Toysrme

I think it's a great idea tho. Take it to the state & pay your fee for them inspecting it.

Ouch! I flipped the protege backwards off a 20' cliff & T boned someone that ran a stop sign in the rolla, but that's nothing to being hit head on~! Just the widest part on the front? That'd be between the middle of the wheel arches. I'll get it when I get home with some squares, tho I have to question even when trying to be accurate - how accurate it will be. (That's the closest way I see of doing it that can be reproduced.) So what happened? Bad repair<s>, or a party claiming no damage? Got any pics?

Only things similar are going to be 300z's, 3000gt's, the last two gen supras, turbo buicks. What are you shady on? We can fix that! ;)

Ditto LoL!

jragosta You've missed a few things because you either didn't know them, or didn't know there is a bigger picture than you are looking at. It's no big deal.

1) I have never posted anything that I haven't personally done myself to verify that it works. Believe it or not - when I say something, I'm not full of *BLEEP*. When I'm guessing, don't know something, or don't have first hand experience with it - unlike most people I SAY IT up front. 2) For the second time, maximum line pressure IS NOT INCREASED by making a throttle cable adjustment. The (Again) The only time your transmission is going to fail in relation to a TV adjustment is when you are substituting the FACTORY ADJUSTMENT for a VALVE BODY / CLUTCH / PUMP UPGRADE. If you're trying to hold more power than the transmission clutches can handle VIA the TV adjustment - You will fail! It's stupid in the first part. It's already proven that even with a full out VB upgrade & dual coolers, the transmissions clutches simply can't keep the stock clutches pushed in hard enough -> quickly enough. Trying to substitute the adjustment for a rebuild is moronic. 3) The longer the clutch, band & brake material in the transmission work the hotter they get, AND the more work they are subject to. This doesn't work the other way around. At any case, transmission life is increased slightly (Tho I don't think enough to justify saying hey, you'll get an extra 10,000 miles out of it) because they not only operate at a slightly lower temperature, but they don't work as long all the time. This has been an extremely common adjustment to make not just on this transmission, but on nearly every transmission from the 70's through the mid 90's before they went 100% electronic by actually monitoring line pressure. On top of all that, our transmission has a very weak adjustment range to begin with. Unlike some transmissions built closely to the maximum power output it can handle, ours are not. On some transmissions, if you leave a TV, or vacuum modulator completely loose / off you'll grind the clutches to death because they're not being pushed in. This has proven to be not true in the case of the A540 family. I've found at least 10 people over the last 9-12 months having transmission issues where the TV cable was either way out of adjustment, or not connected at all. jragosta ask yourself... Did SK's transmission fail from an adjustment, or did it just fail? Ya know there are weak areas of these transmissions... Ask SK about his transmission failure & read the other threads at the time. After I bashed the FAQ from errors, he bashed everything I posted for a week. Ya know he was nagging the threads for an underlying reason LoL ;) This adjustment has been done too many times, by too many people, over way to long a time. If you're going to argue, PICK AN AREA YOU CAN WIN. An FYI, adjusting the TV is an area ya can't win. Arrrrrr LoL! Find a different one. :D

Guess I'll be the ginny pig. Like always... LoL! I'll put in some 5w-20 Mobile 1 synthetic *if* I can find it anywhere. I've seen 5w-30, 10W-30 & 10w-40, but haven't noticed 5w-20 at wal-mart. Shouldn't matter AFA leaks go. The front main seal is the only gasket I haven't replaced in the last year, or two. All my bearings are in great condition so... 5w-20 oughta be fun with the remote filter, aux. oil cooler. I wanna go dual filters this winter when I get back around to playing with a new turbo.

Poor you. Jesus ice you're almost as good at taking heads off as I am at this point LoL! Save yourself time on this engine. Start off by bringing some feeler gauges & a machinist quality straight edge home from work & check them for warpage. Victor's Nitroseals are avalible for a 3vz-fe. They're going to be the strongest non custom Copper/MLS gasket you can get. $50 a gasket. Graphite on steel w' Teflon on the flanges so they can slide a bit with the heads.

