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And she's almost done. It turns out that when you drop the subframe you have excellent access to the exhaust manifold bolts on the engine side. It looks like you don't have to drop the engine all the way to get everything in and out. And that way you can avoid touching anything on top of the engine at all aside from unhooking some of the shorter cooling hoses. Just drop subframe, remove exhaust, exhaust manifold, starter. Raise back up to remove flexplate bolts. Lower to remove bellhousing bolts. Done.
Also much more room to bolt the front propeller shaft on. Apparently the matchmarks have something to do with where the little metal things go to balance the shaft? I didn't have time to really find anything concrete but I had left matchmarks on them and on the shaft itself so it was pretty easy. For future reference, it would likely be much easier to remove the side that's furthest from the engine first, that way you can easily rotate it and get to the much tighter bolts on the engine side. Made the discovery that I was missing one of the driveshaft bolts and the transmission grounding strap. Will buy those tomorrow, and once that's done I'm just going to scope the cylinders to make sure nothing fell in there. Very little remaining to do, just need to bolt the subframe back in, put the intake back on, and do a drain/fill on the transmission. With how long it's been sitting for might end up needing to drain the tank, but I plan to dump a bottle of HEET in and hopefully that'll do the trick. If not, might dump the last of my stash of everclear 190 in there .
Subframe in, intake back on. Changed engine oil while I was down there. Transmission fluid was nastier than expected for a 30k tranny, but magnets are clean and the filter looks brand new so no worries there. Poured 4 quarts of fluid in, there’s a techstream procedure to check fluid level that I am going to do to make sure we’re good on the level and then I want to do at least one more drain and fill. Only issues left at this point Is that I can’t seem to get the upper intake o2 sensor to thread in and looks like I may be missing a small piece that goes on the intake. Going to figure that out, give it another once over, and then we should be good to do the initial startup!
Scoped the valves and while they are very carbonized, everything else looks good. Will need to clean those at some point. Might try the old water in the intake trick. Bought a Milwaukee scope just for this. Decent video quality but I will say that I expected better for the price. Will likely return it and see if there are any higher quality ones on the market, maybe just get one that connects to my phone.
Couple more things I discovered: while removing the stabilizer bar from the subframe makes the subframe much easier to remove and install, once the subframe is on it’s a very tight space and very difficult to get it back into position. Had to lift the engine to get it in place.
While I love my M18 1/2 impact, it’s way too big and heavy for putting the car back together. Was really useful when it came to getting rusty stuck bolts out, but when I was putting it back together I primarily used my hex impact and the m12 ratchet. The ratchet was pretty much useless due to lack of torque when I was taking bolts out, but worked pretty well when getting them back in. Can’t say I really recommend buying it though, it’s been pretty disappointing for the most part.
Also didn’t make match marks on the suspension bits, so now my alignment is probably going to be way off. It was a step in the service manual but I couldn’t find it when I was looking for it initially. Had expected I would need to do one anyways so it’s not a big deal.
I bought a set of sockets from harbor fright that had swivel heads, they are actually incredibly useful and have been holding up far better than I expected. Definitely a must-have. I was hammering them to the point my M18 hex impact driver was too hot to touch and they took it without complaint.
Also bought two styles of wrenches to compare, a flexible end ratcheting end and a non flexible offset ratcheting wrench with a selector to choose which way it ratchets. I found the flex-head wrenches to be worse than useless - impossible to keep them on the bolt or apply significant torque Definitely regret buying them.
Have the same impact it's a beast for removing almost anything it ripped off an axle nut my air tools couldn't deal with. Impressive. I take it to salvage yards when pulling engines it makes the jobs so much faster. I hate flex head wrenches.
Weird thing is it was shifting from P to D and back, though it was a bit stiff. But it got stuck in M and won't go back out. Also throwing PRND sensor errors. Going to lower it some and maybe try swapping the sensor over from my old one.
Got that figured out. It looks like there was a revision in the detent pin at some point, the one in the tranny I was swapping in was completely different from the one in my old tranny. I couldn't get the new style to work at all, either it was too loose and wouldn't hold the gear, or it was too tight and I couldn't shift it. Swapped to the old one and it worked perfectly immediately. Torqued the bolt by hand based on how the shifter felt. Updated style. Could not get this to work. The "old" style that I transferred over.
Quick adjustment on the other end of the shifter rod where it connects to the shift **** and everything lined up well. Shifts perfectly now.
Looks like the PRND sensor is busted also. Tried to get a reading from techstream and it doesn't seem to be sending anything but I couldn't get a good read on it because my knockoff mini VCI cable is on firmware 1.43. Ordered a vxdiag cable that will be coming this evening, hopefully will be able to figure that particular issue out. Probably just need to swap the sensor from my old tranny over. So far, nothing that has required me to drop the tranny again, hoping it stays that way.
I did end up getting a new safety/prnd sensor. When I attempted to get the old one off it turns out it isn't really possible. Ended up snapping the metal plate. Same thing happened with the one on the replacement transmission while I was trying to remove it. It fits incredibly snug and they pretty much just get welded to the shaft after a few thousand miles. Had to drill it off. New one required a LOT of force to slide on also. Make sure that when you put it on that it is flat to the transmission on every side. If it isn't all the way in the pressure will keep you from being able to shift it.
VCX micro came in and works well enough, let me do active tests and stuff.
Now to polish everything off, flush fluids again, and we're off!
Update: a month later and the transmission seems to be holding up, no problem. Still need to double check the fluid level, turns out you have to do it at a specific temperature. They have a whole procedure where you have to put it in check mode and do a dance with the shifter **** while sacrificing a chicken so that it will blink the drive light when it is up to temperature - I don’t get why since you can access the transmission temp directly through tech stream. Anyone have any insight on this?
Next up on my to-do list:
Repairing the amp
Figuring out what’s going on with my seat motors
Retrofitting radar cruise control.
Also, since nobody has said anything about me uploading pages of the service manual I would be more than happy to upload parts if anyone needs them. I have access to the service manual for most Lexus models, so just reply here or shoot me a PM!
Wanted to share a little tip that helped me. If you search for the file T I S - L E X U S 2014-2016 IS 200T IS 250 IS 300 IS 350 Repair Manual (RM 30 G0 U) you may find something interesting
Additionally, there might be something called Toyota & Lexus E W D floating around on ye olde sea...
Looks like most links to it are dead now, so I don't know how long this will last. Grab it if you need it.
Final update: She's been driving for a few months now. Had some initial issues with transmission jerkiness when shifting but those smoothed out after a few days. I did replace the fluid in the transmission and the diff when I did the initial swap, checked it recently and the level is good. Fluid is clean. Majority of issues that came up with this swap were from unrelated electrical issues due to water damage, so anyone else who does this swap should have a much smoother time than I did. This is definitely a 2-person job though, muscling the transmission in by myself was quite the adventure. For anyone who does this in the future - save yourself a good chunk of time and just drop the subframe. You could probably finish the entire thing in a weekend if you do.
06-17-22, 07:23 PM
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