Carlos Who? My ST185 GrpA GT-Four Rally car

Well, sadly as far as I know the car didn't Christine herself back to health during the week so time to get into myself I guess. First steps get the bonnet off & get the car up on some axle stands.

​​​​​​​Water to Air intercooler drained & removed

​​​​​​​Water to Air intercooler drained & removed

I'm not going to bore you with every step, but the Air intake, Alt, shock tower bracing, coil, Fuel lines, gearbox linkage, clutch line, & a heap of vacuum lines & electrical connectors all get removed or unplugged.

Then I went under the car, first step was to pull the front drive shafts out.. I didn't have a socket to fit over the hub nut, it's a 30mm nut but you need a deep socket & the majority of my tools are imperial for obvious reasons.. so a quick dash to the tool shop was needed.  

Then disconnect the steering arm from the front & unbolt the hub from the coilover, this allows you to pull the hub down & at just enough of an angle to let you slide the axle shaft out of the hub. Then you just yank on the shaft like you're in a shake weight advert & it will make a noise that you inner child will once to laugh at when it finally pops out of the gearbox

Had a fresh start Sunday morning & got that exhaust undone without any additional damage to the nut & bolt... always good to start out with a win, no matter how small. 

The next mini nightmare was the wiring... the manual says to unplug the ECU under the dash & to pull the wiring through into the engine bay via this neat little hole & then remove the engine with the wiring attached...

Nice idea, but this car has had a second piggy back Motec ECU wired in & the connection plug & additional wiring for that make the loom too big to fit thru that hole on the firewall, so short of unpinning the Motec connector or cutting the wiring with the death wheel on the angle grinder (I did briefly smile at this thought) I was going to have to take the wiring off the engine

Why was this an issue, because in Toyota's wisdom the wiring passes through some of the dumbest & tightest places of the engine, I lost a lot of blood & some of my mind getting this all off without breaking anything.. I had to remove the throttle body in the end as the wiring passed under it tucked super tightly against the curve of the intake in a hard plastic cover that made it a nightmare to get out 

After an appropriate amount of time picturing what I'd do to the Toyota engineer who dreamt this up if I ever got the chance & generally questioning my life choices I ended up with all the wiring now off the engine & in a big messy pile on the side of the engine bay... reinstalling this is of course future Dave's problem & feck am I'm glad I'm not him...

There was a lot of swearing for the next hour & not a lot of pictures taken but man for car from the dry state of Western Australia some many of the nuts & bolts where rusted & seized on.. I was only just able to get the pipe fitting for the gearbox oil cooler off without damaging anything, the hard line for the clutch sadly left this mortal coil, the power steering pump bolts where so hard to get too & torqued to... well all the torques I guess that I almost took to the power steering lines with the death wheel.. but they finally came undone. Then the engine crane was attached so I could test the tensile strength of everything I'd missed in operation disconnect everything from the engine   

Also the lead technical advisor I'd brought in had lied on his CV clearly... I no longer believe he worked for TTE in the early 90's & he refused to get under the car due to his floof being an attractant for oils & other fluids he said

I knew more bits would have to come off to get the great big lump out of the car but I waned to take off as little as possible but some stuff was obvious, like the turbo & manifold setup... bugger me is this a heavy lump

Both engine mounts & brackets came off as did the rear output housing of the transfer case

Went out tonight to clean up the mess... I collected all the nuts & bolts & put them all back in their homes on the car or the engine. When I remove them again I'll bag & tag them correctly, I went through everything including the parts pile of removed bits removed & I know where everything goes... well except for one small bolt, buggered if I can remember where this part goes, so I've already improved om Toyota engineers work by adding lightness in the removal of this clearly unnecessary bolt from the car.

Put the wheels back on the car & dropped her back to the ground, I tossed around the idea of putting the bonnet back on but in the end settled for just resting it on the roof for now. It's safe enough there. It's a lot easier to push the car around now that I've removed what's probably close to half a ton from the front... there's your tech tip for the day. 

