2000 Montero Endeavor - Build Thread

chentwoten

New member
Hi guys, new here and figured it'd be good to start a build thread to log the work I've been doing to the truck.

Picked up a 2000 Montero Endeavor with 138K miles about a month ago. It had a pretty clean body, but that was pretty much it. The engine was leaking a good amount of oil and it didn't pass smog. The car had last been registered in 2017 and the gentleman who I purchased the vehicle from had changed the transmission (claimed it was water logged), replaced the A/C compressor with a Denso unit and did some stereo work (more on that later) and other bits and baubles. The vehicle drove decently, so I decided to pull the trigger and my buddy helped me take it home.

My plans are to get it in solid mechanical shape and then build a sleep-in drawer setup for the rear to take it on some trips with my girlfriend.

Starting list of issues:
  • Transmission cable needs to be replaced (very hard to move shift lever - assuming cable is corroded on the inside)
  • Oil leaks from valve covers, rear cam seals and oil pan
  • Transfer case is leaking
  • Triggering CEL for P0431 - likely a bad catalytic converter on Bank 2
  • CV boots are split on the driver axle (both inner and outer)
  • Most of the suspension has seen better days
  • Interior is pretty rough, front seats are torn up bad
  • Rear door doesn't open from the outside (broken handle, common issue)
  • Missing some outside trim pieces, rear driver light is from a Gen 2
  • Stereo system was a mess
Here's some shots of the car from the FB ad and on the day we picked it up

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chentwoten

New member
First on the order was to swap out the transmission cable. Fortunately, the seller provided us with a new cable; however we quickly came to find out that it wasn't the right part number and the cable was about half as long as the original. The ends were also different
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Thus, I tried to order the correct part number (MR453301), but none in stock in USA and back order from Japan was 2-3 month ETA. Instead of waiting, we decided to check out a 97 LS in the local pull-a-part yard and see if we could grab one from there. Fortunately, we were able to grab that, along with the white-ball T-case shifter and some other small parts that my car was missing. Here's a shot of the center console out and the new t-case shifter going in. While we were in there, we realized that at some point the transfer case shifter had been removed - and whoever re-installed it didn't clock it correctly and only had 2 of the 3 bolts installed. This was causing gear oil to spill out the top of the t-case. :oops:

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Had some parts on order that arrived quickly so also swapped out the rear door handle so that I didn't have to climb in from the inside anymore.

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chentwoten

New member
Next on the list was to get this thing passing the good ol' California smog test so that I could complete the title transfer and get it registered.

Unfortunately, all of the O2 sensors had already been replaced so that wasn't the culprit. Instead, all signs pointed to a bad primary catalytic converter on Bank 2. The purple line (which is the downstream sensor on Bank 2) should be a relatively consistent flat line. However, because the cat wasn't doing much anymore, the voltage readings were all over the place.

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I went to my local exhaust shop in Oakland, CA - Yang's Auto Repair to get a quote for the repair. Father and son shop that do honest, quality work for a fair price. I ended up getting all three cats replaced since they noted the rear one was completely blown out as well. I figured the Bank 1 primary would likely be soon to follow. They had the job completed in 2 hours, one happy customer (although quite a bit poorer after it was all said and done).

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I immediately cleared the codes and drove it around to get all of the readiness monitors to set. Using OBD Fusion, I was able to verify that Bank 2 cat was now working properly, as expected. Took it to the smog shop and passed with no issues. The gentleman there got under the car and checked all the cats for each respective E/O# and said it all checked out.

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The next day, couldn't hold my excitement back and made a quick trip to AAA to get the title transfer paperwork submitted and get some license plates for the Montero. What a relief!

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spacecowboy7777

Active member
Passing smog is always brutal here! Did you use oem or aftermarket cats? For a little while I thought I might need new cats for my 95, and the oem was like $6-700 each! If there is an aftermarket available I’d be happy to know about it
 

chentwoten

New member
Passing smog is always brutal here! Did you use oem or aftermarket cats? For a little while I thought I might need new cats for my 95, and the oem was like $6-700 each! If there is an aftermarket available I’d be happy to know about it

Aftermarket, they are weld-in units. I believe they are Miller (p/n 74074 - front left, p/n 74004 - front right) and Catco (p/n 912006 - rear). Each cat was ~$300, but the labor was reasonable since they were doing them all at the same time. They cut the old units out with a plasma cutter and tacked and mig'd the new ones in.

