Toolmaker

I wanted to try and document my restoration of my "new to me" tC. This is my first tC, Scion or Toyota product for that matter. I've went through some domestic builds and a couple Honda's. But this one is different because I have been
looking for a good deal on a nice tC for a couple years. I happened upon this one for a couple hundred dollars due to engine problems. But the car is otherwise in excellent condition. It's a perfect donor to restore and possibly mod.

I have started digging into the engine issues. Found a bad starter today so I have a new on on the way. Then I'll see what else needs attention. The car currently has 266k miles, pretty high. But it looks
more like 66k miles. The two previous owners took really great care of it. The bad news is, it's a rust belt car. It started life out in Michigan, then central Ohio and it's finally landed with me here in Podunk WV.

Luckily the body is 99% rust free. There's a few tiny paint chips here and there that's rusted. Some rust developing on the driver's side rocker and a bit of rust on the underside of the passenger door. Nothing major, I cleaned it up and put some corrosion inhibitor on it to help stop the progress of the rust. At least until I'm ready to sand it down, fill and paint it. My major rust issues are on brackets in the engine bay and a few under the car. So I'll be documenting the rust repair here on this thread as I go. I'll be making some of the brackets myself out of either Aluminum or Stainless. I'll include pics of all this so maybe it can inspire anyone else wants to do something similar.

The car as it sits today, is bone stock. It has everything that it came with from the factory. Manuals and case, original window sticker and maintenance records dating back to '06. All original spare tire, jack, tow hook, never been used and is as it came from the factory. I will be doing some mods as time goes on. First thing is to tackle this rust, get the engine rebuilt and get the rest of the drive train where I want it. Then I can get into the good stuff: Wheels, Suspension and whether to try my hand at a Turbo. I've always wanted to build a nice, turbocharged street car and my hope is this tC will be the one.

As it sits today, after a LOT of cleaning and scrubbing:













I know the 1st Gen tC scene isn't what it used to be. I'm a little late to the party but I really like this car and I have made my mind up to build into a nice street car. I've been looking around trying to find some aftermarket parts. I want to get TRD
sway bars front and back. Find a good set of Volk, BBS or similar rims for it. I really like the look of 18's with a machined lip. I'll just have to shop around until I find a nice set that will match up. Coilovers will be in the works along with all new bushings.

The engine build is TBD... I haven't decided whether to just build a nice reliable N/A or rebuild the motor for FI/Turbo. I have my fingers crossed that this block and head are in good condition. If the head bolts
aren't stripped out of the block and the head is not warped or cracked, I may use this motor to build on. If not, I'll DD this motor while I build another. Luckily the 2AZ-FE engines are plentiful and not too expensive.

Anyway... There's my tC, we will see where it goes. Probably seems crazy to dump this kind of coin into a 15yr old car that sold for less than $20k new. But I've seen people dump much more
money into some weird and ugly cars, lol... I always loved the look of a 1st Gen tC so I'm going to to build it, crazy or not. I could care less about the resale, I'm building for myself, to drive it.

I'll try to post some pics along the way. I enjoy reading threads where some of you have built these cars up. It's cool to see the transformation over time. Thanks for reading my insanely long winded thread, lol... Next up is rust repair.

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joeq

Nice find Nick. Even tho it has over 266K, (my newly acquired 04 Pontiac G/P has over 270K), it does look like it was taken care of. If the oil changes were done when required, you should be OK....for a little while anyway. I can feel for ya in the rust belt. Here in New England, it's not any better. And I like your idea of another motor to build, and keep the current one alive, as long as you can. Glad to see the stick shift. I'm assuming they only came with a 5 speed? Doesn't matter. My daughters 2014 tC 6 speed might as well be a 5 spd, cause 5th gear is worthless in the EB-60 tranny. Good luck with your new starter relay, and can't wait to see your build thread. Have fun.

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DannoXYZ

Wow, what a deal! Looking forward to your rebuild and upgrades!

