Hey guys, I decided to post my full rebuild. I don't post here much if at all. These forums were very helpful when rebuilding my car that and a Haynes manual, and Google and some experience from a friend who rebuilt his 5SFE allowed us to get this job done. My dad has worked on corvairs for a good part of his life and is very good with working on cars in general.
This car started off with 160k miles when I bought it. The previous owner was the first owner so I am the second owner of the car. A 5 speed manual kept in the garage so the paint was nice. A few scrapes on one side from the previous owner hitting things
But it ran great amazing gas mileage 25 mpg around town and 35-40 mph on the highway. It sipped oil lightly. I bought it initially for $2,000 I put money into the car for new tires and the harmonic balancer had to be fixed. My car was reliable on the road I broke down once and needed to get a new distributor and called it good.
The clutch life expectancy was 80,000 miles and it was the original clutch! It was starting to wear when we bought it and almost gone. At 165,000 miles it was getting bad and we sent it to the shop and spent $900 for the clutch job. Our mechanic showed us the old clutch disk. It was just beginning to dig into the fly wheel bolts as all the stuff had just burned off! He said had I driven it another 5 or 10 miles from when we sent it to the shop that thing would've started slipping like crazy and I couldn't have timed it better! I loved the new clutch made the car feel more real again. Everything was fine until 170,093 miles....
Back in June I had just received my private pilot certificate, and was on my way back from college in my Camry. I checked my fluids and oil which was pretty black and needed to be changed (it had been about 5,000 miles a little longer than I like ) all was good fueled up and began my 4 hour drive home... Not more than 50 miles in my car started losing power in 5th gear.... I was so excited to go home I forgot to glance at the temp gauge every once in a while like I always did. I still had not noticed at this point. However the car began to have poor acceleration then began to deaccelerate... I pulled it out of 5th gear and it just died on me.... I coasted off to the side of the road and started making phone calls and had the car towed back to college... When I stopped the car I turned back it back to the on position and saw the temp gauge was just below the red!!! How did I miss that !?!? I tried a quick crank and it didn't start obviously... I could hear the liquid coolant boiling too....
So I spent my whole day at the mechanics he said it was the radiator with corrosion in the lines since it was all original. Everything was replaced... He said it would be $350 and I would be on my way... Well they installed it and drove it around and it overheated on them... And he said they waited until it cooled drove it closer to the shop and did that repeatedly until they got back... Then they told me I had rod knock and I wouldn't be going home that day!!
I called my dad and we formed options... I'll skip the details and cut to the point. My best friend's dad offered to take my car back to home (in Austin) so me and my dad at least had the chance to see about fixing it.
My friend graciously came up the next day and we brought my car back on a U-Haul dolly. a long trip it was... All the way from Longview, TX Once we got back we weighed options. I only had 2 months until school and I had work and vacation plans. My dad did lots of research and decided we would rebuild the engine. We borrowed a cherry picker from our mechanic who had just bought a brand new one so he had his old one to lend to us. The plan was simple.
-Take out the engine
-Strip it down to the block completely
-Send it to a reputable shop for machining/cleaning
-Buy all parts that should be replaced (pumps, gaskets, hoses, etc.)
-Put it all back together and pray we did it right!
So we began disassembling the engine... I'll let the photos do the talking and I'll try to describe everything we did. If I missed something or you're uncertain about something feel free to ask!
So here we go...
I was very discouraged and in disbelief in the beginning. My dad initially did a lot of the work and prompted me to get off my butt and help. As I realized this was actually happening I became much more involved.
All that junk in the front was removed. Exhaust manifold alternator etc.
Something I plan to get done this Christmas just haven't had time... I need new hydraulic hood struts... I was very cautious but my dad wasn't and that 2 by 4 slipped a few times and now I have nice dents protruding from the hood...
As we went we were somewhat careful to mark wires...
We removed the trans-axles and every single thing we could think of and we found it was time to unbolt the engine mounts and excavate this thing.
Ready to hoist her up.
There she comes!
