Jebus' Build/Bolt on Thread

[americanjebus]

Well I finally got around to putting together a build or bolt on thread to be honest. I know how important pics are in a build thread so i will make sure to include them.

First the background.

Picked this car up in January of 04 in the middle of winter from a the original owner. Car had 64k miles on it and allot of dust from just sitting in this guys garage. His wife drove it to work about 5 blocks away from their house so it didn’t get used much. The owner had to sell due to cancer and I was the first to answer to the ad. Picked the car up that day and drove it home in the snow and right then and there decided I’d have to wait till spring to drive it. Soooo the car sat for 4 months without me telling anyone that I had just bought the car, didn’t drive it, didn’t do anything to it, the car just sat in my garage till spring.

The very first pic

Come spring I finally got the chance to drive the car and I was stoked! Warmed her up and took off, about 4 blocks down the road the engine started to overheat while I was locked in traffic. Shut the engine off and got stuck a few cars away from where I could turn off. Started the car again just in time to see plumes of steam and smoke creep out from under the hood. I had enough exhaust gasses in my cooling system that my radiator just cracked in half. No milkshake fortunately.

Guess which cylinder blew.

So I took to the hg change and for 1 week that 16 year old tore away at the engine bay trying to figure out wtf he was doing. When I started the work, I didn’t know how to change oil. I just said screw it and went for it. 1 week later, it was done and running great!

Installed a new oem radiator,
Oem HG
Oem gaskets on everything I could get my hands on and ended up with a mostly stock specification supra.

The car drove awesome, especially out on our little proving grounds!

but after a while I started to get bored and was no longer content, the car left me wanting more... so i did more, i'll keep updating as i organize my pics and see if this thread takes off or not. This will be sort of a journal of my work, hope you guys like.

-Luis

 

[americanjebus]

After the initial reliability work was finished i had a chance to start on some of the performance stuff. BASIC performance stuff, i started out with a

3'' cooleeze megamouth DP, That was then , today im running a DDP and am loving it!, well when the car runs that is.

and a K&N fipk,while i was down there i figured i'd go ahead and do more maintenance. The original accordian hose was gettin worn and cracked and the new unit was only $35 so why not?

It gave me noticable difference in driving characteristics and let me hear my turbo for the first time. Somewhere in there i rewired my fog lights to run independently.

This would be my setup for a loooong time until i came accross a turbo 300z that gave a good run for my money.

Only took it by about a foot but it was too close for comfort and once again, i wasnt content....

 

[americanjebus]

Found out that my stock Bypass valve took a S#%t so i went for the popular Bosch 110 install, Valve cost me about $25 shipped and the added peices needed added up to about $10, I highly recomend this to anyone looking to recirculate!

Its pretty darn straight forward you just gotta source the hoses, i hit up my local schuks for some hose and gave the dude at the counter the bypass valve to find a hose to fit onto it, i saw him go arround and ask everyone behind the counter wtf it was he was holding and no one could figure it out till they asked me, I love it! freakin schucks!

 

[americanjebus]

Then came the realization that my car was small potatoes, really small potatoes... not even a spud yet.

I met a few local Supra guys and got hooked to the whole environment, i have to say that one of the main reasons i stuck to the supra scene was because i saw the potential of our cars through theirs. Thats when i accepted the realization that stock,..... sucks. Its "Nice", but i was left wanting more from my car and i knew it could deliver.

 

[kwnate]

Can't wait to see the progress Luis. You have such a clean car to start with and thats half the battle! Keep the pics coming, thats how you keep peoples attention That blue car in the pics is fugly I hope he has new wheels...

When are you swapping in the 5spd????

 

[7Mboost]

Then came the realization that my car was small potatoes, really small potatoes... not even a spud yet.

.

Are those old-school HRE's? nice on mkii.

 

[americanjebus]

That blue car in the pics is fugly I hope he has new wheels...

When are you swapping in the 5spd????

The 5sp will have to wait, i hear everyone bitch about the auto's limitations so i've decided not to give up on it and push it to see what i can do. Kind of go against the grain for the time being.

 

[kylefoto]

Are those old-school HRE's? nice on mkii.

That would be a question for lexustech117, that would be agatha right there, she's a beaut.

Lookin nice Luis!
Eager to see what you're going to be doing here.
And I'm going to have to agree with Nate for once :biglaugh:, you've got a hell of a clean car and that certainly is half the battle. I don't think I'd be pissed off at my car so much if it looked better.

