Practical Engine Building: Step 1: Initial Preparation
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Step 1: Initial Preparation
11.01
| 00:00 | - In this worked example we're going to follow through with the design, machining, and assembly of a Toyota 2JZ, three litre, six cylinder, turbo charged engine, that we're expecting to make somewhere in the vicinity of 1000 wheel horsepower. |
| 00:15 | Now in this first step we're going to look at the initial preparation or initial planning for our engine assembly project, however before we move into that I just wanted to give a brief introduction to the project, talk a little bit more about exactly what we're expecting to do. |
| 00:31 | So as I've mentioned we're aiming to make somewhere in the vicinity of 1000 wheel horsepower, and this needs to come into our considerations when we're selecting parts for the project, and it also needs to come into consideration if there are any known weaknesses with the base engine at that sort of projected power level. |
| 00:51 | Another aspect that is key to our decision making in this project is that the engine will be running exclusively on E85 ethanol based fuel. |
| 01:01 | This is a high octane fuel and that allows us to select parts potentially such as pistons with a higher compression ratio. |
| 01:10 | It also burns cooler than pump gasoline and this will also potentially have an effect on some of the clearances that we choose to run. |
| 01:19 | So we're now going to move into our first step of our 10 step process which is our initial preparation. |
| 01:25 | So with this particular project we've been quite fortunate because we are starting with a brand new engine short block straight from Toyota. |
| 01:35 | So this gives us in particular a brand new engine block as well as a brand new crankshaft. |
| 01:41 | Now we're also dealing with the VVTi or variable valve timing variation of the 2JZ. |
| 01:49 | Now this is to do with the cylinder head design. |
| 01:51 | We're not really having much input on the cylinder head here, it's actually being prepare, ported, and assembled elsewhere. |
| 01:59 | Our task will simply be cleaning the head once we receive it, doing a final preparation and assembly on the cylinder head, and then fitting it to our block. |
| 02:07 | So now I'm going to talk about the components that we've selected for the 2JZ build. |
| 02:13 | So we're starting, obviously as I've mentioned, we've got a brand new engine block, and we've got a brand new crankshaft. |
| 02:19 | This gives us the advantage that with the block we know that we will already be at the standard bore size and we'll also have no wear present in the bores. |
| 02:29 | Likewise we can expect the crankshaft to be at standard size on all of the journals, again with absolutely no wear present. |
| 02:37 | This makes our life a little bit easier. |
| 02:39 | It also is going to affect some of our inspection processes when we move into the disassembly step next. |
| 02:47 | Now in terms of the pistons we've selected here, or the pistons that have been supplied to us for this project, we're using a CP forged piston, and these are a raised compression ratio, these are a 10:1 compression. |
| 03:02 | Now that would be quite high for any engine, and turbo charged engine running on pump fuel. |
| 03:08 | With E85 fuel, because of the octane rating of the fuel, as well as the cooling properties of the fuel, this allows us to run quite a high static compression ratio, even with a turbo charged engine, where we may be expecting to run upwards of two bar or 30 psi of positive boost pressure. |
| 03:29 | Now one thing that is worth pointing out with these pistons, and this is an area that you need to be very careful with. |
| 03:37 | The pistons have been chosen as a shelf stock piston with the stock 86 millimetre bore size. |
| 03:44 | Now in theory what this means is that the pistons will fit into the stock bores without the requirements for the engine block being bored and honed to a first oversize. |
| 03:56 | Now obviously this gives one advantage in that the thickness of the cylinder walls is maintained, however because we're really at the discretion of whatever the stock bore size is, we're going to have little to no potential to adjust the piston to bore clearance. |
| 04:16 | Now this is even more noticeable on a high mileage engine which will obviously be exhibiting some piston to bore wear or sorry wear in the bores. |
| 04:26 | We've got no real potential to make much adjustment to that and we may find that our piston to bore clearance is already at, or in some cases over, our desired piston to bore clearance before we've even used a hone in the block. |
| 04:42 | So this is something to watch out for, particularly if you've got a block that is known to distort when the cylinder head is torqued down, and you're going to be using a torque plate for the honing process. |
| 04:54 | This isn't going to give you very much room to move when it comes to the machining process. |
| 05:00 | And then you have the aspect where you're balancing, whether you would accept a bore that is slightly out of round, or correct that out of round with a honing procedure, and accept a piston to bore clearance that's perhaps excessive. |
