Iminence

“The first drive is iminent” he says. “The radiator seals” he says. Two months pass by and it still has not moved. Tangents on tangents do not a good path make.

To wrap up what I ended with the last post, I figured out a lower rad hose I could chop up and use. Gates 21430. Yay.

It’s incredibly tight but it fits and clears everything. Seems to be a theme with this swap. Don’t worry I put clamps on after I took that image. Upper was easy, it was actually the first hose I bought from AutoZone. Don’t even remember what it was though. I’ll update this post if I find the reciept or something. (EDIT: It was Continental C71134 or 61428) Anyway the rad ended up springing a few small leaks, so I’m slowly working my way through welding those up. Moving forward.

Distraction #1: Differentials (Completely unnecessary)

My, as well as most RAV4s, came with an open differential. That’s fine, LSDs are available, and this diff platform dates back to the early 80s through today so there’s a decent amount of aftermarket parts. I can get an OEM LSD from several different cars, including 1st gen RAV4 (🤯), 2nd gen RAV4, and many generations of Camry, Highlander, Previa, Sienna, Supra, Lexus GS, IS, RC, and RX. Especially those last few means that aftermarket parts exist. Clutch LSDs is mostly what I’m looking for there. All of the factory LSDs to my knowledge were Torsen T1 or T2-style. That works pretty well except in extreme offroading where they can act like an open diff when under no load, such as when picking up a tire off the ground. Unfortunately there are no ratcheting lockers, which is what I would prefer, but there is one Chinese ELocker available. It is $1000 and the company has no reputation so it is a hard sell. Anyway, for now I wanted to settle for an OEM LSD. I can’t find any RAV4s around me, so I found an RX300 at the junkyard I took the diff from instead. I had actually anticipated it to be an open diff and I was going to weld it, but to my surprise it was an LSD, so I took that as a win and moved forward. What I didn’t realize until getting home is that the front mount is actually different between the RAV and RX diff housings.

The RAV4 has the mount thread into the front, whereas the RX has bolts that go vertically and a sit little bit further back. I figured the easiest thing to do would be to just make a different front mount. The driveshaft flange is the same, the rear mount is the same, the overall size is the same, should be easy.

It doesn’t look this scabby in person

Yep, there’s plenty of room to remake the front mount and have it sit behind the subframe instead of in front. This will actually make future service easier too. But there’s one pretty major caveat. The CV flange is different. Up to 06/00, the RX300 used a larger stub shaft bolt pattern and flange. It seems this changed after 06/00, to the RAV4 size, but I can’t completely tell. It’s too big of a difference to just oval the holes, and the center bore is much larger so I would be losing that register. It seems that the early RX is the only car that used this size stub, so there are no easy replacement axles. I can’t use the RAV4 open diff stubs because the spline count is different (23 open vs 24 LSD), the RAV4 LSD stubs may fit but I don’t have the information to know. It may be possible to replace the inner CV on the RAV4 with the RX300 unit, but I did not end up testing this. I decided to kick this portion of the project further down the line. I didn’t want to just throw the original open diff back in, I wanted some kind of upgrade, so I welded it. It’s probably a bad idea, short wheelbases especially have problems with it. Diffs are cheap enough so if I end up absolutely hating this it wouldn’t be the end of the world to switch it out. Anyway, for this, I don’t have a MIG welder, and I wasn’t about to try and TIG it…

That looks terrible

I stick welded it. I have a TIG welder and I have plenty of E6011 rods sitting around, why the hell not. As you can tell I haven’t done this in a long time. But I got it to stick together and it should be decently strong. Got it all reassembled, felt pretty good, so back in the car it went. This time it just bolts in, no custom anything needed. I’ll update this after it’s driving to see how bad it is. Distraction over. (It’s pretty bad)

Distraction #2: Exhaust bracing (Somewhat necessary)

Due to reasons, I am running a VERY long section of exhaust unsupported and with no flex joints. I don’t have room to add flex joints, but I can add supports. I bought some 1”x 0.125” stainless flat bar stock and added some bracing where convenient. This ended up being right up front by the header, and way in the back bolted to the transfer case. Bad picture on the 2nd one its the best I could get. Now it’s fairly rigid all the way to the back of the motor, but should have enough freedom of movement for heat expansion. I’m just trying to prevent the rest of the exhaust from stressing this front section too much.

Distraction over.