We were very slow in case we forgot anything... We did...
Among the mess we forgot the shift linkage and the fuel line... After a few tense moments I found out it was a simple matter of pulling out these pressure plates holding in the shift linkage and the fuel line... The clamps were illegit and we knew we were replacing it so we just cut it with a knife and kept on going.
Finally free! (That's my neighbor holding up the peace sign he helped us out a little bit. A third set of eyes really helps sometimes!)
A few photos of what a 17 year old transmission and engine assembly look like... All still in good working for the most part!
My car after having the engine/tranny assembly taken out.
After a lot of frustrating moments which by this point I have forgotten we got the transmission, intake manifold, wiring harness and crankshaft pulley taken off. Here we can see the timing belt assemblies. The DOHC camshaft drive gear the pulley tension idler, and the water pump, the normal idler, and the oil pump, and crankshaft gear down at the very bottom.
On this part we put in a new oil pump, water pump, idler pulleys, and we cleaned up the timing belt housing a little bit with some sanding priming and a coat of black paint to make it look nicer.
17 years will do this to a car... Lying beyond this we found the internal damage of the engine...
Removing the oil pan revealed neat stuff... There's that stupid balance shaft that is nothing but a paper weight... Note the crankshaft bearing shavings stuck to the oil pick up screen.
And here is 17 years of sludge and some metal shavings mixed in... The stuff in the oil pan smelled awful to say the least...
The oil pump is removed at this point, and the head cover was removed. We temporarily put on the oil pan to catch anything leaking down.
The transmission... Quite honestly it still looks as dirty as this... Standard transmissions last forever and work hard I am very grateful for that!
The evil wiring harness...
The engine block. Finally done this is what we sent off to the shop to have the cylinders bored out and rehoned, and the bearings reground and new pistons. The works.
By this point we inspected parts. We came to the conclusion the oil pump was weak. In addition to this we opened the balance shaft and founded the bearings were worn excessively my dad got cut by a few fine metal shavings off the bearings. Definitely bad. We personally believe the weak oil pump and the balance shaft going bad allowed all the oil pressure to leak out since at the end of the oil passages there is a big line that goes to the balance shaft before falling back down into the oil pan.
Physically we could feel the clearance created in the #1 connecting rod. It was bad... All the other ones had not yet suffered. Also another thing to note. When we knew we had rod knock we wanted to save the engine so we didn't run it at all after I got it off the U-haul dolly after arriving back home.
Me working on replacing the heater hoses under the hood...
So all was done on our end. We had sent the head, and block off to an engine shop that was recommended to us by a friend. It turned out to be a good choice. $1,000 we had ourselves some newly clearanced valve lifters a clean head and engine block and a rebuilt engine block good as new!
While the stuff was off at the shop I spent 10 days in California having a nice much needed vacation!
Me with all the junk out of my car as we get ready for reassembly...
My mom and brother wondering what the heck me and my dad have been doing in the 100 degree weather for the past month... A clean new engine that's what...
The bottom of the engine block. Nice and clean. Note the extra oil passage next to the bottom left bolt hole for the balance shaft. We spent a lot of time looking through TN forum posts about whether or not to remove the balance shaft... Well since ours was bad, our mechanic suggested we leave it out, people say you get horsepower gain and less risk of something failing in the most vulnerable part of the engine we decided not to leave it in and took it out. I must say this forum was very wishy washy about the topic and noone has clearly documented the balance shaft removal from the 5SFE so here you go a 1st hand experience!!
We wanted to tap the hole and put a bolt in... We decided not to since we did not want metal shavings in the oil passages by accident. Instead we used JB weld and my dad found a drill bit that was a perfect interference fit into the hole. So we put JB weld around it and used a mallot and hammered it flush in with the case.
Next we rigged our own little washer and bolted it on with a nut underneath torquing it really good.
It's said and done! No more balance shaft. We ran into another problem. The oil pick up is bolted onto the case in one spot, and the balance shaft in the other spot. We read some people just used the one bolt and left it hanging by the other. We didn't feel comfortable with that so we cut off part of the balance shaft that had that bolt hold and bolted it down so the oil pick up mount had something to bolt on to and that's what you're seeing here in these series of pictures.