| 05:16 | So in my experience if we're choosing a piston for a build, unless there's a very good reason not to, I would always prefer to go to a first oversize, a 20 thou or half a mil oversize piston. |
| 05:30 | This is going to allow us to remove any wear out of the bores and machine to achieve a perfect round bore as well as the exact piston to bore clearance that we want. |
| 05:42 | OK so moving along we've also got a set of Carrillo connecting rods for this particular task. |
| 05:49 | The Carrillo conrods are well regarded as one of the strongest conrods on the market. |
| 05:53 | They're an h-beam design, and they're easily up to the task of what we're trying to achieve. |
| 05:59 | 1000 wheel horsepower, while it is still quite a large number, is certainly not a stretch for a well built Toyota 2JZ engine, and we're not going to be running it to particularly high RPM as well. |
| 06:12 | By virtue of the VVTi cylinder head, and the fact that this limits our choice on cam profile considerably, we're not going to be able to run the engine to excessive RPM, and we're envisaging an engine rev limit here of around about 8000 RPM. |
| 06:31 | Now moving on, once of the weaknesses that is well known with the Toyota 2JZ cylinder blocks is that under high RPM and high power usage, they do tend to crack the main bearing caps. |
| 06:45 | So from stock these are a cast iron bearing cap, as is usual with a lot of cast iron production engines. |
| 06:53 | And we've taken the opportunity to replace these stock caps with a set of billet caps from Titan Motorsport. |
| 07:02 | These are again a popular upgrade for the Toyota 2JZ. |
| 07:06 | The billet cap however is going to require us to have the main bearing tunnel line honed when we get to the machining process. |
| 07:15 | That's an essential aspect to ensure that the bearing journals are the correct size and all aligned correctly. |
| 07:25 | In order to make sure that the Titan billet bearing caps are correctly clamped to the block, we've also taken the opportunity to fit an ARP mainstay kit. |
| 07:36 | This replaces the factory main cap bolts. |
| 07:41 | And the stud gives improved clamping. |
| 07:43 | So again a fairly common upgrade in just about any mild to wild Toyota 2JZ build. |
| 07:50 | As for the engine bearings, we could have kept or retained the factory bearings, however we've made the choice to move to an ACL race series bearing. |
| 08:02 | Now the race series bearings are designed for high powered engines and they have a few features that make them slightly more suited to high power applications than the factory bearings. |
| 08:14 | In particular the bearing shell is slightly stronger. |
| 08:17 | Has no plating on the rear of the bearing shell, and this also helps with heat transfer from the bearing, or from the oil into the bearing, and then into the block. |
| 08:27 | So these tend to offer slightly higher durability in high power, high RPM applications. |
| 08:35 | As for the crankshaft we should have little to no machining work required. |
| 08:40 | As I've said the cranks is new so we're not looking at any wear on the crankshaft. |
| 08:44 | However we will be obviously checking our bearing clearances very carefully. |
| 08:49 | The crankshaft will also require a complete balance along with the front harmonic damper as well as the flywheel and clutch assembly. |
| 08:59 | A major consideration with any high boost turbo charged engine is ensuring head gasket reliability. |
| 09:06 | What I mean here is making sure that the head gasket is reliably clamped between the deck surface of the block and the deck surface of the cylinder head. |
| 09:14 | This is going to ensure that we're not going to have combustion pressure escaping from the cylinders out into the water jacket. |
| 09:21 | This can affect our power level as well as potentially cause damage to the engine. |
| 09:26 | So we need to make sure that the head gasket is correctly clamped. |
| 09:31 | This starts with the head gasket itself, and in this case we're going to be using an HKS multi layer steel head gasket. |
| 09:38 | These are proven to be reliable in the Toyota 2JZ tuning world, even at very high boost levels. |
| 09:44 | Now another consideration here is the type of fastener being used. |
| 09:49 | And here we're ditching the factory Toyota head bolts, and instead we're going to be using a stud kit from A1 technologies. |
| 09:57 | Now this particular stud kit is actually a high spec stud kit that uses an H11 steel material. |
| 10:05 | This provides additional clamping and is ideal for high boost applications. |
| 10:12 | Another consideration that we're going to have with our head gasket integrity. |
| 10:16 | When we get to the machining process we'll be achieving the correct surface finish on both the deck surface of the engine block, as well as the cylinder head. |
| 10:26 | Again we're going to be helped out here by the fact that our engine block is brand new. |
| 10:32 | So it's fair to assume we're not going to have too many deformities in that deck surface to keep in mind when we are machining the block. |
| 10:41 | Alright so at this point we've got a good idea of what we're trying to achieve, we've planned out the project and we now have an idea of the products that we're going to be using for this assembly. |
| 10:53 | Let's move onto our next step which is disassembling the engine block and components. |
