chilkoot

^The 'trac on my 90 saved me several times, especially in snow. Even if you didn't have a trac off light, was your trac lite blinking? That'll be your clue that its doing its job, but before it kicked in I definitely felt my car slipping and it gave me back control.

To the OP, it could be that a wire leading to or the trac off button itself is broken, and the rest of the system is fine; thus no lights. I can't imagine a failure so bad that traction control wouldn't work and the trac off light still would not come on, at the very least you'd see the trac light. My traction control still works and my trac light is on the majority of the time, i'm surprised you don't have any lights just due to age.

that is weird. how long does it take to go away and how loud is it? most cars make a "tink-tink-tink"ing as they cool that gets slower over time, pulsating like you said. However, it's nothing like a hum, they're short and fast little ticks.

up to 94 are not interference. 98 and up are interference. there is still some uncertainty as to 95-97, but given that they have an increased compression ratio and several accounts of valves being bent, I'd believe 95-97 to be interference as well.

I just changed the TB on my '93 and it looked to be in perfect condition, but given the age I'm sure there was some dry rot or internal damage I couldn't see. My idlers were caked in muck and sang when spun by hand. Given that it's already been so long, and it's going to be a long time before you'll have to do it again, I would go ahead and do it. Checking your belt won't give you any indication of the condition of your idlers, and if they seize it doesn't matter how good your belt is.

Your engine is interference, if anything goes wrong in the TB assembly you're out an engine, I'd say do it for the idlers more than the belt, but do it all (water pump included, only go in there once)

yes, when I first started the car and did the coolant refilling procedure after the water pump job (in the Advance parking) lot everything was fine, but I wasn't the one in the driver's seat. I was under the hood topping off coolant.

There's nothing visibly wrong under the hood even with the engine running, it's only noticable in the cabin through the steering wheel and maybe seat, but I certainly didn't notice it before I started. It revved to 3k fine, and I checked the timing multiple times as I was putting it back together. It roars when it revs up, but in a good way.

Motor mounts maybe? I was thinking it had to be the crank pulley because that's the only thing I touched during the water pump removal that could have affected the rotating assembly so severely. However, before I got my chain wrench I did try to use the starter trick to break the torque on the crank pulley bolt, and destroyed a 1/2" drive to 3/8" reducer at the weld...twice...that could've put some pretty serious jolts on the engine, is the starter strong enough to toast the mounts? When I did it I definitely felt the jolt in the driver's seat.

When I get new plates and can actually drive it around that might help some too.

it hasn't been lovingly maintained, but it was grandmad when it was driven. more neglect than abuse.

seafoam is cheaper, safe, and essentially what you are talking about needing.

I've got a vibration in my drivetrain during specific RPMs. It's kind of a rumbling, and I suspect that the crankshaft pulley bolt is not torqued on tightly enough. It rumbles 1300-1500RPMS and smooths out until about 1750RPMS when it starts to rumble again. I haven't tried to take it higher than 2k rpms. I can see a little bit of vibration on the crankshaft pulley with the hood up, but it's barely noticable. I can't drive it anywhere because of plate and title transfer issues, this is in neutral in the parking lot of my apartment. I can feel it through the steering wheel. Idles just fine, comes to temp, no air bubbles in the cooling system, it's completely filled as per normal procedure.

I just did a water pump change myself, and the car seems to work beautifully otherwise. If I take it to a mechanic or a dealer can I have them put it on a lift and take an air wrench to the crank pulley bolt without removing the drive belts or fan clutch? Am I right in assuming I could get away with less than half an hour of labor, or is there a high risk of getting screwed by an ambitious mechanic eyeing a lexus that's mad they're only getting $30-$40 for a quick job?

If anything happens while it's in the shop it's his word against mine as to what condition it was in when I drove it there and who screwed it up, so am I better off just buying an air wrench myself and going underneath the car with jackstands?

could there be anything else from a TB/water pump service that could cause drivetrain vibration? It certainly wasn't there before. I estimate current torque on the crank pulley bolt to be around 150ish (was using a breaker bar and a chain wrench, my torque wrench was too short to get enough leverage)

mileage on these cars may as well not even be recorded, if not for the fact that that's how we know when to service them. under 200k is "low mileage" for a maintained LS.

It's a WOT (wide open throttle) button. I'm not sure on the specifics of how it works, but I know for a fact there was one in my '90 and there is one in my '93. I never floored it in the '90, but I'm curious to see how it behaves in my '93 which seems to be much more rev happy.

my '90 ran the same as described directly above, but for the 150 highway miles I've driven my '93 so far my gas gauge is just under 3/4 tank, putting me much higher than the '90, and that was before I did any service to the '93. however, the '90 was fully maintained and got an almost constant 20mpg for any given tank. i'm estimating 25 or more MPG highway on the 93, which sounds in line with what others here have posted.

flushing your fluids should help, and if your spark plugs and wires are more than 75k miles or 5 years old it couldn't hurt to replace them, air filter maybe? the 1uz is capable of more than 17mpg, surely, have you been avoiding maintenance?

drive it.

to your last question, no.

chilkoot: Did you have the original plugs before you switched to the iridium ix? When you say "purr" do you mean the engine is smoother and/or better acceleration?