I thought about going OEM as well but it was quicker for me to get them replaced in this manner, plus with the R&R and the fact that they handled everything made it worth it to me.
 
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chentwoten

New member
Next on the list to address was the oil leaks. I did some looking around on the engine and it had plenty of oil coming off of the valve covers, rear cam seals (especially the driver side) and what looked to be on the back of the engine (maybe oil pan).

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I ordered up some NGK wires (p/n 7005) and Iridum spark plugs (p/n 7994) since the intake manifold had to come off. Also ordered an intake manifold gasket kit from Fel-Pro (p/n MS95709) since I would be removing the throttle body, intake manifold and EGR while I was in there.

Here's the remains of the valve cover gasket on the driver side. Never seen a valve cover gasket this hard and stuck in the channel - used some acetone and various tools to get the old one out and cleaned up. Passenger side went a bit easier since I got a hang of how to remove it in larger sections without breaking.

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Fortunately, inside the engine looks pretty clean from the top.

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Inspected the timing belt while I was in there as well and it looks good. Sticker and previous owner claim it was done about 3 years, ~8K miles ago. The belt looks relatively new and the crankshaft bolt is the revised unit, but I may go ahead and change it anyways with the Aisin kit (p/n TKM-003)

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New plugs and wires are in. The old plugs were Denso units, soaked in oil from the spark plug tube seals no longer sealing.

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chentwoten

New member
Continuing with the oil leaks, I went ahead and replaced the O-ring (p/n MN176208) on the rear cam seals for both the driver and the passenger side. On the passenger side on the 3.5L, it's easily accessible with just the intake tube off. However, the driver side is nearly impossible to get to (from top or bottom), without having the intake manifold off.

The driver side went off without a hitch, the trick is definitely to get it to spin and rock back and forth, rather than trying to pry it by the ears. When installing, make sure the o-ring is seated correctly and not twisted and use a liberal amount of engine oil to lubricate it to make installation easier. Unfortunately upon re-installation on the passenger side, I didn't fully seat the cover and when tightening it down, the ear snapped off. Off to the junkyard I went to get another one (from a 3.5L Montero Sport) and $7 later, this time I made sure not to make the same mistake.

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After replacing this cap and brake-cleaning most of the oil off the back side of the engine, it was still dripping from what looked like the lower oil pan (the black stamped-steel piece). This was annoying because it would leak directly onto the exhaust and the smell was very noticeable at stop-lights and when parking the car.

I followed the manual here to make sure I knew the process of R&R since I wasn't sure if I needed to lift the engine up (or possibly drop the front differential). Neither was necessary, simply remove the exhaust section (left side catalytic converter) and there's enough space for the rest.

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While removing the lower oil pan, I noticed two red flags. First, there was a noticeable gap between the aluminum upper pan and the lower pan on the back side of the engine. Second, one of the 10mm bolts was loose. I found a bent oil pan where someone in the past had tried to fix a leak here but bent the pan and didn't bother straightening it before re-installation.

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After cleaning the old gasket material off thoroughly (on the surface and channels), I slowly straightened the pan back into shape using a bench vice and some big linesman pliers. I wasn't able to get it perfect, but since a new part isn't readily available this will have to do (and should work just fine).

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Once the pan was straightened and cleaned up, I focused my attention to the engine side and scraped off all the old gasket material and wipe it down with acetone to remove any stubborn remains. I ran a tap through all the threads (M6x1.0) to make sure that installation would be relatively hiccup-free. Unfortunately that wasn't the case, since the loose bolt that I encountered when removing the pan was a case of "there's no more threads here" anymore. That bolt is located squarely above the differential so I went ahead and bolted it back up since it wasn't leaking from there previously. When I get the front differential down to re-gear this thing to 4.9s and add a front locker in the future, I'll take that opportunity to drill the hole out and add a helicoil for piece of mind.

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The pan went up using Permatex - The Right Stuff (Black, 1-minute gasket) in the continuous bead specified by the FSM. When I re-do this in the future, I'll likely use ThreeBond 1217G instead (since that's the equivalent for the Mitsubishi sealant). Swapped out the oil for Castrol 5W-30 and installed a Bosch 3312 filter and gave the truck a drive around the block to put some oil pressure through the system. No leaks so far, but only time will tell.
 
