Lauren's 1985 Kouki Trueno

[Lauren]

Wednesday (leap year day) was spent with a late night drive over to a good friend of ours to pick up a complete 4AGE and a short engine. I also got some cam covers thrown in!

It was a late night, but I was ready to continue again on the Thursday




Have a word! Look what the previous person did to the oil drain!



My head and cams on the table:


1.5 4AGE's! Incidentally the full engine had not been run for about 6 years!


Engine crane, engines and Indy:


Finally after much wiggling, it really was a royal PITA to separate the block from the gearbox.



An empty engine bay!

[Lauren]

Friday saw the preparation of the engine to go in.

My engine has HKS cams and the correct inlet manifold still attached so seeing as I had already bought a Toyota head gasket and head bolts, it made perfect sense to use the 7 rib bottom end off the complete engine and bolt my head and ancillaries to it.

The short engine was a three rib block. Also the complete engine had known to be a good runner and had seen some trackdays 6 or 7 years ago!


Me looking busy:


LOL, we made a poncho for Tom out of the hundreds of metres of spare fabric Mark had lying around:



4AGE blocks everywhere:



7 rib bottom end that's going in:



View from the top of the stairs by the office area:


Here's the problem!


The ring had gone and the ringland had gone with it with a hole in the piston.



We found a fair few bits in the sump. :shocked:

We gave the 7 rib a look over. It looks fine to be fair. We changed the sump for the one of my engine as it was pretty rusty and mine was mint.

[Lauren]

This is what happened on the Saturday.

Have to say a massive thanks to all who came to the bearding party and a huge thanks for all your help. Thanks, Alex, John, Steve, Lee, Tom and Mark of course. I could not believe the speed it went back together!

Sump and flywheel on:


Clutch on and aligned by eye(!)





As the block came out of a friend's MR2 we had to put bolts in where they had never been before for the AE86 engine mounts. Mark had to modify a bolt and use it as a tap. PITA but we got there in the end. This sort of thing is typical of what happens when messing about with 20+ year old parts!


First attempt at putting the block in:


Then the cavalry arrived in the shape of Steve and Lee and well, we found out that the bellhousing cover plate was catching on the banjo on the steering rack for the power steering so it was out with the grinder to modify it slightly as it was the one thing stopping the engine mating up to the bell housing.



Inspection of Mark's grinding. Was it enough? Not quite so more grinding required!


Steve and Lee help lower the block in and line it up. with 6 of us it became a lot easier!



The pic from above. Love it that John's legs are poking out from underneath:


Steve's arm poking up from underneath. Steve enjoyed some love from Indy whilst he was under there, getting various orifices cleaned!



Mark cleans up the head face in prep for putting it on:



Guess which cylinder had the problem!


Bearding:


Alex, Mark and I put the head on:


Bearding at it's best:



Me putting the cams in:


Mark putting the first (or was it the second?) ninety degree turn to finish torquing the head:



John tightens the bolts for the cams (HKS cams back in):



Indy in the driving seat:


Cam covers are just resting on at the moment to keep the dust out. This was close of play at 9pm on Saturday night:

[Lauren]

And then there was Sunday. I had the whole week off previously but was due back in the next day.

Still a fair bit to do this morning:


Mark filing the dowels that had rusted themselves into the oil pump.


More filing of the other dowel that had done the same:


Exhaust manifold on:


Tom checking TDC with a vernier:


Me underneath, turning the crank so Tom can find TDC and set a timing mark:


Everything in it's place:






And the car is gone!


After we got it going I took it for the obligatory fairly sideways test drive. It passed!



Overall it didn't go too bad today. We had some issues with the block as it had been standing for around 5 years and there were a few rusted threads and the like, which just slowed things down a little.


Had to laugh though as when we turned it over for a compression test and to give the oil a chance to circulate, fuel sprayed everywhere from the feed to the cold start injector! Then second try and I realised that I hadn't connected the return pipe for the fuel. Then there was the unconnected coolant pipes! Eventually we got there. Timing was one tooth out on the dizzy but we sorted that and timed it up properly with our new toy, a timing gun.

It's fab to have the car on the road again and it drove very well back from Macclesfield to home.

I'd like to say a massive thanks to all who helped and came to the bearding party and a big thanks to Garrick for the engines and the engine crane.

[Lauren]

A week later and the car is running great. I've had no issues, apart from knocking the idle speed down a bit as it was a bit high at 1500rpm.

The car feels perky like it hasn't for a long time. Given the damage to the piston we wonder if it had been caused over a period of time.

I'm so happy to have the car back on the road and not to have to drive a 1.3 Yaris anymore.

This engine change is really meant to be a quick fix so I can get back on the road. I'm not sure about the GZE anymore. The problem is I've done all the GZE stuff years ago with my old AW11s. I really fancy building a nmice fast road 4AGE. I've got a decent bottom end I can get overbored, though it has already been bored to 0.5mm, so I would be looking at non Toyota pistons. We shall see.

[robokill]

hey lauren, with a good rebuild engine and some headwork + cams you can easily get 170 crank hp from a bigport.

Off course tuning the GZE's is much easier due to the standard higher output and much more torque.

Given the fact you know have a spare engine I'd say go for it. Though you will never make as much torque out of a 4age.

[Lauren]

Hi Robokill.

I would say that if I built up a 4AGE I would get a small port head to go with my late spec bottom end I now have lying around. The small port head is way better than the bigport and I can use my cams (or at least one of them, as would likely upgrade the exhaust to a 264).

I ran two modified supercharged MR2s going back ten years ago, so I know all about them, but I have my doubts that such an engine would suit the AE86. Also the less power I have the more likely I'll hang onto my driving licence!

[RT]

Nice work!

[corolla4agze]

you did have smallport bottom or at least smallport 4ag block. those have that oil plug on plug and it come from head.

[Lauren]

Okay block stipped. Not very exciting pics I'm afraid.

There is a little bit of scoring on some of the shells, we're guessing due to the bits of metal floating around the sump.



Other three pistons removed:


The bare block. Note oil drain:





The idea is, that the block can go off for cleaning and machining work and I can get the ball rolling.