to AE? or not to AE*56k warning*, That is the question.. Options

[Valo666]

So my celi's head is about to blow on me amd ive been figureing how much it would cost to replace my head or get it fixed. So its gonna be up around $2000 for a new head, cleaning, rebuilding, gaskets and installation and then duin the timing. So i found out i can get the threads on the one spark plug that is messed up replaced/recut/coiled for around $300. But it would still leave my head a ticking time bomb. So i got an e-mail from my friend Renato who is living over in japan. He had his AE86 for sale a few months back. I was thinkin of buyin it but my dad refused. Any ways, i was thinkin of sellin the celi again and buyin his AE86 and throwin a silvertop in it. His AE is absolutely mint condition, comes with 2 sets of rims and 3 sets of tires. 1 for drift, 1 for street and 1 for winter. Any ways, heres the pics of the AE as is now.




he has the trunk plastics just not installed cuz they arent cut for the strut bars



Mods: Sprinter tails, JDM badges, KAAZ 1.5way LSD, KGMM springs, 45 way adjustable Tokiko shocks, TRD suspention bushings, bigger sway bars, stainless braided break lines, Sparco rally wheel, momo shift knob, 2inch stainless mandrel bent exhaust system, and he has the pieces to make a short ram or CIA for the 4age. Motors got 156xxxkm on it. Car is like a street legal go-kart. And im Sept, im goin back 2 school and im gonna be livin alone. IE im gonna b drivin to work and to go shopping only. SO im thinkin of gettin somethin a lil better on gas and somethin that would be fun to run around. Plus if he still is selling his car for as much as he was b4, i could buy the car, do a silvetop swap and buy new brackets for my other sparco.

What do you think??

This post has been edited by Valo666: Jan 9, 2006 - 7:29 PM

[TheStreetzKing]

if ur not taking it, i am, i want that freaking car so damn bad and i cant find one in good condition unless its 2927099430, freakin initial D made the value rise like crazy

[Kwanza26]

It's very clean... but keep a project car a project. You just can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to buy it to drive... do so... but keep in mind these cars are 20 some odd years old and cannot replace a 10 year old car as a daily driver. Old cars have issues... PERIOD. As for your ticking time bomb... a new used engine costs less than rebuilding an old broken one.

[jgreening]

It's very clean... but keep a project car a project. You just can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to buy it to drive... do so... but keep in mind these cars are 20 some odd years old and cannot replace a 10 year old car as a daily driver. Old cars have issues... PERIOD. As for your ticking time bomb... a new used engine costs less than rebuilding an old broken one.

I was just going to say to get a used 5sfe long block. Go to car-part.com and you should be able find over 1000 of them for far less than the numbers you quoted.

[Valo666]

I went there, found a few, they r askin $1000+ each with like 165xxxkm on it. My motor has 141xxxkm on it right now n is havin problems. Plus i bought a new compelete head 2day for $130 with tax and im gettin it installed next week. But im still really considering gettin Renato's AE. I talked to him and he said if i want it, he will hold onto it for me untill i sell my celi. The majour problems my dad had with the car when i checked it out b4 was the trans mounts were a lil shabby and the motors got about 225xxxkm on it...So my buddy is gettin sponsered by Hankook and Raceworld.ca's drift team and hez gettin a 6speed trans for his new 20V black top and is gonna sell his trans for $200 with only 124xxxkm on it. And he told me to talk 2 his friend sam, and sam can do a 20V silvertop swap for $600 and i can get the silvertop for $800 with ECU and harness. So if i sell my car at its appraised price $15K CND, i can buy the AE, Swap the silvertop in, get my friends old trans or get the original one rebuilt, get a new set of rubbers and the brackets i need for my sparco, and ill still have like 5 or 6K left over.

[Kwanza26]

A new 6 speed for a blacktop in a drift car huh? Heheh... heheheh... just so you know... I know these cars inside out... and there ain't no 6 speed... and if there was... I would know about it (unless it's a custom tranny or something). Like I said before... can't have your cake and eat it too. If you plan on building and swapping stuff with AE86's... you better have a second car. I've owned 5 AE86's in the past and I wouldn't consider these things, in modded form... daily driver worthy cars. They're 20 years old and sh!t's bound to go wrong. But you's is you and me's is me. Do what you will...

BTW... I just bought a 5SFE for a Camry the other day for 500 and change w/ a 6 month warantee. It's hard to imagine you can't find anything for less than 1000.00... even in Canada.

