No Shims in 4age Head??

[truenorican]

I rebuilt the 4ag in my AE92 and finally got it started but its burning oil pretty bad with blue-ish smoke coming out of the exhaust. We took the head off and once we removed the buckets none of the valves had shims.

Do you think not having shims can cause it to burn that much oil?

[sirdeuce]

No shims?? Are the buckets smooth on the top? No shims could cause oil problems as the cam would immediately destroy the buckets, valves, bucket bosses, guides etc.. That is if the buckets were the type needing shims. Can you post a pic of the buckets?

[truenorican]

[jondee86]

Shims are there... on the 16V they are on top of the buckets not underneath.



They suck onto the bucket pretty good with a film of oil, so they don't fall
off right away. You need to lever them a little with a small flat blade screwdriver
in the notches.

Oil burning... did you replace the valve stem oil seals ?

Cheers... jondee86

[truenorican]

Oh nice, thanks. I didn't know that.

The seals were replaced when I took it to the machine shop and looked good. We are replacing the head gasket (suppose-ably it was a HKS one), just to be safe. Some research online shows it may be a 20 valve HG? But either way, it was drenched in oil, maybe not torque down correctly? We'll see after its replaced if the problem continues.

[sirdeuce]

Were the head and block surfaced properly for a metal gasket? The surfaces need to be SMOOOOVE, typically lapped after surfacing. If that was done properly maybe a bit of dirt got in there somewhere, pinched or dropped an 'O'-ring out oh the HG.

[jondee86]

Looking a bit like a 20V gasket if the TRD one is anything to go by....



But I am no expert. There seem to be a few variations between brands
and that is too confusing for me So I just order the OEM gasket from
Toyota when I need one.

Cheers... jondee86

[truenorican]

It should've been smoothed by the shop. We also noticed there were no o-rings in the HG when we took it out. I'm not sure where they are or if it ever came with them. So, we just ordered an OEM one just to make sure we have the right one.

I'll let you know if the oil burning stops.

[oldeskewltoy]

you rebuilt the head.... since you had an issue with looking for the shims.....


I ask if you ever checked valve clearances???