Toolmaker

joeq, the 1st Gen tC came in both auto and manual. I have ran across more automatic tC's than 5 speed while I've been looking. My 97 Accord is the same on the mileage, it has 252k right now. I tore it down and had a friend repaint everything in the original "eucalyptus green pearl". I left it basically stock, rebuilt the suspension, new wheel bearings, bushings, brakes and lines, etc. I built it for my oldest daughter to drive back and forth to college.

DannoXYZ, thanks. I thought so too. I have actually went and looked at over a dozen tC's over the past few years. Seems like every one I looked at was ragged out. Interiors ranged from grungy to ruined. Exterior was the same and these were all cars with much less mileage. And 80% of them were auto and I really wanted the 5 speed.

So I got lucky finding this one. Even if the motor was locked, it still has potential to be a nice street car IMO. It checked all the boxes otherwise, I can fix the drivetrain issues as long as everything else is good like the body and interior I've got something to work with.

joeq

Silly of me to write that the way I did. My fault for the misinterpretation. What I meant to say, was you didn't have a 6 speed manual available on that year, right? Only the 5 speed. Most cars in the past 25 yrs or so are automatics, so the fun comes with the 3rd pedal, if you can find a car with one. Keep at it.

Toolmaker

Ahh I got ya joeq, nah the 1st Gen was only a 5 speed. I agree I love a manual transmission. That was another box this car ticked with me. It's a good looking, 2 door, 5 speed Toyota. Something a little different than the more common Honda, Acura, WRX, EVO, etc...

So I'll go ahead and update on drivetrain. My new starter came in yesterday, nice clean new Denso reman. Long story short, I put the starter in and found out this motor is locked up... So that sucks, lol, but it was on the list to be rebuilt anyway. This just bumps it up the list to, now...

I'll be doing the rust repair while I'm in there. Go ahead and blast everything I can and re-paint. I don't know if anyone has ever tried the "rust converter" stuff like POR-15, etc. I highly recommend NEVER using ANY rust converter of any kind. It is expensive and it absolutely will either continue to rust at present rate or faster! I've personally seen it irreparably ruin two different truck frames in 2-3yrs time. It's just not going to work for the long run. For more info check out this sites forums:

Southern Polyurethanes Forum

I use this company's "SPI" products from time to time. They make good stuff, I like their 700 & 710 cleaner for prepping freshly blasted steel. Then use their, "or any" good epoxy primer. No rattle cans, to do a good job you need to at least have an entry level spray kit and compressor. If you want it to last anyway. I'm going to keep this tC so I want it done right.

Right now I'm using a cheap hand held/gravity fed blaster. It's good for tight spots, etc. I run aluminum oxide, crushed glass and soda media depending on what I'm blasting. We have a heavy duty blast machine at work running steel shot for the heavy duty stuff. Probably won't need it on this project though. All the rust on this car is on the suspension components, mounts, brackets and small bolt on parts like the slave cylinder. I'll probably just replace most of the bolt on stuff. But the rest will get blasted, epoxied and then a top coat. I'll have to decide on the top coat.

I also found a front main seal leak and front motor mount bolt broken and missing from the mount. I'll be replacing all that stuff with the rebuild so it's par for the course. My wife and I were looking the car over and talking about whether to just do a stock rebuild or try to rebuild for a turbo set up. Amazingly she is down for building it into a turbocharged engine, even with the associated cost increase. So this build just took a much more complicated turn, lol...

Checking out some of the major components. Looks like Wiseco, CP, JE and Arias makes low compression, (8.9:1 to 9.0:1) forged pistons. So far pricing ranges from $500-$1000 for a set of 4. Once I get this engine pulled and check the cylinder sleeves, I'll be able to see what bore size I'll be working with. I'm hoping I don't have to hone the sleeves much. Depends on if the rod bent and jammed a piston into the sidewall.

