cas5259

Part 2: Removed and replaced RMS...much better. Now to install pistons. Start gapping rings. Slide them in and use a piston to make sure they are sitting even in the bore. Then slide a feeler gauge in the gap. Repeat a lot. Load pistons with rings. Follow manual for gap locations, side clearance, and piston size specs. There are 5 rings total. Note bottom oil ring end sits in notch on piston side. Clean all bores until the rag comes up clean. Confirm no debris, then lightly oil cylinder walls and the wrist pin holes on both rod and piston. Confirm ring gaps are in the right position. Apply piston ring compressor. Leave some skirt gap to get able to get it to line up. My compressor is utter crap, but worked with some curse words. Set #1 to BDC. Oil wrist pin, install piston (tap it down gently, it should go in easy unless its not centered), line up wrist pin holes and insert wrist pin. Repeat. Make sure dots are towards front and the pistons go back in the same hole (there are A and B pistons with very slightly different sizes). Insert wrist pin circlip. Confirm it is fully seated. There, done! Turn crank to ensure it is smooth. Insert access hole bolts and seal up the covers. Get it back on the stand. Install baffle, oil pickup, pan, oil/water pumps, ect. Install new head gaskets - make sure they are facing the right way. Coat head bolts with clean oil, then follow ridiculous procedure for torque spec. Install timing belt and everything else! Drop it in and get everything else attached. Fill with fluids, turn crank by hand/starter a few times (with fuel pump fuse and spark plugs removed) to get oil circulating. Install spark plugs, insert fuel pump fuse and start her up! After a slight adjustment of the throttle and cruise control cables, it runs like new!

'06 Baja SOHC. Just an error on my part. I must have moved the nuts by accident at some point.

Found the cruise control cable holding the throttle way open. Must have checked the throttle and not cruise. She purrs!

Finally got the engine finished up yesterday and when it started, the revs went right up to 2500. I adjusted the throttle cable with little to no effect. Good news is that it was running smooth. I let it go to top off coolant and inspect for any leaks. A minute later, the engine speed starts jumping around between 1500 and 3000. It settled down and then the engine light came on: P0519. I erased it, and the revs started jumping again. No vacuum leaks I could see, and I never touched any of the sensors on the throttle body - IM came off in one piece. Every time I erased the code, it would jump around, then settle around 1500. I ran it this morning and wiggled the harnesses/vacuum lines but got the same thing, plus with 3 pending codes: "B2ERR - Body", "DAT -", and "P1900 - Powertrain". I've never heard of those. When its idling high, its smooth....but when the revs settle down into the 1500 range there is a small vibration. One irregular thing that happened during the rebuild process is the TC come off when pulling the engine, but I'm confident that I assembled and installed it correctly. Snapped the clip back into the shaft and got it installed to factory spec. When the engine was fully bolted up, I could turn the flex plate easily to get the bolt holes lined up. Other than that, it was business as usual. Any guesses to the root cause? I'll try and clean the IAC sensor tonight.

I started a low oil pressure thread a few months ago on an EJ253 from a Baja. All bearings were pitted/worn. Root cause was a head gasket failure resulting in an overheat that was likely driven for an extended period of time. Aftermarket head gaskets fixed the leak, but the bearing damage was already done. My guess is that they continued wearing over time until the dash light started coming on. Anyways, here's a summary of what it takes to rebuild an EJ short block. This is part 1, part 2 will come sometime this week. The key to assembling is cleanliness. Clean, and then clean some more until the rag/paper towel stays white. Be careful about debris getting on the bearing surfaces during final assembly. Being a former production engineer, I made an assembly cheat sheet with specs and procedure so I wouldn't be fumbling through all-data during the rebuild. I have a ground crank and am reusing everything except for bearings and piston rings so measurement is critical. If you're using new parts, then you can probably skip some of the measuring. Google Drive link to spec/assembly cheat sheet HERE Parts back from the machine shop. Crank ground and measured, oversize bearings, block/pistons/rods cleaned, heads decked. It was worth it to have the shop clean everything. Sorry for the non rotated, photobucket apparently sucks big time now. Clean the rod and cap surfaces and match them up. Clean/install bearings. Place a piece of plastigage across #1 bearing surface. Make sure the letters are lined up on the same side and the swoosh is facing forward. Bolt rod and cap together, torque to spec. Remove cap and measure oil clearance. Repeat for all rods. Clean plastigage off all surfaces. Apply assembly lube to bearings and reassemble like last time. Note how all the number side of the rods are matched and facing up when they are all pointed to the right. Check side gap. Clean/install main bearings. Note thrust bearing is on #5. Install crank on one half. Check thrust clearance Place a peice of plastigage across each main bearing. Drop other half on Torque bolts to spec - its a rather involved process outlined in the assembly attachment. Disassemble and measure oil clearance. Clean plastigage off all surfaces. Clean block mating surfaces. Apply assembly lube to main bearings on both halves and crank surfaces. Reinstall crank into left half of block. Install 4 o-rings. Apply RTV to other half. Be careful around the bearings. Drop RTV half onto the other half. Replace the metal/rubber washers on the bolts that go inside the water jacket, and apply RTV to bottom of washers. Oil all bolt threads and install/torque like before. You won't be able to get a torque wrench on the bolt inside the bell housing or the one inside the bottom part, so just go by feel. Install rear main seal. I messed up and drove it too far in, so that's where I stopped today. Will continue with part 2 once I pick up the new RMS.

