Roman

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.

I've blown up shitloads of Bosch 4.2 and 4.9 sensors, so changed to the 14point7 Spartan controller, with the LSU-ADV sensor. It lasted the entire lifespan of the echo without blowing up a single sensor, and was running it "hot" on cold starts as well. (As it's designed to be more compatible with cold starts than 4.2 or 4.9) Compared to, I think my record with a 4.2 or 4.9 sensor for worst lifespan was that one lasted 3 days.

I think the general idea is that the faster you are going, the less air intake area you need for your radiator size. A lot of the time attack cars have tiny little holes for the radiator. Total lower grill entry area is 77542mm2 . Equivalent area to a 315mm circle. 57081mm2 for the upper grill entry. Equivalent area to a 270mm diameter circle. The front valance sits quite high on this car, but it's really hard to add something to the front to lower it that doesnt look like absolute shit. I very much do not like this style of front on this era car: This below though can look cool though but it's hard to get it right, often looks gumby when someone fits one that isnt wide enough or the right shape for the car. May also be incompatible with my rural driveway haha.

Radiator situation I've got the Mark X radiator in there currently, and although it made everything nice in a lot of ways in the back of my brain I know it's just not going to work quite right. As the top pipe sits too high. You can see it sits a little higher than the top crossmember too, and this isnt on any mounts yet. Just sitting hard against the bottom. The motor's radiator cap (in blue) sits a little lower than the radiator, and the top hose to the radiator flows uphill towards the radiator. All bad news for ever trying to bleed the air out of this thing. Another issue is that I'd love to have a front facing intake airbox that goes through to the front grill, like a lot of the BTCC type cars have. The best option I've found for a low, wide, twin core radiator that doesnt have a radiator cap (and does have an air bleed) is from an SW20 MR2. Being so much shorter, I can dedicate all of the front grill area for the intake. And they're a common upgrade item for MR2s, so cheap and plentiful. The radiator is 5mm wider than my chassis rails, but the end tanks are alloy and on the sides. So will just need a little slice and reweld to fit at the bottom. If I dedicate the top grill to doort noises, then I dont have a huge amount of frontal area for the radiator coming in from just underneath the bumper. Possibly need to remove the bonnet catch as well, but I'd prefer to keep it over having bonnet pins or whatever. This is a rough approximation of how much space I've got for each thing Red is intake stuff, blue radiator stuff, white is the open area that the radiator can get air through. So a lot of the radiator area will be fairly useless if hard mounted against the front of the car, as it wont get any air flow. so I'll try mount it as far back as I can towards the engine. All of this stuff is a bit off topic to my path towards getting the engine fired up, but I've been working on that too. Last night cut the fuel rails a bit shorter, so there's more room at the back. for the fuel dampers without hitting the body. Then also had the underside of the rails milled down so the throttle linkages dont hit the rail anymore. So that's just about all finished once I've retapped the ends and remade the AN lines to suit.

Recently Dad's car broke the rear door handle, and no inside button. But it turns out he could log in with a canbus scan tool to pop it open.

TL;DR: Using a table to look up circle coordinates instead of maths