Rods run in the $400-$600 range for beefier rods. Looks like K1, Crower, Manley run in the $400-$600 range. Then you've got R&R Aluminum Rods: $800+/- and the Carrillo Rods: $1100+/-. I'm not building a full tilt race engine, just a street car so I'll probably be leaning more towards the Crower or Manley. I'll be shopping around for the best price I can find.

Luckily the 2AZ-FE comes from Toyota with a forged crankshaft, so as long as mine has no damage I'll clean up the journals and run undersized bearings. If I happen upon a lower mileage crank I may go with it. Locking up an engine is hard on the crankshaft, I'll have to get my magnaflux gun and powder to make sure there's no cracks/risers. We will see.

The head will need to be worked over now too. I haven't researched much about cams yet. I don't know if the stock cams are going to be enough for FI/Turbo so I'll have to dig into that. Need to figure out a manifold. I've seen a few are still out there, need to research that too. If nothing else I'll make my own. But would rather just bolt one up, lol. Then I can deal with porting, port matching and polishing. Will need new valves, I've found some oversized (+1.0mm) valves so I'll have to figure out if I need to go bigger or not. I'll have to decide what engine management I'm going to run too. I like the AEM FI/C but have also seen mention of the E-Manage. I'll have to dig into that also.

Lot of work, time and money, lol... I will try to keep updating as I go along.

Toolmaker

Figured I would update this thread. I've been doing a teardown thread here:

https://www.scionlife.com/forums/sci...tarter-239737/

Showing a more step by step tear down of my engine for anyone who may be doing the same in the future. I'm keeping this thread going to have for when I am ready to start rebuilding.
I still haven't nailed down exactly what parts I'm going to use to rebuild this engine. With current availability I'm looking at Wiseco Pistons, K1 rods and the best bearings I can get for the short block.

I did get the head popped off finally last night. The cylinder sleeves weren't torn up as bad as I expected. At least from what I can see on the #1 and #4.
I guess the #2 and #3 cylinders could be torn up below the pistons? We will have to wait and see. The old piston tops are pretty baked with carbon:

#1:



#4:



#2 and #3:



​​​​​I have the pistons soaking in WD-40 since last week. Once I got the head off I soaked them in WD-40 again. I did try turning the crank over again with the
head off but didn't have any luck. Keep in mind I'm not really cranking on it, if I have a bent rod I don't want to jam it up any worse than it is cranking on it.

Someone had definitely been working on this engine before. I found no oil pan gasket, only RTV. Also found no gasket on the timing chain cover, same thing as the oil pan just RTV. From
the look of it the crank case has also been taken off and reassembled with RTV. Nothing wrong with RTV, I use it also but not in place of the actual gasket unless it's just a temporary measure.

More to come as I get the engine pulled and disassembled. Hopefully I'll be able to salvage as much of this engine as possible. The head looks good, some machine work on the seats and
checked over for warpage. Then new valves, springs, seals, retainers, etc. Camshafts also look great, I'll likely re-use these cams if they check out and just replace the cam bearings.

Whether I can use this block or not is TBD. Hopefully I will be able to rebuild on this block and crankshaft. I'll replace the Pistons, Rods and Rod Bearings,
Crankshaft Bearings and Thrust Washers, ARP Head Studs, ARP Main Studs, ARP Rod Bolts and ARP Flywheel Bolts. The Rear/Main Seals and all gaskets/seals remaining will be all Toyota OEM parts.

I'm thinking of deleting the balance shafts. I would love to find more info on doing this if anyone has any info? I'm thinking there must be more to it than just removing the shafts and balancing the internals and rotating assembly?

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joeq

2 questions Nick,
#1-is this the thread you'll be using to show your progress on the engine, or the entire car? The link you give to your other thread is pretty comprehensive too. Looks like you're covering all bases, and thanks for sharing.
#2-Balance shafts, "what the heck are they"? Never heard of such a thing, at least in the old V8, or even V6 worlds. I'm too lazy to hunt the net for the info, and seeing you brought it up, maybe you could shine a "quick" light on their purpose. And who uses them.

