Roman

Alright alright alright! So I pushed the car outside this afternoon so I could reach some wiring inside to try fire it up. I filled the car up with coolant, by which I mean water because I was expecting things to leak. Sure enough each head had a hole up the front where water started leaking out. I couldnt remember what these were for, then found out that they are like an air bleed channel that goes back to the thermostat housing. So, these seem to have gone AWOL when moving house so I'll need to pickapart some more. I must have removed them when taking the heads off to clean them. Easy fix. Then I got the fuel pump working and fixed a few fuel leaks. It turns out that AN fittings arent very good at sealing if you havent tightened them up? Crazy. Then I got my tune somewhat sorted, and tried cranking the motor over.... and the bloody battery died! Ugh. I mucked around to get another battery, it sort of spluttered a few times but not quite. I had a look through the tune settings. Engine size was still set to 1500cc from using this ECU in the Echo - woops. I needed to disable the fuel pressure sensor allocation. As since this isnt wired in yet, it took 0v to believe that the motor had zillions of psi worth of fuel pressure. Then when I cranked the motor it was registering the crank trigger, but not cam trigger. Checked the settings, had this wrong. Both were set to VR sensors, but the crank is VR and the cams are hall effect. So once that was fixed... Bam! We are running. It was absolutely awesome to reach this point. So whats next? Lots. Get the coolant system functioning properly. Make an exhaust for it. A lot of wiring work, get the fusebox setup all connected nicely and mount all of the wiring nicely. Need to put some gearbox oil in the box, will do this before running the engine any longer. Pull the fuel rails off, and do tests to work out the CC rating and deadtimes for the injectors. Calibrate all of the sensors Mount a radiator fan Check intake for leaks (I think all of the air bypass screws are currently all the way out) Install the wideband Finish wiring up the alternator And a bunch of other little similar jobs. Most of these I can peck away at over winter with limited space. Making an exhaust will be difficult when weather starts getting darker and wetter and I can only really work outside. Will push ahead as best I can. Super excited for first start though!

If you can only find one with right geometry but too small a bore, you can get them bored out and put bigger guts in Bit more of a pain than finding an off the shelf option though.

Sidetrack to your build and sorry/not sorry. But the biggest tragedy with the 2ZZ was that they made the 1ZZ and 2ZZ completely different engines. They were trying to make a competitor to the B18C but totally missed the point in that regard. Like how good is the B18C, on account of that even the peasant versions can be awesome, with just different cams and so on. Can you imagine if every single turd car out there with a 1ZZ, had 2ZZ potential? Would be incredible! But instead we have zillions of 1ZZ turds and very few of the cool motors around.

When I took my 1NZ with cams etc for a WOF with the standard intake manifold on. You could not have believed it was the same engine. Holy crap, it turned into a slug haha. Totally choked out by ~5000ish rpm. If the 2ZR was similarly designed, it would be a night and day difference with some bolt on mods. However yes - I must concede that some motors like 1NZ and 2ZR do in fact totally suck in factory form.

2.4m stud height, definitely not tall enough to be useful for a hoist. But not worried about that. One thing I've learned is that no matter how fancy and comfortable your garage is. Whenever you go to an event you still end up lying down on the ground trying to look for your 10mm spanner or something. Haha.

2GRFE / 2GRFXE This is a 3.5 litre V6 that I guess replaces the 2JZGE engine. Has good aftermarket support, aftermarket cams etc but the engines cost a lot. Popular for engine swaps into MR2s and similar, because the east-west variants have a bellhousing pattern very close to a 3SGE. So they bolt up to a factory gearbox. Unfortunately ends up being pretty expensive all up, though. This guy made 405whp with an NA setup, using high comp factory pistons, aftermarket cams and valvesprings. and some bolt on mods. Pretty sweet to be banging past 100hp/litre at the wheels with a fairly big engine.

1NZFXE I think we've covered this one well enough - but definitely earns a mention. It's a pity that available aftermarket cams max out at 264 deg / 9.5mm lift. As I think this motor would give a lot of older 1600cc motors a run for it's money if bigger cams were available. Wins the prestigious Goez hard 4 wat it iz award.

2ZRFE / 2ZRFXE This is a similar era engine to the above, but a smaller 1.8 litre 4 cyl motor. When the 2ZZGE stopped production, Lotus used a supercharged 2ZR engine instead in the Lotus Elise. So there's some alright aftermarket goodies. This was also the 1.8 litre engine used in the 1.8 litre prius, hybrid and non hybrid versions in corollas. So they're fairly common. There's a prius version on trademe for $700. Perhaps most notably though, this engine was used in "Yaris Hilton" by Mighty Car mods as their cheap and cheerful turbo car. They eventually blew the motor up, it was shitloads of fun and zero fucks were given. It's pretty awesome that this engine spans all the way from being in a $$$ Lotus, to the basis for an absolute shitbox car minimum spend build for max lolz.

