Engine Swap...., Looking for details on an engine swap for a friend Options

[Jhoe]

Virgin post!

Hey guys, my name is Joe, I (sadly!) don't own a Celica, but my good friend does. I own a 1g Eagle Talon AWD. (Another friend owns a Celica more my style, an All-Trac, quite nice). The other friend owns a 1996 Celica GT.

The story goes is that I am the gear head that gets the phone calls from friends when their car is having trouble. My friend with the 96 GT is having horrible trouble. He purchased it within the past year. Started leaking oil from a few different places. Now it doesn't want to start and he is complaining of metal on metal noise.

So I called the usual people I know in search of a 1996 Celica GT motor to simply swap back in and discard the old motor. It seems though this motor only appeared in 2 different years of the Celica. He believes it is a 5afe (2.2L DOHC). After reading your motor swaps (do/ do not work) page, it would seem that there are a few engines that would work for a swap. Is this assumption correct?

I usually can get motors for around $300-$700, but this motor does not seem that readily available (thus price goes up). Satan (the dealer) and another shop quoted him around $1200 to repair, which was before the 'metal on metal' noise started. I imagine the price just went up. He is going to have them look at it again this week to get a new estimate.

I have not been over to check it out, but will be this weekend. Can you fellas suggest a motor that is readily available and is at the lower end of the price range? From your experience what does a daily driver swap run vs. and upgrade on these cars? From my experience dropping a turbo motor in is going to require quite a bit of modifying and upgrading (ECU, inter cooler, injectors, etc), does that stand as well for this car?

This is his daily driver and would like to return it to just that if possible, but I figured I would look into an upgrade, maybe not force inducted but maybe a step up in power. He believes the motor is a 5afe (2.2L, DOHC), which I could not find, I only found the 5sfe. Again, I will be going over this weekend to check out the car, and see what motor it is.

I appreciate the time in reading this, I am unfamiliar with these cars but have the know how and tools for cars to help my friend out, who does not have either. I came here just simply because I figure what better place to find this information out than the people who have already done this. Any advice or pointers, appreciated.

Thanks!