Toolmaker

Joeq, yes I'll be doing the rebuild on this thread. I'm just continuing to update the other thread to help anyone in a similar situation. So they can see what is required to do this.

I pulled this from wiki on balance shafts:

"Balance shafts are used in piston engines to reduce vibration by cancelling out unbalanced dynamic forces. The counter balance shafts have eccentric weights and rotate in opposite direction to each other, which generates a net vertical force."

So they basically counteract any vibration in a rotating assembly of an engine. My thinking is, if I can just get my rotating assembly balanced, then I can do away with the balance shafts. Then I will have them out of the picture, less parts to go bad and less parts in the equation.

I'm still trying to figure out if there's anything else to it other than removing the shafts and balancing everything. If not, I may try to make a windage tray and baffle to bolt in place of the balance shafts and housing.

62Fender

Man, that cleaned up nicely. Good luck with the rebuild.

For what it is worth, my 2008 tC has chemical gaskets on the oil pan and the timing chain cover. Only the valve cover has a solid [rubber] gasket. If you want to avoid Permatex, etc, Ebay has paper gaskets for the oil pan. I haven't seen paper timing-chain cover gaskets but I bet they're available.

Toolmaker

Hmm, your exactly right. That's surprising that there's no gasket for the timing cover. I'm not against RTV or anything, just not when it's a gobby, goopy, chunky, leaking mess like the oil pan on this car was. I'm assuming the lower crank case is the same. Looks like whoever had the oil pan off also had the lower crank case off. Because it has the same messy RTV squished out everywhere. The bad about the RTV on the crank case is they basically glued it to the bottom of the block.

So I'm going to hopefully get the block pulled by this weekend. Then I'll hopefully be able to work on getting this crank case unglued from the block and get a good look at the condition of my crankshaft and rods. From what I can access of my cylinders it appears they are right at 88.5mm, factory bore. They appear to be in decent shape, the Wiseco Pistons I'm looking at come in up to 90.0mm. That gives approximately 0.060" of material I can bore out if need be.

I am eager to get this bottom end apart and check out the condition of my crankshaft and mains. Once I get them out, checked and dimensioned I can start ordering my rebuild parts. Fingers crossed that my crankshaft isn't torn up beyond repair.

joeq

I was wondering the same thing. Why on Earth would engineers come up with this? If there aren't any others items being driven off them, (oil pump, camshaft, ect) I would dump them in a heart beat. You've peaked my curiosity. I'ld like to see an illustration of the components, and talk to some savvy Toyota types to find the scoop on them.
Keep up your good work.

DannoXYZ

It's not about statically balancing parts, you can do that to +/-0.000001 micro-gram and you won't get rid of dynamic 2nd-order imbalance that's inherent in I-4 engines. On engines larger than 2.0L, these forces become significant. So much so, that they can crack oil pickup tubes in oil-pan and snap alternator and AC brackets.

To combat this, twin countre-rotating balance shafts @ 2x engine-RPM were invented and patented by Mitsubishi back in '70s. Licensed by Porsche for their new 4-cylinder engines in '80s 944/951/944S2/968 models. The 944S2 was largest production 4-cylinder at time @ 3.0L with +200bhp. It's silky smooth from 1/2 idle-speed to redline. They could've beat Lexus with commercial using pyramid of wine-glasses balanced on hood as engine was revved up & down from idle to redline repeatedly. Without balance-shafts, engine would break free of its mounts and land in your lap! Many Porsche racers figured they would be smart by removing the shafts to save 4-bhp and some weight. None of these engines lasted more than 1-season (cracked oil-pickups, alternator brackets, engine-mounts, etc.). In street cars, you may be able to get away with it... for how long, no one knows.

