Enders swap, Update 11/29/19 Options

[enderswift]

Spend the money. If I could I would go back and just soak all of my aluminum parts in it from the start. It saves a TON of effort

This post has been edited by enderswift: Jul 30, 2014 - 11:49 AM

[mkernz22]

Spend the money. If I could I would go back and just soak all of my aluminum parts in it from the start. It saves a TON of effort

I'm gunna bite the bullet and get the 4 pack. At $75 for 4, you can't beat that. Everywhere else is $30 for a bottle..

I just cleaned up my fuel rail by hand and a bristle brush, and that alone was too much effort lmao

[KAOS]

Did you have a spare/scrap S54 transmission? I'm in need of a small doo dad.

[enderswift]

Did you have a spare/scrap S54 transmission? I'm in need of a small doo dad.

No go bud. I actually drove out of state just to pick this one up. Craigslist was surprisingly empty when it came to s54s

[enderswift]

Almost ready for the manual conversion!

[enderswift]

The night before the conversion the trans stares at it's future home.


First thing to do was remove the front bumper and swap radiators between the celis. The Red car still had the original GT4 radiator so I wanted to make sure I kept it.


quick mid-radiator-swap shot


The next morning I took apart the last of the suspension and started tearing things out of the engine bay.


Here's a view of the majority of the parts that need to be removed. Not really as many as you would expect


Had to drain the s54 and pop out the axles before the install. Removing the driver side axle ended up being a two hour job. That damn c-clip did not want to budge.


Getting the hoist positioned to take the load off of the motor mounts.


Moments before removal. The old auto actually came off very easly. I was expecting it to put up an enormous fight.


After many hours of work the slow, grimy, slushbox was out!


This image marks the official halfway point of the conversion. It was nice to see that the rear main seal wouldn't be puking oil all over the clutch. Also I couldn't believe the torque converter was held on by 6 tiny bolts. Just goes to show how much power is lost with these 4 speed autos. I took this opportunity to install the clutch lines and feed the shifter cables into proper position.


Here is the freshly machined 5S flywheel. This time it has a step height of 20 thou


I was really happy at this point. Attaching the trans proved tough (like it nearly always does). For whatever reason the input shaft didn't want to slide into the clutch disk. I don't know how some of you guys do trans installs without a jack..


It takes alot of disassembly to install a manual shifter and ecu!


It felt real good to rip out that automatic shifter


I liked the way the trans looked hanging there all exposed so I took a pic. Its a strange contrast seeing a clean trans attached to an incredibly greasy engine O.o


Here is a view of everything all buttoned up.


All done

After the swap I slapped together a temporary exhaust and took the car for a drive. The trans seems like it's running great. I get smooth shifts in every gear and the clutch puts down power smoothly, and it's not even broken in yet . Plus I cant even tell there's an LSD installed while driving around normally. It feels like every open diff I've ever driven. I didn't push the car enough to see the effect of the diff because the driver axle I purchased is defective and causes the engine to move 1 cm toward the pass side with every revolution of the wheel. I'm gonna have to exchange it and install it another day. When that happens I'll push the car to see what a helical can do

This post has been edited by enderswift: Aug 5, 2014 - 9:34 AM

[ricochet1490]

You'll have to let me know how the LSD feels. Mainly because the RHD car handles SOOOO differently from my old regular USDM celica.

The issue is that it obviously has LSD and SS suspension. I'd like to know if its the LSD that is causing the difference, or the SS. As You turn more tightly it all of a sudden seems to dive into the corner and I don't know which it is. I should suspect the SS, but would like to see what you say about the cornering.

Edit: it's actually something you be able to test directly. Given that you've done LSD now and SS later. Be prepared for awkwardness one way or the other, but it kinda weirded me out first time i threw it into a corner on a freeway on ramp. It felt like some roll over and then all of a sudden a totally different handling dynamic.

this whole thread makes me want to finish my car. It's sat for almost 11 months now.

This post has been edited by ricochet1490: Aug 4, 2014 - 7:07 PM

[enderswift]

I'll definitely post my thoughts on the diff here soon enough. What you're describing sounds a lot like a clutch type diff... one of the biggest characteristics of the helicals is the fact that they transfer power smoothly. So if I were to guess I'd say its the SS that's causing you to dart into turns. I guess we'll find out for sure soon enough.

