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Phase II : Cleaning old parts, ordering new parts, machining various parts

Well alot of time has been spent cleaning parts and then painting them. For the most part, everything that can be done has been. I sent the following parts out to be serviced:

After taking the internals apart, I discovered that the 5S-FE has a forged crank and connecting rods. Therefore the next weakest link is the connecting rod bolts. I managed to find connecting rod bolts from ARP and got those. We also found that there is a balance shaft installed in the bottom of the engine to keep vibration down to a minimum. This is a heavy device that will certainly rob horsepower in an attempt to make the engine behave like a luxury car's engine. After doing some research, I found that this is not necessary...so on the rebuild, we are going to leave it out and see how bad the vibration is.

I also placed an order with Flat Lander Racing (http://www.flatlanderracing.com/imports) for new, custom made, dished, forged pistons from JE Pistons. I also ordered new plasma molly rings. Because JE has never made pistons for the 5S-FE before, they needed one of my original pistons to make a drawing from. This drawing is then used to build the new pistons. The entire process is supposed to take roughly 5 or 6 weeks!!!! This sucks! JE got the order on April 9, 2002. So I should get them back around May 15, 2002. Until then I cannot have the machine shop do the final bore on the block. Basically, I'm held up until the pistons get here.

In the meantime, I placed orders for a complete engine gasket kit, new metal head gasket, a Perma-cool oil cooler (since I removed the OE oil cooler), the ARP connecting rod bolts, belts, hoses and a new OE oil pump.