6G Celicas Forums

3S-GTE swap, still uses AutoCrap battery. Looks good. I'm not sure about this unassuming look though. I've always been one for tasteful flamboyance. At least you get to mess with a lot of Honda kids this way.

Gotta cut costs somewhere haha. As far as Honda kids go, they seem to be a dying breed around here because I haven't been able to find any. I guess ignoring basic maintenance/rust finally got to em.

Come to where I live then. It's yet to stop Honda kids around here. They just had mommy an daddy buy them a newer Honda

They're all Nissan guys down here now. Funny thing is, they've all put Toyota engines in their Nissans...

240 + 2jz? O.o

My buddy bought a powder coating gun:

Before:


Powdered:


Baked and installed:


It's amazing to see the powder get applied. It's positively charged by the gun, while the part remains neutral. So the powder literally zips right toward the part, even if you point away from it. The end result being even and comprehensive coverage. After coating it just needs 15 minutes in a convection oven at 350 degrees. It's easier than painting. Cheaper too. Unfortunately the photo doesn't do the coating justice, it was raining and lighting was crap. Looks much better in person

This post has been edited by enderswift: Nov 10, 2012 - 8:51 PM

Looks good! I'd still be powdercoating but my oven went on the fritz and well.... You remember the story of my IS 300 headlights.

No 2JZ 240's yet. They're all 1JZ's. The 2JZ is going in a G35.

Hello 6gc,

I have another update for you. A few months back I spent a decent amount of time searching for the source of an acceleration thud that started shortly after the swap. It sounded a lot like the engine was hitting my firewall upon full throttle, so the first place I thought to look was my rear engine mount. Sure enough there were a few tears in it, which didn't surprise me considering it was the original 13 year old gt mount. No doubt the 3s was more than it could handle. So I bought a new one and went through the maddening process of swapping it out. Upon reassembly I damaged the first several threads in the lower bolt hole on the rear of the trans that secures the bracket. No big deal I thought, its only the first 3 threads and its and inch long bolt. So I chased the hole with a tap, changed the assembly approach, and had the rear mount together in short order. Did all of this work solve the issue? Nope, still had a bump on full throttle Strangely, I would eventually find that the thud was being caused by the passenger mount of all things

Fast forward two months and I'm going over a parking lot speed bump before hearing a loud bang. Uh oh. Immediately threw myself on the pavement and started looking. Everything seemed alright, and I thought that maybe the k-member simply smacked the hideously tall bump, but assumptions are a bad thing in these situations. So I Promptly got the car home and continued investigating. What I found was a missing lower bracket bolt and a fractured transmission casing where the upper bolt was... I distinctly remember collapsing back on my creeper and taking a deep breath. I knew this was gonna be a pain in the ass.

The only direct cause I can think of is a worn thread. This allowed the lower bolt to work its way loose over time, finally leaving the upper bolt to take the full engine torque on its own. To make matters worse, the bracket acted like a crowbar on the upper bolt every time I would accelerate. Cast aluminum is very frail so its actually surprising the casing lasted as long as it did.

So with no intention of driving on just the front mount, I knew I either had to try and salvage the situation by drilling and re-tapping the lower bolt hole, or swap the trans. I chose to re-tap the lower thread to hold me over while I accelerated my e154f conversion. A ton of cramped and uncomfortable work ensued before I had the mount secured to the trans again. Unfortunately this temporary solution was more temporary than I had hoped.

It was at this point that I leveraged the collective resources of midwest 6gc and got a replacement s54 in literally two days. Many thanks to Richee3 for treating his transmissions well, Bloodmoney for asking around for me, and Zake for parting with Richee's old trans for only $50! You guys are awesome


With a replacement trans on hand I immediately got to work:


Here are a pair of images of the replacement s54 when I first brought it home. Everything worked smooth and there was no slop, so I was confident it would hold up to my abuse.


Challenge accepted.


Two days, several cans of alternator cleaner, and a soda blast later.

