thanks to both Lagos and Hurley for the props,

i finally figured out what my oil leak problem was, turns out that the vavle cover gasket was leaking from the top where that semi-circular plug goes. So after all the time in taking the belts and timing covers off, i re torqued the oil pump bolts and found them all properly tightened.

So i was a little fast with my conclusions and placing the blame on the machine shop, they in fact did a great job.

A little update:

Motor now has about 800 miles on it, runs strong, and pulls even stronger up top, cant wait to get the miles on it to have it tuned and give you guys a new dyno chart

After i fixed my oil leak, i have not had one problem since, the only thing that i am unsure of is that the valve train makes a funny noise, and its very hard to explain but here goes anyways.

It is most definetly NOT a valve tick from too big of clearances, but it almost sounds like it is a sound of the entire valve train being slightly too tight?... that is the only way i can describe the noise, i will try to take a video and post it up, maybe all the genuises on this site could give me some insight.

Despite that noise, the engine runs extremely smoothly, and it pulls like never before...i am overjoyed with the way things turned out.

Check back for another update in a few weeks to possibly see new dyno charts..and possibly one of the most powerful NA 7AFE motors around.. i hope *crosses fingers*

Matt

this is exciting!

>
then that is probably exactly what it is, the clearances are on the tighter side. it's not a huge deal as long as they are within spec or very close to it at least. you know exactly how everything went together, trust your own instincts.

well, the more i drive the car, to more it is kind of devlopping a tick noise, maybe i was wrong and it is too big of valve clearances, i will concur with my dad, who is truly the genuis behind the operation, and see what he says. He has been gone for 1 month so he actually has not heard the engine running yet...we shall see.

Once again, thanks for + comments and support, i will try to keep updating as thing unfold.

so whats the good word?

so what ended up happening? no news is good news?

Hey all!

sorry there has not been any updates lately...i have had the engine dynoed and got it tuned.

I will have to post the graphs later because i am very busy and this is finals week at school....so hopefully you guys can wait

The numbers that came from the dyno were not quite as impressive as i expected, but that is ok because over all, i have gotten about 20% gain in power over a factory motor.

The engine put down if i can recall correctly 107.77 HP and 110.77 TQ at the wheels.

so while those are no huge numbers, taken into perspective, a stock 7 AFE makes that power at the crank, so i figure i have made up for a little more than the loss of power through the gearbox...i think about 18% loss.

Now these are just the raw numbers, so if the proper calculations are made in order to normalize the HP numbers, then the motor puts down about 115 HP to the wheels.

Now the engine runs great, pulls extremely smoothly through the entire powerband and it makes it a joy to drive. I cannot wait to auto-x the car now, it also has been dropped another .5" so that should be relatively fun....to see what types of improvements i get.

Now on a side note, for those of you that have rebuilt a 7-AFE motor, i am wondering if you have ever had any issues with the motor burning oil.

I just did an all highway trip, the motor having about 4000 miles on it, and it was just a straight 200 mile trip on the highway at approx. 70-75 mph constantly.

I had filled up the oil to the full line before leaving for the trip, and then after coming home and letting the car sit for several hours, i checked the oil level and it was 3/4 of a quart LOW!!!!


Now i know that it burns oil on overrun, if i let the engine slow the car down in a gear, as soon as i step on the gas again, it puffs a cloud of blue/ white smoke.

I also know that that comes from bad valve guide/ seals, and the thing is that both were replaced in the rebuild.

Does anyone know if there is a difference in between the intake valve and exhaust valve seals? and could my head builder have possibly swapped the seals from one side to the other...so having reversed them from where they are supposed to go?...

I would love some insight on this before i decide that i am going to pull the head and replace, once again the valve guides and seals, hoping that this time they will do their job.

Once again all, thank you for support, and i hope that my posts have helped someone.

Let me know

Thanks
Matt

This post has been edited by 94celicadude: May 4, 2008 - 9:45 PM

hows the compression look?

Not worth it.. I fully set up my 7afe and I got pissed off that I only got like 20 hp and sold it.

Don't get a header. You will loose HP and gain barely any torque. Just get an Intake and make yourself have a clean ride with some beats and clean rims, maybe a body kit.

>
i'd have to disagree, i feel like i picked up torque all over but especially above 3000 rpm. though i have advanced timing a few degrees.

>


Please do a little more reading of my ENTIRE thread before you start telling me what to do and not do, maybe you would have seen that i have a custom built 4-1 header that did do something for me.

Bitter, the compression is just fine, i also just talked to my builder and he suggested that because i have a breather filter set up on my valve cover, it is not creating the necessary vacuum in the crank case in order to have the engine run with a closed circuit. The reason i have it set up with breather filters is so the blow back from the engine will not come out of the valve cover and go back directly into the engine the way it does from the factory.

I am going to try to make a catch can set up in order to catch that excess blow back but still be able to run the engine in a closed vacuum loop.

I will try to let you all know how it goes.

cool, i hope that solves your issue.

94Celicadude: This info straight from a very experienced Toyota Tech:
Engines will appear to consume oil on long relatively uninterupted trips because some of the water content of the oil will evaporate out due to the abnormally long heat cycle. Normally this water content will be allowed to condense back into the oil on short trips. He says your consumption of oil is perfectly normal and to take it from someone who has done waaay too many oil changes in his lifetime - don't worry - you're engine is fine. One side note: If it does this during normal everyday driving then something is leaking and you should check it out.
Hope this helps.

