Why Toyota Engines are Reliable

today i'm going to show you what's inside of toyota's 2ar fe engine and how it works now this 2.5 liter engine has been used across many toyotas since the rav4 in 2008 we're going to tear it down to see how it works and just what makes these engines so reliable that toyota's been using it for the past decade now this engine is from a 2011 rav4 and it's already been taken apart so we're just going to quickly remove all these covers here starting with the valve cover at the top now taking a look at the top of this valve cover this engine does take either 520 or 0w20 weight oil that was the advantage of one of these engines over its predecessor the 2az engine it's a lot more efficient yet still a little bit more powerful it also has dual vvti which you can see the oil control valves at the top of the valve cover here as well as the two cam position sensors at the back now taking a look underneath the rocker cover we have this little pipe here that runs along here it takes oil from this part over here and distributes it along the rocker arm system down underneath this valve cover here so everything is about lubricated and here you can see the two ports for the oil control valve that means that this valve cover here which is actually made of an alloy not plastic is part of the lubrication system and has to maintain oil pressure now looking under this valve cover of the 2ar engine we have the intake camshaft on this side and the exhaust cam shaft over on this side and you can see here we do have both variable valve timing gears one good thing is the valve train is powered by a timing chain which means that you don't have any timing belt to service over the life of this engine now looking a little further down inside of there we have the cam shafts that act on these roller rocker arms which then act down on the valves below now these cam shafts are actually secured in their own little tray here and can be removed once they get the timing chain off next up i'm going to remove this timing chain cover you can see we do have an access port for the intake vvti gear we've also got an access port for the timing chain tensioner over here and this whole thing is actually already loose the crank bolt and we've got the timing chain now taking a look at the inside of this valve cover we've got the integrated oil pump which is driven off of the crankshaft right here at the front we've got its inlets and outlets over here and this is actually a three-stage variable oil pump so that also means that the timing chain cover is also part of the oil lubrication system in this engine now with the timing chain covering move you can see how simple the timing chain setup is we just have the crankshaft here at the bottom we have a hydraulic tensioner over here that keeps tension on these plastic timing chain guides and then we have the two variable valve timing for the intake and the exhaust at the top here there's no other idler pulleys water pumps or anything else just a simple cam and crank at the top here now to get this chain off i'm just going to remove these 12 millimeter bolt from the chain guides i can remove that and these do have plastic chain guides in them which i don't typically like but that's what new engines are going for these days this top slide here now i can remove the chain from these gears and there's the timing chain chain guide over here and then remove the chain tensioner now the crank pulley just slides off and you can see that it's actually keyed for the oil pump now this top tray here that carries the two cam shafts are held on by a bunch of 10 millimeter bolts so i'm gonna go ahead and remove those next and then i could pop off these cam caps here you could see the channels for the oil lubrication i'm gonna remove this front one here these ones actually feed the vvti gears from the top here through the valve cover and then at the bottom here through these holes i actually didn't need to remove the cam shaft caps because this whole tray here comes off as one assembly here you could see where we differ from the older toyota engines instead of these camshafts directly acting down on these valves here they actually push down on this roller rocker arm system here which will then push down on the valve indirectly now having this tray separate here kind of makes things easier especially when assembling the engine and you can see it can just remove the camshafts directly from this aluminum tray now with the camshafts removed we have clear access to the valve train at the top here and here you can see the roller rocker arm system now this here is the hydraulic lifter which is actually going to plug into there now this is going to take an oil feed which has this little hole inside of here to kind of take up any of that slack from this roller rocker arm system that way you don't actually have to do a valve adjustment it's hydraulically adjusted for you and looking at the bottom here you can see you have a low friction roller design as well as the contact point here where it's going to press down on the valve directly now these are going to use both a combination of spring pressure and oil pressure in order to take up that slack next up we'll take a look at the air intake on this 2ar engine now the throttle body plugs in over on this side and then it takes the air down below and individually into the four cylinders now there's two main features on this intake here we've got the acoustic air induction system over here which basically uses engine vacuum to kind of control a flap inside of here and that's gonna vary the flow of the air as it goes into the engine depending on what rpm you're at i've got another video on how the toyota acis system works where i've torn this down so you might want to check that link above now the other cool feature of this intake system is the tumble flow actuator now this is just a servo motor here that's going to control individual flaps inside of each of these runners here so that it can encourage tumble flow and therefore help the engine to warm up a lot faster now the two ar series of engines were mostly