Picked up a 1MZ Camry manual for $650 :)
 
Pulled out the 1MZ & E153 with all the things you need from the camry to do this swap. All I needed was the flywheel. Gonna strip this engine down and rebuild it at some point. It'd done 410,000km but seems to of been very well maintained. What lies within should be interesting though. Sold the rest of the car to a wreckers for $300 :)
 
muahahaha take that camry!

 
My prize. Plenty of meat left on that exedy disc.

1MZ's are bulletproof. Nice work with the swap.

Big end seal.....

 
FFS
 
Gonna keep kitty litter in the garage from now on

Gee I wonder who maintained their engine better.
 
100,000km Avalon motor


 
410,000km Camry motor

Well this is going on the backburner for a bit while I drop my old 3SGE into this mongrel SW I picked up today for the princely sum of $1500. Once that's complete I'm hooking back into the 1MZ as all my parts have arrived.

I'm sticking to the S54, for now atleast. They seem to handle a stock 1MZFE well enough and if Woodsport is prepared to fit them to their conversions then they're good enough for me. With the Adaptronic I could be pushing into the 170kw range so at some point an E153 will need to go in. Or alternatively S53/S52 internals and a ZZW30 LSD could be put into the S54 housing.

 
REgards the gearbox selection, how would I find out howmuch power a gearbox can handle?  My 1MZ conversion starts once I get my wheels "engineered" to run wider track, hopefully in a week or two - I'll be running E153 gearbox - but how much power can it handle?  How does it compare to the S54?

Well I've heard of E153s handling 600hp with no problems so I think you'll be right there. It's got better ratios and maybe a limited slip dif. The S54 is cheap but is probably at its limit with a 1mz.

Gearboxes are generally rated to a torque, not HP.  I dont think you will have issues with a 153 box.  I would put in a longer 5th if you are ripping it apart for some reason, its one thing i found a bit annoying on long trips, buzzing at 3000+ rpm.
 
Cheers
 

How come you bought another? Just wondering... That is pretty cheap for 1500 though anything majorly wrong with it beside the motor?

Yeah I got it because it's so cheap. Besides the mismatched panels and a dent in the lhs side it's quite clean. I've budgeted $1500 to fix it up and could probably sell for >$5.5k.