With the timing cover cleared of all the external hardware, its time to remove all the bolts to remove the cover itself. While the removal of the bolts was no big deal, even the studs which also had to come out, I had to fight the timing cover to get the damned thing out. The clearance between the front of the engine and the side wall is so small that there is no room to maneuver the large cover out. Just when I thought I would've had to remove the water pump to gain just a little more clearance, I managed to finally find the sweet spot that allowed me to pull the cover out in its entirety. To remove the cylinder head and timing chain set I will have to remove the camshafts since they hold tension on the chain and also cover the head bolts. I could've just removed the tensioners if I was only doing the chain set and left the cams alone. After pulling the cams and the cam phasing solenoid thingy, I was able to get to the head bolts. The next level of BS to be encountered was with the head bolts. These bolts were the type that use a star/torx type socket, except that these were 12 point triple square bolt heads. Unlike star/torx bits that are 6 point, these have 12 points, meaning that most people probably will not have these tools and will need to source them, as did I. After getting the tools in hand, I removed the bolts, finding out something else about these engines that makes me hate them even more. Apparently the 2AZFE Toyota engines were known for head bolts to sometimes walk out a little bit, getting loose and causing premature head gasket failure. I found three bolts that were almost hand tight while the majority of these bolts required a breaker bar for me to break them. Once I pulled the bolts and removed the head, the spot on the gasket where the loose bolts were showed where the gasket material on the metal sheet was gone. This material was gone from the combustion chamber side all the way through to the outside edges of the water jackets. What this meant was that combustion pressure was able to push out through the water jackets and in turn push water out to the outside of the block, which was at the rear of the engine against the firewall . There was white residue on the inside of the intake and wire harness and the back side of the block where combustion gases and coolant blew out. Basically I caught what amounted to a potential disaster that was already brewing had I kept trying to drive the car in this compromised condition. With the head off we come to a standstill for one good reason, I have to get the cylinder head checked to make sure there's no hairline cracks or the head is warped, requiring a shaving down to level things out. The last thing I want to do is take a chance putting all this crap back together then find out the head is warped and ends up giving me the same exact problems all over again. I do not want to have to do this job again on this fucking car, if I have to go this far it will be with another engine swap, if I don't just say fuck it and get rid of this pooch.
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