Okay, so...
It's been a while. Again. In that time Life has gotten in the way of the funner parts of life, but that's finally settling back down again with a new job and all the fun associated with that. Where we last left off: Intercooler was pissing coolant into the intake at an alarming rate well above the zero it ought to be. So I snapped up a nicer condition intercooler and...the fucking thing also leaked internally. Is this a known problem as these things age or is this just my usual luck at work?
Deciding I don't want to throw yet another pile of money at an unknown condition ST205 intercooler, I tried a much cheaper hail Mary...
A cheapo 12V hot water pump, one of my spare batteries (off frame), and a bottle of sodium silicate radiator sealer. We all know this shit from Cash for Clunkers. i.e. "Liquid glass" that was used to seize otherwise functioning engines. So anyway, fill up the system with water and some of this stuff, cram it into the oven and bake at like 200F for an hour. After letting it cool until it could be handled I opened up the radiator cap and was greeted by a fair bit of pressure built up. Hopefully that's a good sign, but we're not quite ready for testing this just yet. Because!...
The engine was leaking coolant now. Intermittently. But there were drips coming off the front diff housing, as well as the crank pulley. I tore into the timing belt area because I had a suspicion and lo and behold, I was right:
(Note: That's not shitty green coolant. It's actually Asian red with UV dye)
There was pitting around the o-ring sealing area on the block for the water pump. Someone tried to RTV it but frankly, this is not the way. With help I got all that scraped out and bought some engine block high temperature epoxy and used that to fill in the pitting, which can be seen above. After that came the FUn of reassembling the timing belt with the engine in the car...and getting that tensioner on without pulling the engine mount or power steering. The other drips were because of a couple clamps I left loose and a hose to the throttle body that developed a pinhole. Serves me right for using old hardware.
On to happier things; I sprung for some nice new wheels, as I was getting tired of haggard rims in a size that's becoming vanishingly hard to find good tires in. So I got me some Sparco Terras in 16":
Since I'm using a rental garage for this work I had to cart over the wheels myself. Amusingly enough, with the rear seats folded up the 2dr RAV4 can actually fit a full set of Alltrac wheels:
But now at long last her turbo'd elder sister finally runs without any leaks that I can find anywhere. She idles at a rumbly 650rpm, but isn't trying to stall or anything and very consistently holds that idle so I can only guess that's fairly normal. Finally though I can get this beast registered and where she belongs: Terrorizing the tarmac
"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts"