Just worth mentioning that there is also a slightly older version of the same thing, called 2AZFE / 2AZFXE. Not quite as good but possibly cheaper and more available perhaps. This one is cool.

Hello, Maybe it's just my age, and to do with the cars that I learned about when I grew up. However I seem to be stuck in thinking of all of the motors from the 90s or early 200s as the "golden era"? Where anything before that was a bit primitive, and anything much after that is too modernized and hard to do anything with. So only things from around this time are good. Legendary little rippers such as the 4AGE, 4G63, 2JZ, 1UZ, 13B, LS1... Gotta love em! Cheap, plentiful, great potential, great aftermarket support, and so on. However a lot of these older motors are getting hard to source, expensive, and a bit less fun when it costs 10x what it used to. However I feel like there are some good modern options which are slept on. So, what are some cool modern engines that should have some potential for swapping into shitty old cars? @shrike noted a few cool options in a recent project thread. I figure it's a worthy topic of it's own, going into some more detail on each type of motor. I will write a few posts below that I've seen some success with, with some different engines and pros/cons. In my mind what made those older engines great, was a combination of few factors -Easy to make power in factory form. -Good modding capability. -Good aftermarket support. -Plentiful engines / not too expensive. Now to be fair I am Toyota biased, not because I think these motors are best, it's just what I know about from top of my head. Feel free to spam other alternatives if you know of something cool! First up Toyota 2ARFXE engine This is a 2.5 litre 4 cylinder engine with a 90mm bore and 99mm stroke. This is normally found in a hybrid car like a Camry. There is a non hybrid version too (2ARFE) Think of it as a slightly less good Toyota version of a K24 I guess. Why consider it? It uses all of the Toyota hybrid engine tricks, for good economy - that are good for power too when modified. High compression ratio, huge ports, big standard cams, somewhat bolts to a 3SGE gearbox (Easier for FWD than RWD though) There's currently one on Trademe for under $900. How does it go? These motors have a really big factory intake cam, and this can fit on the exhaust side too. So you buy a 2nd one and fit it on the exhaust side for a cheap and easy upgrade. Then retime the cams away from atkinson cycle, and you make big stacks of power with some basic bolt on mods. This guy was making 270whp with an NA motor with 2x factory intake cams fitted. Pretty awesome! It somewhat bolts up to a 3SGE bellhousing pattern, which works well for transverse engine swaps. Downsides are that it's a fairly tall engine, some people have had to cut their bonnet to fit in smaller RWD cars. Okay so that's cool for a low budget throw together, but does the aftermarket support scale up? How about a full $$$ turbo build? As this motor was common in america, there's heaps of stuff available. Papadakis racing made a 1000hp variant.

Shrike thats all great and everything, but... Have you considered a 2ZZ?

It is tantalizingly close. I probably could have done that a week ago. Except for that I've been in the South Island for work, and we found a second hand garage for removal that is a significant upgrade over the tiny one I've currently got. (New one 9x6m 2.4 stud height) So have had zero free time for car stuff. I'm picking up the last of it tomorrow, then hoping to do some carina stuff in the afternoon. I want that start up damnit!

Ahh yeah thats where I'm stuck at the moment too. I've got about a dozen new points in the fuel system where it could potentially spray out of, at tank end and engine end. Need to find the time to clear all of the crap off, and push the whole car out a safe distance from the house. haha. I'm loving the progress on this! Shame about the bumper bar, intercooler setup looked cool.

Aahhh so these injectors might be okay, at least for starters. I left them all to soak in CRC overnight, then made a up a lead to tap them on/off straight onto a 12v battery, and they all clicked. So then I setup the injector test mode in the ECU to run them through 10,000 cycles while they were full up with CRC. Then tested all 6 outputs on my loom and they're all working. So they might have just been ever so slightly stuck. They still might be partially blocked or whatever, but I'll flow test them first to make sure they are balanced and that the spray pattern looks okay. If I can avoid a $500-600 bill for new injectors, that's money this month for stuff like the exhaust which is much better!

Just pump gas, E85 is just too much hard work.

Yep just about! Need to fill gearbox with oil, bolt exhaust manifolds on, replace injectors, make sure the fuel pump still works. Then coolant is optional for first start, haha. But it's damn close.

At the moment I was just working on the basis that the V10 has 10 cylinders and makes 500hp, so 6 cyl worth of injectors should be 300hp capable no problem. However has rpm goes up, you need a slightly bigger injector to make the same amount of HP. As your deadtime gobbles up an increasing amount of your available time to spray.