port injected especially in the front wheel drive variants like the camry and the rav4 and here you can see the four port injectors just before it goes into the head the next i'll just remove these 12 millimeter bolts that hold the fuel rail on and then i can pop off the fuel injectors now what's interesting with these fuel injectors is they've got a really long snout as well as small little holes here that helps to really mystify and push the fuel down inside of the air intake as close as possible for the best combustion now remove the 12 millimeter bolts that hold this air intake on and i'll just pop that off and here on the back of the intake you can see the four tumble flow valves here that are going to turn with this tumble flow actuator in order to create turbulent airflow depending on engine temperature kind of cool that it decided to go with a square intake port here now the head bolts on these are t55 torx all right now i'll remove the engine head here we have the cylinder head removed and you can see we have the tops of the pistons here which do have a lot of crap on them now this engine does use an open deck design with the water jacket around the pistons for good cooling now what's interesting about this water jacket is that there's actually this insert inside of here now what this insert does is it effectively makes the cooling jacket a little bit shallower so that you can warm up your engine a little bit faster now what's interesting is this spacer which is deep inside of the engine where you'd think it'd be hot is actually made of plastic and just take a look at all that crust on top of the engine now taking a look at the front of the engine block here we have the water inlet and the thermostat housing kind of integrated into this water pump which is thankfully not made of a plastic housing although the newer toyota is actually a complete electric unit there's no pulley driving its water pump all right now i'm going to remove a bunch of 12-millimeter bolts that hold this water pump on and here's what that water pump looks like now probably one of the weaker points on these toyota engines is that these water pumps tend to leak after a while just remove this coolant bypass hose here and then pop off this dipstick here now i'm going to remove these 14 millimeter bolts that holds this water pump housing on let's remove this thermostat here it's a simple thermostat and then i'll remove the water pump housing here this one's actually got oil lines going into it now the front of this engine here this pocket is actually an oil separator for the pcv system so as oil is being drawn up inside of here it tries to capture some of that oil and bring it back down so it doesn't get re-burned into the air intake system now this is also good because it functions as an oil return where it kind of bypasses the crankshaft so it doesn't really splash around and drops it straight down to the case now i'll just remove these 12 millimeter bolts and just crack that free and here you can see the oil separator inside of here all right now we need to turn the engine over now looking at the bottom of the engine we do have a steel oil pan which is nice we've also got a cartridge style oil filter so you have to get these special tools here to slide those on and then turn that free then i can spin off this plastic housing and you have your cartridge style oil filter in here which you can exchange next i'm going to take off all the 10 millimeter bolts that hold the oil pan on and we'll just pop that oil pan off nothing interesting inside underneath this rav4's engine we do have this oil pickup tube which is made of plastic and oil gets sucked up inside here and goes straight towards the oil pump at the front now underneath that we do have this balance shaft assembly here which is meant to cancel engine vibrations so we're going to take off all these 10 millimeter bolts to have a closer look now just remove that baffle there's a couple of 12 point bolts 12 and 14 millimeter bolts i'm going to remove next and remove the 12 point bolts let's go ahead and pry off this balance shaft assembly here this is pretty cool see as i rotate this the gears inside of their rotate now this engine's got a upper oil pan or you can call it the crank case so there's just a couple more bolts holding them in and lift this off so with the crankcase remover down to the block and the crankshaft and i think i found the problem listen to all the play here and these connecting a rods of sideways play in all four of them so this engine must have been making a huge racket all right i'm going to break these 12 point 12 millimeter bolts connecting rod cap free they seem to be tight okay that bearing doesn't look too bad and that bearing is not too bad either okay that one's not bad either and the last one seems fine as well we'll just push these down so we can remove the pistons at the bottom now i'm going to loosen up these 14 millimeter bolts here zip these off here now at the back here is the rear main seal and with everything else free i can lift off the crankshaft and remove it from the block i'm going to just drop out the pistons here so here i've got everything taken apart here i'm going to go ahead and take a closer look at each component now starting at the bottom of the engine here we have the crank case or you can call it the upper oil pan and this plastic pickup tube now the lubrication system begins a journey at the pan here where it's going to draw in oil down here and then straight to the front here where it's going to go into the oil pump now one thing i don't like is that the oil pump is located on the timing cover as opposed to kind of internal to the engine that means if you've got like a timing cover leak or something you could lose oil pressure anyways the oil is going to build up its flow and then send it back in through this hole here into the lower crankcase again the crankcase is then going to send the oil back down to be filtered and then back up into the main block now taking a look at the two ar block here things are pretty basic we've got that oil that's going to come in from the