I did a major job to my car recently, part of which was plugs. I see a huge difference in the way the car runs, but I only drove it 150 miles before I changed everything. The plugs I pulled out were the originals with 130k on them.

What I meant before was that the iridium ix's I installed seem to be a solid component of a now well-running car. This is first impressions, I just finished two days ago.

it is supposedly a fire blanket, it is held on by plastic clips that will melt and allow the blanket to drop in the event of a fire.

supposedly.

I removed and reinstalled the LH spark plug/distributor cover and that was the culprit, she roars now. Thank mehullica.

Now i've got a vibration in the drive train over 2000RPMs, time to get my beastly strength roommate to help me torque the hell out of that crank pulley bolt (one of us on the breaker bar, the other on the chain wrench)

I could not have done this job without the LOC, or LexLS and I welcome anyone to PM me with questions on how to do anything or clarifications.

i'm surprised, I thought it was public opinion here that NGK Iridium IX were the way to go. That's what I put in my car, she purrs now.

when I picked them up at Advance the guy there told me they were the natural progression of OEM, as they didn't make exact copies of the original denso's anymore. he may have meant the denso iridiums.

The fan spins all the time, it just spins faster with the clutch enagaged.

you're right, i'm an idiot. it's a fluid clutch. durrrr :chairshot:

I resistance tested all of the wires before I installed them, nothing registered more than 14kohms, unless I pinched one installing the wire covers they should be ok. If there were arcing would the cylinders still be firing normally? The ignition end of it seemed to be silky smooth aside from the low idle, whatever it's doing it is doing it consistently.

I used plenty of dialectric grease on the boots before I installed, so hopefully that isn't the issue. Should I check for arcing with the covers removed and the engine idling?

Is there any demand for a more thorough writeup? I didn't take any pictures, but with a few simple additions the LexLS guide could be extremely comprehensive. As it is there was a lot of uncertainty as to whether I was removing the parts correctly. I had problems not because of misdirection, but because things such as "remove the fan clutch" should have read "the fan clutch is on there tight as a !Removed!, and after you remove the nuts it won't simply pull off. you may need to slowly rotate the assembly as you wedge a pry bar between the clutch and pulley plate, it'll only move a fraction of a millimeter at a time, and you have to keep rotating it, but you will see some slow progress"

also, the hydraulic fan started spinning as soon as I started it for the first time and continued to run the whole time the engine was on. The clutch hasn't seized, because I can spin the fan blade by hand without spinning the clutch pulley, but I was under the impression the clutch would have to heat up before the fan engaged?

Mehullica: there is not an emoticon in existence powerful enough to convey the force with which I just smacked my forehead.

I'll check that tomorrow when it's light outside, that sounds like a very likely culprit. It's loud, and it doesn't sound muffled.

I love you guys, seriously.

I just finished my timing belt/water pump replacement today, refilled the coolant as per suggested technique and drove it home. I appear to have been successful, as the engine revs fine (at least to the 2k I took it to, more on that later) and my coolant reached optimal heat level and stayed steady (old thermostat was stuck open).

I'm pretty happy with myself, except for two issues that surfaced while I was prepping the car to drive it home:

1: While idling for the 10 minutes to refill the coolant tank my idle dipped down to almost nothing (~200rpms) once, gave it a little gas before it died and after it revved down it stuck at about 400-500 (where it had been idling before I even started any work). Is a dip like this normal for the ECU re-learning the fuel mappings? Is it normal that on my way home it idled at about 4-500 RPMs? (steady as a rock, but I didn't think these engines idled that low). It idled the same in neutral or in gear.

2: There is a distinct (read: loud) ticking coming from the front of both valve covers that corresponds to RPM. I didn't listen very closely to the engine before I started tearing it down which is stupid, I know, so I don't know if this is an old issue or something I did during the TB replacement. My instinct says it's lifters ticking, and has something to do with the fact that until 200 miles ago when I got the car it was on 10k mile old dino oil. Should a seafoam fix the ticking, or is it indicative or major problems? Are there things that can cause ticking other than the lifters? It doesn't sound like it's doing any damage, but the sound is pronounced and I can see a film of the old *BLEEP*ty oil in the crank case when I remove the oil cap. How big of a deal are ticking lifters, and how long do they take to do damage? I've only driven it the 150 miles here from when I picked it up and the 2 miles to and from the auto parts store, so I can't give any real detail on behavior. I want to be as cautious as possible. Is there any chance I screwed something up that would cause such a rhythmic ticking?