>


thanks for the advice from your friend the Toyota Tech,

but i think my problem is slightly bigger here, in just under 200 miles on a highway trip the engine consumed almost a whole quart, that is 1 QUART of oil, and that is very abnormal.

I know that the engine runs just fine and it has great power and torque curves, but this extremely high oil consumption is very odd, i will try to make a catch can for my engine and see if that solves my problems. It should hopefully solve the majority of the oil consumption issue.

Thanks for all the input, i am always willing to listen to everybody's knowledge, helps me to learn as well.

Matt

Sh*t I read 2000 miles somehow - yeah that is abnormal - sorry man. Good luck with it.

Well i fixed my oil consumption problem, i just hooked up the lines from the valve cover back to the intake manifold the way they should be and it instantly stopped burning oil....but

there is always a but with this car..lol

now the idle sits where it should, at about 750-850 RPM, and it is low enough that my oil light comes on at idle, so i have low oil pressure at idle....so for now i am back to having the breather filter set up so the idle sits higher at about 1K RPm and i dont have the oil pressure problem.

I think i will just have to bump up the idle a little bit in order to overcome the low oil pressure at idle and then i should be ok...

Will update soon

Sorry for the bad quality picture, my scanner sux...but here it is

Well here it comes back from the dead... again

After 10K miles on this new motor, oil consumption is 1 FULL quart for 200 MILES!!!!!!!!!!! :-O

so the head came off this past weekend, before hand though, compression test revealed low compression on ALL cylinders, and 3 & 4 were virtually useless.

Upon head removal, combustion chamber 3 & 4 valves were found to leak.... MASSIVELY

The piston to cylinder clearance is going to be calculated sometime within the next week once we get the pistons out, but it seems like the compression rings and oil control rings my have been swapped, or put in upside down.

Crank case is pressurized causing extreme blow by and thus the high oil comsumption as well.

So that may answer my question to why we only put 107 HP tot he wheels, the motor has been running in very poor performing conditions, mechanically everything was correct because it made it to CALI and back to the midwest, but the oil consumption was through the roof.

The bottom end and valve job was done by a shop, so unfortunately we cannot say that we goofed on the build up of the head and bottom end, they did.


So the goal is to sort out all the problems, get this thing back together and possibly see around about 120 WHP...that would be GREAT!

Just thought id update everyone after such dismal and disapointing results.

Let me know if anyone has suggestions,

Thanks to all

Matt

This post has been edited by 94celicadude: Sep 15, 2008 - 11:07 PM

Read the whole thread...Hope all is well and you get this thing going the way it should.I built my last celica up like this and was so-oo pissed when **** started going wrong after only a few thousand miles and 2g in the motor.keep us updated =]

will do.

Thanks for the support, i hope to finally be able to truly say that i have built on of the most powerful NA 7AFE motors, because with what we got this past run, clearly a motor with a 50 shot would walk me all day long. So i hope we can see around 120 or more WHP soon.

Thanks again

Matt

damn, i wonder what failed? just ****ty machine shop work or an actual part problem?

well either the machine shop bored the block out bigger than needed for the pistons, or they incorrectly installed the piston rings, but either way all the probelms that we developed from that are linked to an improper assembly of the bottom end.

it is a real shame too cuse they were highly recommended to us, and it seems like they may have messed up. Hopefully they will be nice enough to help us repair the problems and situation.

>

I know you've already figured this all out but I thought I'd answer some of your concerns anyway...

First, my rebuild 7A consumes almost no oil at all. I had already changed the oil 3 times within the first 4k miles then again when I needed to swap the head, all those times I hadn't really checked how much was taken out since I did it at work and emptied it right into the waste oil container.
The last oil change (before the turbo install since I changed it then as well) I did right outside the house and emptied the used oil back into a container to find out if there was any consumption. There was about 13k miles on the motor at that point, I took out just under 4qts, when you account for residual oil in the pan and the filter full of oil it was probably a hair over 4qts, which is just what I put in.

Second, blue/white smoke on start up is valve seals, smoke while your driving is an indication for the oil control rings on the pistons.

Third, the valve seals are generally the same sizes but the rubber on the intake and exhaust seals are different. It probably makes no difference but the valve seals with the darker rubber part are the intake seals and the ones with the lighter gray rubber part are for the exhaust side.

are you burning coolant? i'm sort of wondering if you dont have a head gasket failure!

no there is no coolant being burned. The head gasket was intact when i removed the cylinder head.

The problem is truly all with oil consumption, i had a problem with the car burning oil on over run, when u get up to 75 in third and just let the car slow down in third to about 50 and then just step on the gas normally, a big blue puff of smoke would appear...that was caused by the fact that there was too much pressure from the crankcase, and it blew oil back up and was sucked past the valve stem seals on over run, i managed to solve that problem before i even pulled the head.

But there was still an extremely high oil consumption, hence the 1 quart for ever 200 miles driven...NOT NORMAL.

I do understand that there are different types of rubber for the valve stem seals, and i hope the shop assembled it correctly, my guess is that one rubber is slightly more heat resistant than the other, for the exhaust valves.

The only thing that we can assume is that there was a mistake in the assembly of the bottom end, ie the pistons rings were placed incorrectly or the bore on the block was not properly matched to the piston sizes.

Once again, i will be able to tell what the real problem is once i have pulled out the pistons, until then these are only assumptions.

I appreciate the thoughts and inputs from everyone, please keep them coming i am always open to suggestions.

Thanks again

Matt

**Waking up the dead**

And then the thread just ends before he told what the problem was...
Like reading a book where the last pages are ripped out