supershannons swapped 95 celi (formally RJB's car) PT 2, fixing lots of little things, and reasons not to buy a swaped car Options

[presure2]

unfortunately, this is a continuation of this post:

http://www.6gc.net/forums/index.php?showto...=supershannon77

hey guys, as most of you know, supershannon (which includes her boyfriend, jim, and his brother joey) has the 95 swapped celi that they bought early last year to replace the 5th gen they had.
they bought the car from RJB on 6gc, with the assumption that is was a solid running car, with no major issues.
boy, were they wrong.
apparently, there was a problem with the PS before they bought the car, and they actually paid RJB extra money to insure the PS would be fixed before they picked it up.
the PS went out on the ride home.
after that, it was just problem after problem with this swap gone wrong.
they litterally had a wheel fall off at a meet up here last spring, AND a brake caliper fall forward and lock the front passanger wheel (there was no bolt holding it into the bracket)
we fixed them up, and at the next meet theyre tranny locked up on them.
turns out, once we sourced them a new tranny and went to install it,the car had the wrong rear mount with a lets just say "sub par" mounting bracket..lol, and the wrong shifter cables.
at that point, we could really see just how bad most of this swap was done, and we knew somthing needed to be done to help them out, since they really dont know much about how these cars work yet. lol
so, once i finished the 5sfte car up for them, we waited a little bit, and had them bring up the swapped celi.
once we got it here, i worked on a plan of attack for the car, and started really getting into looking things over really well, and going over the "systems" in the car.
first, the wiring harness was a MESS. i donot know who wired the harness, or who loomed it, but whoever did, it is NOT good.
jim had complained about the alternator wire "melting" on him a couple times, and how he had to replace a peice of the wire.
this is what i found after i cut off jims spilce in, and peeled back some of the sheething:



aweful.
no clip on the AFM plug, a wire pulled out of the temp sensor, and ALL those wires super tight and streched was what we found on the other side of the motor, which looked like a birdsnest there was so much twisted up wiring in that area..lol
so we took note of all that stuff and started digging more.
jim had noted that he noticed the front of the block would get a little moisture on the front of it after driving around a bit...after driving the car, and boosting a few times, i noticed the same, and it seemed to be getting worse...
looking around in the bay, i noticed this, and found it odd...notice the red "dot" in the middle of the pic. that is the water pump housing, right above the thermostat.



hrmmm interesting..lol...looks like....rtv silicone??
at that point, i knew i was going to have to go into the timing belt side of the motor...so, pulled the IC piping off...
when i did, i found that the piping, started as 2.5" aluminum piping off the turbo, and went down and around the fenderwell. inside the fenderwell, it transitioned DOWN in size, into 2.25" aluminized steel piping, into theyre 2.5" inlet intercooler.
yes, it went down from 2.5 to 2.25, back to 2.5 all on the hot side.
but wait, theres more!!
out of the intercooler, it went BACK down to 2.25, around into the fenderwell again, where it goes back to 2.5" aluminum.
brilliant.
to top it off, the aluminum piping wasnt beaded on the ends, and with the crappy couplers and clamps that were on there, crushed most of the ends of the pipes so they looked like this:



fantastic.
add another to the list of to do's..
so, we moved on, and got the upper timing belt cover off, and found this:



notice the match marks are off, looks like about a tooth...lol
a quick check at the dizzy shows us the dizzy is adjusted all the way up, with no more adjustment that way left, and you can see the original clean spot on the dizzy, where it "should" be, when the timing is set correctly.
so, we tore it apart, replaced the water pump, timing belt, seals and tensioners.
once we got the water pump out, we found what the litte red dot was from the earlier picture, and found the leak:




yup, thats RTV allright, filling a bolt hole. LMAO yea, that'll hold, yup, no problem, just long enough to sell the car.

we replaced the water pump and housing, and installed the timing belt, correctly this time. lol




continued..

once we got that buttoned up, we fixed up the wiring for the alternator, and o2 sensor wiring that had melted from laying on the downpipe.



and fabricated them up some 2.5" all stainless IC piping, welded into 2 sections on each side of the intercooler, with hump couplers at the joint on each side, and a 3" intake.

a few pics of that stuff.

during fab work

just about done:


the intake:


we also relocated the battery to the trunk:


once we got it all buttoned back up, she fired right up, first try.
now, we're just waiting on a proper rear mount to arrive, (they had sourced and installed the correct shifter cables, and sourced a rear mount bracket before bringing the car up) and a bit of body work to fix up the fender damage and whatnot that happen when the wheel fell off the car, and they should be able to actually ENJOY the power of a 3s swapped car for a change!

unforutunately for them, theyve learned the hard way, buying a swaped car is not the way to go., unless you have the mechanical knowlage to really look the car over well, and can test drive and make sure the car is solid BEFORE you buy.

[3SGTE]

bad luck supershannon. but presure2, you really know your stuff to sort out their problems.... how long you been into the celicas etc? jus wondered buddy!

[presure2]

bad luck supershannon. but presure2, you really know your stuff to sort out their problems.... how long you been into the celicas etc? jus wondered buddy!

thanks man, i started working on my own car in ~ 02 or so, right around the time i joined this site.
only thing i ever did on cars before that was fix tires and change oil...

