A fox does things and blogs about them

[justafoxytwink]

A long overdue Update

When I last updated on the progress on my truck, this is where we were:

Anyway, a bit has happened since then, and this is what the engine bay looks like now:

although even thats slightly outdated. I realized upon looking at the photos I've got that I don't have a good full picture of the engine bay, but since this photo all thats been removed further is the timing belt, pulleys, water pump and valve covers: this next one was taken after the timing belt and idler and tensioner pulleys were removed:

And then, the camshaft gears were pulled out:

and finally the rear timing cover and water pump:

you'll also notice in the top pic that theres a blue paper towel overtop the passenger side cylinder head. thats because I had just removed the valve cover there and I put the paper towel there to keep dust and whatnot out. unfortunately I neglected to get a pic of the exposed camshaft and valves.

At this point tho... we're about ready to start putting it all back together. I need to thoroughly clean everything i pulled out and get my replacement parts ready, and I'm gonna do quite a lot of cleaning in the engine bay as well, but we're ready to start putting it back together, basically.

But before that, a brief overview of everything leading up to this!

one of the first things I did after that last post I did was pull the radiator and fan out:

then it was time to remove the accessory drivebelts and pulleys. these are the belts that drive the ac compressor, power steering pump, alternator, and in this trucks case the supercharger:

after that I removed the upper timing cover which exposed the timing belt

I had to remove the fan pulley in the middleish there, and then came the really fun part. Getting this giant crankshaft pulley out:

thats what drives all the accessory belts from the output shaft of the engine. It had a pretty large bolt holding it on which was stuck on there quite good. In the end, I had to use my impact wrench, a weighted impact socket and I had to hit it with a propane torch for several minutes to get it out:

that thing behind the bolt is a special tool for holding the pulley in place while you remove the bolt. and the bolt is on the ground because its really fucking hot. also I love this next picture because you can see smoke coming out of the hole the bolt left:

after that getting the pulley out was a breeze

next came the lower timing cover which was just underneath that pulley

didn't get a closeup of the lower timing belt after removing that cover, but you can see at the bottom of that second image that the crankshaft timing gear is exposed, and with that the whole timing belt is now exposed.

I took a break from the timing work to work up top on the engine next. I decided I wanted to replace the valve cover gaskets cause I think thats whats causing the oil leak (and it was becoming quite apparent that the oil leak was pretty bad the deeper I got here and the easiest way to get to the valve covers was to pull the intake apart, which could probably also use a good cleaning. So I removed the air filter box, air intake hose, throttle body and supercharger. I didn't get a lot of good pics of that cause i was a bit too involved in the work, but here's a pic of the engine bay before I started with all those parts labeled:

And hey look, a supercharger! yeah I forgot to mention that this engine is supercharged. This was a rare factory option for this truck back in the day and its in my hands because of shear dumb luck. It's also a pain in the ass because this means it requires premium gas, and the supercharger is likely going to need to be rebuilt soon, which is sure to be expensive! fun. and I can't just take it out because it replaces the stock intake manifold, so I'd have to track one of those down. anyway it does make it fun to drive and gives the engine a very recognizable whine when running, which I'd be sad to hear go away.

and that about brings us to where we were at the top. I might go back later and properly label these images but I kind just wanted to give an update on what progress had been made so I didn't do that just yet. feeling a bit lazy today. Hopefully I can get this back together faster than it took to get it apart, I ended up having a fairly busy couple months which delayed me and I had to wait on parts and some specialized tools to get here. i won't be able to work on it this next week cause I'm going on a trip with my family. anyway, thats that

[justafoxytwink]

Me vs 1998 toyota tacoma

It has begun. Actually, I started a couple weeks ago. I'm been chipping away at it slowly, taking my time and making sure to keep track of everything because I'm pulling a lot of parts out.

This is my dad's old work truck. He unfortunately passed away of Alzheimer's a few months ago after several years of living with it. We spent a lot of time together in this vehicle and I have many fond memories with him in it, and just generally I feel a connection with him when I drive it, so I'd like to keep it around if possible.

It's not in the greatest shape. Because of my dad's condition, maintenance often just didn't happen. No one else drove it except me because it's a manual and I'm the only one in my family who learned to drive it from him. It leaks oil, the ABS and Airbag lights have been on for a while now (and shortly before I started this the check engine light decided to pop up! JOY! Luckily I borrowed one of those diag tools from a local shop and its a pretty simple fix), and it's in need of a new timing belt-which is an expensive repair... and probably everything else is too. So, why not save some money and do it myself?