Toolmaker

DannoXYZ, I can't thank you enough! That is excellent information that I hadn't found yet. That is much appreciated and gives me exactly what I need to make the decision...

So, in that case, I will be going back with OEM balance shafts. I guess it would depend on your application, but the benefits seem to far outweigh anything you would gain from "deleting" these balance shafts.

I'll be getting a new lower crank case in then. I don't know if this one is salvageable? It may be but I would rather have bearing races that aren't eaten out this bad. It's very interesting the science behind this vibration issue. Pretty great idea coming up with these counter balancing shafts, imo.

Thanks for the help.

ETA: When I think about it, the simplest and most efficient way to balance out the secondary imbalance is going to be the factory balance shafts. So this sways my decision to leave them in place on my engine build. Reliability is paramount to me and I can only see deleting these shafts causing more issues than anything else.

DannoXYZ

Engine-layout makes a big difference on 2ndary harmonics. Smaller engines have less vibration, so they can get away without balance shafts. But my CBR600RR definitely has a buzziness that my V4 bikes don't have. Smoothest 4-cylinder layout is flat-4 with perfect 2ndary balance. Same with inline-6.

I'm not sure about this engine, but many of these balance-shaft housings are line-bored so bearing-holders are perfectly concentric. Perhaps yours was replaced previously and that's how the bearing got chewed?

Toolmaker

Makes perfect sense now that I understand the physics behind it. If it were a track only car then I can see where it would be a possibility. But I plan to drive this car on the street so I think for my application it would be better to leave them in for longevity. I'll end up with thousands in the engine build alone I don't want to risk shredding it after 5-10k miles.

​​​​​​I found a place out in Cali called Record Crankshaft that sells a completely rebuilt lower crank case with balance shafts and new bearings. All cleaned via hot tank, anything worn rebuilt and they go for $315 shipped. They have rebuilt crankshafts that have been cleaned/turned for $280. I'm going to just order a clean, rebuilt crankcase from them with shafts/bearings already installed.

I'm very sure someone has had this crank case and balance shaft housings off of this block for one reason or another. The entire crankcase has all that squished out RTV around the entire mating surface. So it's hard to say, maybe they didn't get them timed correctly? Maybe the shaft housing was not torqued properly? I can say that the torque on the shaft housing bolts was very light compared to everything else I've taken apart. Maybe they mixed up the bearings? That would definitely be a no go.

joeq

Good info Danno, and great job finding it, and that video. But...with all due respect, don't take this personal, but it's the craziest thing I've ever seen.

I've been in jet engs for almost 50 years, and specifically balancing ,( axial flow turbine engines, (not recips), and have been to a number of balance schools over my 40+ years in this trade, and this whole balance shaft design looks to be nothing more than an engineers "job justification".(LOL) Anything to complicate a basic principal. And the dude in that video, might as well be talking legal terminology, or "Star Trecky". The average layman will get nothing out of it. "A squared plus B squared" (give me a break). A vibration is basically caused by an unbalanced, or un-equalized mass, that is contributed by a number of factors. And there are common ways of dealing with correction methods. I've had to deal with engineers in my line of work over the years, and there are very few that live in the real world. I'm not saying the balance shafts don't work, but from what I see in photos of these crankshafts, there should be no reason they couldn't be balanced, .."normally". Even in my preferred automaker line, (Pontiac) they had a weird engine late 70s, to very early 80s, the 301 V-8, built for the times, "not performance", and it had what was called a rope crankshaft. It had no counter weights. Only on the very ends. and it was balance externally. I'll see if I can find a pic.



Even with this crazy design, it was balanced externally, and successfully.
So I guess Toyota isn't the only one with the balance shafts, cause talking to some of my co-workers in the know, so does Honda, and Mitsubishi.
Maybe more. I don't know. the whole thing just looks like another grenade waiting to have it's pin pulled. Good luck with your quest in your overhaul Nick.

