Meet Augie
 

Well I just bought a 1991 Toyota Corolla Wagon All-Trac. It has a center locking differential. EPA is 26 hwy, 23 city. Users normally get abut 28 mpg mixed. About half the MPG of my saturn sc1. I'll be happy with 35 mpg with a few mods. I drove it home, 128 miles on 3 cylinders. It needs a head gasket, but I think the plug is fouled also. I didn't have a spark plug wrench with me to check it. The car is from Western Washington and has no rust. It drives good and I got a good deal on it. Pictures and progress reports soon... The previous owner named it Augie for some reason and so the name says as it is my late twin's name also.

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Good find, those things are pretty awesome.

Tony Where the heck did you find standing corn.... PM sent.

Hi Dave,

I didn't take the picture, it was with the ad on CL.

Progress so far removing head. This car has a huge radiator and an oil cooler! Doesn't look like I will be able to deactivate one intake valve per cylinder very easily. Power steering has its own belt run off the water pump, so removal is trivial.

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Well Toyotas engines are not so easy to work on. They do some stupid things like run the wiring harness across the intake manifold and put the charcoal canister under the intake manifold so now you cant get to the bolts. The air box is almost as big as the engine block, huge radiator and oil cooler, but tiny oil filter. Also have to take off some piece that's the water outlet, why its not on the block, I don't know. Had to take the oil filter off the get to the exhaust manifold bracket bolt . You'd think with a small 1.6L engine there would be room to work on it. I tried to determine the overall top gear ratio, but with all wheel drive, all the wheels have to be off the ground to be able to turn them. The whole bottom of the car is oil soaked, leaking from the valve cover gasket and distributor o-ring is as hard as rock. Going to the junk yard tomorrow to get a starter for the saturn, was going to check to see if I could get a better fifth gear pair for the corolla. I wonder if the 205/70R15s will fit and I can put the skinny and aero 165/80R15s back on the saturn.

Head is off. I had to turn it into a project, removed hood, battery, air box, heater hoses, radiator hoses, throttle body warming hoses to get to the 2 bolts left in the manifold. Turns out the cylinder under the manifold is the differential lock actuator. There is no way to get the starter motor out of this car without removing the engine or transmission, I hope it never goes out.

Nothing obvious like a hole in the piston. Head gasket was not too bad, may have had a slight leak between 1 and 2. Those head bolts were easier to remove. Lots of deposits in the dead cylinder(#1). Ring ridges not too bad for 196K. One exhaust valve is a different color. Could be a sticky valve.


... Upon further inspection one valve is seated lower, about 1/2 mm that the others.. the brown one on cylinder #1, must be burnt or the seat sunk....

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Im thinking it's not much more work to take the pistons out...

Yep, burnt. seal burnt too.

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Well, I am not sure what to do next, a rebuild head is $275. Its hard to believe that toyota used solid lifters and not hydraulic on this engine. There is no lash adjustment, shims are used in the tappets to set the clearance. Another thing is the engine has reverse cooling, the coolant goes in through he head and out through the block, which is great, but looks like they modified an earlier normal flow design by adding something to the head. The thing that gets me is the outlet goes to the bottom of the radiator and the inlet the the top, so all the air gets pushed into the head. Crazy Japanese engineers, Bosu, kakka, sensei, enjin ga ōbāhītodesu! " Boss, your excellency, sir, the engine is over heating"... " Use a bigger radiator and add an oil cooler". Of course someone one unwittingly could have switched the hoses around when they changed them, but the whole engine compartment is a rats nest of stuff added on.

I guess I should get a manual for it to get the specs for assembly..

Ordered the exhaust valve and gasket set.

Looks like the 93 and newer pistons will for a half point CR, to 10:1.