for YEARS after the core indecent.

So the old head seals around the valves just fine, but I don't like the condition of the cam. It's very "orange".

I've decided to try to take the cam off the new head and put it on the old one. Once that's done I'll install the old head/new cam and do another compression test.

Sounds easy enough.

Now we're up to this morning. You could call this "day 2"

I've decided that my goals for this project are going to be simple. I want to first:

• get this truck running, legal, registered, and on the road. To do this, I'll also need a turn signal and a driver's side window.

Second

• I want to make the truck "nice" again. I don't have anywhere NEAR enough cash to do this now, so that's just going to have to wait.

Third (but not necessarily last)

• I want this truck to be practical. No off road toys, no bad street manners, no more banging her off of rocks. Just reliable transportation that can pull the work I need it to do around the house.

So, moving on.

I spent most of the morning cleaning grease off the new head and getting any grit out of anywhere moving parts are going to be. The old cam was only held in by about 3 bolts, and the new cam came out of its location with out much of a fuss. I briefly thought about an RV cam (Delta cams is close and $55 is not much money) but I'm trying to keep goal #1 in mind. I just want this on the road and legal. A 22r cam isn't that hard to change later.

The problem revealed itself when I tried to bolt the desired cam in the desired head. The 3rd cam tower was completely stripped. My torque wrench was set to 14ft/lbs and it never clicked. Truthfully, it could have been the wrench. Apparently it's a common problem (at least there's plenty of forum talk on the subject).

I spent most of the rest of the morning looking for a machinist that turned out to be not at home (office was dark). Moving on to "Plan B" I got a helicoil kit from O-vanced zone and went to town.

Can you see that little guy in there? look for the center tab

The side in the picture threaded up nicely and is holding its fair share of torque. The side opposite of it (but still on the #3 tower) is not doing so well. In fact about 40 inch pounds is all we feel comfortable putting on it. I'm kind of worried about that.

I've got it setting with some blue loctite (242?) and I'll check the torque in the morning, but really I'm thinking I might be forking over $300 for a new head.

Crapbeans. That's about 75% of my remaining budget, and I still need to get her licensed.

I'm super stoked you got this thing back! Can't wait to see the progress! Someday when you have some pennies saved up you need to get a motor from 22reperformance.com, they make some gorgeous stuff!

This may be my new favorite build thread! Keep the updates coming.

"Honey!" I said. "Get out the credit card, and listen to the noise this truck is making now!"

I LOL'd.

Awesome thread, but something caught my attention, the shirt your wearing when you pick up the truck again, where did you get that? Madison, ms is my hometown and its funny/weird when I see it so far from home but then again your a world traveler compaired to me. Keep up the good work in bringing her back to life

Awesome, I love these things! In me & my friends' early high school minds, the peak of cool was to have one of these with the "TO" and "TA" blacked out on the back tailgate, leaving "YO".

Neat thread and I'll be watching with nostalgia. I had a similar '86 4x4 Toyota between 1990 and 1999. It too suffered much during my "poor years" in the early 90's. Due to how rusty it was when I sold it 16 years ago, I'm sure it's been recycled by now.

I know you aren't building it for off road, but I have a feeling that you and your son will be able to use it for some awesome father/son camping trips...there is too much beautiful back woods in WA to not do that!

bgkast:

Try as they might, it was running until they tore it apart. I still think that falls in the "alive" department :)

sethmeister4:

Man, are you ever going to be in trouble with Mrs. Hungary! With the new head as a spare, I might look into those 1mm oversized valves they have :) In regards to the "backroading". It'd be a great disgrace to the truck if she never saw the dirt again. So kid camping, hunting, or just backwoods exploring are all on the duty roster. I'll just be a little more gentle with her while we're doing it In the end, I'd like her to be "truck pretty" but still usable as a truck.

chiodos:

Funny story about that shirt. While in Hungary the C-17's I was working on didn't have a hangar to do their big inspections. So every 180 days or so we'd fly to Jackson, MS to use the air national guard base there. We stayed in the Marriott in Ridgeland, right next to Burgers and Blues (great place to grab a beer). Small world!

slowride:

I'm afraid the people who owned it between now and 3-years ago have removed the T-Y-T-A leaving just an O and an O. I'm willing to bet it looked something like this (.)(.) before it got rattle canned black. Kids these days...

i was always a fan of the toyota tacoma becoming: Toy Taco

Day 3

First order of business today was to check the helicoil that wasn't doing so hot yesterday. When we left off, it was given some loctite 242 and was left to cure. Today I'm happy to report that I was able to get some more torque on that bolt and it now falls within the "realm of comfort". It's not tightened to the 14 ft/lbs the manual calls, but it's good and tight and I'm ok with that.

