6G Celicas Forums

the rod knock in that video sounds soooooooooooooooooo0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o horrible.

I knew I smelt bull****.

Sounds so beautiful!

He actually got me. Well done.

That's not funny....well maybe it was alittle funny

Sounds as good as it looks

Ah ha haha hahahaa!!!

I see what you did there...

You're an ass.

I knew you were too anal to let that happen.

Thought you guys might get a kick out of that



It's all about the details My inspiration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IjItGEr6Ic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdcoVurVY30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5XcAf-Psd8

GREAT work here. really like what you did.

Looking good!

Thank you for the kind words guys, I'm beyond happy to be at this point after so many months of staring at the motor in my garage

I'm unfortunately having issues with my clutch master cylinder, to the point where its almost impossible to shift into gear when cold. So I wont post an update until that's sorted out. It's the wierdest thing because the pedal feels like a sponge when the cylinder is cold, but once the engine heats it up the pedal is great and I can shift no problem Tomorrow morning I'm gonna sit there with a hair dryer just to heat the cylinder up and see what happens.

These cheap aftermarket cylinders just aren't cutting it, and I'm sick of replacing the master only to have it crap out again in two days. I've tried EVERY bleeding technique known to man and they all lead to the same outcome. So today I bit the bullet and bought a new master and slave from Toyota. If that doesn't solve my problem then I'll also try to have an extended pushrod turned for the slave.

This post has been edited by enderswift: Nov 19, 2012 - 1:23 PM

Since it's all done now. Is it safe to say your car will be 2 toned like everyone else's?

unfortunately red and white clash waaaaaay too much for my taste. So for now I'm gonna take the less popular route and put spacers on my hood. My priority is to get an lsd in the car. The exterior mods will have to wait till next summer when I can save up for a good paint job.

I had to go through so many master's through napa i just paid the 80 bucks to get a new one from yota

I wanna see some pics dude!

Hello 6gc, I give you my swap update:

In the week before the swap I started to run through the whole process in my head, step by step, to try and foresee any potential problems or missing supplies. It actually turned out to be a really good exercise because I realized I would need an axle puller, ratchet straps, lithium grease, fluid pump, a tank full of 93, and a ton of other materials that don't immediately come to mind. It even made me realize that I needed to have the engine hoist come in from the passenger side so the transmission jack could be rolled from the other side without being obstructed by the legs. This eventually led me to write out a plan to do swap and saved me from countless bottlenecks.


I took the 5s for a blast around the neigborhood to fill it up with 93 octane before parking it in the driveway for the last time. The motor was good to me and I took good care of it right until the end.

The first thing to accomplish was to replace the fuel pump with a walbro 255l unit and see if the car would start. Imagine going through the whole swap only to end up with start issues because you never tested the new fuel pump. I didn't want to be in a situation where I'd have to sift through a whole list of variables to figure out what could be causing my problems. So little tests like this keep the troubleshooting list semi-short.


Next all of the body panels were taken off and put to the side. I originally wanted to remove the fenders too, but that turned out to be a real pain. So a set of fender covers did the trick. Notice how it's already getting dark outside around 6 pm. The shortening days really became a problem over the weekend. Anyone else planning on doing a swap like this outside should aim for mid-summer when you have all the daylight you would need.


Luckily I had two artificial suns to keep the progress going before we called it a night and got pizza




The following morning I woke up around 5 am to get things ready for the next day.


As the morning progressed I removed and disconnected everything that would get in the way of pulling the 5s. This was all done keeping in mind the possibility that a swap-back may need to happen. I've never rebuilt a motor or swapped before so I made sure I had a way of reverting my daily driver in case of a failure.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the joys of popping tie-rods and balljoints:

The axles were among the last things to remove before the 5s could be pulled


Impact tools, a torch, wd40, and some suspension service kits made taking the suspension apart really painless. I think I had both sides done in a little over 30 minutes






Then, it was finally time to pull the 5s from its home. I originally planned on using nylon rope for the pull, but the super-convenient hooks meant I could use the chains that came with my load-leveler. The nylon ropes were thus saved for installing the 3s


We had the motor out after a surprisingly short amount of time. My previous experience removing a toyota motor was with the front clip, and the awd trans made it a total pain. So this was a breeze by comparison.


It was at this point where it began to dawn on me that there was no easy going back. This swap needed to go perfectly or I wouldn't have a car for the following week of work. We were already halfway through Saturday and there was still so much to do. Pressure was starting to build.


The only thing to do when you start to feel like that is keeping on pushing through. And so we did. My brother was awesome enough to be my cameraman that weekend and he got the typical engine bay shots for me


They all laughed when I bought my gas pressure washer a few months ago. I regret nothing




Next order of business was to lower the 5s on its jdm pallet (made in japan haha) and get ready for trans removal


The final resting place of the good old 5s. Tucked against a wall in the crawl space I call a garage. I may find it another home in the future


Here is a shot of the cleaned up engine bay waiting on its new motor.


Quick shot of the s54 on the harbor freight special stand. There are a select few tools that I feel are simply worth their weight in gold. This is one of them.




I decided to finish up the saturday by cleaning up the s54. I was already behind schedule at this point and the fact that I had just one day to completely assemble a car was very real. The 3s wiring was my main concern, if that didn't work perfectly then I'd be screwed trying to figure it out. Something as small as a broken soldered joint could keep me from having a running car for days... And at $65 a day for a rental, I'd be broke in no time. Needless to say, some of the fun of the swap was sucked out because of this. Looking back on it my biggest mistake was tackling a project like this on my primary vehicle.