I drained the oil out & it didn't look too bad there was only the tiniest hint of sliver to it, it you weren't looking for it you probably wouldn't have noticed it. I then removed the filter & got my opener out to see what was in the filter. 

Even looking at the filter it doesn't look like its covered in metal, there is some glitter there for sure but I'm starting to think it's not catastrophic inside this engine... maybe, hopefully, fingers crossed etc...

I used my magnetic wand to pull all the metal fragments out of the filter & I'm thinking that this really looks like it's all bearing material... if I've only destroyed bearings maybe scored the crank a little then I'll call this a win 

I didn't have the right size bolts to mount the engine to the engine stand & my local hardware shop didn't have them in stock either... so sadly that ended play tonight, I would have loved to pull the engine down tonight but now that will have to wait. I'm busy the next two nights so I think it'll be Friday evening at the earliest that I can get this engine stripped down to see just how bad the damage is.

Feel free to start a betting pool as to just how fecked you think it is.... 

Right lets get into the engine tear down... first step was to remove the intake, this then allows access to the weird TVS or TVIS as I've seen it labelled elsewhere, this variable airflow system is to help with torque at low RPM I believe

Looks to be stock cams in the head & looks like no porting has been done, so there is scope here for some gains during the rebuild.

Can't get the distributor off yet as the screws are ugga dugga'd all the way on & I've bend my torx but trying to undo them. They will have a date with a small nut & the welder at some point.

I'll spare you all the pics I took during the teardown, it all went to plan other than needing a quick dash to the tool store to get a set of male spline sockets so I could undo the head bolts as I've never needed to remove this style of fastener before

The cams look fine, they have a little wear but I suspect that they are the originals & as such have 201K on them, the buckets in the head look fine too but I suspect that all of this stuff will be upgraded for the rebuild 

I was happily surprised by how good the bores look with the head off, you can see that this was rebuilt not that long ago, you can still see the hash marks on the bores.. it looks like I got very lucky here & there is no bore scoring at all from the failure 

There was not a trace of bearing shell left in the number one big end... the inside of the rod is badly scared too, the crank journal I think can be saved with a light linish as it's not too bad when I drag my nail across it 

The big end bearing for rod number 2 was about sooooo close to failing, another few RPM run & it would have let go too

With the rods & pistons out a full inspection of the bores can be done & again I think I've dodged a bullet here & there is no real damage to be seen at all, the rods & pistons looks good quality & new but I'll probably look at replacing them all as I can't find any brand markings on them 

The main crank bearings are another tale of a super close call... I don't think you can get much closer to a bearing failure than this with it letting go, I was so lucky that this thing didn't seize up on me sending a rod out of the block 

My shiny new baffled sump turned up... it's a really nice piece of kit. You don't notice how angled the engine is in the car but this sump is setup so the bottom is flat when installed.

I can't remember now if I'd pointed out before that all of the suspension bushes are the original rubber items & are as you'd expect quiet worn. To that end I'd order a long list of bits out of the UK to rectify this. I'd ordered:

- Front Sway Bar End Links 
- Rear Anti-Rollbar links 
- Front Anti-Rollbar Bushes 27mm 
- Rear Anti-Rollbar Bushes 18mm 
- 3S-GTE Engine Mounts set - RED 
- Rear Subframe Bushes & Top Diff Mounts - RED 
- Celica Turbo 4WD Rear Diff Mount Cushion - RED 
- Celica ST185 Front Bushes - RED 
- Celica ST185  Suspension Bushes Kit Rear - RED

These look like nice bits of kit I have to say, I've just inspected the steering rack bushes & I think that whilst the engine & gearbox are out I'll order a new set to replace them also.... hopefully they make them in red too.