Distraction #3: Transfer case actuation (Pretty necessary)

I’m actually following another person’s steps on this part. A Canadian fella with a 2nd gen RAV4 has swapped a 1st gen transmission/transfer case into his car, and with that he ran into the same clearance issues as me on the 2AZ. The stock vacuum diaphragm doesn’t clear his block either. I will link his posts on the matter here:
https://www.rav4world.com/threads/week-end-off-road-warrior.245017/post-2343698
https://www.rav4world.com/threads/week-end-off-road-warrior.245017/post-2836986

He found a linear electric GM transfer case actuator that had the exact stroke necessary to move the RAV4’s lever. So I’m doing the same thing as him but slightly different. His original setup had the actuator remotely mounted with a push pull cable, then he later flipped it around to act on the lever directly. I am much tighter on space, and the only place I can reasonably tuck it is directly under the intake manifold, conveniently right where the actuator arm lives. I figured out the threads for the part, something he didn’t figure out (or at least didn’t utilize), and I thought it would be more convenient to thread the part in. M33x2, for those playing along at home. Yes, M33. Weird size. Luckily McMaster has nuts in that size that I can use. As for the bracket, it’s kind of a weird location, its weird to pick up the bolt pattern and circle around the axle, so instead of trying to triangulate it, I just took the original bracket and cut the vacuum off. A few extra cuts left me with a bracket that bolted to the t-case with no extra features. Drill a hole and tack weld the nut in place, it’s quick and dirty but it’s in situe. Now I just need to make the connection from the actuator to the transfer case lever.

This ended up not being enough space and I had to weld a third nut on as a spacer. No problem. I epoxied in a rivnut to the linear actuator, got a 16mm double split collar, drilled it, welded a bolt in place to give it a thread, and made a small bracket to offset the collar upward to clamp to the arm. This all happened so fast I dont have pictures of it all. But I have screenshots of video, so you’ll have to live with that.

I installed the collar with 2 nuts rather than threading the plate. This is to allow for adjusting the placement of the collar. However I don’t think thats as important now as I originally thought. More on that in a bit. Anyway, weld it out, give it a coat of paint, and throw it in the car. This was a PAIN to do, and would have been impossible to do if I had the exhaust in place. But once it was in, it was good to go. Give it power to the right places, and…

That’s actually it. That’s fully installed and done. Ready to go. Well, ready to sit. I’ve not done the wiring on it yet. The whole adjustment thing I added doesn’t really seem to matter, or at least it landed in the perfect spot first try. There’s enough flex in the bracket where the shift arm lands in the correct spot with no further adjustment.

That was the last piece of the puzzle before it would be possible to drive the car. I didn’t want the shift mech to sit and move freely, lest it moves and grinds the 4WD engagement teeth or actually engages 4WD while turning right. Well, with that, it was time for a small amount of reassembly, and to actually go for the drive. Bolt the wheels back on, fill the coolant, make sure everything was plugged in or tucked out of the way. It actually went pretty well. It was loud because I was driving a 2.7L inline 4 with 3 feet of exhaust and no muffling, but it ran fine and everything (mostly) worked as it should. Here’s a little snippet of the relevant YouTube video.

The two issues currently are that the clutch isn’t adjusted properly, and there’s something up with my shift linkage. The shifter is sitting too far to the left when in the neutral position. Far enough where I can’t actually get into gears 1 and 2, only 3-4-5-R. So I was starting in 3rd. Pain, and I’m sure my brand new clutch loved it, but it had enough power to move. I believe I’ve actually figured out the problem, but that’s a post for another time. An expected side issue is that the welded diff is noisy. The tires chirp like crazy. I’ve been in welded diff cars and none of them were this bad. However, those cars weren’t this short of wheelbase and didn’t have tires this large of diameter. So I’m not too surprised. But the engine, the engine feels great. It felt happy and it performed well so far. The lack of immediate self destruction means I didn’t majorly mess something up on assembly. I’ll take it.

So where does that leave us? Definitely the #1 priority is to finish the exhaust. Zero muffling is an absolute killer. I’m reconsidering the entire rad setup, I might look for something else and switch to an expansion tank setup. I’ve found some of the parts necessary for that but not everything. I need to make AC lines, I haven’t even begun to look at that. I need to make brackets to mount the wiring harness, that should be pretty easy. The list keeps getting shorter

The end is in sight. It’s not here, but it’s close.