 

[supra90turbo]

Nice storyline Luis!
I like to see how the car developed

 

[americanjebus]

Knowing I was going to be pushing the hp and boost to the next level I decided once again, preventative maintenance would be more than necessary so I took on Ravens guide on how to shim the accumulators on the A340e. I hope this can be used as a form of reference for anyone who might be looking at doing this in the future. If you have any questions I’ll try to edit the answers into this post so it doesn’t get scattered across the thread. I’m covering this as in depth as I can because SM doesn’t have its own guide and people are lazy sometimes when it comes to searching other sites. ( I am one of those )

I give all credit of information to Raven97990 without his thread and help I never would have been able to learn about this nor pull it off.
His thread is here -> http://supraforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=267655

The Reason for doing this: the shims in the accumulators help make the shift points from 1-2, and 2-3 slightly more aggressive, By installing slightly thicker shims the transmission will decrease shift time but will also cause harsher shifts, driving around half throttle causes a jerk, full throttle not so much. Tightening the kick down cable and running a larger oil cooler for the trans will also help.

As I went along with this I learned some things too and must stress,
-Don’t over torque the bolts; most of these parts are very sensitive to overtorquing.
-Keep track of where they go, they are specific to their individual hole so NO MIXING!
-Preferably do this with the tranny removed; ( I’m pretty much a badass so I did it without removing )
-Take your time and stay ORGANIZED, you don’t want to lose a part.

You need the following to complete this:
Orange oil pan gasket maker from Toyota ( 00295-01281 )
New oil strainer, unless your cheep like that (35330-30011)
( 2 ) Shims, Preferably .80 inches wide. ( or you can get shims within (.6'' - .85'') wide. The thickness will depend on you, the thicker you go the more aggressive the shift, I went with 5/8'' (noticeable difference but not enough for me to get annoyed, and I’m picky!) I went to a local machine shop and had them cut them out of some steel rod, it'd be a good idea to bevel the edges a bit to keep them from causing any damage.
Paper! Plan your attack; I made a cardboard diagram of the valve body with the individual bolts I would be dealing with plus a written diagram of everything I’d be messing with. As I took of each bolt I taped them to the cardboard so I knew exactly where they went.
Molly Lube, Dissolving grease ( not pictured ), engine assembly lube helped me out because seeing as how I did this with the tranny still in the car, gravity had a tendency to pull everything back apart as I tried to reinstall everything. As I installed things back in I smothered them in molly lube so they would stay in place while I assembled.

For starters if you’re going to remove the transmission you HAVE to tilt the engine back a bit,

Slacken then engine mount bolts so the engine can have some play,

Remove the stuff up front so the engine can tilt and nothing will hit,

Remove the exhaust,

Remove everything that may be damaged stretched, or interfere with the tilt.

Disconnect the 3 plugs next to the starter, and pull the dipstick out, its in two pieces so the top part will pull away from the part connected to the pan.

Remove the rear support for the transmission

And your drive shaft + Carrier bearing.

Get some extensions; the top two bolts are BASTARDS!

Continued on next page

 

[americanjebus]

I said F#%# it with removing the tranny because I have no friends and took this on by myself.

After not doing all of that ^ I just drained my tranny from the pan, and removed the sucker; this is when you take a good look at the condition of your tranny and what’s left of your clutches.

The pan has 4 magnets on the bottom there to collect any metal residue that gets into your fluid, as parts wear out, clutch packs in particular they leave sediment in the fluid that is trapped on these magnets and keeps them from floating around until you change your fluid.

I don’t know how bad that is but the fact that there was even some residue on there didn’t make me happy, meh, the show must to go on, I didn’t feel like changing clutch packs that night.

Now that the pan is off take a good look at your valve body and find the following,

3 Selenoids ( disconnect the cables going to them )

2 Metal tubes, carefully with a screwdriver ease them out slowly.

The kick down cable.

And the bigass oil strainer, just take that thing off. Hopefully your not cheep and got a replacement.

Take a GOOD look at the position of your shift lever, make sure it’s all like this when you reinstall. The top part that looks like an h has 1 bolt holding it in, don’t remove that bolt completely, and just slacken it by a couple rotations.

After you have removed said items its time for the valve body, 1 by 1 find the bolts needed and make sure to have a way to know where they came from. I have no friends available for this project so my imaginary friend jack had to be there to hold the valve body up while I removed the last few bolts.

If your doing this while the tranny is in the car as soon as you take the valve body off your going to start cussing because a bunch of fluid is going to start seeping all over you, LOTS, I measured close to 2 quarts so I had a plastic tub handy. Also in that mess two little f#*!@ers are going to fall out,

A ball and spring
And a fat spring

Snatch those up before you lose them.
This is where they go, the ball and spring go in the hole to the upper left (install with the ball facing outwards), and the fat spring goes in the hole on the upper right. I also marked the only two accumulators we're going to be messing with. The b-2 and c-2 ones.

This is quick, when removing the accumulators if you removed the tranny push down on them so the spring will shoot them out and you can get to them, if they're in the car still, just look out when you poke at them and they'll do the rest. Just make sure you know which hole they came out of.