[Bigmeanbulldog55]

So, if someone were to get an AE86 and put a rebuilt 20v silver top in it, that person could still expect a lot of problems? Kwanza, what's up with that? There's guys out there driving 50 year old cars every day to work, and as long as they're well maintained, they're fine. I use to have a 78 Ford F-100, and although it eventually broke, it was not a constant problem. The motor blew in it, my fault. I can see it not being as nice a ride, but how can it be so much less reliable? Any car with significant mods is not reliable. Is it the 20v that makes it bad? Transmitions go out? Suspension stuff break a lot? With a rebuilt 20v and propper wiring along with a good transmition, I just don't see how it could really be that bad. I know you know what your talking about, I just don't understand why it's your opinion.

[Valo666]

All im relaying is my buddy told me hez gettin a 6speed trans from some JDM Toyota car to put into his AE86 when he swaps in his 20v black top. I have no idea of what trans it is. If you wanna ask him his nane is KnightX on TN. Feel free to ask him. And as for me needing 2 AE's if i wanna swap, i wont. My friend tore 4 of them apart while he was building his drift car and he has like 16 big rubber tubs full of parts in his garage. Plus im gonna be getting one of the guys on TN who does ST swaps all the time to do my swap. As for the 5S, I went onto Carparts.com and searched for a 5S with good KM on it, for a reasonable price, and relatively close. Cheapest one i could find was one out of a 93 Celica that was in Stoney Creek(approx 1.5H away, close to the closest race track), it had 168xxxKM on it, with no warrenty what so ever and they wanted $600. I found a few other places that were asking $800 with a 30 day startup warrenty on it but it would take a lil over a month to get it in and it has about 150xxxkm on it. Finding things for Celica's up here is rediculusly hard to do. I live in Toronto, Every thing for at least an hour n a half in every direction from the core of the city is developement, IE no scrap yards. Canada is very different than the States. Ive been to plenty of big US cities, Detriot, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Clevland, Louisville, Chatanoga, etc. And every city that ive been to in the States has been nothing like Toronto. The area around us is called the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). At first Toronto was just Toronto, now Toronto includes Toronto, Etobicoke, York, Scarbrough, Missisuaga, Vaughn, Burlington, Oshawa, Woodbridge, Concord, and like 2 or 3 other towns. It may be easy for some people who live in smaller towns that are surrounded by rural area's. It may be easy for people in Cali to get stuff, but up here, good luck. I also researched and looked around at every Japaneese Engine place within an hour from where i live and no one had n e thin instock that was respectable.

[Kwanza26]

So, if someone were to get an AE86 and put a rebuilt 20v silver top in it, that person could still expect a lot of problems? Kwanza, what's up with that? There's guys out there driving 50 year old cars every day to work, and as long as they're well maintained, they're fine. I use to have a 78 Ford F-100, and although it eventually broke, it was not a constant problem. The motor blew in it, my fault. I can see it not being as nice a ride, but how can it be so much less reliable? Any car with significant mods is not reliable. Is it the 20v that makes it bad? Transmitions go out? Suspension stuff break a lot? With a rebuilt 20v and propper wiring along with a good transmition, I just don't see how it could really be that bad. I know you know what your talking about, I just don't understand why it's your opinion.

Easy answer. 20 years ago... EFI started to become a standard option. 20 years ago... cars started to finally rely on electronic control devices. Cars prior to that didn't need anything electrical besides headlights and ignition. Carbs, although not as efficient as EFI, are very self sufficient with mechanical fuel pumps and such. That's what made the muscle car generation so great. Their mods meshed easily with each other because nothing relied on anything...

Now-a-days... it's different. Just ask anyone here who is swapped. Ask them if they feel their car is more reliable, or is slightly less reliable. Ask them how long it took them from simply getting the car started and running, to getting the car to a comfortable stage of driveability, without having to worry about small issues. It's not a matter of the engine or the swap or anything like that... it's sum of all those things together. A 20V swap, done by yourself, will not be quite as reliable as stock because it's NOT stock and we aren't perfect. It's not really a mechanical thing either... and the T50 is a great tranny for the 20V btw. It's always the small things and I want the OP to understand that before he tries to have his cake and eat it too. You can't have a cool project car with a swapped engine done and driving without a plan for the downtime. Even my AE86 has been sitting for about 5 months now... and I like to think I'm more mechanically inclined than most.

[Bigmeanbulldog55]

Easy answer. 20 years ago... EFI started to become a standard option. 20 years ago... cars started to finally rely on electronic control devices. Cars prior to that didn't need anything electrical besides headlights and ignition. Carbs, although not as efficient as EFI, are very self sufficient with mechanical fuel pumps and such. That's what made the muscle car generation so great. Their mods meshed easily with each other because nothing relied on anything...