A few hurdles... Only one side worked for the hoses. The next size up is 495mm long and sounds like it would work good. It's over $100 for the hose which is spendy. But for once in my life I want no joins in the radiator hoses damnit. So will just do it. (The non fitting side is currently 305mm) Then I've been making good progress on the wiring, a new roll of DR25 turned up so I finished the injector loom and tested it. Injector 1 - working fine injector 2 - working fine injector 3 - nothing injector 4 - nothing injector 5 - nothing Injector 6 - working fine I figured I must have derped the wiring somehow, so I pulled my loom back off and test it, traced wires back, blah blah. All seemed okay. Well, turns out that the wiring wasnt an issue, but the injectors are. 7 out of 10 of the BMW injectors are seized. BMW life! hahaha. No big drama, as it's probably a good idea to start with some slightly bigger injectors anyway. Internet says these factory injectors are somewhere around 248cc which might have been borderline for high rpm, depending on the deadtime. For interest's sake I will chuck these in Dad's ultrasonic cleaner and see if they unjam at all. Anyone got some suggestions on a good set of long pintle EV14 injectors? Over 250cc and under... say... 500. If there's some common 6 cyl car that is pickapartable I'll go grab a set. Needs the long pintle.

The SW20 radiator turned up, and thankfully it was indeed 755mm wide, not 770. So just needed a small snip up one side to fit. There isnt actually too much in the way of the fins being shrouded by the front panel, because those side parts are mostly the end tanks. So ended up better than expected, it will mount up to the front panel nicely. This is the amount of room to the crossmember level: My next problem was that the radiator outlets are 32mm, but on the motor they are 38mm. Wellllll, turns out that you can buy flexi hoses with 32mm at one end, 38 at the other. At what looks like good lengths (400 for one side, 300 for the other). So ordered some. Too easy! I'm glad to not need a join in the hoses this time. I printed some lower radiator brackets which bolt onto the crossmember similar to the ones I had for the Altezza radiator. I remember we made the altezza ones out of aluminium, and it seems like it took forever and was a really hard job. Now with a printer it's just incredibly easier to test print and test fit a few iterations within hardly any time at all. I've also got all the fuel lines connected, throttles are now mounted on carbon nylon manifolds, throttles are balanced and connected. My to-do list for getting the motor fired up is rapidly shrinking!

If you're looking at getting that wagon, probably want to do a rack and pinion conversion as the steering box stuff takes up heaps of space where you'd want to run the exhaust. Also most likely has leaf spring in rear of that wagon which is a bit gross compared to 4 link. Also, at the best of times with some $$$ spent these cars handle... not amazing compared to modern stuff. But with standard suspension etc they just wallow all over the road haha. Costs a fair bit of $$$ to get them handling and braking a bit better. With lots of weight in front and not much power would be kind of like wielding a marshmallow sledgehammer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8I6soGvGeI

Yeah true. Apart from existing options not fitting, it's also that eventually I want to be able to have an intake something like this. Both because it looks cool, and works to hide a lot of other sins in my engine bay haha.

I found an SW20 one that is a little different on dimensions: Core Size: 675mm *320mm *40mm Overall Size: 755mm *345mm *50mm Row: 2 Core If it turns up and is 770mm then I'm in trouble haha.

Yeah I hear you, and I am focused on getting this from current its current state to a running motor/car ASAP with no fucking around on non essentials. (Can do that iteratively once it's going, like echo. thats the fun part) As I want to know how well my engine scheme is going to pan out! So the seemingly easiest way would have been to keep the Altezza radiator that I already had - but the pipe sizes are wrong, and the pipe locations dont really work either. I was hoping the Mark X setup would just tick off all of these boxes, just have to remake some top and bottom mounts. But it's actually only as thin as the Altezza radiator (16mm) and the hoses didnt really fit too well since the radiator and engine heights dont match relative positions to factory. Bottom mounts will be easy, but the top ones tricky because it's tall. But once mounted it's going to be even taller, and I suspect it will hit the bonnet. So my thinking here is actually to NOT waste my time, rather than to dilly dally with unimportant stuff. So I'm cutting my losses and ironically going to SW20 parts haha. To get the motor running I dont need an air intake at all, and I dont need any radiator ducting. So I'll bang the radiator in there, work out the mounts, work out the pipes, then fill the damn thing up. This new radiator is 40m thick core as well, so hopefully zero cooling issues if I can get some air to it. This SW20 radiator was $220 delivered so meets the cheap and cheerful criteria!

Needs to be huge for a car that doesnt go! And yeah can probably tip it a bit, there's a reasonable amount of room ahead of the motor.