Please finish your car. This site needs more threads, only a handful of people are working on projects these days

[navseal345]

How many extra ponies does that red valve cover give?

Jk

You will be done with the full swap by the time the fall meet happens.

[richee3]

... the fudge is up with that axle? I've never heard of an axle pushing the motor like that. LSD install looks great!

[enderswift]

... the fudge is up with that axle? I've never heard of an axle pushing the motor like that. LSD install looks great!

From what I can tell it's binding at the inner joint. I already have the replacement on hand so it's just a matter of switching them out. I really hope I don't have to struggle with the c-clip anywhere near as much as I did this past weekend. I was using an 8lb slide hammer and a CV axle attachment, and it still took forever to break loose.

[enderswift]

How many extra ponies does that red valve cover give?

Jk

You will be done with the full swap by the time the fall meet happens.

hmmm, the butt dyno says the red cover puts this 5S into 1MZ territory lol

[ricochet1490]

yeah I'm thinking SS as well cause its a factory toyota LSD in the beams, but I can't isolate the variables. Good news is that you should be able to.

with my car, I just bought a house like Daniel, am in the PROCESS of getting the garage, because there isn't one. Have been trying to get everything done and the car has remained at my fathers. Need to get my wheels straightened out and rubber on them and i'll move the car to the house. It needs fender work, toms lip installed, side skirts painted and installed, rear lip painted and installed, rear visor installed, rear spoiler figured out and maybe painted and installed, and the worst of it is that I need to change the timing belt and a bearing on the BEAMS. Pretty rough "grind" coming from over there. Don't really want to pull the motor, but because i can't screw up the timing, I might as well (again I reference the garage need).

But I do miss driving it and sitting in the recaros and getting crazy ass looks from the Rhd.


But this looks good. I enjoyed the last 10 pages

[enderswift]

Well I hope you get the house situation figured out soon because that car needs to be on the road! And thank you, I'm glad people enjoy the thread. It's certainly a pain taking pics in the middle of a job haha.

Update:

The driver side axle has been replaced with another new part and my driveability issue is solved. No more vibration at speeds over 25mph
In other news, I spent the hours after work this week installing the front/rear gt4 suspension and brakes:


The GT4 rotors and calipers look even more massive when they're mounted on the car! Could not be happier with how this turned out.


I will be running stock GT brake lines until I can have a set of SS lines made. I do not see any issues just running the GT lines permanently though.


I had to use 7 cotter pins per side haha. Here you can see the infamous figure 8.


I am using the stock GT4 sway bar up front together with the Mazda 5 links I detailed earlier in the thread. I will be replacing the rear bar with a suspension techniques part to take care of whatever understeer the helical and SS can't handle.


I will be adding bellows to the struts in the near future. The stock parts were torn by me unfortunately


I also purchased a set of Monroe GT rear struts and swapped the GT4 springs onto them. The stock GT4 rear struts do not mate up with a USDM rear spindle unfortunately. However this actually works out in my favor because I still get the benefit of stiffer rear springs with dampers that match a lighter ST204 rear end. The GT4 rear calipers then just require a 5mm spacer to line up properly. Nothing a trip to Ace Hardware couldn't fix

Can't comment on the details of the handling just yet because I haven't put any real miles on these, but initial impressions are very good. Turning circle is tight, there is no binding at full lock with a usdm rack, turns feel confident and planted, less nose dive under braking, less squat under accleration, and overall ride quality is slightly better than stock GT. Oh yea, GT4 brakes bite HARD

This suspension still needs an alignment, and I have to get the front rotors cut about a mm further towards the top hats so the pads bite better. Other than that things feel tight with no clunking anywhere.

I would rate this conversion as easy to do. Just replace the inner tie rods with shorter ones and you will have no issues (There's even an off-the-shelf tie rod available, so no custom machining is required). The USDM rack, GT brake lines, GT axles, and subframe all work just fine. Your experience may vary and your particular application might be different, so dont treat this thread as a guide; I can't accept responsibility for harm caused by attempts to follow my work!

anyway, I will be the guinea pig and let everyone know how this holds up over time.

Next update should be paint!

