onespiritbrain

As am I

You should upload a video on YouTube of the current condition, both idling and driving around a bit. First change the oil of course. Have someone hold the phone near the engine bay with the hood up for idling and parked engine revving, then you might try either having someone hold the phone out the window for some slow driving or even find a safe place to sit the phone inside the engine bay and drive around a bit. I’m just very curious about the oil light all the sudden coming on. Have you seen the oil light intermittently? How about a hot start up, did it ever stay on for longer than is normal and flicker a bit before going out?

Did the blinking of the oil light follow the clatter from the engine as you were pulling into the driveway?

Sorry to hear that man. I sure hope my suggestion to add “Oil Stabilizer” didn’t have a hand in the demise of your engine. If it were me, I’d change the oil and send a sample of the oil that comes out to Blackstone lab. It’s $15 I think, and you’ll get a report that will detail the amount of metallic materials suspended in the oil. If there is a lot of bearing material then you can be confident that the engine is toast. The report will tell you what the likely source of each contaminate is. Again, if my suggestion to add the crap helped kill your engine then I am super regretful and I’ll never suggest it again...

I bought new hose from the parts store and ran it from the hard lines up to the cooler.

How many miles does your engine have? It doesn’t sound like this ( ) does it??

You know, with the lifter noise I experience regularly, I have never heard it flare up during deceleration. When I hear valve train noise listed by loudness: >Cold start up (5-15 seconds) >Hot start up (3-5 seconds) >Cold idle (rhythmic cycling fading in and out every 5-10 seconds) >Hot idle (past 3000 miles on OCI— ever present with one loud tap that’s louder than the orchestra of others) >Cold low RPM low load acceleration (rhythmic— harder to hear over sound of combustion) >Normal driving 500-1500 miles in to OCI (ever present but not very noticeable— if I asked someone if they could hear a tapping noise they’d probably say “it just sounds like an engine” but I can hear it because I know it’s the same sound that is heard later on into the OCI) Letting off the gas and getting an immediate clatter sounds a lot like loose heat shielding! Coincidentally I have a section of exhaust on the passenger side that will make a loud noise and it’s only during certain 2-3 gear shifts.

Well apparently the later RE4 transmissions were updated and hold up better than the priors so you’ll be good either way I’d pay $7k for a 500 mile 04’ Pathy Edit: read that wrong. I’d pay $7k for a sub 75k mile 04’ Pathy IF it’s in great condition.

You should just set your mind on a 2004 manual trans R50 and be done with it. I think it’d be worth flying out for if it’s low mileage and a good deal. That’ll be my next vehicle unless I can afford a 96’ land cruiser by then. I should’ve updated this thread instead of the other one... I put Walmart synthetic 10w30 in mine last OCI and it sounded like I poured a handful of nuts and bolts. Horrible horrible noises coming from every perceivable direction, top end— bottom end, pinging— knocking!!! Something is going on with mine so don’t stop experimenting but do be careful. Edit: btw it was dino Delo 400 15w40 that I used to run in my Frontier

So your going to shoot for keeping it at 12”?

If it’s swaying then I’d inspect the sway bar end links and bushings. However you’d be hearing clunking something fierce if it were the end links or bushings. I just changed my lightly worn rear sway bar bushings and it took away the non metallic clunking that remained after a repair I had to make to the driver side upper trailing arm. Do you have clunking noises from the rear?

Lol

When you say sway does that mean the vehicle is rolling from side to side? Or is it more like there’s no real center position on the steering wheel and to go straight the wheel is never actually in the same position?

The only real deer protections are defensive driving skills, fast reflexes, and well maintained brakes. And maybe a set of led spot pods aimed off road?

I feel bitchy about it. From traffic fines and emissions on citizens to carbon taxes and the ISO mafia on business, I think it’s all a racket based on science that was paid for by government grants. Bleeding heart.. greed. Sorry about that. I think the VG33 swap will be awesome anyway!

You should do a time lapse from above the engine compartment.

Putting new bearings in the bottom and new rings for the pistons sounds like a good idea to me. You could also go ahead and put a new oil pump in there. Redoing the top sucks butt.. FYI

So you can swap any engine that was approved by the EPA? Or only engine’s that were approved for that chassis?