There we are getting ready to seal it up and put the oil pan back on after making sure that those bolts were torqued properly.
Working late we got on the new oil pump, idler pulleys, water pump, and head gasket on preparing to put the head back on. I love how new it looks.
There were a lot of frustrating moments. The worst part was figuring out the intake manifold and the wiring harness with the fuel injectors all crammed right in there. We put on the intake thinking we could feed the injectors and wiring harness through... My dad was wrong... We had to take off the intake and put the wiring harness and fuel injectors on first then the intake manifold. The timing of the cams, and the timing belt were difficult I did all that my dad was impatient and not detailed to my taste and I'm glad I paid attention because had he done it alone my engine would be way out of time...
So here's some installation pictures sorry I skipped a bunch I just got excited about putting it back together and I was on a time line to get this done before going back to college so I was all work and no play...
Back on the cherry picker with everything put on as much as possible!
Ready to receive her new engine.
All stock camry here.
And in it goes...
That's all I have for the photos. Once we got the mounts in we started hooking everything up.
By the end of the day exhausted it was time to crank. I put the key in and turned it to start and nothing... My dad threw a wrench to the ground in frustration. Turns out I forgot the clutch. It took me just a second to remember.
It cranked and fuel began to feed and it sputtered to life!
It ran horribly... Very rich and kept dying. We adjusted the distributor to where it would run... It idled varying between 400 and 1,000 RPM. And if you revved it the RPMs dropped off so fast the computer couldn't catch it and it would die... I drove it around for a while to test it out and it went FAST!! We took it to the mechanic because we couldn't figure it out and we were tired of it after all that hard work. Turns out the vacuum line to the MAF had slipped off! It was as simple as that. Our mechanic also timed the distributor for the best time, and she ran great!
Not gonna lie once she warmed it idles at about 800 RPM it rattles a lot... Basically due to the balance shaft being removed. I have gotten use to it and it really is that bad. It gives it an old car feel and it idles smoothly despite the vibration. 1,000 RPM and above it's smoooooth no vibration at all!
Preliminary checks went good. We had to replace the seal on the left trans-axle it had a small leak. The car got fixed after I was off at college for a week. My dad drove it around to make sure it didn't have any more problems. I flew home to pick up my car... Anddd it decided to leak fuel.... We repeatedly fixed the fuel lines and clamps. Turns out an O-ring on the fuel injector decided to leak! So... Anyone who has worked on these engines knows that is not easy to get to...
Well $300 later and the mechanic changed the gasket and my car was good as new.
I don't have much else to say if you have any questions feel free to ask.
Things I learned
-Be patient
-Don't be afraid to double check your work even if it takes a little more time.
-The vacuum line system I only found a diagram under the trunk lid and we used that to figure it out. LOL
-I learned how my engine works PERIOD.
-It was fun.
When I drive it around now I always eye that temp gauge and make sure it never starts going up. With the new radiator and the fact that the engine is clean and new it runs a lot cooler. I get the same gas mileage as before. It has more power noticeably. My girlfriend likes my car better, and now I know every part of my car and I can most likely fix it if something breaks now that I understand it so much better.
If you made it this far on my topic you are a true TN Senior forum member and I wish I was as awesome as you guys! Thanks for reading and these forums helped put my car together.
Future projects
-Hood struts
-New seat belt for backseat (it's broken...)
-Air conditioning knobs.
-New heater valve (it broke when we were reinstalling it with the heater hoses...
-New car stereo speakers (I have a receiver I had installed by a friend, but the speakers are original. The new receiver improved the sound quality a lot but new speakers are in order sometime!
Thanks for reading guys.
Justin
I4 5-Speed Manual 115,500 miles acquired 01/21/2011 at 109,XXX miles
95 Camry
AUTO to MANUAL Swap Guide (3rd Gen) - 
Scamry
Linear Mode