So this morning the machinist called me to tell me I could come hang out & do some work with their tools. Needless to say, I was a kid in the candy store! After a 15 min dip in a sonic wave parts washer, then getting blasting them with ground walnut shells!?, I took them & checked them with their machinists straight edge & some feeler gauges. The spec for going from one corner to another is 0.0039". (IDK what other specs are.) The rear head by the coolant passages where it blew the first time I replaced it (IDK where when Lexus did the work before I got the car, but I'm fairly sure that's where) was 0.002" warped front to back 0.006" warped in an X across to the opposite corner @ 0.005" warped going across the block. The front head was much better. After cleaning the gunk it wound up being a lot flatter than it looked like 0.0015" in an X & 0.0018 across in the worse parts!!! LoL! The edge where the coolant line blew on #4 was actually flat. The set of feelers I had didn't have under a 0.0015" so I couldn't read it. Anywho. It was sooooo much fun. I applied for a job after lapping my valves! LoL! That would be a fun place to work through school. When Lexus replaced the HG's under warranty years before I got the car. I thought it was odd taking them off the first time that there were no marks at all on the heads. It really sunk in after I cleaned them the first time. It's impossible to scrape, or brush gasket material off without leaving some amount of marks. I went back looking at old pics from the first time I worked on it... There's not a single mark then either! Not only did the god damned NOT machine the head flat, they apparently didn't even clean/scrape the *BLEEP*ing heads before putting them back on! *BLEEP* Lexus. For the amount of time I've spent solving multiple *BLEEP* ups from their end, I could have gone twin turbos + supercharger & rebuild the engine with forged pistons by now LoL! Oh well. Maybe good will come out of it & I'll be both a mechanic, and a machinist. =) I didn't take a digidigitdigdigitsdiggingdigitaldignifydignitydogiedgdiggingsdigitalsdigitizedigsiidoing cam, but they had a huge methanol+n2onononnornotnowknownonenoteMOknownknowsnotesenoughnobodynormal GM 572ci v8vivNVRVTVUVWVkVmV from a dragster torn apart. The custom Titanium rods in were unbelievable!!! I'll try to get some camera phone shots of it whenever I go pick the heads up if I can borrow one. They're all so nice, but they didn't want me to take pics. They do lots of NHRA & SCCA stuff - I guess that's why.

;) It's cool. See the head gasket thread, but in short. Lexus f'ed up when they didn't mill the warped head true when they did a warranty head gasket recall. I hate dealers. Calling them money grubbing pr¡cks would be a compliment. It's like you have to have a batchelors of !Removed!-hole to run at least 1/2 of the f'ing places...

M.R.M. 914lps I haven't used WI in months. See the thread I made with pictures of the latest head gaskets blowing up. The #2/#6 are normal, while #4 is completely clean. That's what WI looks like. jragosta You have no, without a shadow of a doubt, Earthly idea what you're talking about. Ice blew a set of head gaskets & had electrical problems months back & replaced/fixed them only to find the bearings weres siezed up from the associated oiling problems. Bought a JDM engine & swapped it on after much difficulty. Now it's having problems.That's how I remember it from talking to him. New oil doesn't cause bearing damage after thousands of miles of crap for lubrication. It's the other way around - the thousands of miles of crap causes the damage. Compouned by the fact after thousands of miles with poor running conditions, including water contamination, his rear head gasket blew - letting oil & coolant mix which sent it over the top. Bearings die from: 1) Severe overheating after no/too little lubrication oil 2) Old oil is corrosive & doesn't lubricate well. 3) Spin / shatter after the power produced exceeds what the bearing bolts / studs can hold down. "Gritty" oil will score bearings, but the scoring itself doesn't kill the bearing - low flow from low oil / clogged oil ports causes them to fail. It's a sign that there has been, or is damaging occuring. The problem<s> need to be fixed & the bearings replaced. In any case, you don't have to use it in your oil, tho it's a great idea. Be it Seafoam, Kerosene, or a light weight oil. I've been looking into the crevasses of my '93 3vz-fe for a good while now. Tho no passages had any build-up. Some walls had more gunk on them than I like to see, but otherwise great condition. If I had a later engine I'd be all over oil cleaning. Again, tho I don't think there is any critical underlying problem with the 97-02 1mz-fe's - I would still find a way to average cleaning the system a few times over a few years just to make sure no damage is incurred from build-up. Tho I'll outright say Seafoam will clean combustion chamber & the like as good as anything else - if not better than the majority. It seems to clean the fuel system well. It also seems to cleans everywhere oil goes as well as anything else you can grab. If you're so worried, spend your $50-$100 on Auto-RX kits that take months to complete. Otherwise I'll take 2* $5 cans of Seafoam you can do in 20 min whenever you want & have better, or in the worse case the same results. When you get down to the bottom of it you have to do something with both carbon build-up & at least a semi-regular basis for fuel cleaning. Oil for many engines falls under doing anything is better than the *BLEEP* that eventually ubilds up in them. The problem with both carbon build-up & the oil system is that many of these engines build-up stuff at a much higher rate than many people normally account for. It goes back to the old man & the rifle. The rifle stays in the kitchen & he shoots it every day, but never tears it apart to clean it. Yet the rifle is in immaculate mechanical condition! That's because every time he walks back inside with the gun he takes his cleaning rod & makes a single pass down the barrel. It's only 90% the same as out right cleaning it, but it's far more than good enough.

