Y2KG20

This is our first Scion/Toyota that we bought cheap to rebuild for my girl. We have always been Ford/Nissan people so it's going to be a learning experience. It has 159,000 miles and was run out of oil and when we picked it up and the engine just about froze up getting it on the trailer. The exterior is OK with some bad paint touch ups and a cracked front bumper. The interior is in excellent shape. I picked up a 04' Camry engine with 170k for $200 at a u pull place. The bearings and bore on the engine is PERFECT so it's going to be a easy rebuild. Also going to drill out all the head bolt threads and put in 10 inserts in the engine block so I won't have to deal with any coolant leak problems. Replacing the tranny with a 2010 35k mile one I found for $240 just because I don't want to work on it again for a loooong time.

Plans:
Rebuild the engine - Done!
Flow check/Clean/Match injectors - Checked/Matched - DONE!
Replace transmission with 35k mile tranny - Done!
Replace front bumper - Done











We got 16 hours into the block this weekend. My brother helped me get the 04' block finished up and boy was it a job! Drilling and tapping all 10 head bolt holes for the inserts is a good 6-8 hour job alone but it was worth it because it will never have a head bolt problem in it's lifetime now. I had a BIG surprise when cleaning her up! The pistons were dated late 13' and were Mahle/Toyota replacements YAY!! So my $200 U pull junkyard motor was well worth it. The oil rings were totally clogged and all 8 oil relief holes on every piston were clogged and had to be drilled out. I noticed that the 08' factory pistons have a 1 piece oil ring spacer that I have never seen before and maybe that's why the rebuilds are back to the split ring style like every other engine in the world... Crank is back in and rod bearings are within factory spec and so are the main bearings. The piston rings are in spec except the 2nd ring is a little tighter than spec but should be fine for a NA car. If it was boosted I would have filed the 2nd ring a little. We also did 10 passes with a 3.5" ball hone.

This is going to be a pretty nice drivetrain now. 35k tranny with a revised 2015 torque converter and a rebuilt 2004' 2AZ-FE with revised 2013 pistons.

Here are some pics from this weekend:

Engine build slideshow <<<< ---- Pics in here

samatman

Nice, I'll be following along as you do the rebuild. As a favor to those not as skilled, could you put captions on the photos so people like me know what we are looking at?

Y2KG20

I'll try to lay it out well and have as much description as possible. We have built a bunch of Nissan engines before but this is our first Toy build so hopefully it goes well. It's definitely more complicated and we will have to pay attention to more details when assembling the motor.

On anothe note... I picked up a 72k mile transmission to put in the car and just saw that the case is broken.. Yay.. So there's another 2 hour drive for me to get it swapped out for a 68k mile one they have. On the good side the old 159k mile transmission that we pulled from Macy had a torque converter dated 2015! So the car has had the updated transmission service done. My buddy used to work at Toyota and said they would reflash the TCU and replace the torque converter and add a magnet to the pan for shudder problems. So now I have a practically new torque converter.

xile6

I couldnt see. What was the injector flow?
And what plans for her, just a rebuild and stock?

Y2KG20

They came out to 352cc @ 3bar fuel pressure. They all flowed out the same and passed leak down test. The spray pattern was also great.

Plans for the car is to restore it as cheaply as possible for a DD for my girl. We travel a lot and this car is going to replace our 00' Sentra SE SR20DE car that we rebuilt 6 years ago. If everything goes well and we like the car I may pick another up for a turbo build for myself.

Y2KG20

Well I called Tristate salvage about the broken case on the transmission and they said they grabbed the wrong one. So they had a guy swinging by my area and dropped off another. I was thinking to myself that's how a business keeps customers coming back. About an hour later I thought I better run the VIN plate on the replacement transmission that came in. They said it was a 08' with 72k.... and the VIN says! 05' and service records went to 88,605 miles in 2011 and had the shudder torque converter problem fixed in 2015 and was salvaged in 2016..... So a conservative mileage estimate of 130,000+ miles at least. I called them up and verified what they sent me and I went ahead and told them what I got. The only thing he would keep repeating to me was "We don't know if the transmissions have been changed out in these cars" and "We don't check the numbers" and I said that's ridiculous that you list the transmission as a LOW mile "A" condition transmission and price it accordingly without checking anything. Soooo I'm taking another 2 hour journey to get my money back and no transmission.

If I can't find a tranny under 80k I'll probably rebuild the stock one. I have rebuilt many Nissan 4 speed FWD autos for boosted SR20's. Just didn't want to wait for parts and build time for a stock application...

:Venting over:

samatman

That's really disappointing. It's a good thing you checked the VIN on it - if it was being driven 15k miles a year it could have had over 150k on it.