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DannoXYZ

Rotating engines don't have to deal with 2ndary harmonics because they don't have reciprocating motions.

That guy in video didn't explain it as well as could have been done. Read the comments, some of them clarify points that wasn't explained well.

Once you get over 4 cylinders, each pair's unmatched motions contribute less and less to whole. V8 issue isn't so much 2ndary harmonics as torsional rigidity of crank and uneven firing order. Thus need for torsional damper. Otherwise 4th and 5th-order harmonics can easily snap crank.

I can't quite tell from photo of Pontiac crank, but it might be flat-plane design. Which has better primary balance, so no heavy countre-weights needed. Also flat-plane V8s have perfectly even firing-order, so no torsional dampers needed.

Smoothest engines I've ever touched are V12s or flat-12s. Aside from having perfect 2ndary balance, they also have many more cylinders to smooth out power-pulses per revolution.


Aside from piston pair's unmatched opposing motions, the swept path of con-rod's big end doesn't cancel themselves out either. On the swing above crank, rod moves through large arc far distance from crank centre line. The opposite bottom swing of con-rod however is centred closer to crank's center line. This is like spinning a barbell at center with one weight at end and other closer to centre. Lobsided, absolutely zero way to balance that out with primary balance.

One only has to compare 2 identical engines, one with and one without to notice difference. Camry with 5S-FE engine is silky smooth due to balance shafts. Celica with same 5S-FE but without balance shafts feels like you're riding on rock-tumbler! That's only on edge of needing balance shafts @ 2.2L. Larger engines have even more shake.

Toolmaker

Yeah I understand where your coming from Joeq. That was my original thinking as well. I'm no engineer by any standards nor do I have the decades of experience with any combustion engine design. So I'm outside my scope of knowledge to assume anything about the design and implementation of these Toyota balance shafts.

Luckily I understood what he was saying in the video. Not sure why he was showing off the Pythagorean Theorem? But I understood he was using the radius of the crank swing to find his height of piston when the cranks positioned at 90deg. But I can see where this could throw the layperson off...

I did pick up that as you decrease the number of cylinders in-line, the secondary vibration increases. Also as you pick up rotating mass/displacement it exacerbates this secondary vibration. So in my mind I weighed the pros and cons.

Pros: The balance shafts are obviously proven as they have been put on hundreds of thousands of 2AZFE engines. From my research, failure of these balance shafts and bearings is rare. I believe what caused them to fail in this engine was a combination of wear, (266k miles), improper care, (oil and filter changes) and a shade tree mechanic that took the assembly apart and likely didn't reassemble properly. Also there's no real data showing the effect of running without them. I've seen multiple forum posts stating someone had removed them and plugged the oil feed. The effect of said removal of these shafts and oil pressure were also debated but no real numbers were ever published. No one ever really came back to elaborate on the effects. I assume if they did experience any damage, they weren't going to come back and admit it. So it's an unknown.

Cons: Deleting the shafts would get rid of multiple rotating parts with multiple bearings that can fail and cause issues like what I'm dealing with now. Less parts = less problems in my experience. It would also free up the bit of drag applied to the crankshaft.

If I were building a track/drag car where I wanted max power with minimal run time, then deleting the shafts would be much more appealing. But for my purposes, a fun but reliable street car, I am going to err on the side of caution. Like I said before I can get a rebuilt crankcase with new shafts and bearings for $315 to my door. Considering the amount of money I'm going to be putting into this engine build, it's cheap insurance imo...

Not saying there aren't valid opinions to the contrary. But now that I understand their purpose and considering the low rate of failure I'll gamble on another set if it helps add longevity to the parts I'm about to put into this engine.

ETA: Thanks to you all for sharing your knowledge on the subject. I try to soak up anything I can when I'm working on something. It's been a big help...

joeq

And I'm no expert either guys, just trying to understand these modern engines, and with the help of you guys chiming in, I can learn a bit more each day. Interesting reading.