With the engine bolted up and partially hooked up, it was all downhill from here. Of course, as nice as that sounds, there was still plenty of stuff to do to get the engine ready to start up. There were still the matter of the torque converter bolts and the crossmember that links the rear and the front of the engine bay, along with the front transmission mount. There were several plugs that still needed to be mated to their respective sensors, as well as some sensors that needed to be swapped out since the JDM engine came from a different vehicle. That is where I started, getting the remaining stuff from the old engine to put on our JDM engine. Surprisingly it turned out there were only two sensors that were different on the engines so that was cool. The next thing was the fuel tube going to the injector rail. The connector on the rail that had a short cut piece of tube on it was utilized the same shitty lock ring that Ford uses to lock their fuel injector and AC lines together. Crazy thing is this tube setup plugs up to the pressure regulator, and good thing, because unlike the Ford tubes, Toyota in their infinite wisdom put some kind of lip or ridge on the tube just before the lock ring so I couldn't even use regular lock ring release tools to pop the tube off. I just had to remove the fuel pressure regulator from the old engine, which included the junction that was easily able to be disconnected from the main fuel line going back to the fuel tank. This setup at least made it easier to resolve the issue, makes me wonder if there's either a special tool Toyota uses or if the pressure regulator includes the short piece of lock ring linked hose that connects to the car's fuel lines. I have no idea... The next move is the torque converter bolts. At first I thought about the idea that to access the torque converter itself to spin it around to line up the bolt holes with the holes on the flywheel, I would have to remove the starter, which did work, but unless I had another party on top spinning the TC while I was underneath to make sure things were lined up, getting that first hole lined up might be a PITA. But luckily, the flywheel has open spots on the middle of the piece that allowed me to use my finger to reach the TC to spin it around and line up the first bolt hole with the flywheel hole. Once I got the first hole lined up and a bolt installed, the rest was simple, just spin the crank around and keep installing bolts until I had all of them in. With the torque converter taken care of, I was able to install the crossmember which blocks access to the back of the engine and the flywheel. With the crossmember in place the front transmission mount in place, furthermore, locking down the support of the whole powertrain. Now things were definitely in the home stretch. I installed the AC compressor, the exhaust manifold, air cleaner/intake assembly, thermostat housing tube and serpentine belt. Once all that stuff was in, the radiator went in, along with the hoses. AC hoses also went in, and the overflow bottle went in. At this point we were just about ready to start things up. With everything checked and cross checked a couple times, I added fluids where needed. The engine still had oil in it to the top so I just needed power steering oil and coolant. All I needed was the battery, which was in the FMT at the time since I had used it to test run the truck while I was waiting for the JDM engine to show up. With the battery in place I was able to get a test crank in. Of course I had to crank the thing and even when I did get an initial sputter and weak run, it stalled out and needed to be cranked again, since the fuel system needed to prime itself and bleed the air out. Once fuel was in place, the engine started right up and ran like a sewing machine. I ran the thing for a few minutes, listening to everything to make sure all was well. Satisfied that the engine was good, rather than run the thing too long where everything was hot, I shut it down since I had some other stuff to do and was actually in the mind to put some oil treatment in the engine just because I'm now paranoid about ensuring the long life of this engine. The oil that's in the engine is actually very clean, like it was just installed, but I still want to give this engine a chance to have a long healthy life. There are still a couple other things I have to do to the car even with the engine good. As stated, I want to put some engine treatment in the car. I also have a couple of new tires that we just got when the old engine started dying, these tires need to be installed on the front rims to replace the worn meat that's currently in place. I also have to pull the driver's side CV axle since the boot was destroyed and during the old engine extraction that resulted in the transmission being moved all over, the CV axle separated. With that, it needs to be replaced before I can test drive the car and ultimately put the car back in service.
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