Graig,
As you might expect I will bite on the offer of an email document re oil
types. Not because of any LC related issues but because we had a Nissan
Navara 2.5L TD get quite noisy all of a sudden at a little over 80K miles.
Nissan looked at is as a courtesy even though is was all of a few thousand
miles out of warranty.
Two cylinder bores were scored and there was heavy wear on a few of the cam
followers, when Nissan asked for =A34000 to repair it we fitted a second hand
engine ourselves.
Mains con rod bearings on the old unit haven't even been looked at but
sometime I will have a look and measure the clearances.
Engine had done mostly motorway miles at 85mph ish (my boss) with regular
oil changes with an API CH4 which might not have the calcium content of some
oils.
Plastigage by the way is now quite hard to find in the UK, I have just
ordered some online, shows how few people play with engines.
Malcolm Bagley
Stafford, UK
1975 FJ45 Pickup (In Work)
_______________________________
-----Original Message-----
From: [Email address removed] [mailto:[Email address removed]] On
Behalf Of Craig Vincent
Sent: 05 July 2006 22:01
To: [Email address removed]
Subject: Re: [ELCO] Big end bearings
Hi Guy's,
Confusion seems to really raining on this topic. Big end shells can be
replaced in place in the vehicle easily mains can not.
To replace the big ends remove the sump and read off the numbers stamped on both the conrods and the crankshaft, then consult the workshop manual to work out what size you need (the following is Maartens tip) then get
one shell size thicker this tightens the clearance 1-2 tenth's of a thou to allow for a little wear and bedding in of the crank. To actually
replace them undo one conrod cap at a time and push the rod up the bore
a little way and flick out the old shells and refit the new (I like to
for my piece of mind and the little bit of extra time involved to
plastigauge each journal to check the clearance) shells and tighten the
caps to spec and then move onto the next one. Turning the crank ot be at the bottom for easiest access.
The mains are a whole different story as the toyota has a one piece main brg cradle (what you would expect on a purpose built race motor not a
old plodder truck motor) which dramatically enhances the stiffness of
the block you can't remove individual main brg caps to replace the
bearings. If it had individual main caps you could potentially (but
some engines attach the front and rear main seal retainers to the front
and rear main brgs preventing there removal) remove them one at a time
and slide the top shell around the crank in place, but not on the cruiser.
To replace mains remove engine from car remove front timing gear
housings, oil pump housing and rear main seal retainer from rear of
block, so that these components are not bridging across the main brg
cradle and the block, remove the main brg cradle. Now you can replace
the main brg's using the above method or remove all the big end caps and lift the crank out of the block for easy access to the shells. They are
sized the same way with numbers stamped on the block and crank to work
out the correct size. You can see it is a major excercise.
Why not just replace the big ends once then use an engine oil with the
correct additive package i.e lots of calcium (minimum 3000ppm) plenty of zddp and preferably 10w30 and every 10,000km do an oil analysis and if
you are getting a second brg failure which is very unlikely it will show up in the oil analysis as elevated levels of aluminium and tin or if
using aftermarket shells copper and lead. I am not a fan of copper lead
brg replacement for original Al/Sn brg's as yes it has better dirt
embeddability but it can't support the same loads as the harder Al/Sn
brg's.
If any one wants a copy I can email a word document that I recently
updated that explains the difference in engine design's between Japan,
USA, & europe and why they require diffrent types of oil for best
component life. Use of inappropiate oil will NOT cause a catastrophic
failure in a short period (i.e. inside warranty period is extremely
unlikely) of time but it will cause a premature wear failure which may
or may not be catastrophic.
Cheers,
Craig.
NB: Stop trying to wear out my finger tips.
Gareth Jones wrote:
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