Stef's 7A-FE Rebuild, up and running since 12/16/07 Options

[hurley97]

So obviously my oil problem is only getting worse, I decided it's finally time to do something about it.

so I went and picked up Defgeph's old 7A...
177,000 miles and was begining to use some oil before he swapped and it sat in the garage for 2 years.
but since I was getting it for free from a friend I decided to pick it up and hope for the best...



so I picked it up Fri (8/24) and the next day it came with me to work (I work at a Toyota dealer) where they unloaded it into the brake lathe room and it stayed hidden for a while. this past Saturday (9/8) me and one of the techs began tearing it apart. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is actually in incredibly good condition for its age...

I will be spending close to $500 in parts replacing every bearing, seal, gasket, etc that we can think of. What I need from you guys are your suggestions as to what I can do to make this motor a little stronger and better flowing. I'm keeping the stock pistons and considering bigger cams and having the head machined.

We work for about an hour each morning before customers start coming in. Between Sat, Mon, and Tues (today) we have everything pretty much apart (except for the valves since I haven't decided to send them to the machinist with the head or not yet). This is a huge learning process for me and happy to have the oppotunity to do it. I'll add more pics and info so maybe some of you can learn some things too.

This post has been edited by hurley97: Mar 6, 2008 - 9:09 PM

[hurley97]

GETTING CLOSE!! just putting little things back on now, there are a few things I'm going to transfer over from the motor that is in my car right now (i.e. fuel rail, alternator, power steering pump, and a few other small things)

we test fitted the turbo exhaust manifold the other day, it does need to be shaved down a little to clear the alternator bracket. I also brought my turbo into work that day to see how it sat, we did end up having to re-set the orientation of the turbo but now its perfectly the way I want it.



So now what you've all been waiting for, what I've been waiting for anyway, its pretty much done...
Peter (the tech thats helping me with this) painted the valve cover, put the water pump and timing belt on for me the other day when I was late. Today we changed the distributor O-ring, put the valve cover on (with the help of a little FIPG in the sharp corners), spark plugs in, distributor, plug wires back on, put all the EGR stuff back on, cleaned up the IAC (which was stuck btw) and throttle body and put those back on, little things like that.... and heres how she sits right now.....






I know there are a few things on the back we didn't clean but thats ok, nobody is going to see them, except you guys...




So I'm pretty happy with all this, I'm excited to get this motor in. I almost want to re-think the whole waiting until 200k miles and just give in and do it at 195k.... hmmm