93NA -> Gen3 swap progress

[Tyler H]

There is a lot of info on the net about doing this swap, but there are a lot of details that have been glossed over. I did a LOT of research before beginning. My intent is to capture and document any issues I run into that aren't widely covered with what's already out there. I already had the car stripped down to the head because I had to replace a headgasket. I decided that it was so much work, I would go ahead and swap.

I began with doing the prep work. Put the front tires on some boards, disconnect the battery, drain all the fluids. Support car on jack stands and remove rear wheels. Disconnect engine wiring harness from ECU in the trunk and the engine room fuse box. Disconnect the clutch hydraulics and shift cables. Disconnect the coolant hoses at the firewall. Disconnect the fuel bajo bolt at the fuel filter. Remove rear rotors / calipers and break the bolts off the ends of the axle. Disconnect the rear strut rods from the chassis and the rear toe control rods from the spindle. Disconnect the spindle from the strut body and the lower control arms from the spindle. Remove spindle. Support axles if you care about them. Remove three bolts from subframe -> rear engine mount. Support subframe with a jack and loosen 4 bolts. Lower subframe/strut rod/lower control arm assy slightly. Remove rear swaybar, which goes OVER the exhaust, then remove exhaust from "downpipe" and set aside. At this point, you can remove the rear subframe/strut rod/lower control arm assy. It isn't as heavy as it looks....probably about 65lbs.

whew....ok on to the fun stuff

Step 1, Take one last look at your neat, organized garage.



Step 2, remove wife's car and let the fun begin.



Step 3, Take a look at all the nasty parts that you'll need to degrease



Step 4, Construct a dolly to lower the engine onto, with 2x4s, screws and casters. ~25-30 at Lowe's, or buy one from Harbor Freight . I ordered one, but it wasn't here yet, so I built. 18" w x 22" l is the PERFECT size.



Unbolt AC compressor from block, 4 bolts from the front of the car. Suspend with bunji cord to rain tray.



Attach engine hoist and take tension



Unbolt 3 engine mounts from: front firewall( 4x14mm nuts, obivous), drivers side through bolt (obvious,) and passenger side 2 x14mm nuts from the bottom (picture looking up from crank pulley.)



Engine is free! Lower carefully onto your dolly. Lower, lower, ahhh....





Note: This chain was too thick to work with my load-leveler. As it turns out, the engine hooks Toyota supplies are in the perfect place and the engine balances perfectly as-is. Just use an equal length of chain on either side. The 3-ton chain I bought was a little overkill.



Enough for tonight. Whew. To be continued.

[NoSirItsAToyota]

I know we have a lot of stickies already, but I'm sticking this since it will be VERY informative. Thanks and good luck! Please update all you can.

[tigerpee]

Yes, i like ur wifes car too. haha

[Tyler H]

Originally Posted by NoSirItsAToyota

I know we have a lot of stickies already, but I'm sticking this since it will be VERY informative. Thanks and good luck! Please update all you can.

I will update it here as a post until I'm done, and then I'll go back and edit everything down and put together a web page. I'll cover everything I've done, what worked and what didn't. Right now, I'm having trouble getting it jacked high enough with the stuff I have laying around.

Originally Posted by tigerpee

Yes, i like ur wifes car too. haha

I do too...and I can't have it being faster than mine. She wanted us to get a Corrolla, I talked her into getting an IS300 that was a couple years old instead. At least I enjoy working on it, instead of her old Honda Accord. I wanted to make sure we got a car that was suitable so that when the time came, I would inherit it as a project car. I'll have my MR2 in good shape by then and it will be time to look at swapping a 2JZ-GTE. muahahahah

[91gRedddymR2]

Hey Tyler have you don eany of the wiring yet-- I did a conversion on my 91 too. engine came with a cut harness. I work at a toyota dealership so if you need any pics from say wiring diagram book( I know it saved my life) or the repair manual just let me know or if you need help with anything else. ----Derek----

[Tyler H]

Originally Posted by 91gRedddymR2

Hey Tyler have you don eany of the wiring yet-- I did a conversion on my 91 too. engine came with a cut harness. I work at a toyota dealership so if you need any pics from say wiring diagram book( I know it saved my life) or the repair manual just let me know or if you need help with anything else. ----Derek----

I've done research on all the wiring and made an excel spreadsheet that should match up all the colors from 93na body harness to 97 gen 3. I'm not sure if I want to cut/solder/heatshink the wires individually, or try to repin the connectors at the rear fuse box. Once my clip gets here, I'll plan that out. I think that is one of the details that gets glossed over a lot. I haven't seen any pictures on re-pinning the connectors or splicing the harness.

[Tyler H]

Tonight wasn't quite as productive. I spent about 2 hours on carpentry/masonry trying to figure out how I could get the car above the engine. This method sucks and is dangerous. I finally resigned to removing the rear bumper cover and using the cherry picker to lift the chassis by the towloops.. This took about 30min, so I wasted 1.5 pissed off, dangerous hours trying to find a novel new way to do it.

Those fake plastic push-screws that hold the rear bumper cover to the crush bar have my vote for Toyota's worst fastener. There was about a cup full of dust and 12 years of grime under the bumper cover. A sorry state of affairs:



Once it was lifted, the motor rolled right out on its custom dolly:




Your garden variety 5SFE... The longblock is already sold for $200 to a guy whose daughter's ex-boyfriend let the oil out of her Celica GTS, and the tranny is going to a 18yo kid with with a 91 MR2 in need of a tranny for $50. Good homes.