It was crack. 3vz-fe.

2vz-fe's aint so hard to find. Talk to some salvage yards, or JDM importers.

The valve cover needs to breath, or have vacuum, the intake side doesn't matter. Put a vacuum gauge on the manifold. Sounds like a vacuum leak.

What kind of clutch did you replace it with?

Werd. The only thing better than $5 fixes are sub $5 fixes LoL! Ya you can run without a thermostat. Werd on changing timing belts / water pumps on this type of stuff. Remember it could be worse. on the 3.0+ you have enough room for a wratchet to take the bolts partway off, then finish by hand! :(

It can be either. Depends entirely on how much oil they leak.

It's actually pretty easy. Simply process of elemination. Step one - what causes oily smoke out the tail-pipe? Oil burning inside the engine (Combustion chamber - see the link to howstuff works to see how an engine works :D) How does oil get into the combustion chamber? In our case there's really only 3 easy causes. 1) blown head gasket 2) leaks past rings 3) leaks past valve stem seals 1) If you blow a head gasket it's not really a question of if the head gasket is blown. It's an obvious problem that can go from no symptom one split second, to a hugely obvious problem a few seconds later! (2000-2500*F+ jest of exhaust, hitting a head gasket many times a second cuts extremely quickly. Causing a pinhole to become a big hole in seconds) Count #1 out. Head Gakset problems just do not fit the profile. 2) Yes, your rings could be just starting to let oil from the bottom of the engine slip by the piston into the combustion chamber. Altho this could be the problem, I don't think it's likely for several reasons. When a set of rings on a piston starts to leak. The problems associated with bad rings goes from little to "Hey I'm pretty sure I got a problem" over a relatively short period of time. Now I'm stepping out on a limb assuming some things. (Which I don't like assuming, but hey... Welcome to the real world LoL!) You didn't wake up one day & notice a puff of smoke for a few seconds. Then freaked out & went searching for answers. More likely it's been a problem for a while & you finally got tired of it. Assuming that... If a set of rings were going bad - they'd be bad by now & you'd be pumping blue smoke all the time out of the exhaust & maybe running poorly / roughly. Your original description is also "good enough" to troubleshoot. If it had been getting worse (important information) - you would have told us that in the first place. That only leaves #3. Valve stem seals. They: *Cause little - to no measureable oil loss. *Oil leaks / pools into the combustion chamber, or on the intake valves - both leading to the combustion chamber *Cause smoke when the engine begins to run from pooling oil - but isn't enough oil leaking & burning to cause smoke all the time (once the engine warms up & runs faster any oil leaking & burning isn't enough to notice). Not only do valve stem seals fit the problem, but they're the only cause left on a fairly short list. ;) Like I said on the other post, having a compression check, or cylinder leak-down test done on the engine will tell you how it's doing & problem areas. For example: here's a compression test done on a different Toyota v6. Cylinder # - compression read in psi (left side) 2 - 120 4 - 135 6 - 140 (Right side) 1 - 150 3 - 30 5 - 145 Now the specification from Toyota is a minium of 142psi, normal is 178psi & there should not be more than 14psi difference between any of them. Obviously #3 isn't holding anything while #1 & #5 right beside #3 are. #3's head gasket is blown & #1 & #5 head gaskets are probably leaking some. (Possibly head-gasket, or warped head/block, or old rings that are some-what leaking) Also the other half of the engine is struggling. Another possibly blown head gasket, or severe ring wear, possibly valve seating, or timing problems (but not as likely). We know it needs new head gaskets & we're fairly sure there could be some minor ring blow-by (Hey it's an old engine... Stuff wears over time.). We also know one more thing! It's an old engine & the valves may not be seating to the head fully - creating a smaller leak. So while the engine is apart we do a basic valve job to make sure they are not leaking also! So without ever seeing this engine, it's pretty obvious what the main problem is blown head gaskets, possibly warped, or cracked heads/block, possible ring problems, possible age related valve problems.