I have the 3.3 I’ve been thinking about the pumping mechanism.. so a gear pump pushes oil with the space of each tooth holding some oil against the case. Normally a small amount of leakage between the gears and the thrust plate occurs but I wonder if my thrust plate has some grooves cut into it from contaminates and the thicker oil equals higher resistance to flow thru the oil galleries and the path of least resistance actually ends up being between the thrust plate and gears. Having a thinner oil which flows easier allows the oil to flow thru the proper channels instead of blowing past the gears. All of which would have to be in a balance that didn’t cause the idiot light to turn on. I really need an oil pressure gauge...

Supposedly ATF is very high in dispersants and is also thin so it does well at helping to suspend particles that usually end up depositing in low flow areas, or in my case it helps to keep whatever deposits are loosed by the Seafoam, which is a naphthalene distillate solvent, in suspension. So basically just cleaning additives. Edit: However it’s pretty clear that the only thing that was actually happening was that the ATF/Seafoam mixture effectively thinned the 10w30 out a bit.

I can order flanged JIS stuff at my local bolt house. They service a big Toyota plant and a huge Kubota plant so it very well might be a special situation. I’m sure anyone can order flanged JIS nuts and bolts but maybe it’d have to be in larger quantities? Most JIS stuff is 10.9 and everything we use at my job is 12.9 so I usually use what we have and call it a kaizen hah! I used high strength M14 zinc plated threaded rod and welded a nut and washer to the one side. I also have a habit of completely coating anything I touch with copper anti-seize.

For future reference, 50 bucks for 8 bolts is too much. A local nut and bolt supply house would have the exact same thing (minus the external torx) for a quarter of that and 12.9 black oxide socket cap bolts with nuts and washers for even less.

Dug this up in order to report that my recent oil change to SuperTech 10w30 yielded the same noisy results. I don’t know why my engine hates 10w30 so bad.. but it really does. I thought I had a rod knocking and I’m still greatly puzzled by what that sound could’ve been... I threw a quart of mystery oil in to decrease the viscosity some and 50% of the noise went away. Then as soon as I got home I drained the oil and put 5w30 in, quiet as a mouse. What the heck is going on here?? 10w30 sounds like my engine is falling apart and 5w30 it’s quiet as ever. Is my oil pump worn out or something? And if so then wouldn’t thicker oil cause better performance... what in the heck is going on here...?

I can vouch for water wetter. That stuff does work and if turning on the heater is all the nudge you need to be in range then it might just work for you. You might also consider an electric fan. My engine would try to overheat with the AC on at idle on a hot day. Now the electric fan keeps the temps below 210 no matter what, AC on up a mountain at nearly 100 degrees outside. I hope you find a solution where you don’t have to worry about it anymore.. I truly loath worrying about major vehicle failures.

Oh yeah definitely install the input and output shaft seals before you install the transmission. There is also an o-ring on the input shaft that seals inside the torque converter. I couldn’t find the seal at any auto parts stores but I did find it at Ace Hardware in the faucet o-ring section. Make sure it’s buna-N rubber and not ethylene-propylene(EPDM). It won’t suck the new fluid in. You use the discharge line to empty it and refill thru the dipstick tube. It’s better to have a second person starting and stopping the engine. I use two painter’s mixing buckets so I can see exactly how much oil is discharged but you can use any clean buckets. Take both lines loose at the radiator and put them in the bucket. Have someone start the engine so you can see which lines discharges. Reattach the line that doesn’t discharge. Have someone start the engine again while you hold the discharge line into the bucket. While the engine is running watch as the oil fills the bucket. Bubbles will start to spit out of the line and as soon as they do call out for the engine to be shut down. Measure how much came out and put that exact amount back in thru the dipstick tube. I use two identical buckets and I fill the one with new oil to match the level in the bucket filled by the discharge line. I think about 3 quarts come out at a time before the bubbling starts. You’ll just keep this cycle going until the darker oil is replaced with bright new oil coming from the discharge line. You’ll want to have 12-13 quarts for a full swap.