oil filter here and send down across the water pump housing and then down into this oil galley here now that galley is going to feed these oil squirters here now interestingly the two outer pistons only have two squirters while the two inner pistons have three squares it's also going to feed the main bearings and also the crankshaft on the bottom here you've got the pcv system that's gonna draw oil and vapor up in here into the oil separator and hopefully bring the oil back down into the crankcase before venting out to the valve cover and that oil separator is basically there's a bunch of baffles now the bottom of the crankcase driven off of the crankshaft we do have this balance shaft assembly now the reason why we have a balance assembly in this engine is because a four-cylinder engine is not naturally balanced see because if you look at this crankshaft here you've got piston number one and piston number four over here and piston two and three that are going to move together now when they're moving on opposite directions like this you're going to create a secondary force which is going to cause a lot of vibrations in this engine due to the way these pistons are configured and we do have this large gear here that's built on to the balance weight of cylinder number three that's going to drive those balance shafts now the balance shafts can only sit under cylinders number two and three if you tried to balance the outside you'd actually be creating more forces now you can see here these two are the weights that move opposite of each other and this moves twice the speed of the crankshaft so it can reduce those secondary forces for a more balanced engine you can also see it's also got oil channels and bearings just like the main crankshaft taking a look under the head here nothing looks really damaged there's just a lot of crust here built up from over the years you can also see that there's these ports here that are going to feed oil to the head now the exhaust ports are kind of traditional you just have four exit ports newer engines are actually going to integrate the exhaust manifold into one piece and then the catalytic converter will just bolt right up there now in the head itself you can see you do have two main oil galleys that are going to feed all of these hydraulic lifters to make sure you don't have any tapping sound from the roller rocker system furthermore you've also got these oil feeds here that are going to feed the cam shafts to lubricate them and the vvti system next up we have the camshaft tray and the camshafts themselves which are a nice solid piece here now the variable valve timing system is what's going to phase the input which comes from the timing chain to the output which is the camshaft now one downside to many toyotas is that when this vvti system does wear out it tends to give you a rattle when you start up especially when it's cold now i've got another video on why that rattles so you make sure you check that out linked above now the water pump itself is also a weak point on some of these engines and one thing i don't like is that they ran a main oil galley through the water pump housing for no apparent reason they could have just shorted that through the block itself just makes for another failure point and finally we come to the valve cover itself now as i mentioned before you do have to run oil through this little pipe here to lubricate the roller rocker arm systems now that's good for lubrication however it just opens up another point of failure if you've got to run oil through each individual part now in order to reduce side to side forces inside the cylinder walls toyota has actually offseted the piston slightly downward towards the exhaust side so that the crankshaft is actually offset from the center line of the piston and one of the main problems with the predecessor to this engine the 2az is that it would strip head bolts right out of the aluminum block now that was a big problem because it would basically give the same symptoms as having a blown head gasket except once you get in there you find that it's actually stripped out and then you have to put inserts in here in order to fix the problem or potentially change the engine block now another thing the toyota's addressed is oil burning from the previous 2az motor in that motor you wouldn't have enough oil return ports and they would get all clogged up and then the oil would just end up inside the combustion side of the chamber here you can see there's clearly four ports here and four ports over on this side here and an improved oil control ring now in addition they've also reduced the oil weight in order to increase fuel economy now overall i think toyota's done a pretty good job in the design of this engine although very simplistic it's still there to very good fuel economy and of course really good reliability this engine has been used in a lot of toyotas such as the rav4 and even the camry and a lot of fleet vehicles and it's proven itself over the past 10 years and hundreds of thousands of miles and that's pretty much all the components inside toyota's 2ar engine and how it works make sure you follow me on instagram for more behind the scenes footage and subscribe for more videos just like this one check out my new glasstop engine table i made out of this engine i finished it off in a nice bronze and black theme and it's even got a little flywheel clock on the back

Channel: speedkar99

Views: 333,814

Rating: 4.934999 out of 5

Keywords: toyota, engine, teardown, how, works, diagnose, repair, maintenance, failure, bearing, oil, burning, head, gasket, valve, camshaft, crankshaft, rebuild, power, economy, fuel, piston, ring, connecting, rod, inside, lexus, 4 cylinder, motor, lubrication, VVT, variable, timing, solenoid, water, pump, replacement, transmission, rav4, camry, venza, highlander, corolla, chain, block, balance, shaft, intake, air, exhaust, mods, problem, fail, reliable, mileage, K24, honda, gas, noise, cold, belt, serpentine, pan, filter, 2AR-FE, emissions, workhorse, aluminum, drift

Id: l6WXqdaiuKo

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021