RWD and 7agte conversion on 95 hatch st, I am honestly trying to rebuilt a celica for drifting and more Options

[JERX88]

I have a 95 Celica st with the 7afe engine in it. I have been saving up for over a year now and have been trying to figure out what I would like to do. I have always wanted a ST205 Celica GT4, but living in the states you either have to build it yourself or import one, and I dont have the money nor the ease of importing one, as Wisconsin isnt too convienent of a location. I have thought about getting the next best thing, an st165 all trac, as well as a mk2 MR2 turbo, but have this dilema. I love the 6th Gen Celi looks, and don't want to sell my original car, and even if I were to sell it and purchase one of the previously mentioned cars, I would still have to wait another year or so to start to progressive work that I would want done.

So thats when I had this revelation: How about a RWD Celica with the 7A-GTE engine that I hear the AE86 Corollas sometimes have swaped and rebuilt with when used for drifting? To me it sounded like a great idea. I could keep my car, maybe buy a second cheap one for a DD and parts car (horrible isnt it, HAVING to buy a second 6g), and find either an old corolla or project mk1 MR2 to use the 4A-GE. I dont think I would have the biggest problem building the 7A-GTE, as I have a group of friends who would be more than willing to help me take on the task, as they have worked with swaping engines on their own cars (such as a mkIII Supra's 7M-GTE swapped to a 2JZ-GTE).

My only real concern is if this idea will even be a possible Modification. I know the 7A-GTE can be done, but what about the conversion to RWD? My only drawback is if the RWD conversion really has no hope, maybe I need to wait a year and buy the backup ideas, the MR2 Turbo or st165 Alltrac. Hopefully one of you can shed some light on this subject, and hopefully it can be done, so I could one day keep up with my friends supras and rx7's, but as of right now, I am not giving up the hopes of my 6g Celi.

Thank you for your thoughts and time.

[parriehunter]

Hey Welcome to the site.

About the RWD. The best way I could think of doing it would be to make it 4WD but remove the front drive shafts. I have heard of a couple of Subaru guys here in Christchurch doing this. I don't know how plausible it will be tho. Pipes has done a 4WD conversion recently and he said it cost him about 10K your money to complete and I believe that is minus labour. To me that is a lot of money, considering that here you could pick up a reasonable GT4 for NZ$10K.
The thing is the car was never made to fit a motor longitudinal (I think thats the one) so getting the motor to fit that way way be a struggle and I don't believe there a transmission tunnel either.

i wouldn't have a clue about the 7M.

Sorry to be a bit of a downer.