Engine Compression and Leak Down Test (Toyota Land Cruiser FZJ80) 

So is there a more definitive way to figure out whether it's the rings or gasket?

@@weijia8088 We could perform a "Wet Test" of the bad cylinder to help confirm or rule out the piston rings as the issue. You pour a small amount of engine oil into the spark plug tube and into the cylinder and then you redo the compression test. If the compression number improves by quite a bit, that's a sign it is a piston ring problem because the oil helps the rings make a better seal with the cylinder wall. If the compression number doesn't improve, it's most likely the head gasket is the issue. But, there's also a chance that there's a loss from two areas, the piston rings and the head gasket. It seems pretty clear if you hear air at the throttle body, you have an intake valve or seat problem. If you hear air at the exhaust, it's also fairly clear you have an exhaust valve or seat problem. if you have bubbles coming up in your radiator, that's a clear case of a head gasket failure. But, it appears air getting into the crankcase is harder to pin down 100% where the problem is.

Thanks Sean. We really appreciate your very nice compliment.

Thank you for the very nice compliment of our channel. We truly appreciate it! Good luck with figuring out the issue with your 2UZ engine. Let us know how it goes. Happy Wrenching!

Thank you my Guam Toyota Brother! We appreciate the compliment. We will have more videos for sure on the 80 Series. Happy Wrenching!

Glad you like our channel. Thanks for compliment. We appreciate it.

Thanks Bro. I appreciate it!

Thanks MIke and you're very welcome.

We agree, that’s why it’s important to check your rig before leaving for trips so you can catch small things. The belt on this rig was super loose, then broke, causing the fan to stop moving, which in term caused the engine to overheat🙃

Thanks Arin.

Glad you like the video George. I guess it would have been a good idea to mention each cylinder needs to be at TDC to properly do the leak down test but we figured that was self-explanatory. We try our best to be very detailed and descriptive with our videos but sometimes we make assumptions and those assumptions are wrong. Thanks for the comment George. Happy Wrenching!

Thanks Bro. What project car did you purchase?

@@TimmyTheToolman I've got a '66 Rambler American that I'm working on restoring 👍👍

@@WeekendWrenchTurner That's rad.

You could just replace the rings but that basically means you would be tearing apart the lower end of the engine, and at that point, you may as well rebuild the whole thing because it's a lot of work. What i learned after this video though is head gaskets don't always end up with compression leaking into a coolant jacket. They can fail in many ways. One is the gasket fails between an oil gallery and the cylinder which could mimmic bad piston rings because you would also hear the air escaping into the crankcase. So, it might not be bad piston rings after all like I thought. I learned these engines when they have a head gasket failure usually have it happen in the very front on the #1 cylinder or the very back on the #6 cylinder. We probably are going to pull the head and try fixing Rey's engine with a head gasket replacement job. It won't be anytime soon but we will most likely shoot this video. Check out the comment I pinned. It has a link to a site talking about all the different ways head gaskets can fail.

That's great you got the compression back on your cylinder. Thanks for sharing this with us.

You're welcome. Rey has 235,000 miles on his 1FZ engine.

Good point. The spark plug did look OK though. After this video I did learn a head gasket can fail between the cylinder and an oil gallery so it might not be bad piston rings but a bad head gasket.

It overheated because of the alternator belt coming off and wrapping around the fan clutch. We talked about this in the video we shot replacing Rey's radiator. Head gaskets from what I learned don't always end up with the engine eating coolant. They can fail in many ways. One is the gasket fails between an oil gallery and the cylinder which could mimmic bad piston rings because you would also hear the air escaping into the crankcase. So, we probably are going to pull the head and try fixing Rey's engine with a head gasket replacement job. It won't be anytime soon but we will most likely shoot this video.

The Tundra Brake Upgrade as fast as I know only works for 3rd Gen 4runners and 1st Gen Tacomas. I don't know of a brake upgrade for 5th Gens.

Hey Matt, I use a Toyota FSM. You can find them for sale on Ebay usually. Just do a search for your year like "1999 Toyota 4runner Factory Service Manual".

@@TimmyTheToolman you are the man dude. i cant express how grateful i am to see those videos on the 3rd gen stuff. thank you!

@@matthewfurlotte1316 Thsnks Matt and you're very welcome. Have fun wrenching on your rig.

I don't think that would work so well. You really listening for a air in those areas. I don't know if you actually fill up a glove with the lost air because we are talking about large areas the air is going into. But, maybe I'm wrong and it could work.

The Sicker the Better!

We'll eventually do the swap but it's not going to be very soon. That project will most likely be months out. It's going to take a while to get the engine we want for the swap.

That seems weird. Check with Yota1 Performance. They rebuild those engines and they can either sell them to you or point you in the right direction to purchase some. 209yota1.com/

People definitely do both but valve jobs are more common than diving into the lower end of the engine and doing piston rings. What most would do for upper end work is just buy some new or remanufactured heads. If the lower end needs work, I think most would just go for a complete engine rebuild at that point. If you going to do what's necessary to replace piston rings, you may as well tear the whole thing apart and do everything.

We don't have a shop. We operate our RU-vid channel out of my home. We aren't mechanics for hire. We help people out when it means we can create a new video to share on our channel. What kind of help is your dad looking for?

A disclaimer for the sue happy people of the world. Basically, we're not responsible for you screwing up your rig. If you really want, you can pause the video and read this boring document. That's why we scroll it by fast, because most people aren't sue happy and they really aren't interested in reading a disclaimer.