The obligatory shot:



The rest of the weekend will be spent degreasing and restoring the engine bay and bumper area, as well as installing the Walbro 255lph fuel pump that just got here today. Deadline to first start is about 3 weeks.

[DavidH]

Got any of that Miller left? I'd be happy to watch and give useless advice some afternoon. Dad

[monopolizedinc]

would you care to send a copy of that spread sheet? im in kinda the same process 93na to gen3 but im taking my time and upgrading in the process so im waiting on a few more parts..

* edit damn i spell like a 1st grader sometimes.....

[Triad.:]

post pics of the fuel pump install!

[rhouck]

Originally Posted by Triad.:

post pics of the fuel pump install!

there are 2 different guides in the MKII turbo sticky if you need directions w/ pictures asap

[Tyler H]

Originally Posted by Triad.:

post pics of the fuel pump install!

My computer was down all weekend. I pulled the fuel tank yesterday (not fun) and I have plenty of pictures. I'll try to get them posted up tonight. It didn't help that it was full when the HG went, but I have plenty of gas for my lawnmower and weedeater now.

[Tyler H]

Originally Posted by David

Got any of that Miller left? I'd be happy to watch and give useless advice some afternoon. Dad

Hey old man! I usually drink Miller Lite, but the High-Life helps with those really tough bolts. Come on over anytime.

[exhacker]

Hey when I get my `bus back from the Service people, I'll be glad to hook you up on the wiring. I miss my turbo

With what kind of wires are we dealing? (gauge, stranded/solid, and roughly how many)

[Tyler H]

Originally Posted by exhacker

Hey when I get my `bus back from the Service people, I'll be glad to hook you up on the wiring. I miss my turbo

With what kind of wires are we dealing? (gauge, stranded/solid, and roughly how many)

Stranded, dunno what guage. I have strippers / solder / a new solder gun (1100w !) and heatshrink tubing. 53 wires in total.

Originally Posted by monopolizedinc

would you care to send a copy of that spread sheet? im in kinda the same process 93na to gen3 but im taking my time and upgrading in the process so im waiting on a few more parts..

* edit damn i spell like a 1st grader sometimes.....

I'll post up my spread sheet as soon as I verify it is accurate. I want to work through any issues that arise before posting it, so that there isn't any false info floating around out there.

If you are in desperate need, email me and I'll give you what I have so far.

[monopolizedinc]

ok that sounds good im not ready to put it in yet. im still waiting on a few upgrades to come in. but please keep us posted
joe

[Tyler H]

Sunday was spent dropping the fuel tank and cleaning up. The fuel tank drop is a particularly distasteful job, especially when it is still full. There is a drain valve....the wiser among you will drain the tank BEFORE you remove the rear subframe, since its right in the middle of the tank.

I'm going to gloss over this because I need to build a step-by-step. Basically, undo all of the hoses in the engine bay...this will be much harder to do with a turbo vying to occupy the same space. Remove the 12mm bolts that hold all of the coolant hoses and enjoy your refreshing coolant bath (you can NEVER get it all out.) Disconnect the parking brake cables. Remove two cross braces and the pin-strap. Once the bolt is out of the pin-strap, just get physical and yank that bee-otch out of there. You can see the pin holder on the right tunnel wall in the pictures below. The tank will be unlikely to plop right out. I had to do some careful prying at the engine bay end to get the super-stiff filler hose to clear the frame. Even mostly full, it wasn't tooo heavy.

Connections at firewall:



A shot down the firewall, note the pin holder:



A shot of the little bastard:



I never could understand why you couldn't get to the fuelpump from the top. Turns out that access port is for the fuel level sender. The pump is farther back.

Next up was janitorial duty. You'll (hopefully) never get a second chance to clean things up. My stuff was caked with oil and funk. I bought some ZEP Industrial Purple at Home Depot for ~$8 a gal. You're supposed to dilute it 10:1, but I found that 2:1 is quite effective. It isn't as nasty as engine degreaser and is just as effective. I just sprayed it down, let it soak and hosed it off with a waterhose repeatedly until I was down to ~.5" of caked on gunk, then I hit it with a brush. I also got the engine bay and rear bumper area....yeah yeah...nobody will see it, but I would know it was there.

Is it concours? No. But it is definitely an improvement.

Subframe before:



Subframe after:



Engine bay before:




Engine bay after:




Rear bumper area after:

[Tyler H]

Ok, fuelpump install.

Here's what you get with a Walbro 255lph MR2 kit:



Butt-crimp connectors? No way. I'm not going to gamble having to pull this sucker again or lean out on those weenie things. By the same token, I don't want to solder on the existing connector since its saturated in gasoline. BOOM!

BTW....a wise man once told me that "full fuel tanks may catch on fire, but empty fuel tanks explode." Be careful.

I'll let the connector dry out overnight and do this soon.

Here is a picture of the old fuel pump removed from the tank (6 screws and a 10mm bolt on a hardline bracket.)



Here is a shot of all the crud that the fuel pump's filter was holding on to after 12 years and 138k miles:



I'll update this post when finished.

[exhacker]

Originally Posted by Tyler H

Rear bumper area after:

Argh ! My cones ! Ahhhh....

[mr2slow4you]

When you lifted the car with the hoist, why the heck didn't you just attach the hoist chains to the side motor mounts (put bolts in and then attach a hook or something on the chains). Also, the fuel tank drain might not be a good idea if you left 8-10gals in it like me lol. I thought it was better to leave some fuel in there to prevent more vapors which are very combustable.