I chased all of the threads on it to allow me to easily thread bolts all the way by hand (because I knew it would be damn near impossible to repeatedly reset a wrench on some of them later). I also replaced the axle seals, and lubricated all of the moving parts with white lithium grease.


I had my buddy powder coat the rear engine bracket to commemorate the sheer of the amount of money and grief the stupid rear mount had cost me lately.


Here is a picture of my tools and materials getting staged for a move to a nice and warm dock. It's December so working in the driveway is no longer an option.


Once at the shop I wasted no time in setting everything up before tearing into the car. There's just slightly less work compared to an actual engine swap so time was certainly a factor.



After many hours I arrived at this point. I was very tired, and only half done, but it was nice to see that everything I was taking apart was holding up well these past few months.


And here is the reason for all this work . It's a real shame, the transmission is still in perfect working order. But it's not worth building the aluminum back up and machining

I wish I took more photos but a trans replacement is just so labor intensive that you really don't have time to document everything. Thankfully all that work paid off because the car is running and driving beautifully. I was expecting a bunch of gremlins but all I had to do was tighten a few things a little better after my first few test drives. I'm very happy with the new trans, its smooth, tight, and quiet. My old one had a soft, part-throttle whine in certain gears. All that is just a bonus though, I'm mostly happy with the fact that I can go back to driving the car normally, and not like it's made of glass

Anyway this weekend I think I'll bolster this update with a few post-replacement photos and a long overdue driving video

This post has been edited by enderswift: Apr 7, 2013 - 10:11 PM

Nice.

I'm glad it's working well for you

Wow, that transmission cleaned up well! Glad to hear you got it in there and you're back to letting the 3S do its thing.

This post has been edited by richee3: Dec 14, 2012 - 10:31 PM

its an amazing thread. just spent 2 hours reading the whole thread from page 1. its an amazing project!

Thanks man. I'm certainly glad people are enjoying it

This post has been edited by enderswift: Dec 25, 2012 - 2:17 PM

tke out the internals, clean them and save them. Take the aluminum case, sell it, get money, buy ice cream cone...

That's actually a very good idea. Plus now that I think about it, it'll get me familiar with Toyota gearboxes before its time to work on the e154f.

small update:


My intake hose started to crack on the turbo end. All those years of heat-cycling did its toll on the rubber I guess. Luckily for me there was a brand new one available at TCB


A new intercooler sticker for that 'brand new engine' look

Both parts were bought at http://www.tcbparts.co.uk/

This post has been edited by enderswift: Dec 20, 2012 - 7:07 PM

Quick update:

Finally spent some more time working on the 3" midpipe. I've been really procrastinating with this thing lately. Mostly because anything that's made from scratch ends up being a total pain the ass for me. Tons of measuring, tons figuring angles (with trig!), and lots of time coming up with impossible ways to fixture tubes on the Bridgeport cutter. This is definitely one of those deceptively simple projects.

However, it's all worth it though.

It's worth it because I ran the car with just the downpipe for the first time yesterday. And there's only one word that can describe what that's like:Instaboost
Not to mention the +4psi peak boost gain. Damn the thing pulled hard, even third gear is iffy now

Anyway, here's a photo of the exhaust. I'm going to have certain sections TIG welded before I do my final mockup. At which point the last set of adjustments and markings are going to be made before finish welding.



I took great care to ensure smooth transitions throughout. It's tempting to cut tubes the lazy way and end up with abrupt direction changes, even if the actual angle is large. There's just lots of variables to take into account when making something like this, so props to the folks on here that have constructed their own custom exhausts.

More updates soon

This post has been edited by enderswift: Dec 23, 2012 - 10:39 PM

Amen! Looks like the beginning of the holy grail.

B-pipe looks great man, Manny made one for my swap that looks a lot like yours. The boost increase by the flip of a switch is amazing, great mod.

Thanks bud! If my stuff reminds people of Pressure's work then I must definitely be on the right track . And yea I have a feeling the cutout is going to be my favorite mod too. Definitely gonna give the car two different personalities, which plays well with the understated, unassuming thing I'm going for at the moment

This post has been edited by enderswift: Dec 24, 2012 - 12:11 PM