the biggest issue with the vvti timing gear is that seal inside
eventually breaks down and gets hard and it leaks oil everywhere
so that's usually the main cause of your oil leaks on the timing side
hey guys welcome back to the channel so if you guys see my recent videos i did the timing belt
service and all that on this car and just for the sake of saving time because i didn't want that
video to be like 45 into an hour long i decided to separate some of the different components up so on
this episode today what i'm going to show you is how to rebuild the vvti cam gear so the cam gear
that comes from toyota is not serviceable they don't want you servicing it because of some laser
alignments in it that people can mess up on plus the labor time it takes to take it open and change
the seal in it it's probably cheaper to have the technician just replace the timing gear because
most of your time is just trying to take apart everything just to get that cam gear out so today
i'll show you how to rebuild it on the cheap it's about 25 worth of parts and it only takes
like maybe 15 10 to 15 minutes to really do it but you just got to be careful on some things so stay
tuned the biggest issue with the vvti timing gear is that seal inside eventually breaks down and
gets hard and it leaks oil everywhere so that's usually the main cause of your oil leaks on the
timing side so you can see there's a pool of oil just sitting right there from those leaks with
this whole timing gear it's pretty much kept on by five bolts and the bolts have a little
tolerance in them but from the factory those are actually laser aligned exactly so your timing is
exactly perfect and you don't mess up anything so before you even take it apart you got to make sure
that you mark all your timing parts especially you know you use that little groove right here
to do that and then you got to put together exactly within millimeters of that spot so you
don't lose timing on this and screw up your engine in this rebuilding of the timing gear it's best to
do it during the timing belt service just because you got to take all the stuff apart already when
you're doing it i removed this 14 millimeter hex here so not many people have 14 millimeter hex
bolts so you kind of got like for me i'm gonna rig it with a bolt the back of a bolt and two nuts to
try to get it back in place and the factory manual actually tells you to get inside the valve cover
you see those little hex right here so you put an adjustable wrench there and then you hold it
back there while you're turning this so you don't turn and take this thing out of time or you could
probably try to shoot it off with an impact so i'll try to do it the way the factory manual says
see if this works i had to rig this little thing for some leverage
that way i could put all my weight on here
so now we're going to get down to actually doing this disassembly
and putting the new seal in you can't really mess this thing up because once you take this
thing out all the gears inside all go in in one way you can't really screw that up
thing that you can screw up is the timing so you gotta look at these marks right here so there's a
there's a mark there and then there's a circle here so you wanna before you start you wanna bore
those little spots using a little screwdriver or something sharp so you can score the line in there
and then maybe even score and make that hole so when we put it back together we just line those
two spots together and bolt it down so i'll go ahead and find a little screwdriver and do that
right now you just look into there kind of score the the side that and it's you know it's pretty
dirty you're not gonna screw it up that bad so i'm gonna i scored along there and i also scored
the wall so that way i i have a reference point like inside the groove and then along the wall
and then over here over here i'm just gonna go i'm gonna take the thing and just scratch it and
circle it you know with it being so dirty on most of these by the time you guys are rebuilding these
it will be pretty obvious when you take it apart where it goes so we'll go ahead and
you know i just keep on doing this just to make good work of it once you get that so you gotta
take apart these 10 millimeters so these are your just normal 10 millimeter bolts that are
probably torqued on like nine pounds so i'm just going to use my little impact driver and this is
going to remove it you don't want to impact drive it on we got it so just take it apart
so yeah it's pretty pretty easy
a couple weeks ago when i actually looked it's august 2020 right now
this thing was only 130 bucks on ebay from all the you know reputable sellers of oem parts
some of the lexus dealers were selling them for like close to 200 but then within the last two
weeks the price has jumped up to 155 dollars so the price has gone up uh 20 something dollars
in the last month or so since i looked at it a lot of those guys always price match each other
on ebay anyways but i find it odd that it jumped that much in price but the dealer yeah the bell
lexus the dealer that i buy from all the time they their price is 230. so doing this you guys save
at least 130 bucks part shipped was like 23 dollars and then just the labor to just to do
this so now that i've unbolted everything i put my bolts off to the side if it doesn't come off right
away then you probably want to take something and tap it because you know it's been in here for
18 years so i got to go find a little socket and tap it through the back one other thing you could
set it on two pieces of two blocks of wood along here and just get something that fits right in the
center and then tap it out but maybe i'll do that since i have all these blocks of wood around here
turn the other way so you want the face down
make sure you just line it up so it's only touching the gears
only that the outer shaft and then just get get something that fits in here since i'm doing my
timing belt service i've got this 22 millimeter which fits in there like a glove and then just
tap it right through just like a light tap and it drops right through
so you want to flip it over pull it apart now
and you can see once you take it apart a lot of times the the seal gets stuck
on this side on the sprocket side but mine actually came out on the
over here on this side so that's a good sign i guess if it's a little bit easier to take
off because it's not in the groove but let me see what you just want to
yeah this thing is solid as a rock in here man this thing
18 years it's probably gonna brittle and cracked yep so this thing
is a big culprit for leaking on two jz engines with vvti i mean look at that
