What it cost me to own a $500 car part 17

"StudyStudyStudy" (jesterjin) 05/06/2015 at 14:00 • Filed to: 240z, project car

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Onto the parts acquisition. As mentioned before several times, I was an idiot in planning out my car, especially in the room to grow area. That meant quite a bit of rethink/revisits to a couple aspects namely the fuel. Being EFI and turbo that meant I needed a high pressure fuel system and a higher pressure and volume flowing pump along with a rising rate fuel pressure regulator. Along with all that I needed to purchase parts that weren’t included with the motor as well as other bits and pieces that never made it to being installed.

Parts list:

R154 Transmission

Shifter

Intake manifold

Coil packs

High pressure fuel line

New fuel hardline

New fuel pump

Rising rate fuel pressure regulator

Intercooler

ECU

Pipes

Steel

A lot of time was spent looking for setups and parts and reading about install and boy it was another couple of weeks of 100+ tabs open before I started work on the engine.

So why the 7mgte? Well after I decided on the swap I had a few requirements. I wanted a turbo/preferably factory, I wanted twin cams, I wanted the exhaust to exit on the passenger side, and I wanted something I could get parts for, the long list kind of quickly resolved itself and it was down to a 2jz or a 7mgte. I went with the 7mgte from a 1989 supra. For those unfamiliar it is the predecessor of the venerable 2jz. From newest to oldest, 2jz, 1jz, 7mgte. Tavarish actually ran a great article on the merits of the engine.

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At 3.0 liters it was bigger displacement, came stock with a turbo, and had the advanced properties of a twin cam. This also meant a cross flow design which would orient the exhaust away from the clutch and brake reservoirs. The engine is known for making 400 pretty easily with a metal head gasket and arp studs.

Downfall was the very weakly torqued head bolts led to failures headgasket failures.

On my particular motor it had supposedly less then 40k miles, had ARP studs and an MLS gasket so I was off to a good start, the unfortunate part was that it was spray painted bright yellow which was flaking off and it had been left exposed to the elements with the spark plugs out and missing the wiring harness ECU coil pack, and igniter.

I was under the impression the owner was quite good with cars and I asked if he would install the setup into my car given that it already had mounts etc for a bit of extra cash. He said he didn’t want the liability nor did he really have the time, but he did have space I could use to finish the install which we could negotiate for. I said if I could move my tools in and close my storage I would be more than happy to pay him rent/help out in any way I could. Onto motor stuff.

So compression tests. With general compression tests you have two methods, wet and dry. A dry compression test involves cranking the motor over with out the spark connected to get an accurate measurement of both piston and head condition. If a chamber reads low you can add oil through the spark plug hole and read again, the oil seals the piston ring and thus isolates the leak to the head. If it tests fine then the leak is a likely result of the bottom end. If it tests low then it is most likely the head.

Wet compression went fine, dry compression yielded a low reading cylinder. Along with the shoddy paint and an admission of maybe not torqueing the studs to the correct specs that meant removal of the head.

Closed off the important holes, and prepped it for a thurough clean. Cleaned out the oil/water mixture from the cylinders and made sure there was no gouging on the cylinder wall. No scarring indicated maybe the oil/crud mixture was preventing the rings from seating nicely. So all of that was wiped clean and the engine manually cycled a bit. If the compression is low I’ll have to come back and address it with some new piston rings.

A couple hours with a wire brush and the wire wheel attachment on a drill and voila much cleaner

Having learned my lesson with the oil leak on the old motor, I went for a high heat silver this time around.

The head went back on with a thurough cleaning and inspection.

TDC was determined and the bolts and cam towers went in the correct order according to the FSM with a torque wrench at each step.

I even mounted the intake manifold I picked up to rid myself of the cross over manifold.

(I know very blinding, it won’t stay that way for long)

Lessons learned:

Strangers can be nice.

Some people have strange choices in color scheme.

Having a job and being able to spend money on car parts is fun.

Having said job cut into the amount of time you can work on car is not as fun.

Costs:

1000 - engine + arp studs + 2x head gaskets + random bits and pieces

800 - transmission

100 - intercooler

100 - intercooler pipe kit

100 - bosch 92 fuel pump

80 - AEM RRFPR

420 - intake manifold

150 - fan shroud

100 - 3/8 hardline and earl’s fittings

100 - 6 AN lines to connect hardline to tank and hardline to fuel rail.

