Celica Ra65 engine swap to 7mge

[Norbie]

The M series engines are long and heavy, which is why it's a bad idea for a Celica with a short engine bay. Either swap your car for an MA61 with a longer engine bay, or restrict yourself to smaller engines (4 cylinder, V6 or maybe a small straight six like the 1G). If it's your first engine conversion you don't want to start with something too hard, you gotta crawl before you can walk!

[mrshin]

Who's gonna be the first to go ahead and say that the 7M is just a crap engine in general? (It's all relative of course, but compared to alternatives...)

[MR 1JZ]

I fail to understand why people honestly put 7M's in anything...

[o_man_ra23]

MrShin, after the debacles I have been through fixing a blown head gasket in a 'rebuilt' 7MGE, I will happily say they are plain crap. Reasonably torquey, good for towing around a Cressida, but thats about the end of it.

As for the 22RE - dont write it off too much. They are still a good torquey engine and respond quite well to mods. If there is one person on these forums to talk to about modding a 22RE it would be Phobia.

Other engine conversions, depend on your driving status. If your going to be driving the car on P-plates, then pretty much every decent engine choice is out of the question. If your not restricted by our crappy laws, then the 1GGTE would be the best bang for buck, and ease of conversion. Even if you are restricted, then you can put in the 1GGTE, put the turbos and manifolding into storage, and put a set of extractors and a MegaSquirt onto it, and run it around NA for a while. Wont be quite as good as a 1GGE, but when you get off your Ps, you can simply bolt the turbos back on, retune for boost and you have a potent car. This engine will work well with your RA65, seeing as you already have an F series diff, and W5x box.

If you decide to get adventurous, then the 3SGTE is a very rewarding engine, but a pain in the a-hole to put in. Of course you do have the option of the 3SGE BEAMS engine from an RS200 Altezza, plenty of power, and a compact engine, RWD already for ease of install... the electrics get complex though as you need to use all the factory stuff including ignition barrel to work around the immobiliser stuff. Either that or buy a couple of grand worth of ECU and spend a few grand getting it tuned.

There are many choices, what you need to look at is... what do you want the car to do?? Drag, drift, track, street etc, and what restrictions do you have, money, P plates, etc etc.

[brendanraymond]

The car has to atleast manage to power slide in dry conditions.

I am restricted to P plate laws so in actual fact, its illegal to modify ANYTHING, so i was actualy considering an aprilia rs125, which is the second fastest L legal bike in NSW, so atleast im obaying the law this way, BUT they go for atleast 5 000 dollars.

To tell the truth, if its cheaper to mod the 22re in order to have some fun, I will.

Maybe ill do both in time.

To be honest though, i don't realy want to spend too much money on the celica as its in pretty bad condition, and a decent resprey don't come cheap.

Will a set of extractors and maybe dual webber carbs plus DIY port and polish on the 22re show decent results? And are there high comp pistons and/or a better head available for the 22re?

[o_man_ra23]

Leave it with EFI, dont go the webbers as that will be expensive. Extractors will help, and a reground cam. That will be your cheapest way of making this thing tougher. You may need to tweak a few things to make sure it gets enough fuel with the cam, or you can buy a MegaSquirt ECU for a few hundred (less than the cost of the webbers) and a cheap oxygen sensor will get you going pretty good. But yeah, the cam will make the biggest difference of anything.

[brendanraymond]

So for exhaust, ill just take it to a specialty shop

For the cam, wouldn't further grinding the cam decrease valve lift, or do you make a pad weld and re grind or somthing or is the cam replaced by another part entirly?

For EFI, will i have to remake the intake manifold, and will the cost of injectors + megasquirt ecu + oxygen sensor plus tuning out wiegh the cost of a webber or a similar carbie.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Vinta...spagenameZWD2V

I had somthing like this in mind, and this doesn't seem to be too expensive.

Perhaps maybe a 4 barrel holly carb might do the trick?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Holly...spagenameZWD2V

I liked the idea of carburators as they are easy to tune and setting it all up should be much easier... hopfuly.

[o_man_ra23]

bredanraymond... wheres the manifold to fit either of those carby options?? Why would you need to buy new injectors??

The cam is ground back to re-profile it, and seeing as you have adjustable tappets on the end of your rocker arms, you just use that to increase the lift to where it should be.

Exhaust is easy if you have a MIG, just find a second hand set of extractors and weld it to the existing exhaust. This would be done after the cam though, as the cam will give the biggest gains. If you dont have a MIG, then yeah, exhaust shop.

If you had ever played with a modern programmable ECU, you would know that the ability to re-map on the fly, and the ECU tweaking itself with the oxygen sensor feedback makes them a lot easier to tune than changing jets and ports in a carby. So much so, that with good software, you dont need a dyno at all to tune your ECU, you can do it driving around the streets.

So yeah, setting up a carby will be a pain because you will need to get a low pressure fuel pump, frig up all your fuel system, make redundant most of your wiring etc etc. Then you need to find a manifold to suit the 22R to fit decent carbs on (or you will lose power with the 22R-C carby). After a year, the fuel savings on having the EFI over the carby will be enormous... even when you factor in that you will be driving hard!! Sorry dude, but your logic just doesnt make sense, just spend a short amount of time researching MegaSquirts... you will learn so much, and it really isnt hard.

