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LEXUS 1UZ-FE Engine Swap My blood sweat and tears. It will be worth it!!

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  #16  
Unread 03-13-2010, 11:38 PM
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Truck was doing great until the transmission stuck in 4th gear. Time for a teardown! Transmission comes out in 15 minutes but I found it to be low on oil... not cool! I'm scouring the web contacting people for used transmissions so I'll have one pretty quick. One of the gears seized up on the main shaft so I'm screwed for now.



And in other news my good buddy neighbor was installing a new ARB Locker in a friends rear end. Pretty damn nice and $$$$$.

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  #17  
Unread 03-24-2010, 10:35 PM
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Ok so since that transmission is history I went out and picked up another transmission on Saturday that is in great shape. Now people wonder why I haven't sourced a stronger transmission, well this is the reason. I've already explained that this W59 transmission is made for 4wd truck torque and the other reason is that I can find a used one in great shape for just a few hundred bucks. It would cost me another 2 grand if I went ahead and bought a different type of transmission and built another adapter or bought some existing bell housing to adapt it. Yeah so this W59 is working just fine thank you!

Here is my collection of W59 transmissions, bellhousings and transfer cases:
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  #18  
Unread 03-24-2010, 10:41 PM
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In case you missed it here is a short video of my truck just spinning the tires on a wet road. I made this video specifically to get record of what the transmission would sound like while spinning up. It doesn't sound good and I could never relax while driving this thing down the road. The noise was unnerving nevertheless, I still flogged it raw.

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I AGREE


Needless to say one day while out driving around in the country I couldn't shift out of fourth gear. So I just drove back and parked it and yanked it out as you have seen earlier in this thread. Ok so I might be repeating my story again but just making the point. Now I have a fresh transmission and everything is back on schedule.
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  #19  
Unread 03-24-2010, 10:49 PM
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I had some problems with the engine side of the bellhousing being true which led me to slap it back down on my mill to straighten things out. But first I wanted to have a look at the pilot shaft surface for any hints of what's going on.

Pilot shaft mug shot:


This isn't so bad as I thought. There is obviously some premature wear going on here considering that I haven't gone 150 miles since firing up my new engine. The color shows us that there is too much heat and since faded from the engine side back on the bearing surface I came to believe that it was a surface alignment problem and NOT an alignment problem with the holes around the bellhousing. I KNOW those holes are correctly placed in the CAD program so the only variable left is the welding of the bellhousing when I removed a section from it to shorten it. I went through great pains to get the housing milled super flat and the sections braced properly before welding them together. Time to check for variances in the surface of the engine side of the bellhousing. For reference here is the pilot shaft of the newer transmission that I just picked up. The rust is a non-issue as I easily removed that from the surface before assembly. The shaft is shiny and uniform without signs of discoloration from heat.

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  #20  
Unread 03-24-2010, 11:02 PM
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Placing the bell housing on the mill table I simply adjusted the head down just enough to skim the surface of the housing as I turned the housing using the endmill as a gauge for any changes in surface height. I used a new 2 flute endmill so that I could "draw" 2 lines while dragging it across the surface as I rotated the bellhousing (BH from now one if you please). Of course the endmill would only etch lines in the surface if the surface rose up from the lowspot that I gauged around the edge of the BH. The surface never rose up more than enough to make a scratch in the surface as in the picture so it really wasn't as bad as I had imagined. But still enough to be of concern as tiny adjustments at this point make a big difference.



This is some pretty crazy stuff and it all takes an extremely long time and a lot of knowledge to get this stuff exact. This is the reason I recommend that people wanting this type of power just buy a Toyota Tundra as they can be found for a really good price with a factory V8 that runs perfectly and will run perfectly for years. If Tundras weren't so expensive when I first started building my custom suspension for this truck I would have started with one of those from the beginning. But back then they were expensive so I began building my truck and since I'm never getting rid of it I went ahead with this new engine. If you are considering trying to make an adapter like this I highly recommend you do not. This takes an insane amount of time and effort.
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  #21  
Unread 03-24-2010, 11:23 PM
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OK on with the show. While it was high noon I wanted to make sure and get under the truck and check things out with a fine-toothed comb to make sure there wasn't anything else going on under there. And it was a damn good thing I did. On top of being anal and just wanting every bolt painted nice and clean this also serves another purpose. As you can see here the bolt head was being rubbed by the BH! This is a GREAT find. So obviously besides the housing surface being a tiny bit out of true this adapter bolt it interfering with the mating surface between the two. If I hadn't painted the bolt heads this would have been VERY hard to see. I probably would have found this problem anyway but this is why I have every single thing super clean and easy to see and work on. It makes it a hell of a lot easier to spot problems, find leaks and stuff.



This was a welcome sight. If feels good to actually find something that you are confident in as being the source of the problem at hand. I test fit everything before assembling so I don't know how I missed this calculation. And since it's way up at the top of the adapter you can't really see it if you don't stick your head up there. And the times I was taking the transmission in and out was in a darker garage and in a big hurry to get it together to test out. And being that they paint is fairly thick it probably took a while for the paint to wear threw. Anyhow I'm just glad I didn't do a bonehead move and assemble the whole thing without inspecting it thoroughly.
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  #22  
Unread 03-24-2010, 11:31 PM
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Not the best picture but you can see the exhaust going around the steering shaft and also how convenient the v-band coupler is. I can just pop the band off of each side and have enough room to remove the transmission pretty easily.



Today was a very long day and I probably lost 5 pounds just working as fast as I could all day to get this issue taken care of. I spent an hour cleaning the new w59 transmission as well. It was a dirtball but my degreaser and then some acid wire wheel cleaner really shined it up to a bright new looking aluminum. It was good to finally get the bellhousing / adapter combination totally finished with a newer transmission to boot. And did it work? Well of course! I was very relieved to start the V8 Tacoma up again and drive it down the street. As soon as I shifted in gear and drove away I knew it was fixed right this time. Revving it up and heading up the road going through the gears SILENTLY really felt good and boy does this thing move. Since the Flowmaster is a smaller model it's really quiet for now but it's great to only hear the engine revving up and not the transmission going crazy.
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  #23  
Unread 04-02-2010, 01:46 AM
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The transmission is working perfectly still so now is the time to build the crossmember which holds the transmission in place and at the now higher position. Tonight me and a buddy just finished up making a boxed crossmember for the transmission to sit on. Now that the mounts are all really strong it feels even more solid and I can't wait to try it out in the morning.

The gravedigger shift working in our only spare hours... midnight!


A hole here... another one there...
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