This post has been edited by enderswift: Aug 15, 2014 - 10:57 PM

[Batman722]

Looks fantastic Luke

[njccmd2002]

Wow amazing. Real gt4 front end... Props

[ricochet1490]

Baller. I need to refresh my whole superstrut suspension like this. Really give the car the fine tooth comb.

[enderswift]

Looks fantastic Luke

Thank you as always Dustin

Wow amazing. Real gt4 front end... Props

Thank you, it's about as close to the real thing as I can manage.

Baller. I need to refresh my whole superstrut suspension like this. Really give the car the fine tooth comb.

it's worth it in my opinion, especially if the goal is to be factory-like in terms of reliability. The only downside is that after a certain point it becomes a game of diminishing returns. You end up exerting enormous amounts of effort for only a little gain. I consider the paint and powder coating I did to the suspension to be a perfect example of this haha.

As for my thoughts on the helical and susperstrut:

Helical with mcpherson suspension:

The only way I could tell the helical was there was during sharp high speed turns. I would coast into a 90 degree turn in at ~25mph and step on it mid-corner. With an open diff this always caused the car to understeer like craaaazy. With the helical the car pulls right through. The tricky thing now is the fact that I have to actively countersteer at the end of a corner because the car wants to keep cornering and the powersteering cant keep up haha. (edit) I forgot to mention how the car acts when flooring it from a standstill. Torque steer is GREATLY diminished. I used keep one hand on the wheel when punching it to keep it from turning left, but now I can control the car with literally one finger. Another benefit is the fact that jumping into traffic is now a possibility in many more situations. making a right turn out of a parking lot onto a busy street is no longer a matter of waiting for a big gap in the flow of traffic. I can now floor it and the car will simply accererate into the turn without any wheel hop/spin.

TL;DR: buy a helical.

Helical and superstrut

Superstrut is awesome. I like it. And the biggest reason is because it removes the pucker factor from a lot of the things I'd try to do in the past. For instance I'm a big fan of merging onto a highway at speed. That means taking the clover-leaf on-ramps with your foot on the gas. With mcpherson I would feel nervous going past half throttle and I would usually max out at 45mph. Superstrut takes that nervous feeling away. The car feels planted and I give it more gas, finding myself taking those ramps about 5-10mph faster without being worried. Trace, I haven't noticed the car diving in half way through the on ramp yet, but keep in mind my tires are pretty worn and the alignment wasn't set when I went about testing this. Plus I'm still running a stock rear sway bar so there was a decent amount of roll


Update time:

The car is in for paint!





At the moment I've asked the shop to:

-Straighten Hood and repair crushed area near latch
-Remove front windshield and repair any existing rust/ rustproof
-Repair fender dents
-Paint and Blend all front panels
-Repair Passenger rocker panel
-Repair bumper cover cracks and tears and reinforce weak areas.

I'm excited to see the results

Before all of this I took the car to have the 3in exhaust pipe welded back together, this time with a set of flanges to allow the inevitable future disassembly. My god was it nice to drive the white car without choking on exhaust fumes, or making an insane amount of noise, or having a temporary flex pipe rattle on the cross member.

I also went in for an alignment. Wow this ended up turning into a cluster. Long story short, I asked the alignment guys to be careful with the suspension because I just painted/coated everything. Well they used vise grips on everything and ruined the finish on a number of parts


I have no idea how this could have happened. All I asked them to do was adjust the toe. Nothing else.


Ruined the threads on the inner rods too, even though the flat spot for a 12mm wrench is right there....

Sigh. I touched most of the areas up and I'm on the lookout for some off-the-shelf inner tie rods that will work with superstrut.

Anyway,

I just ordered a set of st202 stainles brake lines and a new FX300 clutch kit from clutchmasters. The car should be painted within two weeks and when it gets back I'll immediately work towards dropping in the 3S

I've also been looking into a devils own WI kit, a symtech map clamp, a turbo timer, and an HKS EVC-S boost controller. It's time to get some power out of this setup

This post has been edited by enderswift: Sep 1, 2014 - 8:34 PM

[njccmd2002]

that sucks, bunch of incompetents. sorry to hear that..

[Tigawoods]

go yell at them! that angers me just looking at it!