@@george2113 I know where you're coming from. I'm no spring chicken either.

It depends where you live. In my area of California, it's around $4.50 per gallon. Almost every other state in the union is less by 1 dollar or more. California is probably the highest in the whole U.S.

In Alaska we are paying $4.89 us dollars per gallon for regular unleaded gasoline. Diesel is $5.25 per gallon. 9/27/2022

When the engine kicks over and rotates, you hear it and feel it. It didn't rotate when I pressurized the cylinder.

@@TimmyTheToolman ah. Then that's unfortunate. Good luck on the rebuild or replacement !

@@NKPGarage Yeah, he's probably going to get a rebuilt engine.

@@TimmyTheToolman Out of curiosity, have you guys tried to put a scope down in there to see if there is anything visible? I have one of those cheap chinese Amazon scopes that I love finding reasons to use.

@@NKPGarage I did and couldn't see anything other than the top of the piston. I believe he probably has a head gasket issue. I learned after the fact that head gaskets don't just fail between the cylinder and a coolant jacket but they can also fail between the cylinder and an oil gallery. So, it's not a slam dunk it's a piston ring issue like I thought it was when I heard the air escaping into the crankcase.

Yeah, pretty much.

Who knows what Rey has planned.

Never heard of it. I sort of doubt it's going to fix bad piston rings but I guess at this point Rey has nothing to lose.

@@TimmyTheToolman you haven’t heard of it because you don’t run a rinky dink operation over there 😂

The answer is we have haters. As idiotic as it sounds, there's literally people who stay subscribed to our channel just so they can give a thumbs down to everything we post. The reason why I know this is I can post a long video, say 50 minutes, and within 5 minutes of us making it live on our channel, it gets a thumbs down. They didn't even have time to watch it.

@@TimmyTheToolman so true! But the good thing is your ratio of lovr to hate is amazing 🤣. Keep em videos coming we love it.

@@Usernamebutwhy You are right. Most people appreciate what we do. How we've developed some real haters is some keyboard warriors think they can talk shit and get nothing back. I've had a battle of words with some guys on our channel, on Toyota forums and Toyota Enthusiast Facebook pages. On our channel, if the comment is way out of line, I can just block them. They can post all they want, but nobody but them can see what they wrote. The count of blocked people is up to 52, I just counted. When the comment isn't that bad and I think it's a potential teachable moment, I'll respond and defend our way of doing things. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't. On a T4R.org, one of my nastiest battles was with another RU-vidr who was talking shit about our Supercharger Install video we just made live on our channel. I had made a claim that we were the first to detail an install of a supercharger on the 3.4 liter engine and some guy innocently commented this other guy was the first because he did a time lapse of him installing a supercharger. I responded that time lapses are cool and all but they don't show any detail and thus are useless for someone to use. The guy who made the video commented and the battle ensued. He said nobody is going to watch an hour and 20 minute video. We should cut it down to around 30 minutes. I responded politely but the guy kept coming at me and it didn't end well. What's such a burn is that supercharger video ended up being one of our most popular videos. The current view count is 278,000. Also, at the time the video went live, this guy's channel was more popular than ours. We surpassed him over the next year or so and I had plans of rubbing it in his face but decided to let it go. The guy is a total douche. So, the big haters our channel has is due to me. Sean has the ability to ignore these kinds of people but I usually can't. I don't like letting people think they can walk all over me whether it's in person or over the internet. If they dish out shit, there's a good chance they will get some back. Thanks for supporting out channel. We appreciate it! Happy Wrenching!

@@TimmyTheToolman very well said, and i think someone who really wants to go the supercharger way ia really up for even a 2 hour video. The more the detail the better. So man! Your channel rocks! Every video that ive seen ia juat amazing!! God bless ya. Let the haters hate coz they sad in their own life. I will follow u on t4r 😉

@@Usernamebutwhy Thanks. We know our videos aren't for everyone and that's ok. We don't make short and sweet videos for complicated jobs because that's not going to help people get the job done. We want people to succeed and that means lots of detail. Thanks for the kind words. I use to be really active on T4R but participation on that forum has dropped off considerably over the last couple years. I use to contribute everyday on that forum but now I find myself only going on there every once and while. It's sort of lost it's allure for me. More people are on the Toyota Facebook pages these days than on forums.

I used Google translate and what it translated into English didn't make much sense.

​@@TimmyTheToolman I will translate it for you. It is in a slang, which makes it un-translatable by any software. Even I have trouble decyfering one word. "Because there are no spark plugs, the crank is too easy to turn now, but we turn the PUMP (instead of a crank), using 12mm wrench." There is one word "вискарь" which sound like it is attached to pump or part of the pump, because it says to turn the nuts of "вискарь with pump". "Вискарь" is a slang for Wiskey (alcohol). That is the only definition I could find on internet. So, Wiskey is some slang for a part that is near the pump or part of the pump, because you are supposed to turn nuts / bolts of "wiskey with pump". This way, he claims, you can do it all by yourself, without assistant.

Lesson for us Free-world countries: nothing can be done in neo-Nazi Russia without alcohol.

@@BesprovolkiSvias Thanks for the translation. So I guess he turning the engine over via the power steering pump.

@@TimmyTheToolman Steering Pump is sealed, there are no spinning parts outside of steering pump. I do not see any "whiskey" that is spinning outside of the steering pump that I can grab and crank. I suspect he drunk too much whiskey while writing this. He is most likely dead either from alcohol or Ukrainian shells.