Previa JDM 2TZ-FZE Teardown and Rebuild

[pdgizwiz]

This is a sequel to a post of mine from almost ten years ago.
One of my Previas is a '97 Alltrac DX. I love it. I won I in a Copart auction for $150 many years ago after it had been donated by someone who was behind on some mechanical maintenance and apparently didn't want to spend any money on it. Their loss, my gain. Anyway, it's been a faithful steed in my herd, especially in snow, for some time now. If I could buy a new one I might do it, but that would break with my longtime tradition of "pay cash and tow it home".
It has 270K on it now, and so far as I know has its original engine, so I've worried some about how long it will be before it blows a head gasket and strands me somewhere. A year or so ago I decided to buy a JDM engine, do a "scratch" rebuild on it, and swap it out. The gal at Foreign Engines said, "oh, we don't get those in very often anymore". Ooops. Had I waited too late? I called to check now and then, and a few days ago whaddaya know, they had one. I bought it and it was delivered to my door the next day. So I got it on a stand and began to tear it down.
Overall it's what I expected/hoped for. The external parts will wind up being replaced by those on my van's original engine, as there are a number of differences, and they tend to be used as "packing" anyway. The oil pan is beaten in pretty badly, the distributor cap and the coolant sensors have been bashed off. None of this is a surprise and it all has to come off for a rebuild anyway. At this point I've stripped it to a long block.
It looks very clean inside the valve cover.
cam-drive.jpg

Although it's clean inside it looks like it has been sitting for a while. The oil on the surface of the cams has all drained off and a couple of intake lobes had some light rust on them. It cleaned up reasonably well and I'm not worried about it.
cam-lobe-rust.jpg
cam-lobes-spiffed.jpg

There are deposits in the intake ports, but I've seen a lot worse. The plugs all looked good so I'm optimistic.
intake-port.jpg

I'll get the head off in the next day or two to take a look at the other critical innards.