Tercel Overhaul

[ESI-RStarion]

So I recently had my front wheel bearings go out to the point where I was slowing down going down hill in neutral. So my brother and I ordered up a new set of front wheel bearings and oil seals from rockauto, a few days later they arrived and we began installing the new bearings, while we had the front end apart we replaced rotors and pads on my celica/paseo brake system. After we got it the front end back together we took it for a test drive I had the stereo off so we could hear any noises that may be happening. On the test drive we noticed a scraping from the rear end, when we got home we tore apart the rear brakes figuring they needed adjusting. After we got the rear brakes apart we noticed that the rear axles had about a quarter inch of play. So we order new wheel bearings and seals for both sides of the rear end, while the parts we're shipping out from rockauto I went to thrifty's auto supply and picked up new rear drums, shoes, hold down kit, and wheel cylinders. When we were pulling the rear axles we noticed that like 6 of the ball bearings out of the wheel bearing were missing so we dropped the diff and checked it out, it was still solid so my brother took it to work and welded it up. While installing the rear axle bearing assembly you need to heat the bearing retainer to 350*F in an oil bath so my brother took apart our deep fryer and hard wired it to bypass the safety switches, worked great! So now after dropping hundreds of dollars on my car I now have all new wheel bearings and all new brakes, stops great and i've had it up to 70mph with little to no vibration. Still gets horrible gas mileage but I also ordered a rebuild kit so i'm going to use that on my spare engine that has roughly 170k miles on it.
I forgot to take pictures while we were doing it so none of those yet but i'll get some pictures up soon when I take it wheelin. Slapped it around in a little mud at a local spot and it is a huge difference! Just thought I'd give you guys a little update, haven't posted much lately but I check the forums religiously every day if not multiple times.

[ESI-RStarion]

Now that the bearings are getting worn in I'm seeing much improved gas mileage did a little over 110 mile drive(80 of which were mountain highway driving but there were quite a few long and steep hills that required a bit of effort from the tercel to climb, the rest of which were offroading/city driving) and got 21.5mpg, much better than the 15 or so I was seeing before. go go gadget bearings! lol.

[Typrus]

You welded your rear axle... Thats going to cause some issues.

[shonuffisthemaster]

Ahh, when you start taking things apart...........

The first major work I did on mine was the front bearings, when I had the front end apart I noticed that the stabilizer bar ends were rusted through, and $1500 in parts later (brakes, rotors, drums, caliper, tune up, axles, tie rod ends, shocks, exhaust, cat, some things I can't even remember) and it was in pretty good shape.........then the brake lines rusted through

[Mac]

that sucks, but replacing brake lines isn't as painful as you might think, you can either buy the fitting and a flare tool and some metal line, or some pre-fabbed lengths, and pre-fabbed lengths with a spring around the outside for easy bending.

then while your at it you could install an ajustable brake proportioning valve:
http://www.speedwaymotors.com/p/6494,9_ ... Valve.html

[takza]

I replaced 90% of mine using the prefabbed stuff. If you flare them yourself...they have to be double flared...you have to use a quality tool for this and it isn't that easy to do right. Had to use vacuum to bleed them.

[shonuffisthemaster]

Yeah, bending / flaring the lines wasn't too bad, it was getting all the damn line clamps off without breaking them that was the problem! And when I did my Corolla, there was a plastic cover over all the lines that went under the car that I had to remove, what a pain! I used a coil of tubing from speedway and bent / flared them myself, worked pretty good.

As Takza said, use a quality tool. My Northern Tool kit ($20) would not make a double flare, even though the box said SAE double flare, it made the bubble flare fine, but then would just squash it into a single 45 degree in the second stage. I got a Craftsman set ($60) and it made perfect flares every time with no problems whatsoever. I would recommend flaring your own, really not that hard with a good tool. Make sure to square and de-burr the cut ends of the tube, really important. I used a sharp drill bit to de-burr the inside of the tube, worked better than the awl like de-burring tool that came with my tubing cutter. Second cut mill file for squaring and de-burring outside (could use bastard mill).