I've put the car back up on the hoist now, I plan to do all the rear suspension bits first.. but now that I'm looking at it, I'm wondering if I can actually get the back end up high enough on the hoist to be able to drop the whole rear subframe out in one go? I'll need to study this closely, I may actually be better off with the car on the ground jacked up on old school stands that gives me more room to slide the subframe out... guess we find out soon.

Sadly none of these parts where in labelled bags.. so a game also has to be played now to match them to the correct suspension part they fit, so are easy but others less so. Hopefully once the parts are off it will all be obvious. 

Spent some time this morning in the shed & this went smoother than I could have hoped, this is another one of those jobs that's really a 2 post hoist job & not a 4 post hoist job but with a little thought there is little to nothing you can't do on a 4 poster. I got the transmission jack out & slid that under the center of the diff cradle to take the weight 

Then just undo the 4 big nuts that hold the cradle to the car & gently lower the whole assembly down with the jack 

Lower it down till the bottom of the cradle is at the same height as the ramp of the hoist & then just slide it over so that the cradle is sitting on the ramp

Then just slide it off the ramp & onto the waiting table 

At least one of the bearings of the tail shaft has been rubbing & is worn so I'll send this off to a driveshaft shop & have it all replaced whilst it's out.

Next steps are to strip it all apart, clean & paint it & pop in the new bushes & then reassembly & reinstall.... this should be fun 

Next is operation press out the old bushes, I was again expecting this to be a big fight as it often is... again I was shocked how easily these came out, the spit stell shell design that Toyota used on these was genius for when it's time to pop them out, just a tiny bit of pressure & they pop right out.

I even just tried removing one with just a hammer hitting the metal sleeve & just that on it's own was enough to pop one out... mind blown. 

One of the bushes that held the diff crossmember in place was actually broken up, so that explains the clunk you often got when backing off the gas maybe... even if that wasn't what was making the noise it's unlikely that a broken wobbly bushing was a good thing.

The crossmember and frame are cleaned up now & ready to be painted & have the new bushes installed tomorrow.

Just the diff & all the arms to focus on tomorrow

I've cleaned the diff but I've decided not to paint it... because racecar & I think I'm at risk of making this a huge rebuild project if I don't just do some things to a "good enough for the girls we date level"

With the diff installed back in it's home its time to reinstall the whole frame back into the car

Then things took a shite turn, when pressing the old rubber bushes out of the lower control arms the arm slid off the socket that I was pressing the old bush out into & it bent the bar instantly ruining it..... bugger

I sat in the shed wallowing in the emotional phase of this problem whilst I finished my cup of tea... then I switch into the solutioning phase of the problem & got on the interwebs to source a solution to this. To be honest I'm mostly annoyed that I didn't get to finish the job this weekend which was really the goal. I hoping that the parts I've ordered turn up next week & I can get this end back on it's wheels next weekend.  

Started bolting stuff back on... thought I'd put the hub & the driveshaft back on first & then install the arms one at a time after measuring them up against the OE arms to try & get them close to right to start with.

Installing the front lower arm was a massive pain, the stock arm is held in with a camber adjustable bolt on the stock arm for adjustment. This new setup has semi spherical spacers & these nifty washers that fill the camber adjustment slots in so that the bar can't move anymore. 

After installing all the arms, I realised that it was a dumb idea to put the hub & driveshaft in first as they where just in my way 

For the other side I chose to fit the arms first, much faster to do it that way.

Now to focus on the front later in the week or on the weekend.

Started with the super simple bits, the sway bar rubbers where really shagged so definitely needed replacing 

There was no damage to the old steering rack rubbers, these new polly ones are just stiffer & remove movement from the mountings

There are 3 parts to the new front arm, the rear bracket that goes here

The front adjustable part of the arm that used to adjust the camber & has the 3 holes for the adjustability of the sway bar 

Then the rear adjustable arm that adjusts the castor angle   

I was super happy at how easily the old front arm unbolted & came off the car

Then I sat the old & new side by side so I could get the initial arm length adjustment as close as I could to how the car was set up