Now-a-days... it's different. Just ask anyone here who is swapped. Ask them if they feel their car is more reliable, or is slightly less reliable. Ask them how long it took them from simply getting the car started and running, to getting the car to a comfortable stage of driveability, without having to worry about small issues. It's not a matter of the engine or the swap or anything like that... it's sum of all those things together. A 20V swap, done by yourself, will not be quite as reliable as stock because it's NOT stock and we aren't perfect. It's not really a mechanical thing either... and the T50 is a great tranny for the 20V btw. It's always the small things and I want the OP to understand that before he tries to have his cake and eat it too. You can't have a cool project car with a swapped engine done and driving without a plan for the downtime. Even my AE86 has been sitting for about 5 months now... and I like to think I'm more mechanically inclined than most.

Oh. My dad and uncle have done a few swaps and they don't seem to have any problems with them. A 350 in a jeep and into a little Toyota truck. My dad drives around an 85 F150 with a 97-98 Dodge Cummins engine. Although he does have problems with things, it's most just cause he drives it to hard. At least that's what I think. I understand that the ae86s were at the begining of the FI, and therefor would be more prone to problems. I thought if you just got all the wiring from a Levian and used that ECU, it wouldn't be a problem. That's who my dad did the Ford/Dodge. Just take the whole system out of the new one. I'm not near as expericanced as you, so it's still hard for me to rap my mind around the consept. If it were my car, I would just bolt up the motor and have a reputable shop put a stand alone on it. But you run into problems with stand alones I've heard. Give me a few more years so I can actually get some experiance heavy modding FI cars, then I'll know more.

[Celica_Fan]

the 6 speed is found in the BZ-R, BZ-G levin JDM models 1998 and also in the trueno.

[Kwanza26]

the 6 speed is found in the BZ-R, BZ-G levin JDM models 1998 and also in the trueno.

Those are FWD cars... this is a RWD drift car... heh. I was waiting for someone to say that...

[nik]

the 6 speed is found in the BZ-R, BZ-G levin JDM models 1998 and also in the trueno.

i thought the blacktop 20v 6speed tranny was only a fwd tranny

edit: bee beat me to it

This post has been edited by nik: Jan 11, 2006 - 7:39 PM

[Celica_Fan]

it is a front wheel drive transmission.

[Kwanza26]

it is a front wheel drive transmission.

heheh... so what's your point of mentioning it? I did emphasize "drift" car...

[Valo666]

so what ur tryin 2 say is that NO swap what so ever, no matter how freaking good its done, is gonna be good enough? Of course its not gonna be natural or you know..OEM..because..uhh..its not original or natural cuz if it was oem..then it wouldnt be a swap. There is very limited jdm motors and parts up here, but for people duing them, we have some freaking talented people. My friend Phil runs a place called Adrenalin Motorsports..its purely supra's...he swaped a 2zj into a MKII supra...he can swap a 2jzeg out and put a 2jzgtte into a MKIIII Supra in 6 hours and have it running. My friend swapped a SR20 into a Del Sol in a week n a half and had it driveable. One of the guys i used to work for swapped an RB26 into an S13 4 weeks. Theres a guy who can do ST swaps in 2 weeks and get it running that lives on the other side of the city. My friend Jover can swap 4agze's into AE's in less than a week. His friend did a 13B into a KP61. You are right, swaps are never gonna be natural. Can swaps be done right, yes. Can swaps be done quickly, yes. I can get this done easily and reliably. So as you say way 2 freakin often, I can have my cake and eat it to. So ie, NO CAKE FOR YOU!

[Kwanza26]

so what ur tryin 2 say is that NO swap what so ever, no matter how freaking good its done, is gonna be good enough? Of course its not gonna be natural or you know..OEM..because..uhh..its not original or natural cuz if it was oem..then it wouldnt be a swap. There is very limited jdm motors and parts up here, but for people duing them, we have some freaking talented people. My friend Phil runs a place called Adrenalin Motorsports..its purely supra's...he swaped a 2zj into a MKII supra...he can swap a 2jzeg out and put a 2jzgtte into a MKIIII Supra in 6 hours and have it running. My friend swapped a SR20 into a Del Sol in a week n a half and had it driveable. One of the guys i used to work for swapped an RB26 into an S13 4 weeks. Theres a guy who can do ST swaps in 2 weeks and get it running that lives on the other side of the city. My friend Jover can swap 4agze's into AE's in less than a week. His friend did a 13B into a KP61. You are right, swaps are never gonna be natural. Can swaps be done right, yes. Can swaps be done quickly, yes. I can get this done easily and reliably. So as you say way 2 freakin often, I can have my cake and eat it to. So ie, NO CAKE FOR YOU!

If that's the case... then it's not a matter of NOT finding an engine for the Celica... but an excuse to buy an AE86. Seriously... if you can afford buying another car, paying for an engine and swap labor, yet you can't afford to buy another 5sfe... then you've already made a desicion and need no further advice. I could care less what your friends and such can do... what can YOU do? I know how your father must feel...

And I have already had my share of cake thank you very much... =P







This post has been edited by Kwanza26: Jan 12, 2006 - 12:20 AM