now once you peel that off you just want to take it apart clean it and now like i
said earlier the gears they just drop right out and yeah you don't have to worry about
it getting back in place because there's they only come in go back in one way so there's no
there's no way to screw this up because yeah you basically if you look at the the grooves there's
some flat edges on here and then you look at on this side and there's another flat edge
and it just lines up once you line up those flat edges it just falls right in so
important that you keep this place clean this area clean because you're going to wipe it
up and then you're going to end up putting it back on a dirty piece of cardboard or table so
i'm just going to wipe the excess oil with my rag and then once i do that i'm going
to use my brake parts cleaner and a clean rag you just clean everything up in here
while cleaning it out there's inside here there is a rubber seal in here that it's not a part
that seals anything i think it's more of a gasket but it's in here so just be careful not to damage
that or spray that with anything that might damage it so we'll take some brake parts cleaner just
i usually just drizzle it on lightly so just to get the chemical under there i don't need
the aerosol the high jet aerosol in here let it sit for a little bit and then kind of work
his magic especially in the groove on this side where the this new seal is going to go
so yeah all the years of leaking gree or oil through here you could see where it kind of
penetrated through here and got along the lines and all that there over here
so what i'm going to do since i have my scotch brite that i've been just scrubbing
everything with a scratch bright i'm going to go ahead and just scrub some of this i'll
probably just grab a new piece so that way i don't introduce any more contaminants in here
but yeah i just because i want i want my mating surfaces to be just free of all
this oxidation and corrosion over the years a little piece of scotch brite i'm just gonna
go around the edges of this and circular the same there's like
just a factory scoring from the machining just follow that pattern
some little pieces of rubber still left in here
from peeling that gasket off so yeah you just want to get that that mating surface perfectly smooth
no kind of gaps or anything that might cause a leak when the new seal comes on i got that
done
clean even though i did all this i still see the scoring marks from when earlier when
i did that there and here the ones on the wall kind of disappeared a
little bit i basically know where it's supposed to be so i'm good there so
what i'm gonna do now i'm just gonna hit it both surfaces with some more brake parts cleaner
so we want to reassemble the the gear over here
so putting the gear back up together it's pretty simple it kind of goes one way but there is a
way you can [ __ ] this up right so this if you look at the gear
one side is got it doesn't go all the way to the end so make sure that it goes upside down so you
don't see that that goes inside uh it will go on either way so you got to be very careful the
easiest way to do it is make sure that you see the notches so there's a notch here and a notch down
here and then you just line those notches up and it falls in so yeah you got to make sure that's
going in that direction because if you put it the other direction you're going to get the p1349 code
once you put it in it'll still work and run but the movement won't be as smooth and you won't get
your full 30 degree rotation so that it's important that you do that so pay attention to
this part when you're putting that back together other than that everything else is pretty simple
one on when you're putting back here line up on the outside so you can see the mark on the outside
and just line it up and get it in there
so once it's in there you just leave it set off to the side if you want to wipe the excess oil or
grease and dirt you can do that just kind of keep it clean for now and then we got to stretch the
the new gasket so we got to put some oil on here and stretch it
to dip it in oil so you just get some fresh oil all i have is this big old jug so i'm just gonna
dip it in there just get a little bit on there don't drop it in here
kind of so put it all around the seal coat the seal really well and start stretching it so the
the key to this is stretching it don't stretch too much but you got to put some strength into it
and you got to get it to form to the size of the this spot and then once you get it formed you only
have about 20 seconds to get the other thing in there or else it's going to shrink back down so
you gotta get it in there flip that thing around use your pinky to hold the gear in and then get it
in there to where your line alignment marks were
the reason why you have to get alignment marks because inside
the gear once you get this in there is a small tolerance from the factories
i'm just threading them on right now by hand just to hold it but
we want to get some lock tight on them before we we lock them down
so there i got them tight in hand i'm gonna get a ratchet now and
make sure they're all fully seated and tightened got out the torque wrench
just to be legit so all my scores and notches are good i'm gonna go ahead and set this thing up
all right so they all clicked so i'm good now i'm gonna wipe it down and hey guys
thanks for watching all the way to the end of this short video on rebuilding this vvti cam gear with
the new seal in it as you can tell it's a pretty simple process you know the five bolts put that
seal in put it all back together the as long as you follow directions and mark where your existing
cam gear is and you put it back the way it was before you should be fine and it's going to save
you upwards of 200 if you had to go buy this from an online dealer or if you buy one from one of the
ebay sellers who are selling for like 150 160 as of this video right now that's still 130 savings
using that drift motion kit if you're watching this video you're probably doing a timing belt and
water pump service so don't forget to check out my other video where i go into detail about taking
all this stuff apart on here and putting it all back together and doing the whole timing belt and
water pump service on this car so check that video out i'll have a link up here if you like this
video you found it informative give it a thumbs up if you haven't subscribed to your channel
already go ahead and subscribe to your channel and if you want these cool shirts check out
the teespring store i'll have a link up here and i'll talk to you guys next time on the next video
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