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evomaki

Observer
Slightly on, but off, topic, what is the purpose of that black steel stamped oil pan part? Inspection cover? Looks like you can't access the oil pump through that. Do I understand right that the regular oil pan will not come out with the front diff still in, even after removing the black steel cover? Thanks,
 

chentwoten

New member
Slightly on, but off, topic, what is the purpose of that black steel stamped oil pan part? Inspection cover? Looks like you can't access the oil pump through that. Do I understand right that the regular oil pan will not come out with the front diff still in, even after removing the black steel cover? Thanks,

I would guess the steel stamped part is probably there to take a beating (hitting things, etc.) so that the cast aluminum upper pan doesn't get damaged as that would crack instead of bend.

As far as removing the upper pan, you are correct it probably would not come out by simply removing the lower pan first. To remove the upper (aluminum) oil pan, I believe you can do it two ways:
  1. Either dropping the front differential (which will give you a lot more clearance) or
  2. Raise the engine up off the engine mounts and use an engine support bar to hold the engine up
I haven't done either so I can't really speak to it, but that's what I've read after searching around a little bit.
 

chentwoten

New member
While I was in the engine bay replacing the alternator, I spotted this electrical harness going to the starter where the loom was saturated in oil from the valve covers leaking and it looked to be disintegrating. The split loom on the wires going to the alternator was also not doing much anymore either.

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I de-pinned the alternator connector so that I could slide new loom on , making sure to take note of which pin went where on the connector. Also took the opportunity to patch up sections of the wire insulation where the oil and heat had caused the insulation to crack.

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Used some silicone coated fiberglass heat shielded fire sleeve to cover the heavy gauge wire, and some expandable braided sleeving for the signal wires (would have liked to put them through the fire sleeve but I got one size too small). Used some marine adhesive-lined heatshrink on the ends to keep things clean. Here's the loom cleaned up.

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chentwoten

New member
Something else I noticed while walking around the truck were that the lug nuts on the wheels were the mag-seat style (OE) nuts, which weren't really compatible with the steel wheels that the previous owner installed.

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So I ordered up a set of 24 black M12x1.5 acorn lug nuts from Amazon and got to replacing them on each wheel. As my luck would have it, the rears had been mangled up real bad on a couple of the studs with the nuts cross-threaded on there. Ended up snapping four studs (three on the RH rear and 1 on the LH rear) after all was said and done.

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Ordered up a couple of boxes of replacement rear studs (Raybestos p/n 27520B), costing just a buck each per stud and got to replacing. The process was very easy - remove caliper/rotor, hammer out old stud, and pull new stud in using a M12X1.5 nut.

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Definitely a rewarding repair, and glad to find this out before having to try and change a flat on the side of the road (or worse on a trail).
 

chentwoten

New member
One thing I knew that needed to be improved on the Montero was the headlight situation. Once I found that the Gen 2.5 used a H4/9003 bulb, I knew that I wanted to retrofit a set of projectors in there since it should be pretty easy.

I managed to snag a set of relatively clean headlights from the junkyard for $40 and ordered up all of the necessary parts.
  1. Morimoto D2S 5.0 Bi-xenon 3" Projectors
  2. Morimoto D2S Igniters
  3. Morimoto XB35 Ballasts
  4. Morimoto Motocontrol Harness (H4/9003)
  5. Philips 85122+ bulbs (didn't want to break the bank here)
  6. eBay Apollo projector shrouds
Overall, the hardest part of most of these retrofits is to get the lens off the housing. This requires a lot of patience, heat and is a lot easier with two people (fortunately I had a good friend helping me here). Once we were able to split the headlights, we quickly realized that the headlight housings didn't offer a lot in terms of depth (i.e., the projector lens was nearly hitting the glass when closed). To make additional space, we opted to not use the supplied rubber ring and also grinded the reflector housing so the projector would sit flush.

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You can see in this pic how little room we have for adjustment once the light is on the car.

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Once we got the projectors and bulbs fitted, next up was to figure out where to mount the ballasts. Since most OEMs mount the ballast inside the headlight assembly, I prefer to do something similar as it makes for a tidier package and less wires running everywhere. After some test fitting with the ballasts taped to the bottom of the lights (and re-routing the headlight washer line through the plastic guard), I mounted up the ballasts to the bottom of the housings with some 3M VHB and a couple of screws.

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Ran the harness and plugged everything in. Also took the opportunity to respray my front grille with some SEM trim black to give it a fresh finish.

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Overall, pretty happy with the end result and will be looking to add more lighting in the future.
 

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