Y2KG20

Yeah, it's always good to check even if you trust the place. Part ID tags are there for more than one reason. I'm surprised that some places think that most people won't check so they can get 3-4 times the money on parts that are considered cores. Total BS way of doing business. If there isn't a thread about how to check stuff like this maybe I should start one.

Also I ran the first tranny they gave me and it was an 06' with over 185k. Would have been real nice to install it and find out after all of the work that it was junk.

Y2KG20

I returned the transmissions and hopefully the money gets back to my card so I don't have to deal with them ever again.... Anyway I found another from a much more organized salvage yard. It was cheaper, newer and less miles too! From a 2010 with 35k miles. The vin and mileage all seems legit so I'm finally happy. Now on to building the engine so I can get this thing on the road.

Y2KG20

Made quite a bit of progress this weekend. Updated #1 post with info and pics. We may not get back to finishing it up this coming weekend because my home AC/Heat finally gave out and we are getting that all fixed....

samatman

Nice work. Very lucky on the '04 Camry engine - those are clean looking pistons. Looking forward to the next update!

Y2KG20

All done. Took Saturday and Sunday to get it all finished up. We stuck the engine / tranny in the first day and got all the wiring hooked up. Second day we finished the axles, brakes, radiator, new condenser, and a new front bumper cover.

The transmission I picked up was from a 2010 TC with 35k miles. I opened it up and changed the filter and cleaned the magnets off. They were a little fuzzy but not too bad. I also noticed that Toyota uses really small magnets. The Nissan transmissions we build for our SR20 cars have HUGE magnets, so I threw a couple of them in there also. I would suggest for anyone with an auto to drop the pan and clean the magnets every 60k miles or before. If not you will have all that crap recycling in the fluid making it abrasive to the seals.

I drove it for about 50 miles, would have been more but no plates yet. Has lots of low end grunt that I like a lot compared to the SR20 cars that don't have anything until 2500rpm or so. They have a lot more engine noise with a plastic intake compared to our cars with solid cast aluminum intakes. Drives great, feels like it's on rails with tight steering. Pretty sure we are going to be happy with it for quite awhile.

Other plans will be new crossdrilled rotors, Ceramic coated calipers, some little bodywork stuff to make her look better, and moving the fosgate system from my girls old car that we are retiring.

Updated build pics on post #1



The little Toyota magnets vs Nissan magnets. That's why Toyota adds a magnet when they do the torque converter swap and TCU reprogram for the shudder problem.

samatman

Congrats on finishing the build so quickly, the car looks great! On a rather funny note, I somehow recognized that stretch of road behind the car, was through there 5 years ago on a RT66 trip.

Y2KG20

Thanks! I'm kinda surprised that I got it done in a month. Would have been a lot longer if my brother wasn't around to help out. I don't know if I could have guided that drivetrain in the engine bay alone.

I took that picture at my shop parking lot on Chestnut expressway here in Springfield, Mo.

samatman

Springfield is a very nice town. We loved all of Missouri from top to bottom that we saw. Didn't finish all of RT66 so we'll be back eventually.

On the front bumper, did you order it bare and paint it to match? My bumper looks like it has been sand blasted and I've been trying to decide the best way to proceed. Refinish mine (sanding intensive) or order a primed bumper (surprisingly cheap) and get a quart of matching paint & clear.

I hope you plan to post any mods you do in the future.

Y2KG20

I bought it already painted from ebay here:

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Scion TC Front Bumper Cover (SC1000103) Painted | eBay

But they went up $20 since then. I paid $181.50 shipped

samatman

That's not bad at all considering paint supplies would run $100 not counting the time. Thanks for the link.

Y2KG20

Got the rotors in and on the car. Not a bad way to spend $95 I love how cheap everything is on this car!

udelslayer

What is the tool you're using in conjunction with the tap in prep for the inserts? Are there not "updated" bolts? Am I reading right that you're cannibalizing a 08 block with rebuilding the 04? What parts were you swapping over to the short block and are you able to use the piston oil squirters the 04 is not supposed to have?

Y2KG20

I used the northstar kit to tap the block. The problem is the threads in the 06 down blocks. You have to drill out the original threads, tap it all the way down, use bottoming tap, locktite the new steel inserts and screw them all the way down. The 07+ blocks were redesigned with a lot more thread. The threads are at different heights between the old/new blocks so head bolts are different lengths and not interchangeable. As for squirters... I read that somewhere too but the 04' I just rebuilt had squirter rods just like the 08'. The only thing I reused from the 08' engine was the head and cams, a rod bearing got ate up from loss of oil and trashed all of the bearing surfaces (mains,rods and even the balancer bearings). Also Toyota had different bore sizes per hole in each block so swapping rotating assemblys from block to block doesn't really work.