Dropped the crank and rods off at the machine shop. They verified my measurements and said they could grind the crank and fit oversize bearings. They will also measure and recondition the rod ends if any are out of spec. Will now turn my focus to ordering all gaskets, fitting the torque converter, then cleaning up the pistons.

Got the block split and found Fel-Pro head gaskets. Looks like the originals blew at some point and were replaced. That explains why a Subaru engine with 150k had great compression and no signs of leakage. Light rear main leak Had no trouble knocking out the wrist pins from the other side With this Pistons out. Very dirty Good cross hatching though Block bolts And here are the bearings. Signs of water in the oil. Crank feels like a worn brake rotor in places. Crank surface Rod surface. Is that just carbon, or something worse? How would that get there? Next course of action is to take the crank and rods to a machine shop for measurement verification. May need a new/used crank and rods. Will get the torque converter seated correctly while waiting for parts to arrive.

Dang - wish I knew of, or thought of that at the time. Oh well, first time doing this much work on an EJ, mistakes will be made. I will order the front seal and read up on how to properly insert the TC with alldata.

Ok, I got the engine out this evening. All went well, except the torque converter came out with the engine, along with a bunch of ATF. All the flex plate bolts were out too, it was just stuck or whatever. I've done a little reading about the issue, but haven't been able to make much sense of turning it and such. Won't really have to worry about it for another few weeks anyways. First up was to make a rebuild bench and get some good light on it. Alright, here we go I found that removing the whole intake made it much easier to get at the flex plate bolts, plus it all comes off as mostly 1 piece with all the wires anyways. Flex plate access 4 hours later and its out! My electric ratchet was clutch in getting the lower engine bolts out. The whole torque converter came off, is this ok? At least it looks like the whole thing came off, compared to a few other pics I've seen. The input shaft is just 3 bare splines. ATF was dripping out of center of the TC and went everywhere except where there was cardboard already laid down. Should be able to get it fully disassembled next week.

Assuming the pistons (I will compression test before disassembly) and crank are fine, and all I need are bearings + maybe rod re-sizing, what should I be looking at for total cost? I wouldn't mind getting the block hot tanked just to be sure that all oil passages are clear and to save some time cleaning gasket material off the thing. Adding in a full gasket kit, is <$500 a reasonable target? One more question about foreign object debris. I will be rebuilding this over the course of a few weeks in a plain old garage and no FOD controls. Will a plastic sheet over everything suffice? Should I be worried about putting oil on parts to keep them from accumulating moisture and avoid pitting?

Talked with a local machine shop about rebuilding the short block....$1200 +/- a few hundred with a 2-3 week turnaround time. The interesting thing is that they only charge $300 for the assembly, the rest being parts and some machine work. Does that sound right? That doesn't include a full gasket kit or head bolts either, which would put it at $1500.

The first step will be to remove/disassemble the engine and confirm route cause. Thanks, I will check the cams and journals. The heads didn't have abnormal noises coming from them so I'm hoping they're fine and its just the main bearings.

My only holdup about a used engine is the unknown history and how long its been sitting. I'd rather have the piece of mind and either rebuild it myself or find a re-manufactured short block and swap the heads onto it with new gaskets all around. Does the short block have to have EJ253 stamped on it? From what I've seen, all 2.5's look the same.

Things started out good, then went south. 70psi cold start up, then fell down to 10psi as the engine warmed up - double what it was before. When fully warm, it dropped to 7psi. Still ok, so I installed the regular sender and went for a drive. After 20 minutes, the dash light started flickering when stopped. It goes off at 1000 rpm. F&%K!

Received the 11mm pump kit yesterday, thanks for the link. Got a new pickup tube and o-ring from the dealer and cleaned up the pan/block/pump surfaces last night so I'm ready to go for tomorrow. Hopefully this is the fix!