My mr2 v6 swap, long post, with heavy pics (56k beware) Options

[P5ycho]

Hello friends.. its been a long time since I posted on here..
Unfortunatly my Celica got totalled last year about 2 weeks before christmas..

I had told the wife to take it to work as we had quite bad snow, and the celica being 4wd, and built like a tank would be perfect for her..
on her way home that night some idiot travelling at high speed on the snow , could not stop and T-boned my celica..

long story short , insurance said the chassis was twisted and the car was a wreck..
I bought the car back from insurance company and dismantled it for parts and sold off the bits over last few months..

In the meentime I needed transport and started shopping, went and found another Gen 6 celica.. this time a 1998 model, gt4 with all the toys you could ask for..
bought it and spent some time and money tidying it up.. then handed it over to the wife...lol

you might say why , But I love the woman, and she loves gt4's lol.. so had to get her another one..lol

anyway at this stage I had been through 4 celica's and wanted something different but still a toyota.. so for myself I got a mk2 Mr2..with a rev2 3sge N/a ...
won it of ebay...lol
here is a pic of my new car...
The wheels were silver when I got the car,. but were looking quite bad with the paint flaking, so I painted them black with yellow lip as you can see in pic..


now the mr2 came witha full and comprehensive service history, and had done 93k miles.. the engine was like brand new... the car had been garaged when not in use and was in really good condition inside and out...
only thing that was showing signs of age was the seats. the drivers seat was badly worn on the bolster..
so back on ebay and I found me some nice retrimmed seats in black and yellow to complement the car..


now I/we drove the car round for 6 months like this, and whilst browsing the mr2 forums one day I came across a post about a v6 swap into the mr2...

I did some more digging, and after reading various posts on various forums, I was convinced that this was a great idea..

Now don't have me wrong, There was absolutely nothing wrong woth the 3sge, it was probably still producing somewhere close to the 168bhp that it set out the factory with,
but the 3sge lacks torque..plus I have had a load of 4 cylinder cars up till now and I think it was time I got me a v6..

so I told my mrs, I am going to v6 the mr2.. I think she was a bit skeptical, to be honest , but this did not deter me,.
spent the next 6 months, reading as much info as i could find about the v6 swaps,, found myself a website called twobrutal.co.uk..
thats when things got a bit more serious..

this place was heaven for an information junkie like me.. I spent hours upon hours reading, taking notes,, reading, scratching head, and more reading ...

at the same time I started hunting for a Donor Camry for the engine..
I had decided the 3vzfe was the engine I will use as later on I will be supercharging the engine, and from what i read the 3vzfe is best for this purpose..

many weeks shopping, and a few missed auctions on ebay I finally won me a 1997 Camry off ebay..
camry was a great runner, had been serviced well and looked after over the years.. and had 110k on the clock..
heres a pic of the camry


there was no turning back now.
the next thing I needed to get was a custom made engine mount for the driver side. the other 3 mounts fit on the mr2 gearbox which was keeping so there was no worries about that..

again managed to get the engine mount from Paul Woods of Woodsports, through Twobrutal forum..
next was case of working out what clutch I was going to use.. and also mr2 flywheel would need to be modded to fit the 3vzfe..
again one day i came across someone selling a modded flywheel and clutch combo on the twobrutal forum..
and I couldnt resist.. I just bought it..

now the next thing I wanted to do was freshen up the engine.. the 3vzfe is a very good engine and will go on for ages.. all my research told me that the only weak point on these engines is the headgasket that seams to go at around 100k, once you replace it . its vertually reset for another 100k miles..

but I though if I am doing the headgaskets, then may as well replace water pum, timing belt, idlers , tensioners and anything else that can be done while the engine is out..

so I went to visit my local Toyota spares shop with a list in my hand..
and almost had a heart attack when the bloke gave me a quote of £1000 for 2 headgaskets, timing belt,. water pump, and all the other bits I needed..

now my plan was to do the swap on a budget, and 1k was far more than I was prepared to spend on service parts..
so went on ebay, and found someone across the big pond . (over there in the states..lol) who had all the parts I needed, and after bought and paid for all the stuff it only cost me £240 delivered to my door in the UK..

parts landed on my doorstep almost 10 days later..

[P5ycho]

so now the bits had arrived it was time to begin..
transported both cars to a indoor unit that I had hired to work in, and I started ripping the camry apart..
here are some pics ...




then I attached the engine hoist to the car and lifted the front end into the aor so I could drain the engine and gearbox..


enlisted my kid bro to give me a hand with manhandling the engine out of the car after I had dissconnected all the electrics..
and after a few hours of spannering we managed to pull the engine out..


and were left with this..

and this


now I put the bonnet back on the camry, and stripped of the automatic gearbox from the 3vzfe, and promptly dumped the auto box into the boot of the camry..

following day I did some more engine stripping, the air con pump, and the power steering pump were removed and binned also as my car mr2 does not have aircon, and the power steering on the 2 is electric..
so once I had everything I needed the camry was sent to scrap..


after this I left the 3vz and the car under wraps for a day or 2 while I regained some energy,..lol

shifting through some of my car bits in my garage I came across my Fidanza Flywheel and Iron man clutch and pressure plate which I had bought for my Gt4 but never used.. I hadf a sudden thought, why not get the fidanza flywheel modded and use that instead of the stock mr2 flywheel..

so I dropped of the flywheel at a local machine shop to have it modified, then went and bought and engine stand to aid working on the engine,.
then i returned to the unit and proceded to wrestle the engine onto the new engine stand..



flywheel was done and ready to pic up the next day..


also managed to win some ported and polished heads of ebay..
I was planning on getting the heads on my engine ported and polished at some stage, so these came up at the right time and I got them..


dropped the heads of for a skim and picked them up a few days later looking like so..


spent an eveing grinding in the valves by hand... what fun that was (NOT) 24 of the buggers, but got it done eventually,.
and here is how they looked after ..




put the valve shims in and dropped cams back in, bolted them down and checked tolerances using a feeler gauge, and I guess i got lucky, they all seemed well within tolerance..



more to come...