Crank girdle, RTV silicone and oil pump

This didnt go well at all. Now that all that hassle with crank has been dealt, I thought I should glue crank girdle and block together.

Having some glühwein

My choice for sealant/adhesive was Permatex Supra Grey. It was very easy to handle and the results were good. Afterthought came to me bit later that I should have avoided grey and black RTV colors and used some other. It wasnt easy to scrape off grey RTV from the grey block and if I had used black RTV, it would have been really hard to scrape off from the all-black crank girdle.

I prepped everything, checked that bolt holes lined up and made few alignment tests. Everything seemed good and I torqued both rear main seal and oil pump to the spec.

Carefully applied a decent sized bead around the block, avoided oil pan bolt holes and lifted the girdle on the bottom of the engine.

Below: First round with the RTV

Below: examining how the RTV is doing

I went around the block inspecting it and noticed that the oil pump had moved. The front seal on the oil pump wasnt aligned around crank anymore and it took me a while to get it aligned again. Couldnt figure at that time what had happened to it but left it there and gave the RTV time to cure.

Later I noticed that the oil pan bolts that I had used to secure the girdle were causing this.

Pretty hard to see it, but the top side of the crank in this photo sits tightly against the seal.

Couple of days later I was reading the shop manual and noticed that I had forgotten the two alignment thingys from the oil pump side (Toyota calls them ring pins) that were meant to be inserted into block.

I’ve got both ring pin sets here, the other that are for the top of the block – to align the cylinder head (larger ones) and the ones that align the oil pump.

RTV had cured well and the girdle was really stuck to the block. I was impressed how well it holded and it took some effort to separate the two.

Smacked the two ring pins into block, checked the alignment and reglued everything. The glueing actually took less time than cleaning the RTV residue off the parts.

Finally, glued again


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