Celica GT4 Forge Engine Build, Upgrade Options

[cloqwise]

Right this is going to be pic heavy but I have been building my car for a good while now and its pretty much finished. Done 2 threads on the TOC and gt4oc.net and i know most people on here are americans so i thought this would make a good source of info as you guys didn't get the st205 over there officially.

This is basically how the engine looked before i started stripping it, unfortunately the car club nazi's on my military base have taken up all the room in the garages I had to do this outside over late summer and through the winter. I'm sure people know about the UK weather so its not the best way to do this as i got frozen many a time.

Now as you can see the intercooler route isnt the best and basically the more i stripped the engine the more i learned and i would consider myself quite a knowledgable bloke on engines now cause i cannot stress how much you learn from doing this from rebuilding, general maintenance and modifying.





As you can by the big gap at the front i took the turbo off in a oner including the exhaust manifold, comes off really easy altogether was quite surprised. As you can see the exhaust valves are nicely scorched and gave me the idea of replacing all valves and doing a little more head work than planned. After i took the head off i took it to get skimmed and a bit of a clean up, this is what they found while skimming it, basically these are either det marks or where a piston ring exploded. Luckily as you can see on the picture all marks fit inside the gasket bracelet making the head still serviceable to use. Basically i have had 2 blocks before this so some parts have migrated over to this engine, back then i didnt do much on the car myself so whether i had cowboys working on the past engines who knows. My other two engines basically what happened was, crashed my car and cracked the block so rebuilt the car, finally discovered the block was knackered after elimnating everything else and got a new one in. After a few thousand miles i was having minor temperature problems with the new block so enough was enough, plus my last few gfs pissed me off enough to decide screw women for a while my car needs me more. You will see the problem i found later on but for now the head was skimmed by 0.005"









For uprating the head i decided on getting ferrea valves, titanium retainers, new collets, new buckets with 8mm shim, dual springs, HKS 264 camshafts and some vernier pulleys. 272 camshafts would have put the power band way up the rev range and would require extra machining on the valve train. The dual springs are proper nails, just so much stiffer.
New setup


Old setup

and where the engines at for the time being

Plus Suspension and driveshafts need disconnecting

Underneathe the car, prop shaft disconnected

Cross member needs to come out

Must apologise for the lack of action shots, this is my first strip and build, did it mostly on my own and was really focussed when i was set about the engine.

Right now for the fault with the engine, once i pulled the engine out the car i removed the pistons and this is what i found

A horizontal crack, quite rare as usually they are vertical and with a bit more blackening around it. Unfortunately this meant new block but someone off the gt4oc.net sourced one for me and she was in much better condition than my current block so was very happy.





After pulling the pistons, i did actually think to myself wouldn't it be great if they were some gucci racing pistons and this is what i found



Oh yes CP 86.5mm pistons, quids in boyos

Will start a second post cause this is going to be super long.

[cloqwise]

I can do it all in situ and it gives me an excuse to check everything, plus i'm going to change my apexi head gasket 1.1mm to the apexi 1.5mm. It will be a big job basically taking all the engine apart but i can get it done in a day or a weekend and i had already ordered oil and coolant as i had one or two tweeks to make. Either way mate it needs to be done and you have done me a favour, i'd get you some beer if you lived here its my first build anyway so it helps a lot in what to look out for if i do it again, needless to say i wont be missing that again