Ok, so having finally woken up from my winter hibernation I thought it was about time to open the garage door and do a few hours on the engine.
Quick recap! I bought a land cruiser from a fleabay liar who was rather economical with the truth regarding the coolant loss on his pride and joy! Long story short the block was cracked! Sourced a new block and that's what I'm now using as my base to rebuild.
Thought as it had been sat on the engine stand all winter I'd just crack on and strip it all down as the cylinders are good but could probably do with a light hone and I wanted to check shells, rings, pistons etc.
All went ok apart from one thing that has stumped me a bit so thought I'd get you lovely folks opinion.
When removing the sub idler gear (i think that's what it's called!) The manual says to install a service bolt. I did this when I stripped the first engine without a problem but on this block the bolt wouldn't go though to screw in as I don't think the idle gears had been lined up properly. I took it off anyway and there is quite a sharp bur on the front and rear gear tooth faces and wondered if being not lined up had caused this.
Now when I rebuild should I just chuck it back in as is, remove the snap rings and realign so I can get a service bolt in, substitute the idler gear off the old unit or swap all the timing gear from the old unit to new? I was thinking if I fiddled with the alignment it may have an affect on the teeth which are probably mated to each other. All the timing gear from the old unit would keep consistency but was going to keep the crankshaft in the new unit as the pistons and all bearings would all be mated to each other (all look fine so wasn't going to change these).
Would swapping all the timing gear from the other unit be overkill and should I just chuck the idler gear back in as it came out?
Now that's a question! Haha