Water can only do so much, so I busted out the brake cleaner and went to town


I think it came out pretty well. I really didn't care how it looked, I just wanted a clean interior for the new clutch. Plus I wanted to get rid of whatever was causing the clutch squeak that's been slowly crushing my soul.


With the 5s on its pallet and the transmission prepared for the following day, I turned to hanging the 3s on the hoist. I bent brackets before so I took care to avoid repeating past mistakes. It's a good idea to hang the engine with the stand still attached. That way if you mess up and the motor drops, you still have the stand to save everything.


By this point I was exhausted and starting to get sloppy. So I called it a night and packed up. I really need a bigger garage for a hobby like this.


I couldn't sleep too well, so I woke up bright and early to keep on going. Only one day left and still so much to do


Despite the pressure to finish everything up, I took a moment to step back and look at what was hanging from the hoist. This is what I've been working towards for years. Here it is, it's happening. Couldn't help but feel good about something like that


No time to waste though, on to the clutch. My engine stand never allowed me enough clearance to completely tighten the rear main seal and install the flywheel, so I had to do it while the motor was hanging on the hoist. It was interesting trying to tighten the bolts to proper torque, but we managed in the end. I really hope my machine shop put the correct step on the flywheel. Its the one thing I forgot to check.


I like to put white paint marks on any bolts I've tightened to keep track of my work. It's super easy to miss a bolt otherwise. All proper torques and sequences were used. The last thing I wanted was to have to remove the trans again.


Clutch disk and alignment tool were next


The motor was finally ready to go in


Time to max out the travel on the hoist


What followed was a two man affair with my brother controlling the descent of the boom and me lining the motor up while it lowered. The actual lowering was easy because I'd decided to bring in the transmission seperately ahead of time. All we had to do was lower it and loosely attach the passenger side mount. The plan was to come in with the transmission jack between the legs of the hoist on the other side, and mate everything together in the bay.




3s is almost situated in its new home. The ratchet straps I mentioned before helped keep the motor from rocking forward and crashing into the power steering assembly. I really hate the damn power steering assembly, it's always in the way of something.


Okay, now it was time to bring in the trans. I knew this wasn't going to be a fun process, but at least I had that jack. Plus doing it this way meant I had a much better chance of not damaging anything


ofcourse nothing ever goes perfectly to plan and I couldn't slide the transmission in with it already on the jack because the frame wouldn't clear. So I slid the trans over on some cardboard first, and lifted it up by the starter hole, while my brother brought the jack under it.




Once the trans was in place we were golden. Now it was a matter of lining up the spline with the clutch disk and gettin the dowels to slip into the engine


We managed to get the spline to slide into the clutch disk but the trans wouldn't rotate enough to get the dowels into the motor. It was driving me nuts because I couldn't see what was hitting. After about 20 minutes I realized that one of the dowels on the trans was hitting one in the same spot on the engine! Duh I forgot to check if there were doubles left over from the two engines. 5 minutes later I had the extra dowel removed and the transmission in place


Things were really coming together at this point, and I was starting to get excited. I was surprised to see that I was mostly using the 5s mounts. I expected to use all of the gt4 mounts, but then it occurred to me that it makes sense that only the 5s mounts fit because I'm still using the s54 trans. So the only gt4 mount is on the passenger side. The rest are stashed away for when I swap in my converted e154f.


With the engine and trans installed I was feeling pretty good.I wasn't out of the woods yet though, that long length of loom could be a show stopper if I didn't do everything just right in the weeks leading up to this. The fact that the gt4 manual had mis-labeled connectors compared to usdm manual wasn't helping my confidence. Easy wiring or not, there's still lots of places where you could screw up!


At least my extension worked out pretty nicely as far as wire tuck is concerned. I left the loom unwrapped in case I'd have to dig in there and start searching for a mistake


After a while the process of fishing a harness through the firewall and connecting it up to the ecu gets pretty easy.

Quick video of a mid-swap wiring test. Goals were to get the engine to crank, and to see spark at the ignitor using the timing gun. If they did then I knew I was home free:


It was a great success I'd never wired so much before so reaching this point in the swap was a huge relief. The goal really started to feel attainable now. We edited out the part where I have this big dumb smile on my face






With the sun setting, I started attaching all the coolant and fuel lines. Connected anything and everything I could find. Checked everything over about a thousand times and finally let it crank away


Started first try! No horrible noises, no smoking wires, and the only issue was a code 54 because I didn't fill the intercooler with enough coolant! My buddy got excited haha. I was mostly just relieved. The rebuild worked, and I wouldn't be stranded without a car. whew

This video doesn't show it, but we primed the motor ahead of time with the efi fuse removed. The oil level on the dipstick dropped to its normal position confirming that we'd circulated through the oil pump, filter, and turbo.

With the engine started I quickly checked everything over and it was okay except for a power steering leak (wrong crush washer). I let the engine warm up then shut it down for the night. It was late, and I would need a rental car for the next day. But that was okay, I was home free with a functioning motor and back in familiar territory.

Rest of the update in a little while

This post has been edited by enderswift: Oct 18, 2012 - 10:46 PM

HELL YEAH!! When is she (or he) going to go to a MidWest Meet?

Looks perfect man! Your hard work has paid off!