I didn't mean swap the engine yourself!!! Right now I can only think of one woman I would trust could do an engine swap herself. Hi babe~! Like the guys were saying in the start of the post, it's probably your valve stem seals because you only get some smoke when the engine cranks. When valve stem seals go bad, you just get a few drips of oil here & there. Just enough so that when you stop the engine & turn it back on you'll see smoke. (The leak itself is so slow you don't get any smoke while the engine is running normally.) ******************** Skip this if you want. In a nut shell, here's what we say your problem is. If you need to know a really down to earth explanation of how the engine works. http://auto.howstuffworks.com/engine.htm Is awsome. The flash animations say everything 4-7th grade science does, 'cept you won't sleep through it & it takes a few min to glance through at most! LoL! What happens is oil flows up to the top half of the engine to lubricate moving parts. (In our case the camshafts & related valve equipment.) Look how everything in my front head had the pretty golden tint to it. That's from oil. Now on the underside of that is where the good stuff takes place. It's the top part of the combustion chamber & houses the valves that let air in & exhaust out. (You can see the 4 valves per cylinder) Here's a cleaned valve. Take the valves out & you see the hole<s> they fit into. Obviously, those holes have to run from the top side to the bottom side. Here is where the problem lies. On the one hand, you've got steel valves going up & down in a metal hole. Metal rubbing metal is very bad! To fix that you let oil fall into the hole to lubricate everything. The bad news is that now that oil is flowing through holes you have to seal it so oil doesn't leak out. That's what valve stem seals are for! They are just little metal caps with a rubber ring to seal the oil from dripping out. Those 4 nasty looking holes from before. You slip a stem seal over it then put the valve in. So what's the big deal? What happens when oil drips by? It falls directly on the valve into the combustion area where it burns up with the gas & you get a smokey engine & some oil loss. (normally bearly measureable) ******************** With the mechanic quoting so much for a rebuild, I'm pretty sure he's saying let's take the whole thing apart. I honestly don't trust the quote either way he means it. 1) Because of the symptoms you gave us & previous common experience tells us that another possible cause - piston rings - are not likely your problem. (Which ya, I can see 4 grand for rebuilding an engine bottom to top. That's in line.) 2) If he's saying $4000 to replace the valve stem seals I don't think that's right. Even if he did things like general maintenance items & then did repair work far above what "the book" tells you to do - You'd be paying over $3000 labor charges of your $4000 spent just for him to do a few hours of work & keep your car! Neither of those reasons mean that he (or anyone else) is right or wrong. I's just why I don't trust it. Now if the mechanic did compression, or leak-down tests on the cylinders & it showed the rings were leaking. That's fine - we're off to the races tearing the engine into itty-bitty-pieces! My other point was that if it were me & I was staring over $3000 worth of engine work in the face. I simply wouldn't do it. Instead of rebuilding it, I would buy a lower mileage engine coming out of Japan - have it shipped to an honest mechanic (or at least a good one!) - and have them swap the engines. It would be much cheaper even after doing all possible maintenance on it, and checking it after it's been installed! Ebay search 3vzfe Ebay search 3vz-fe Obviously you don't want to buy one that looks broken! Anywho, before anything get's done in the future, I would get a compression test, or a leak-down test done. (Get them to write down the numbers too!) That way you know exactly what & where the problem is & you know exactly about what the cost is going to be before a mechanic can see your car. I like you, you're smart. You've done everything exactly like you should. 1) Narrow down the problem<s> 2) Find the cause<s> 3) With the information learned, use it to fix the problem<s> in the most fitting way.

