Lift Bolts Revisited

[bullet1]

I realize this has been talked about extensively but this is something that I know I haven't read here. I took the initiative to replace the lift bolt on my own but once the valve cover was off I found I was too late. The intake side lift bolt was broken off. I looked through the TSB and realized that I didn't want to do all that work to get the broken piece out so I made an appt. with the dealer. I have 53K miles so I was still in the warranty needed to have the TSB Done.

Well I just got off the phone with the service manager (which I am very cool with, he knows what is up and loves my car) and he tells me that the broken off piece of bolt was jammed in the rocker and because of this, when it rotated, caused damage to the head. So now the dealer is ordering me a new head from Cali, and they are going to have my car AT LEAST till the end of the week. So, moral of the story, if you have a GT-S, by all means change your lift bolts. You do not want to have to do all of this.

Oh yea, and one more bit of info that you might like to know. SPDFREQ is in the process of rebuilding his engine. He had a 2001 and had the new style bolt installed. Well, when he started dismantling, he noticed the Intake side of his was also broken. So, apparently the new bolts don't really do the trick either. As said before, this is going to have to be part of routine maintenance every 10-15K miles. Much better to spend $2 and an hour over dealing with the Heafty work of getting these replaced once broken.

Sorry so long, but I figured you guys would want to know this.

[BRAK]

man ... im gonna get mine looked at!:eek:

TY for the info on the new bolt also .... you would think they would "improve" the bolt.

[00CericaRuss]

damn... what exact damage did it do?

I helped someone check theirs this past weekend, and the intake side was broken, shaft slightly rotated, and we managed to drill it a bit, rotate the shaft to where it had to be, then drill the rest of it out since there was no other way to remove it other than the tsb method.

after about 3 hours of drilling and trying to figure out workarounds, it finally came out, we cleaned up the metal shavings, put the new bolt in (after rethreading the hole that it goes in) put everything back together...

he's driven a good couple hundred miles since then, and his car's driving better than before... so.. yeah.. what kind of damage did you get? I'm rather curious :)

[bullet1]

I'm not sure the exact damage, all I have had was phone contact. I am going to go get my garage door opener and stuff from the car since I won't be driving it for a while so I'll check it out then. I'll try and get some pics as well while I am there. But over the phone, all he said what that the bolt was lodged and it damaged the head so they ordered a new one. Thats it. I'll keep you guys updated.

[All_MTR_GTS]

Originally posted by bullet1
I'm not sure the exact damage, all I have had was phone contact. I am going to go get my garage door opener and stuff from the car since I won't be driving it for a while so I'll check it out then. I'll try and get some pics as well while I am there. But over the phone, all he said what that the bolt was lodged and it damaged the head so they ordered a new one. Thats it. I'll keep you guys updated.


did you notice your lift not functioning right? or did you just check it because?

[All_MTR_GTS]

oh yeah, they have these bolts at the dealers? do they have to order it or do they seem to have them in stock??

[bullet1]

1) I checked them because they can potentially break and I didn't want to go through what I am currently going through.

2) No they usually have to order them and can get them w/in a few days.

FYI Bolt Part #: 90105-06293

[Korben007]

That was my car that CeliRuss helped with. I am getting a little nervous now that I hear the word head damage. My engine is running great, better then before. So I am as curious as Russ to find out what type of damage was done to the head. I am not under warrenty anymore so I hope I am not any the same situation as you.
However from looking at the way the system works the shaft is round and rotation does not seem like it would cause to much of a problem as far as engine function, however mine was broke, rotated and slid towards the cam gear a couple mm. It was a pain of a job, definatly easier with someone else there :)
Cant wait to hear more!
Rory

[gts24]

Guys, I'm a victim of the intake side bolt breaking. I dunno of anyone that has had the exhaust side break yet.


Here's the rules,


1. Check it yourself. The dealer can't do ANYTHING if you just go in and complain about a TSB. This is a TSB here people, if you don't have proof the bolt is broken, and your car isn't exhibiting syptoms, you can't expect the dealer to just look through your car.
2. Take pics. This helped alot for me when I got mine serviced. I did part of the work for the dealer. I just wanted to replace my bolts, but when I got in there the intake side was broke. So I took a ton of pics, and documented everything, and posted my pics up and sent the link to the service dept manager.


cliffs notes. check this for yourself , if you car isn't having any issues in lift the dealer cannot and should not do squat. Until this is a full blown recall (which IMO it should almost be) you can't expect the dealer to just check out a car which is functionally fine.

[SilverBulletGTS]

This might be me worrying a bit too much, but if we check it ourselves can the dealer blame anything on us, like saying we didn't take it apart/put it back together properly? Been reading some dealership horror storys lately so just wondering.

[bullet1]

Yep GTS24 is right, If you don't have symptoms of lift failing, the dealer really shouldn't do anything for you. I thought my lift felt a little weak, but it never failed to work that I noticed. So I just wanted to get them out and replaced since I had 53K miles on it. But I was obviously too late... and who knows how long it had been broken. I also believe this should be a total recall, but once the bolts are replaced they can still break again so I don't know what Toyota is going to do about it.

[celi7g]

So I'm curious now, is it safe to drive the car around if a lift bolt is broken? What are the chances the broken piece can come loose and fall into the engine causing even more problems??? I'm not sure if I have enough of an understanding of what happens when the car gets into lift at 6000rpm. Right now I'm just keeping the revs under 6K until I get this thing extracted, but is that even enough? Maybe I should just park it... this cheap POS bolt is causing me enough headache as it is!

[AJFtL]

I never really noticed a problem with my car when I decided to check my bolts. This was about 9 mos ago, and my intake bolt was broken. I'm pretty cool with my dealership and service manager, but I was surprised to hear that they had to order and install a new head at 58000 miles. I was without my car for a week or so. I drive a lot, and so decided that I would check the bolts every six mos. I checked them 3 mos ago, and replaced them both as the intake side showed a little wear. It's just as easy to put a new bolt in as it is to look at them.

[gts24]

I'd just stay out of lift until you get it fixed.

[bullet1]

Well, I went and looked at it today and the problem was that the bolt got jammed in the rocker shaft so hard that it messed up the shaft itself. This caused the inside of that bore to be really messed up and they had to use vice grips to even pull the shaft out. Where you see it in the pics is pretty much where it is stuck, so therefor They are ordering me a new head.

http://www.tcforum.com/bullet1/head5.jpg

http://www.tcforum.com/bullet1/head8.jpg

http://www.tcforum.com/bullet1/head9.jpg

Well, I guess I can't really complain about getting a new head after 53,000 miles. Hopefully they put everything back right and it'll last another 100,000 without anymore hickups.

[bullet1]

Bump, you guys said you wanted to see the reason for the head replacement.

[celi7g]

Appreciate the heads up bullet1, I hope this isn't a typical scenario of what happens to engines with broken bolts. I'll be making an app't to bring mine in asap!

[Aracheon]

My car is almost to 30,000mi, and I have a pretty good relationship with the service manager at the dealership I always took my RAV4 to, so I'm gonna see if he can't open her up and see if he won't replace the bolts just under a precautionary measure, and give me the old ones.