So I put that off to the side and went after the timing chain.

The timing chain installed on the engine was too short when the POs replaced the head, but they were able to source a longer one from their local O-vanced zone. Since I'm using the original head and not the new one, I need to remove the new timing chain and reinstall the old one.

The good news is all the guides, the tensioner, and the old chain all look brand new. I have no problem not spending the money on a new timing chain kit.

The bad news started slow: I was noticing a lot of evidence of water where water shouldn't be (ie: the oil pump was full of it). I was beginning to suspect the chain had eaten through a water jacket and was allowing coolant to get everywhere. I was seriously holding my breath, and started thinking very seriously about that complete 22r I saw on craigslist yesterday for $200.

But all was not lost! The cover looks untouched and there isn't a scratch to be seen anywhere! I think what happened was the previous owner just didn't drain the coolant before attempting to repair the cracked timing chain cover he inherited (sorry, forgot to mention: When he made the trade, the cover was cracked)

Even still, this happened:

The realization hits: I did 3 compression tests with nothing but coolant in the oil pan. Yes, you read that right: There was nothing but coolant in the oil pan!!! Talk about a "near miss"! Thank god that timing chain needed replacing, or I'd have never caught this one.

Day 3 cont.

I ended day 3 with some cleaning of the gasket surfaces. The water pump, timing chain cover, and oil pump all needed new gaskets and I didn't have any on hand at the moment so I thought that would be a good way to set myself up for tomorrow. On the way to work I grabbed the stuff I needed from O-vanced zone.

I could have installed the head (the timing cover slips between the head and oil pan fairly easily) and set up the timing chain, but I'm waiting on some EGR blank off plates from LCEngineering. One of those plates goes on the back of the head and is annoying to get to with the head in place (see the "vane plate" in the picture)

The EGR plates aren't really necessary, but a lot of the emissions components were removed from this truck and the job is rather shotty. When one of the POs put the weber carb on it really made things look like a mess. There were random disconnected lines, missing lines, and capped lines that I had no idea what to do with. Furthermore the EGR looked to be completely disconnected so I figured, why not buy the plates and save the headache. They come with the added bonus of cleaning up my engine bay. If they're not here by tomorrow though, I'll just fight with the plate later. I'm on a roll baby, and I don't want to stop!

Good stuff.

This is where I end day 3

Today was a good day

About a year before I moved (2008 or 2009), I let a buddy borrow my truck. He came back white as a ghost.

"It's leaking oil everywhere!!!!" he tells me. "I've been putting in almost a quart a day!!!"

He's very apologetic, and we start poking around. Looks like the front of the oil pan, or... Hey! It's the oil pump!

I tell him to buy me the $2 O-ring and we'll call it even.

He does and the next weekend I go out and attempt to remove the pump. But first I have to get that pesky crank pulley off. It's a 16mm socket (IIRC) and I begin with a jack handle on my 3/8" breaker bar. I have the truck in 4th gear with the park brake set and it's chocked. One pull brings me almost fender to fender before everything is tight and I start pulling for all I'm worth.

SNAP! There goes my breaker bar.

So a trip to Sears, and lots of penetrating oil later it's now the next weekend.

Same setup

SNAP!

So it's a trip to Sears, a propane torch, more penetrating oil and

SNAP!

So I get out the change bucket (we were rather broke in those days) and it's another trip to Sears. This time I come back with a 1/2" breaker bar

SNAP!

There goes the socket

Eventually I got it. I had to borrow a neighbor's impact set with my 1/2" bar, my wife had to stand on the brakes with the truck in 1st gear, low range.

While working today I had vivid flashbacks of that oil pump job. Today though, all it took was 2nd gear, e-brake, chocked wheels, and that same 1/2" breaker bar with my cheap-o socket set. Maybe some anti-seize would be a wise thing to slather on before I reinstall it this time.

ah memories

Day 4

Day 4 begins where Day 3 left off. All the sealing surfaces were dry, so I started slathering on the good 'ol "Ultra Black". I started with the head, then the timing chain, followed by the timing chain cover, oil pump, and water pump. There was a bit of finesse to get the job, and I kind of bent the head gasket portion where it goes around the timing chain hoop, but it shouldn't be any big deal. The Long block is back together!

(applause)

I'm running close to quitting time about now, but I cant help it. My heart is racing, I'm just a valve adjustment away from my compression check! If it goes good I'm stinking GOLD!!! I know I said I should wait for LCEngineering's blank off plate kit, but I can't go to work like this, I'd never be able to concentrate on a THING I'm supposed to be doing! I'm so close I can taste it!!

So out comes the feeler gauges.

Nice!