Busy Busy, but not With the Project...

My Dad and I have basically been working on the truck every Friday as long as the weathers good and neither of us have plans. Over vacation we worked at the beginning but towards the end was Thanksgiving so I was away in Rhode Island. Then this week the clutch Finally came in but Friday's weather didn't cooperate. Hopefully next week everything will be on our side and we can install our new clutch kit and maybe even drop the engine into the pickup and start hooking everything up. It's hard because December is such a hectic month for me with a new after school job, college applications to write, COMPS to work on, a giving day gift to create, AND a senior project. I'll get through it though and once all the other stuff is out of the way I'll have lots of free time to fix my truck.

I guess its time to start fixing the plow too, then once its running I can test how well it does, especially since the snow finally seems like its ready to stay for a while. 

Two Day Shipping!

I was extremely impressed with Rockauto.com's shipping. I ordered the clutch kit on Monday and it was supposed to arrive on Wednesday afternoon but because of the weather it didn't reach our house until Thursday, but three day standard delivery is still fantastic. With my experience of ordering parts online most websites it takes around 6-12 days for your parts to arrive so this was a nice change.

I'm definitely planning on buying most of my truck parts on Rockauto because they seem to have almost everything I need and at some of the cheapest prices I can find. Once the truck is running I'll be buying new exhaust system and new filters, spark plugs, fluids, and all that good stuff to have the engine breathing healthily; all of which will be bought online.

Is a New Clutch Worth It?

This blog branches off of my last one from Thanksgiving Break and its a brief conversation that my Dad and I had about the clutch in my truck. After we replaced the pilot bearing we decided to take a closer look at our clutch and pressure plate, at first we had the intention of reusing it because it looked like it was good enough and to save money we could just reuse it till it breaks. With that mindset my Dad showed me how to get all the surface rust off of the contact points and explained to me how a clutch works. As we were doing all this we came to the realization that brand new clutches for these Toyota's are damn cheap. For most vehicles if your clutch goes you can expect a big $300 dent in your wallet, but for this truck its a mere third of the price. While the engine is out might as well make it easier for down the road and just replace it now.

I went home and started doing my research on websites like rockauto.com and partgeek.com, scrolling through different brands and prices of clutch kits. I was about to settle on a Luk kit because it was only 80 bucks and the company has had some good parts in the past including being used in the earlier Corvettes. Then I decided to double check on the forums and I read "with clutches you get what you pay for", I also ran into some people saying their Luk clutches didn't quite line up right. That lead me to decide on my favorite brand for Toyota Pickup parts, Aisin. Aisin is one of the most well known suppliers of OEM parts and their clutch was $30 more (Aisin CKT049) and had great reviews from everyone I asked online. 

Even though spending extra money is usually bad, I'm glad my Dad and I decided to take a few extra minutes to look over the clutch and decided to just get a new one cause not only will it save us from replacing it anytime soon, the truck will also shift and drive a lot better once the engines in.

Thanksgiving Setbacks

The plan for Thanksgiving break was to have the engine in the truck right after school on Friday then throughout the week work on connecting all the cables, hoses, and wires back into the truck. That isn't exactly what ended up happening.

Friday after school I headed up to my Uncle Bryan's place where my Dad had been working on the engine for the past hour or so. Right when I pulled in I looked over and saw them both lowering the engine into the truck and rushed over to see how it was going. All seemed well and the mounts lines up for some reason it just didn't want to line up with the transmission. After playing around with it for over an hour we finally called it quits for the day and decided we'd meet up again tomorrow and keep trying.

 The next day was the same thing, we tried for nearly three hours to align the engine but it just wasn't working, eventually we got tired of the cold outdoors and having to crawl under the Pickup so we blew up its tires and pulled it into the garage with the tractor. Once we had it up on the lift it was a LOT easier to see what was going on but we still had no clue why it was going in so terribly. An hour later we finally looked at the top of the engine and noticed an inch wide gap, assuming something was in the way we just hooked the whole engine onto a ceiling mounted pulley and tugged it out once more.

Heating up the problem

There was the culprit, one of the dowels used to align the engine into the transmission snapped off of the previous motor that we had taken out. We quickly fired up the blow torch, heated up the dowel and pounded it out with a fancy air powered hammer that I had never even heard of before. Once that was out we realized that we didn't replace the pilot bearing (which is supposed to be replaced every time you change an engine.) and with that we decided to keep the engine out until we replace that. Also after a further examination of the clutch we decided that it would be fine to just keep using, but while we have the whole thing apart might as well just replace it since its a slim $80 for a whole kit.

Now all we have to do is wait for FedEx to drop off my package and we'll be ready to give my little red pickup a new heart. Even though we wasted a few hours of time at least we're correcting ourselves now and doing the job the right way.

Cleaning off the surface on the flywheel with a wire wheel

My Library

My first book came in right before Thanksgiving break, Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I'm excited to read it because its a story to reflect on and gain knowledge about mechanics as an art. My other physical resource, Haynes Repair Manual for 1979-1994 Toyota Pickups & 4 Runners, which will be super handy to have because sometimes the internet doesn't have a tutorial on exactly what I'm trying to do, so this book should have instructions to help me make progress on fixing the engine, suspension, brakes, and all other components of the pickup. We should be ordering it today and hopefully it'll arrive next week!

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