Get a compression check, or a leak-down test done to see if you have a blown head gasket. If a HG is shot, either buy a used JDM 3vz-fe off ebay to drop in it (If you have emotions you'll need to swap the EGr system over - no big deal). Or rebuild it. Check that the block & heads are flat (Machinists level & feeler gauges. No more than 0.003" from side to side in straight, and crossways. If they're not, go to a machinist. Head repair services normally only run $50-75 a head. When you buy new head gaskets. Victor Nitroseals - graphite/steel (Napa/Car Quest) are the strongest available without custom multi-layer steel, or copper head gaskets.

It wouldn't be a second thought to me. If you're that worried about it buy some 0, or 10 weight oil & idle it for 10-15 min. & if you're really anal take the oil pan off & see how much is built up on the pan & oil screen / pick-up.

Good call on not believing the cold weather stuff. $4000 to rebuild it, no way LoL! Forget that. If it's valve stem seals, the need to fix them is very, very low. If it's piston rings, that's actually important, but you can still drive it into the ground before they get changed b/c the whole thing has to be torn apart at that point. You can by low mileage JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) 3vz-fe's for like $600-900usd. Freight shipping normally only runs $100-150 (175 MAX & they better box it pretty!) for something the size/weight of an engine to go cross-country if the shipper is being fairly honest. You oughta be able to get a low mileage JDM engine swapped in for $2000. Including any tune-up parts on the engine depending what it needs. No better time to replace every dumb belt & plugs & clean the innards than while it's out of the car! If it comes down to a serious engine rebuild.I would drive the sob into the ground & simply buy a new (used) JDM engine when it get's on it's last leg. (If you have emotions testing, they'll have to swap the EGR system from your old engine to the JDM one, but that's very minor work. If you don't have emessions testing forget I just said that.)

Recheck the thermostat, check that the pump is pumping, check for blockage, check pressure cap<s>. The pumps don't leak unless their gasket is damaged. If you don't stay on top of coolant changes, it's pretty common for water pump impellers to corrode away (regardless of make). My guess is that barring the thermostat is faulty / installed incorrectly, the pump may be damaged. A side note Stop playing with the adjustments until you fix it. Put the car in Diagnostic mode & set the timing @ 10*btdc. You can overheat an engine by incorrect ignition timing fairly easily without pinging. We can all flash back to the time I advanced my distributor till it sounded good & later found out after it started running like !Removed! that it was 40*btdc base timing LoL! & don't play with the air-flow meter bypass, the throttle body screw, or the coolant sensor either. The ECU sets it's own idle speed. It'll run whatever it should be running.

You're not only in the diesel engine section, but you're also skipping over, "for best results" in the deisel section. For gas engine's it doesn't bother the service interval. Neither does Trans-Tune.

No. You're only cleaning the oil system when you flush the oil. Just like you're only cleaning the fuel system when you do fuel additives, or you're only cleaning the combustion chamber when you put something down the intake. The main difference would be that AFA the oil cleaning flush, seafoam you just pour it in & go about your biz. Using a light weight oil, or adding kerosene / desil to new oil to flush, you: drain the old oil Put in what you're flushing with Let the engine idle for 10-15 min - NO LONGER drain oil again pour in another quart or two to try to get sedimants out of the pan then add your fresh oil & go about your biz. Seafoam is like a $50 kit of Auto-RX, but you can do almost as good, or just as good with 2 $5 cans.