Old Cars

Toyota Tundra Pickup Odometer

Iowa man took this photo when he changed the oil on his pick-em-up truck. He also sent me a link to the Top Speed article about the Tundra engine - the 4.7-Liter 2UZ-FE.

Our Mitsubishi Endeavor recently hit the 200,000 mile mark, and my Hyundai is over 150,000.

Giovanni's

Tundra Repair

My gang gets together for lunch every Tuesday. Today we were going to Giovanni's but IAman makes an excuse for not coming:

I’m busy with Tundra coils-over-shocks.  Can’t do lunch today.

You all are welcome to come over and commiserate with me. 

Again it was easy, except for the one inaccessible nut, that finally gave into a nut splitter.

Woodmate's Mr. Grip

Woodmate's Mr. Grip

Iaman brought me a sample of this stuff. He swears by it. He was working on his truck and the screw that secured the grounding strap to the A/C compressor stripped its hole. He peeled off a couple of threads of the Mr. Grip stuff, stuffed them in the hole and that was enough to secure the screw.

Tundra Water Pump

Iaman reports:

My Tundra water pump replacement lasted 8,000 miles then mysteriously supernaturally started dripping coolant. Where from, I could not tell....till this weekend I spent Saturday going through the 75 steps to replace the pump again.
I was relieved to find it wasn't my fault, but an excessive flow through the weep hole of fluid meant to cool the water pump shaft bearing.
I have two dark bruises on my chest from leaning over the hood catch all day Saturday...
The weep "hole" is funny, there is a channel but the "hole" is the gasket thickness between pump housing and engine block.

Outside. Arrow points to weep hole. Note rib leading from weep hole to bearing.

Inside of water pump. Weep hole is at lower left.

The arrows in these pics show the weep hole in the defective pump.
Otherwise the pump and gasket look/feel fine.

This shows the leakage crud as was deposited behind the Timing belt idler pullley (removed). That is why I could not see where it was leaking fully assembled.

Water Pump Cross Section

Water pump bearings are sealed. There should be no coolant going through them. None. Any cooling should be done by the circulating coolant. Weep holes are a hold over from the good old days when the seal was a separate item. I am not sure, but I think they were there to indicate the seal had failed and to prevent coolant from getting into the bearing and washing away the grease and so causing the bearing to fail. So if you were alert enough to notice coolant leaking from the weep hole, you could pull the water pump and replace the seal and save the bearing which might prolong the life of the pump for a while.

Aftermarket auto parts are a bit of a crap shoot. New car dealers charge exorbitant amounts for replacement parts, so shade tree mechanics will go for the cheaper versions available from the corner auto parts store. Rebuilding common components like water pumps and alternators can be done in a small shop and usually means replacing some relatively inexpensive parts like bearings, so there is a huge margin available. But some of these rebuilding shops turn out shoddy products, products that might last as long as the warranty, which doesn't bother these guys much, because the car will likely be sold before it fails, and the new owner will replace the failed part again, which means more business for rebuilding shop. But then China got into the act and they started building new replacement parts and selling them for the cost of ones rebuilt in America, which I suspect caused the quality of replacement parts to go up in most places. Except maybe in Texas.

Tundra Timing Belt Replacement

Iaman reports on a maintenance project:

All the stuff in front of the timing belt

Toyota 2UZ-FE engine, I'm replacing timing & serpentine belts and water pump after 175,000 miles, looks like they could have gone another 90,000.  The red coolant has kept inside of motor water channels sparkling clean. (Dealer and manual say belt is good for 90,000.) I'm doing this cause I have a place to work, my landlord's Jeep in case I need parts and dealer wanted $1000+. Parts were $200.  Shop time 3.5 hours,  my time 3.5 days.

Immediate issues:

• rounded off screw in ac compressor (need extractor),
• think I heard the tinkle of a nut falling into frame
• remembering reassembly process 30+ steps.)

Removing the crankshaft pulley

Belts, idlers, water pump installed. Oil changed. 3 days. Tested good. Yay!

I am impressed with the overbuilding in the Toyota engine. I am curious about the development cost of engines/drive train vs the rest of a automobile

Lingering issues,

• replacement screw for the rounded off screw (impatience) came out by fingers after drilling off the head, go figure
• Serpentine belt idler has a a squeak warming up for a couple minutes
• Waiting for new serpentine belt to come in, Amazon sent wrong one, reinstalled old one which looks OK.
• The specs call for the crankshaft pulley bolt to be torques to 225lbs!?! Why? It merely keeps the crank serpentine pulley on.

More importantly I have a shallow aluminum hole in the truck air compressor buried deep that I stripped the threads out of, tried many fixes short of special engineered helicoil, next thing large shallow screw involving 1/2 hour trip to hardware store where I left my magnetic screw starter last night when I was looking for the proper size bolt.

Update:

• After 24 hours I drove back to hardware store and miraculously there in the parking lot, my lost magnetic-screw-starter and a missing screw.
• I found the missing nut indeed in the frame using magnetic wand, this could have easily been avoided by stuffing rags in tactical positions
• I have checked and rechecked the crankshaft bolt, tugging on it for all I'm worth.  Getting it off was easy, bumping the starter with a the bolt held by breaker bar, yet the web is full of stories of people trying to hold the pulley while yanking on the bolt to loosen.
• similarly researching CV replacement, many sites have step that include disassembly of caliper and rotor, when they can merely be swung out of the way....and on my water-pump replacement more than one site had the unnecessary step of removing ac compressor.

Relative to replacing water-pump, changing the oil was a pure joy, instead of a dreaded task! Funny how that works.