[brendanraymond]

I don't have any problem with the manifolds as i can make them mylself easily.

I thought the 22re is factory with a carb?

If so, then why do i need a new fuel pump and electrics going redundant?

Tuning for the carby i can do as i have done this before, but i realy have no idea about programming ecu's.

Your right about the fuel though but i don't comute that much anyway.

So if i already have EFI, then this means i can use the existing manifolds and its just a simple change of the ecu.

I'll have to go home and have a look at my engine as i am now having doubts weather or not its even a 22re.

I'll have a read up on the megasquirters too.

[o_man_ra23]

22R-E is the 22nd revision in the R family of motors. The E extention means it has EFI. If you have a 22R-C then I would say yeah, webber, cam, extractors, but if you have a 22R-E, then as I said, keep it EFI. After a few years of learning to tune carbs and twin carbs, I then played with an EFI set... much easier to tune, really isnt anything scary there (I thought it would be scary, but alas, much simpler)

You say you can make the manifolds easily... are you a boilermaker or similar??

[brendanraymond]

I was an apprentice fitter/machinest for about 1.5 years, but not all in the one place. But iv done alot of fab work with alum and 250 grade steel.

Studying mechanical engineering advanced diploma at tafe now.

i know for sure its not a 22r-e/c, but im still not sure yet wether its a 2s-c or a 21r-c. Ill have to look at the engine plate when its light again.

I know for a fact that it doesn't look anything like the 22r-c/e so im betting its the 2sc.

Do you think i should change to another s engine or mod the one i already have?

[Norbie]

If the car is an 84 model it should be a 2S-C, but this is not a good platform for performance modifications and neither is the 21R-C for that matter. An engine swap would definitely be better but by the sounds of things your budget is going to limit you here.

Perhaps if you have reasonable fabrication skills a 1G-GE swap could be done on the cheap? This would certainly be an improvement over what you have and makes it easy to upgrade to a turbo engine in future.

[o_man_ra23]

If your fabrication skills are good, then half the battle is won. I would agree with Norbie that you most likely have the uber-crap 2S-C. Never fear though, as the 3S-GTE is a highly rewarding engine. You can pick them up for a reasonable price if you look hard, and fabrication is usually the hardest/most expensive part of the conversion. You will already have the engine mounts (a plate will be needed for the driver's side), sump, gearbox etc etc. All you will need is an engine with loom and ecu, an RA65 EFI fuel tank (or a couple of pumps and surge tank), thermofan, and heaps of fabrication. I would suggest upgrading to an Adaptronic or similar ECU to get the best out of the engine.

Once you have done with the car, the 3S-GTE setup can easily be transferred into another body, or you can sell the setup and make your money back (or more).

If you would like an easier conversion, I would say get hold of a pranged/rusted out RA65 and put all the 22RE parts into your shell. This will be the easiest conversion, as pretty much everything bolts in, and it can be done in a short period of time if required.

EDIT: 3S-GTE is not an L or P legal engine... 22RE can be done without engineer certification as it was an option on that chassis, and is not greater than a 20% increase in displacement.

[brendanraymond]

I found a 3sge for 300 bucks, although i don't know what condition its in. and i don't know eactly what it comes with. Iv had a look at it, and i doubt all of the efi is intact so im prepared to convert it to use a carby.

My question is: is the 3sge going to require any moding of the corssmembers or mounts, bellhousings, clutches or gearboxes?

Im not too sure what year it was manufactured or how many km's its done, but are these engines worth putting in my car and modding?

Even though it sounds cheap, i know ill have to find other parts to complete the engine or to modify, such as exhaust and tuning, so i think ill be looking at about 1000 dollars for somthing like this, no?

Also, if the block doesn't fit in directly, can i change the heads over... ill have to buy the whole engine either way anyway.

let me know what you think.

[o_man_ra23]

Is it a front wheel drive or rear wheel drive 3S-GE?? If it is front wheel drive, the dizzy will be at the back of the head, which will interfere with your firewall. This can be converted to a sensor and used to operate a wasted spark system. Not really viable if your going to carby it. If the EFI is all there, you will need to move the throttle body (assuming its front wheel drive version) to the front of the intake plenum and shuffle a few things about. Extractors will need to be made to suit. The 3S-GE BEAMS extractors from an RS200 Altezza may fit. Pretty much the same amount of fabrication and work as putting a 3S-GTE in, but without the Turbo. They are a good engine though and certainly one of the better naturally aspirated engines on the market. Again, you fabricating everything will make it cheaper to install.

Bellhousing and gearbox will fit, again use the sump and pickup from the 2S, and engine mounts (probably need a plate to put the driver side mount on... look at TurboRA28's members ride thread on how he did his... good reference material). Again, you will probably be best to use an Adaptronic ECU (a. they retail at a grand including the loom, and b. they tune themselves - need a wideband oxygen sensor to tune from scratch, or time on dyno to get it close enough for it to tune the rest)

If you want a quick easy 2Ltr EFI performance engine, the 1G-GE will be the cheapest and easiest as they are already RWD. For that you need a new bellhousing, a thermofan, and you will need to modify your tacho to read the 6 cyl motor.