Oh, also if your doing brake lines make sure to check that the brake proportioning valve is working properly (the little cast iron thing on your firewall that has lines going too / from it) I've had two that were bad, wasn't sending pressure to the rear lines. This can be hard to detect because you can't really tell unless you panic brake, the front breaks just do all the work. Thankfully its the same valve on all corollas and tercels through the mid 90's I believe, easy to find at the U-Pull lot for $10. And yes, it is $250 at the dealership. As Mac said, you could replace it with an adjustable one, but you'd have to change the whole brake line setup because our cars have a diagonally split breaking system. For those that don't know, this means that one master cylinder (cylinder? chamber?) feeds the left front / right rear, and one feeds the right front / left rear.

[ESI-RStarion]

Resurrecting a dead thread with a new update! I haven't posted in awhile but i've been a bit busy so here we go! With tax return money(mid february) I bought a re-ring(bearings, gaskets, rings, seals) kit for a spare 3ac I had lying around, in our spare time my brother and I have been rebuilding it. With my brother working 50+ hour weeks on the regular and me working the opposite hours as him it was put off for far too long. Over the last month we have been able to put a few hours each sunday into it, on last sunday we put the finishing touches on it and dropped it in, with the only hangup being the fuel pump losing its prime it went rather smoothly. After getting fuel to the engine she started right up! It was very rewarding to see all of our hard work pay off. To seat the rings I did a bit of a spirited drive, it was between gresham and multnomah falls for the people who are around my area. For those not fimiliar with the drive it has speeds ranging between 45 and 15mph, tight corners and long straight aways. After a week and 150 miles, I have observed no oil consumption and 21mpg(this is all city driving 10 miles round trip to work with like 2 stop lights to the mile atleast) This is with roughly 7-8* advanced, a weber 32/36, 2.5inch exhaust, 205/75/14 destudded snow tires, and a lead foot. Prior to the rebuild I would get pretty bad clouds of smoke when starting my car from the leaking valve stem seals, but that is a thing of the past. lol. The tires I just mentioned are new as well, my old tires were so bald I couldn't take off in FWD from a stop in the rain without severly losing traction.

**For those who do not want to spend the time to read my horribly composed post, here is the broken down update. (It's late and writing is one of my weaker subjects)
*Re-ringed 3AC that had 170k(I think, still had factory honing on the cylinder walls lol)
*New 205/75/14 tires(Overall diameter is 26.1")
*New motor mounts
*New geared starter
*I'm also no longer running the rwd corolla dizzy, when we removed it from my old head we found chunks missing out of the drive gear for it(umm.. oh shiz.. wtf??) so I tossed in an old stocker.

This would bring my new stats to
-Re-Ringed 3ac with 150 miles on it
-Weber 32/36
-Celica/Paseo big brake upgrade up front
-205/75/14 tires
-Lifted a few inches
-1500 miles Wheel bearings and brakes all around
-2.5inch exhaust
-Welded rearend

My car is currently just as quick as it was tuned at 12* advanced with higher performance dizzy on a 310k mile motor that had fried rings with its comp being about 115 across all 4 on the previous engine. The power is much smoother, she starts easier, and runs like a champ!

This rebuild has renewed my love for my T4WD, every time I start her she puts a grin on my face, and everytime i turn her off I have a hard time leaving her.

Sorry again for the lengthy post that was horribly composed but I had to share my excitement with people who understand the love I have for my T4WD!
-I bought a really nice camera off of a friend recently but i don't have the usb cable for it so as soon as I pick one up I will have new pictures to share!

[Petros]

It seems you should have more power than that.

Quick question: My T4wd badly needs brakes (I have a warped disk, and the pads are almost gone), I was thinking of going to the later vented disks like you did. I just want a quick clarification (the thread on this topic is unclear). Do the vented disks and the thicker caliper just bolt right in with the existing flex hose and offset? Or do you need to shim the disk to center it in the caliper? Give the short answer please.

Thanks

[ESI-RStarion]

If you use paseo rotor and caliper it is a direct bolt on without shimming and with stock flexhose, since I used a celica caliper I needed to make a 1/8th inch spacer for behind the rotor.