I know some stuff about cars, I usually do most of the routine maintenance for my daily driver, a honda civic (which incidentally also belonged to my dad) and I know generally how they work, but this is beyond any kind of repair or maintenance I've done before. But, I have done my research, I found a couple of pretty comprehensive guides, and I've been consulting with a friend who knows quite a bit more about cars then I do, and I think its doable. I'm taking my time, keeping organized, and I think with some time and hard work I can do this timing belt replacement, and fix a few of the other problems it has along the way.

[justfoxyprojects]

As I said before I started a couple weeks ago-first things first I removed the front grille and skid plates, drained the oil, and drained the radiator as I'll need to remove the radiator to give me extra room to work:

skids plates and grille removed, the grille was held on with plastic clips that broke way too easily, I suppose 26 years of exposure makes plastic pretty brittle so I'll have to replace those

Here's the oil drained out into a pan, I ended up putting the drain plug and filter back in just to keep any contaminants from getting in the engine while I'm working on this. I also put down an absorbant mat to make sure any spilled oil or antifreeze didn't escape into the wild... or rather the suburbs I guess

Ah yes, the forbidden fruit punch gatorade. Antifreeze. It's very toxic, so that gets drained into a clearly marked bucket, and I put a lid on it immediately after I finished draining it from the radiator-to be disposed of later. There's a hazardous waste facility not too far away so that won't be hard to take care of.

The final thing I did on my first day of work was removing the upper radiator hose, and used some blue shop towels to stuff up the engine and radiator's now open connections, both to keep contaminants from getting into the cooling system and to soak up any remaining antifreeze.

And that's day one. I've actually gotten quite a bit more work done since then, but I don't feel like documenting that now so I'll do that later. I'll be playing a little catchup on here.

[justfoxyprojects]

So I started gathering the tools and parts to replace the timing belt on my truck (there's several parts besides the timing belt that are usually replaced at the same time while you're there) and should have everything I need by next week. All I need after that is good weather. I'm thinking that I should look into replacing the valve cover gaskets as well since the engine is leaking oil and that's where it appears to be coming from:

That doesn't seem to terribly difficult or expensive to do but I'll need to remove part of the intake and probably the throttle body. Probably add a few hours to the job. While I'm doing the timing belt I think I'll replace the radiator and heater hoses as well as they're getting rather cracked. It's very old

Once I actually start I'll post up lots of pictures and maybe a couple videos as I'll be taking lots anyway to keep track of everything.

I'm following a guide I found online as well as a repair manual my dad bought years ago when he was working on the truck:

Step by Step Toyota Tacoma Timing Belt Replacement for 3.4L V6 5VZFE (also 4runner, Tundra, and T100) | ADVENTURETACO

Learn how to replace your timing belt and water pump in your 1995-2004 Toyota Tacoma (or any other 3.4L V6 5VZFE, such as 4Runner or Tundra)

I've done some work on cars before but nothing like this so this should be... Fun!(Scary) I've done my research so I think it's doable, and as far as timing belt replacements go it seems like this is a pretty easy vehicle to do it on. The best way to learn is to jump right in, right?

[justfoxyprojects]

What is this?

This is my brand new sideblog, my main blog is @justafoxytwink. I've been wanted to document some of my coding and other projects that I do because I've been having trouble motivating myself and I'm hoping that having a public space to talk about them will help with that. So here's a couple things I'm planning on for the next few months:

Making a simple digital clock - this is a very simple arduino project, but I've gotten a bit out of practice and want something easy to start with

customizing a model for vrchat/vtubing - I've gotten the julia winterpaw canine model and would like to recolor it to my own fursona, and I'll need to get the software to do so running on linux since I don't use windows. I'll have to try getting vtuber plus running, hopefully I can use either wine or proton to do that.

replacing the timing belt in my truck - this is a bit of an odd one out. I have this old truck that belonged to my dad that I'd like to fix up, and this is where I'll start.

general programming practice - I've had to put my cs degree on hold for the last couple years due to a lot of personal issues, so I've got some catching up and relearning to do. I'm hoping to get back to school this coming fall tho

I'll put more stuff up here as I come up with more and have updates, I'll try to post at least once a week with some kind of update.