[Valo666]

wow..shannons got bad luck with that thing. Nice work cleanin up some one else's crap manny. i do like the RTV bolt though

[supershannon77]

Yea it seems like I have the worst luck with celicas...always something going wrong but the way I look at it is I got good luck otherwise I would have never got to meet my good friend Manny.

Manny once again I cant thank you and everyone who put time in the cars enough....you are a real stand up guy! You give us updates just about everyday. One thing I dont get is how people on this site can keep putting down the mods when look how much u have done for not only me but the whole site....I love you Manny!!!

[tim86]

nice work once again... you guys up there need to set up a shop, looks like this was done just in time too, nice troubleshooting

[CelicaZR]

Great stuff Manny Your the Man
Shannons looks like your in good hands
Keep us updated on your progress

[snapshotgt]

I feel your pain. Good work Manny. You're like Speed-Source to them like they're to me.

[Batman722]

so just so we're clear...a bolt that holds the water pump to the housing was missing a bolt, and there was red silicone in it's place. yup, it was just glued in place !!! and of course it didn't hold and was pissing coolant all over the front of the engine.

[playr158]

Looking good Manny, getting some nice work done to her car....You woulda been amazed what that car looked like mid swap when I saw it up in Baltimore when he took it outta the shop. Man did they have ZERO clue what they were doing.

glad to see it coming together the correct way

[jason]

did rjb by any chance have a couple of dsm's before gettin his celica?

the silicon is great, and im glad everything is workin out for you guys! glad to know that people like manny n dustin exist in the world.

[x_itchy_b_x]

...and this whole time i thought i had the ghetto modifiers title.
Good work Manny!

[presure2]

...and this whole time i thought i had the ghetto modifiers title.
Good work Manny!

lmao!!
naa, man...this thing was in a class ALL BY ITSELF.

[DEATH]

Guess what I found when I was looking for leaks last night in my IC setup? Just exactly what you show but not quite so severe. Regardless I'm replacing what I can but one of them is on the very nice welded [and expensive] hot pipe to fender well peice. Now after I just spent 1.5k on rebuild parts and rebuilt my engine I have almost no cash to replace that peice.
My question is: Is there something I can do to restore a simblance of roundness/sealability to the pipe end? I have a full shop at my disposal but unfortunately it oesn't have a pipe flaring machine. As I said it's no where near as bad as that but I want everything done properly and this is just bugging me.
Thanks in advance.

[njccmd2002]

step 1, find a swapped celi.

step 2, let pressure2 take it for a ride

step 3, get ready for the bill, lol

oh my god, i am really sorry for all this mess, i guess by reading this i learned the easy way, not the hard way. I will never buy a swapped or modified vehicle. Cause for sure ill get ripped off, cause i know nutting about mechs.

is the intake being painted next to the fridge, or did the swap include a frdge




Good thing everything was fixable to a point, hope it did not cost too much, now that its fixed, is it better than a ride at six flags

one day one day, i will be able to say that........

This post has been edited by njccmd2002: Jan 15, 2008 - 1:00 PM

[presure2]

step 1, find a swapped celi.

step 2, let pressure2 take it for a ride

step 3, get ready for the bill, lol

oh my god, i am really sorry for all this mess, i guess by reading this i learned the easy way, not the hard way. I will never buy a swapped or modified vehicle. Cause for sure ill get ripped off, cause i know nutting about mechs.

is the intake being painted next to the fridge, or did the swap include a frdge




Good thing everything was fixable to a point, hope it did not cost too much, now that its fixed, is it better than a ride at six flags

one day one day, i will be able to say that........

lmao, the intake was just hung there to dry, no overspray on the fridge, please.
i havent driven it yet, it snowed here sunday- monday, and i am still buttoning up a few other little things, and waiting on a plate to arrive to make it street legal again.
it should be tearing up the streets by the weekend hopefully.

[lagos]

My question is: Is there something I can do to restore a simblance of roundness/sealability to the pipe end? I have a full shop at my disposal but unfortunately it oesn't have a pipe flaring machine. As I said it's no where near as bad as that but I want everything done properly and this is just bugging me.

Cut the damaged section of the pipe off and use a longer coupler.

[DEATH]

My question is: Is there something I can do to restore a simblance of roundness/sealability to the pipe end? I have a full shop at my disposal but unfortunately it oesn't have a pipe flaring machine. As I said it's no where near as bad as that but I want everything done properly and this is just bugging me.

Cut the damaged section of the pipe off and use a longer coupler.

Good Idea lagos - not sure why I didn't think of that.
Good news is I replaced the intake peice [which was the worst and slightly leaking] with the stock peice which was really not any more restrictive and the idle flucuation went away. I'll drive a few days like that and then start repairing the rest one at a time so I can deal with one problem at a time and not compound my difficulties.
Thanks for the tip.

[GMan]

Good work Manny !

Regards

[presure2]

so, we got the car back up and running that weekend, and after a few quick pulls, the car lost power, and a no boost situation followed.
a bit of investigation and we figured the turbo was blown.
after speaking with shannon and joe about it, they decided another stock turbo was the best solution.
luckily, our good friend jeremey (alltracman78) DONATED another turbo to the cause, which we picked up this past week.
we pulled the old turbo today, and once i removed the downpipe, i was AMAZED to find this:



that is, or WAS the turbine!!! its totally GONE.
just for refrence, this is what it "should" look like.



so we installed the new (used) turbo and now, its all good, 15psi and all is well!