A good friend of mine Phil messaged me one day saying he had a friend in Hong Kong with a supra that was having issues starting and running. It was a Series 2 NA5 that was converted to VVTi TT6 using all oem parts which should have been fairly straightfoward conversion. The Supra had visited a few different shops but no one could figure out the issue. I made a few suggestions for him to try, but eventually the owner Pendy made plans to get me over to HK to see the car in person.
After a plane and hotel was booked, I made a list on what the issue could be and what parts I might need working from some photos the owner gave me of the car. Given the symptomes of the problem I figured this issue was going to be related to ignition, fuel or triggering so packed some relevant spare OEM parts and a bag with wiring tools & materials in case I had to get creative on the wiring.
Unsure what was going to be waiting for me in terms of problems or what state the Supra was going to be in, I decided to pack a Link Fury X standalone ecu. There is no plug and play solution for a Link ECU to VVTi Supra engine harness, so I spent an evening making a patch harness that I could use to run the car if the stock ECU was dead for some reason. I have a package that can run a completely OEM VVTi supra including the sequential twins, so I wired the patch harness for this in case we needed to start from scratch whilst retaining all OEM features.
The Link ECU also has a built in occiliscope which would allow me to check what the crank/cam signals are doing without needing to pack a picoscope tester.
It was a rough 14 hours flight for me, but after landing at the start of the day in HK, there wasnt going to be much of a chance for me to sleep so went straight to the garage where the Supra was to see if I could at least understand what the problem was before trying to sleep later on.
After having a quick inspection of the car, everything from the surface looked about right, enough at least to have the car start and idle. Yet sure enough go to start it the car and it would fire and then die a few cycles later. No warning lights or stored codes. At this point I thought I wont waste anymore time with the stock ecu in case its faulty. Got my plug and play adapter for a Link ECU out my bag and plugged everything in, loaded in a base map I had made on the plane, disabled the injectors and got a trigger scope of the crank/cam sensor.
Once the results of the trigger scope loaded, I facepalmed and went to show the owner the problem. Somewhere along the way someone had broken a tooth off the VVTi crank sprocket. I think they thought I was joking when I told them one little tooth was the cause of all their problems. As a sanity check I quickly removed the alternator and crank sensor off the engine and rotated the crank by hand until I could see the offending broken tooth using a small mirror.
So within an hour of having a look at the car I had established the problem, which was caused when a new cambelt was fitted at some point. My feel good moment was dulled a bit by the thought of having to remove and change the crank sprocket which meant crank pulley and crank pulley bolt out whilst having no specialist tools for that job with me. If anyone reading has ever tried to remove a stubborn crank pulley bolt without the proper tools, you know the pain this job can be.
Luckily for me the last shop to put the crank pulley bolt on didnt do it to factory specs, so I was able to free it off with a large breaker bar and someone standing on the brakes with the car in 5th gear. I got lucky again when I could remove the crank pulley and crank sprocket with relative ease by hand.
Now with the crank sprocket out of the engine and the problem confirmed, we now had to source another. There was a local garage that had a 2J VVTi that we could get the part from, but once we got there it seemed said 2J had been sitting outside for the last few years and was rusted beyond saving. Depspite the efforts of a few mechanics no one was able to remove the crank sprocket from the engine due to corrosion on the crank. The puller tools were breaking before the sprocket could be removed, and no amount of heat or other tricks helped.
We had wasted a few hours by this point and chances weren't looking good to finding a new part locally in time. It seemed like a silly idea, but I gave Lee at SRD Tuning a message to see how soon he could ship the part from the UK to Hong Kong. Turns out it would be there within two days and if he sent it that day. Overnight parts from the UK, who'd of guessed. Result!
At the same time all this was happening a small typhoon was getting ready to hit Hong Kong. With a new crank sprocket on the way from the UK we decided to wrap up the day and retreat back to the hotel and wait out the Typhoon there.
Luckily the Typhoon wasnt too horrific in the city, so the next day life continued in HK as per normal bar a few fallen trees and flooded areas.
With another day to wait for the crank sprocket, it was time to turn attention to the rest of the car and start tidying up a few bits and sorting some minor niggles. The OEM viscous fan was ditched in favour of two electric fans and required independant fused relays built into the OEM fusebox to run them using the factory fan switch trigger.
With the car at the point where we needed the new part to arrive, Pendy took me out to see the sights of hong kong and meet some other enthusiasts.
The next day came around soon enough and DHL had come through and delivered the new crank sprocket. With no time to waste we headed back to the garage to get the front end of the 2JZ back together.
With everything back together and ready to start, I started the engine and in true toyota fashion it fired into life straight away like nothing was ever wrong. Pendy was super stoked, hearing his engine for the first time in a few years.
After doing a post start check, everything seemed to be behaving so we rushed the car around the corner to get it through an MOT test at a local testing station. After that we took the car on its maiden voyage keeping an eye on temperatures and checking for any leaks. Everything was working spot on, huge sigh of relief.
Although the car was running stock boost, we were both grinning when the boost hit and sequentials were doing as they should. Success!
Then a flight back to the UK where I managed to catch up on sleep!
If you need help with your project for the road or race, then get in contact.
