Since day one of our ownership of this particular 1NZFE powered Toyota IST the engine was a bit on louder side.
Previously all my other cars had timing belts and I put it down to simply being a “feature” of chain.
After more family and friends upgraded their cars to xNZFE, it was clear that this engine was slightly louder in chain department then the rest (especially in the mornings).
One day after coming back from a holiday I started the car only to be greeted by loud chain slapping noise.
OMG! My wife’s car turned into a Nissan!
I decided to exorcise the Nissan out of it by replacing the chain tensioner and guides.
Below is how I did it, not necessary the “correct” way. This process took about 6 hours, good chunk of it was spent on cleaning the surfaces.
It was pretty much like replacing timing belt, except with way more RTV.
Over all I replaced two oil pump O-rings, front crank seal, valve cover gasket, both chain guides and chain tensioner.
In retrospect I prefer timing belts as opposed to timing chains, especially considering that the tensioners still fail on chains occasionally.
Interesting notes:
- Old guides were PA66, new guides are PA46 (improved)
- Old tensioner had larger oil hole than the new tensioner.
- In hand old tensioner functioned correctly, but while fitted it would skip.
- For some reason Toyota decided it is great idea to incorporate water pump flange into front cover. This creates a potential of RTV failure and leakage of coolant into sump. It also requires pump removal when removing front cover. It would saved me 2 hours if the pump was not part of the front cover.
- The oil pump is mounted on front cover, thus requiring two O-rings for inlet and outlet.
- One of those O-ring was completely flat, possibly leaking oil. It is hard to tell if the O-rings seated properly when fitting the cover.
- For the crank pulley Toyota gone away from woodruff key in favour of tiny hollow pin.
- The 10mm cover bolts and water pump bolts torqued at 11Nm. The 12mm cover nut and bolts torqued at 24Nm. The crank pulley went in hella-tight with crappy rattle gun and on top with some hammer on spanner action (It should be 128Nm). The tensioner and guides bolts are torqued to 9Nm.
- I used Threebond grey RTV. The manual specified two kinds of RTVs for water pump and the rest of the cover, good luck buying two Toyota genuine RTV tubes ;).
Slack Before and After:
Continue reading Replacing timing chain tensioner on a 1NZFE