Issues that the tb/wp did fix: squealing idlers/tensioners, worn belts, stuck thermostat, bad plugs and wires, bad water pump, leaking coolant

I was afraid to rev the engine over 2krpms on the 1 mile drive home due to the ticking, but it seemed smooth. I couldn't hear anything from inside the vehicle, but the ticking certainly needs to be addressed.

Anyone with any questions about a DIY timing belt/water pump change, lemme know. I had difficulties in pretty much any area there was difficulty to be had.

Thanks for any help, all! (I really just want people to assuade me that I haven't messed up my car more than anything)

edit: i've been searching about the ticking issue and it appears to be harmless, but it just sounds so BAD. is it odd that it would appear so distinctly after a tb replacement? could it be that I just didn't notice with all the bearing noise I was hearing? I'm still worried about it, after the engine cools down I'll do some comparisons on sounds between hot/cold and idle/rev.

mine was doing the same thing. I'm in the middle of working on it so I can't say if it fixed it or not, but the thermostat I removed was definitely hosed.

the above posters seem to be correct.

nope, there are two screws equidistant from the center of the cam pulley and are lined up so that it can be flipped 180 degrees. the spokes of the cam pulley are smooth except for the two rotor screwholes, the only "grooves" i noticed are on the outside lip of the cam pulley itself, and the inside lip of the distributor housing, both are timing notches.

it's gotta be the groove on the distributor housing, there's no other reason for it to exist, and the rotor doesn't point exactly to the cam pulley groove if I flip it around, it's off by about 45 degrees. (blade can be at either 9 or 3 o'clock, cam pulley notch at 1 o'clock and dist. notch at 9 o'clock for the right cam).

If I can get a confirmation then perhaps we can have the LexLS guide amended. Also, it states that the drive belt RH idler uses an 8mm hex socket, it is a 10mm.

The o-rings were already clean, they came out looking new. I cleaned the o-ring grooves on the metal pieces with shop towels, they wiped clean. there was no corrosion or anything on the metal. the o-rings were still pliable and soft, and no one in town had them in stock. they have gaskets, but no o-rings. If this takes another 5 days to complete my girlfriend is leaving me, she's already incredibly *BLEEP*ed. I'm almost fully put back together so at this point so I'm going to have to pray.

My concern with the distributors was that they weren't flipped 180 degrees, I just wanted to confirm that the blade should be pointing to the notch in the distributor housing, and not towards the notch in the cam pulley as is stated on LexLS.

The LexLS guide says to align the protrusion (i assume he means blade) on the rotor to the timing notch on the camshaft pulley, however I seem to recall it being aligned to the notch on the distributor housing, which makes a lot more sense to me as they bolt on and point to the notch on the dist. housing perfectly when the engine is at TDC. I just wanted to make sure before I fouled my timing. There are two screws, so it wouldn't be able to rotate freely anyways, it's steadily fixed to the cam pulley, but can be flipped 180 degrees.

thanks, i'll make sure to get to a mechanic who can torque it down for me. how important is it to replace the o-rings on the water filler housing and water inlet? I inspected them and they looked NEW, so I cleaned up the grooves and reused them. new o-ring didn't come with water pump. That's the only x-factor thus far, and i'm a little worried about it, but I don't want to wait another 4-5 days for shipping for an o-ring to get my car back.

distributor rotors- is the blade supposed to to pointing towards the notch in the distributor housing? I could swear that that's how mine were before I removed them, but the pic for step #11 at LexLS has them backwards, with the blade 180 degrees from the dist. housing notch. huh, odd. any thoughts?

crankshaft pulley- I used the harmonic balancer pulley removal kit I rented to get it off, but it doesn't have the correct size bolts for reinstallation. I fit the pulley back onto the crank by hand and it seemed to go on all the way with minimal effort, I reinstalled the crank pulley bolt and torqued it down to ~150ft/lb (as high as my torque wrench goes, I will have a shop torque it down for me after I finish to full spec.). Can this cause any problems with the pulley not being seated right? it appears to line up just fine with the drive belt, and appears to be fully seated.

I've already got the distributor rotors and caps back on, just need to reinstall the drive belt, ignition wires, fan clutch and engine covers, then i'm done! HUZZAH!

yeah, in the LexLS tutorials you'll see directions for removing the engine covers, the caps/rotors are at the top/front of the engine and can be accessed without removing any belts or pulleys.

if they are original, they're toast. i noticed when I pulled them out that the tips of my 130k rotors had almost completely oxidized, i'm surprised they could pass a spark.