Subtotal: 2950

Total spent: 16235

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Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > StudyStudyStudy 05/06/2015 at 15:12

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Did you ever consider building a 3.1L stroker motor? E88 head on a 280z block, with the right pistons, and rods you get 3.1 liters of displacement and 12:1 compression. Probably cheaper than a fuel injected turbo. We built one for my dads race car, seat of the pants is 350 hp and it’s has been incredibly reliable. I tried restoring my own Z a number of years ago and said fuck-it when I discovered how much rust it really had.

MonkeePuzzle > StudyStudyStudy 05/06/2015 at 15:44

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non-painted and greasy finger marked valve cover, nice :D

but wait, didn’t you say lesson learned in a past installment was to not paint an engine, and her we see the engine block being painted

StudyStudyStudy > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 05/06/2015 at 17:44

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I actually did for a while, so I could tell you pretty conclusively that it is way more expensive to get it running right at least when I wanted to put it together.

Budget build wise:

L28 block bored out

LD28 crank polished, balanced honed

L24 rods

KA24DE pistons

E31 head (more quench area)

Even though I had the rods, head and the block, the machine work for the head was going to be almost 1k to replace the bronze seats, open it up a bit, and a generic rebuild. The block was going to be another 1k or more especially if I wanted a bore guide. LD28 cranks were going for nearly 1k as well. All in all it would have cost a good 5k to build the motor, then you have the problem with the transmission not wanting to take that much power, nor the clutch, add all that into it and you are at 7k before you even find a way to get fuel to the motor. The L design also has a fault with cylinder # 5 on prolonged use application, not hard to fix, and not a deal breaker, but a nuisance that needs to be addressed. Overall not worth it. With a factory turbo engine all you need for more power is bigger injectors and a bigger turbo, way easier to hit that power level.

I think it was a combination of the internet catching up to the little tricks, but the individual parts to build the stroker motor went through the roof. There were stories of people getting it done for ~3k, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore.

I bet it was a great motor for your dads car though.

StudyStudyStudy > MonkeePuzzle 05/06/2015 at 17:46

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Not to paint the block black is the key. I painted this one silver :).

A good paint job can stave off rust problems and it can also provide a nice surface for any leaks to flow down so it doesn’t collect on the motor itself if you have them.

I learned my lesson about the valve cover last time, those were spares until the nicer ones were finished.

Pearson Hurst > StudyStudyStudy 05/06/2015 at 23:21

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Just went back and read this series from the beginning. Very entertaining. Great job on the writeup AND the project. Looking forward to seeing more.

StudyStudyStudy > Pearson Hurst 05/06/2015 at 23:25

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Thanks, it really is nice to read comments like that.

Unfortunately we are catching up to current day real quick. Hopefully some more adventures planned down the line :).

ciscokidinsf > StudyStudyStudy 05/07/2015 at 03:27

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Lucky you found a working 7mgte - the head gasket on the Cressidas with this engine were under-torqued from the factory. They usually (sometimes fatally) fail about 100K-150K (I dare you to find a 90-92 cressida in CL above 160K miles - very few)

The other problem was that the head gaskets blew taking the engine down with them. This engine commonly failed (from a warped head to, dead cylinders, to holes in the engine block) when the gasket blew up.

I had just bought one (a 1992) the summer of 2011 as a daily driver, found one with 140K miles, with “extensive service paperwork”, etc… and yes, I KNEW that the first thing to do was to re-torque the gasket. I read the Supra forums. But the car blew the head gasket right away on the 2nd day of ownership. Undaunted, I bought a head gasket kit and got ready to fix then…

We found the head was warped from the gasket issue, so it would need rework. Too much $$ – Went to local pick-n-pull, who had 3 Cressidas (90-92) and 2 Supras with the same 7M engine, 4 of them with a blown gasket, All cars below 125K miles. Bodies were straight. – One ‘looked’ clean, so we bought the block, but upon arrival at garage and further inspection, we saw that it also had blown up, 4th cylinder was dead. – New engine (or used one) would’ve taken another $1300 in parts & labor – Last, my mechanic noticed that the block had gauges where the cylinder blew up. – Spending $1,800 in total for all , so the junkyard buys it for $350? Priceless.

All in all, probably the WORST Toyota engine to buy used because its a hard gamble to win. They do feel great when all is sorted, etc… but I would INSIST to ask the owner if the car had a new gasket installed during ownership, if answer=no, run, run away.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > StudyStudyStudy 09/02/2015 at 18:12

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Oh I see its not the original engine. I have matching numbers and it came with about 80k on the motor, we rebuilt it with better modern parts anyhow.