Two wrongs don’t make a right

Thanks to the magic of ecommerce, I ordered a ‘hose and belt’ kit for our ‘Toyoda’ off eBay.

The morning started well at around 9 o’clock, as I drove to Fyshwick (a local industrial area) as it was bound to be deserted on a Sunday. It’s ideal to work in as there is concrete everywhere, no prying eyes and your not in anyone's way. Ironically i ended up being in the way of two seperate people! In an estate with 20 shops, I was parked right out the front of those exact two. It also proved valuable shelter in the rain today under a shop awning.
I setup shop with tools and parts everywhere. I started by loosening the lock nut on the idler pulley, which is followed by adjusting down the tension on the pulley… but there is no adjustment bolt. It was absent because I suspect someone previous to me snapped it. Thankfully I was acutely aware of this as this type of thing has caught me out before, if you don’t loosen the lock nut, you end up breaking the adjuster bolt. So that belt came off easy.

Next step was to remove the two belts that drive the water pump & fan and alternator. The procedure for replacing fan belts is to loosen the alternator adjustment bolt and push the alternator towards the block which loosens the belts. Only problem was no matter how loose I made the bolts it was mighty stiff to move. I loosened it off about half way and was able to get the belts off… on a roll I thought.
As the coolant was still too hot to do the second half of the operation so I thought I’d put the new belts on. It would have been easier to change the hoses without the belts, but wasn’t as time efficient.

Well… I expected the new belts to be tight, but my oath, they weren't even close. Pulled as tight as I could, they would still only make it about half way round the alternator pulley. I found some more adjustment in the alternator by removing the A/C compressor and pulling the alternator with everything I had towards the motor. I looked like a right monkey sitting on the motor but it was the only way I could get the right angle. Even in this position it still wasn’t enough. I virtually removed the bottom pivot bolt and the adjuster bracket as it was too tight against the alternator… finally managed to get the alternator tight up against the motor. Annoyingly this bracket is held on by the same bolts as the water pump, so as soon as I cracked the bolts it started to leak. ‘dammit’ I thought – that better seal back up when tightened back up.

In my efforts I thought I would lever the alternator into submission using a screwdriver in one of the vents… turned out it just smashed out. dammit. Doesn’t really effect anything, it just looks dumb (pictured right). So, you would think now that the belts would just fall on… nope.
HOURS went by trying different techniques, different angles, soap, levers. Finally I got ONE on, but it was on the outside of the two… it needed to go on the inside. More hours went past and I just couldn’t get it to go on. On approximately 21 different viewings to confirm that the belts were indeed identical to the ones that came off.
Taking a break from the stupid belts, I changed the hoses. Oh my. Sometimes having the correct tool helps, sometimes some jobs are just downright hard work. In theory, the job of replacing the hoses is perfectly simple. It goes without saying that I didn’t have the correct tool to compress the clamps and fashioned up a technique of ‘winching’ the clamps open using…. yep you bet, cable ties. Excuse the blurry photo

I had three sets of pliers but none of them would open up wide enough to grab both bits of the clamp. I’d say each clamp took 15-20 minutes to undo X 4.
Add to that actually removing the hoses. The ends connected to the radiator went well, maybe 1 minute each. The ones connected to the motor… maybe 30 minutes each! They were virtually melted on.
So all that aside, inside the hoses was a weird silty mud – not sure what it is, maybe some kind of leak fix?
Back to the belts, now around 15:30, I drove around to SCA to see if I could confirm if the belts were correct… hmm, seemed correct according to their in-store chart. Phew, all of them are identical. When buying parts online (and offline for that matter), you usually quote your year/month and make to make sure you get the right ones. Thinking I may have made a mistake, I was pleased to see they were all the same.

This story is hard to follow, but I returned to flushing the radiator and refilling it with a brilliant red coolant. It felt much better to have that filth out of it, and some coolant in there. What came out of it just looked very watered down original 200,000KM old coolant – looked almost like petrol.

So, I drove home on one belt and naturally it ran fine (that’s redundancy for you) and did some more research… mine is a HZJ78R. I found one eBay listing that says specifically that the belts I was using are not compatible with the R models. I have no idea what the differences are.

So the two wrongs are the fact the belts that came off it were wrong and I was sent were wrong. Clearly it’s an easy mistake to make.  The upside of all of this, is I’ve discovered that belts aren’t made to suite the car, the car manufacturer uses standard belts. This may all sound obvious to automotive veterans, but I didn’t know. For example, the 11A1005 belt part number means 11mm wide and 1005mm long. If I can’t find the specification for my configuration, I’ll just buy one that’s maybe a centimetre or two longer – simple as that! Wish I knew that before!

Cassie finished installing the 3rd flyscreen – which may end up being the last. We may not end up putting one on the window next to the fridge as it always has the solar shade on it.

Ok, so where did they ‘Toyoda’ name come from?
Well, Cassie pointed above the air cleaner there is this plastic box (almost like a growth off the air intake, no idea what it does) that has ‘TOYODA’ and a part number… no idea what that’s about. Plus it ties in reference to Yoda from Star Wars who is quite the awesome ‘know all' and super wise ugly short old thing. I don’t imagine this name will stick, but it was funny enough for the post.