Take your sexy new shims and put them inside of the accumulator in the order shown

For reference here is the width of the spring (.783''), and inner diameter of the accumulator. ( .877'')

Re-install as removed taking care not to block the tiny holes inside from where you removed the accumulator. The spring goes into its labeled round hole & the Ball and spring piece goes in its little rectangle crevice. ( This is where I used molly lube to hold them in place)

I had to get help from my friend Jack and Mrs. 2x6 to hold the valve body up while I reinstalled the bolts in EXACT order. Hand tight is tight enough.

Reinstall the two tubes, Reconnect the selenoids, and bolt up your new strainer. Now is the time to have a look at the shift lever and make sure its as it was when you started this. Tighten down that bolt we loosened before that holds down the h looking piece. Then make sure to re-attach your kickdown cable, DONT FORGET THIS.

Now you just clean off those magnets so the next time you take off the pan you can see just how much clutch you've burnt, use your silicone gasket maker and reinstall the pan.

Fill with fluid
Start the car,
Monitor fluid because it will suck up what’s in the pan, ( remember all that fluid that got dumped? )
Once the car has been running for a few minutes giving time for the molly lube and everything to be full of oil, Shift the car from P-R-N-D-2-1, a few times.

Then you can tighten down the kick down cable from up above by the throttle linkage, I have yet to do this but will cover it later.

That’s pretty much it!
Try to finish before daybreak.

 

[americanjebus]

Posted this before to help someone with their shiming but it fits here too, i had to do this because of my dumb move of mixing shims during the original headgasket work.

Here is the link to the TSRM page that shows how to do it - > http://www.cygnusx1.net/Supra/Library/TSRM/MK3/manual.aspx?Section=EM&Page=8

This is what you need for it, + a feeler gauge
The tool you need you can get from snap on for like $15. Part # YA8825

if you know what that looks like, looks like a pocketknife with a bunch of little peices of thin metal of different thicknesses you stick between the valve shim and the cam when the lobe is facing AWAY from the shim.

main thing is to get the engine to this point.

You need to remove the stuff upfront to make it easier to turn the crank.

Once you figure out how far off your shims are say you have a gap of .012 well you need to replace that shim with another that is .002 thicker.

I had to have a friend/local supraguy Gerrard (boostedstr8six) help me out, otherwise i would have spent an extra day trying to get these shims out. thnx dude!

Check the TSRM for your crank position and what valves to adjust at certain crank positions, also the gaps required for the intake and exhaust cams.
This is how you use it, i tried to put the ends around the lobe itself it didnt really work :icon_conf

so you have to put it on the rough part of the cam as shown and have the long arm on the tool come over and push on the shim, you push the handle towards the center of the head and the arm will push the bucket down. you then take the smaller little hook that comes with the tool and VERY CAREFULLY place the hook between the cam and the tiney lip/edge of the bucket next to the shim, leave room for the shim to pop out while retaining the bucket in the down position at the same time. ( its hard and with the pressuer from the valve spring it gets harder it helps to have a friend handy and a thin magnetic screwdriver.)

once you get the shim out put it on the micrometer, do your math and put in the shim that you need to get it within spec. it does not have to be EXACT but using SLIGHTLY tighter tollerences by about .002 is what i did to compensate for it loosening after seeting more after running. But be carefull not to leave them to tight, you can have them tight enough that when the engine is runnign the valve will hang open and you will get horriible compression.

After it was all said and done my setup ended up looking like this.

until now.

 

[Big Wang Bandit]

This thread is awesome!

 

[johnathan1]

Awesome thread!

 

[americanjebus]

Awesome thread!

thnks guys! :icon_bigg

I wanted to make it as informative as possible, i still have a shitload of other work to do before mid april :cry:

I didnt get the garage because my parents werent willing to let me take over it for 4 months so i get to work out in our carport. That means the work i get done is dependent on the weather, it just snowed but before it did i had some sunny days to get started.

This is what was left after a long summer in 06 of some hard and constant driving. I learned what FC is, boiled over more than a few times in the mountains, killed a set of tires, and managed to make my speedo die.

interior is going to undergo a very subtle make over.

going to have to buff out some imperfections from my paint from "laying" on my hood. :icon_razz Downside of driving this to big parteis, drunk drivers, and a bunch of wandering drunks falling on people/cars.

hopefully i can make some huge changes to my engine bay without making them too noticable.

Had to buy some new tools for the job and a little something to help keep them secure. = more $

and now, i can begin.

 

[Justin]

Looks awesome man! Sounds like you're having great fun with it. I'd love to find a car driven by old people

 

[johnathan1]

Your car is absolutely gorgeous, and I want one just like it!

Just me thinking out loud...lol.

 

[supra90turbo]

Glad you got rid of the Lexus wheels and now rolling on some white 91 5spokes! They look so much better.

 

[SupraJDS]

^Hey I have lexus rims =( lol ... Great Thread very helpful I might shim the accumulators too.

 

[kylefoto]

interior is going to undergo a very subtle make over.

hey luis,
you're missing a pedal there...