I gave up on the idea of doing the conversion a while ago. It's too much work, and it's been far too long since I've driven anything other than the Corolla, and I miss the noise dearly.
The mods list I previously listed will still happen eventually, but most likely to a devoted track car rather than this one, which is too clean to ruin for track use.
 
Cheers for the heads up!

FINALLY an update that isn't just more of the same!
 
Since my last post, I've had that fitting sorted, and the turbo oil drain is done, all coolant lines and oil lines are connected and the engine starts and runs!
The car is STILL leaking oil out of somewhere, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's coming from the intake plenum, where there could be a large amount of oil from when the turbo oil seals blew, and sent it all through the intake.
If I had a leak where the intake manifold joined with the head, and there was a pool of oil in there, would that leak out? It's the only reasonable explanation I can think of as to why oil would leak from an engine that has had all the oil drained out of it... The leak is definitely coming from above the head on the intake side, so I'm stumped if it isn't that.
If it is, the intake plenum will be coming off soon enough when I replace it with the Celica one anyway, so no big loss there.
 
Chuck us your ideas guys, I'm not too sure what to think of that.
 
 
Anyway, new turbo is in, engine is running and the bay is now properly together and ready to drive.

 
Almost looks stock, huh?
 
So the back end of the car is on the ground now, and we're just waiting on a steering rack rebuild (which should be done this coming week) to get the whole car back on the ground and driving again!
 

 
 
I also made up some brackets out of 2mm sheet steel to mount my Civic radiator heat exchanger for the charge cooler, since I had nothing better to do this week. I had to flip the core 180 degrees since the outlets fould on the front bar and I couldn't mount it, but one of the outlets will now stick out of the mount of the bar a little for that full-on street cred

 
 
But the front bar is on again, and the only thing left to fix is the passenger side foglight, whose plastic mounting tabs are broken. I'd assume it's a fairly common issue, anyone else got ideas on a fix that won't cost the earth?
 
 
 
 
So the car is less than a week from driving again! I have to say it's been a VERY long time since I've been able to drive my own car and I'm looking forward to it quite a bit.
 
As long as nothing else breaks, I'll be making it to Mallala on the 9th of April for a track day to see exactly how bad the stock intercooler is before I start serious work on Charge-cooling this.
 
Hope the next update is a positive one!
 
 
 

Good progress Joe!

Beautiful shot with the flames out the back joe. Good times to mate, good to see ur cars running finally ☺

Sent from my SM-G800Y using Tapatalk

Go buy a tube of sikaflex to seal the wheels. We used the grey stuff last night. you must always seal 3 piece rims. Run a bead in the seam then run your finger along to smooth it out. You dont need to take the bolts out.

cant remember which one exactly but it was grey. Might be bathroom sealant?

Been a while since I posted anything about the car.
 
I moved house in September, got the car running for a whole week, then heard an exhaust leak from the turbo mani.
 
Decided it was finally time to drop the engine and get a good look at the head since I already knew a couple of the studs had stripped.
 
engine on the floor, gearbox off, clutch off, and engine stripped
 
This is the Pistons after a clean and removal.
the rods were still fine, but chunks missing and clear evidence of detonation show that something was definitely not right in there.
Amazingly, the bore was still mint!
I now have a nice paperweight at work now too
 
New 9:1 Wiseco Pistons (86.5mm), reused the rods, Genuine Toyota 3S-GTE gasket kit with a metal head gasket (keeping the compression ratio around where it was)
 
Now, I'm no professional when it comes to building engines, so I actually sent it off to get assembled by people who do this for a living (also warranties are nice).
While being assembled, I installed some Gen 2 3S-GE cams (dat extra lift tho), got a 3-angle valve grind done (increase compression further, somewhere around 9.3:1 now approximately) and the builders found that my oil pumps pressure relief valve was somewhat stuck open, so my second set of bearings was shot after less than 2000 k's (awesome)
 
a couple thousand later, 
 
This happened
 
I had a (mostly) assembled engine.
 
with the help of G-ham (EssDub) and the use of his garage, we put the engine together, slapped an intake manifold off of an ST162 Celica, deleted the TVIS because it's awful and put the engine back in!
 
Also got a Gen 3 wiring kit to get rid of the AFM and updated to Gen 3 540cc injectors.
(heads up everyone, the Blitz adapters are useless, you'll have less pain repinning your ECU)
 
Now, after doing all this work it would seem silly to use the stock ECU (it had a sisterboard, but that has gone in the bin).
 
cue NEW ECU!
 
Link G4+ standalone!
This also helps as on the list is a Coil on Plug conversion, and it's easier to set up with a standalone than stock ECU.
 
So
We get the engine in
we spend 6 hours rewiring the whole bloody thing
we find out that the standard spark plug leads won't fit because the Throttlebody is in the way now (thanks random Corolla at U-Pull-It)
still using the stock intercooler(warmer)
have to relocate the fusebox as now my cold-pipe goes right through it
(new holes in the firewall are fun)
 
finally ready to start?
Pretty much!
We get it to start and run, eventually sorted the idle out enough to get it driving onto the trailer.
 
Off for a tune!
Now, I didn't get videos of the car being tuned as i dropped it off and left it for a week.
I also don't have photos of the dyno-graphs because I'm lazy and don't want to go out to the shed to get them (it's cold)
Take my word for it, but on the run in tune, still with a dizzy and stock interwarmer, we pulled 186rwkw on 12psi.
The turbo has run out of puff at about 6.5k rpm as it's still a CT26 for size purposes, even if flow is miles better.
 
Also bought a set of Blitz type 01's for it
 
so the car looks like this now!
 
Parked down the street from work here
 
It developed an oil leak from the sump, so I've resealed that (again), but otherwise appears to be pretty good.
 
Now it's 80% of the way through it's run-in, having done about 800k's, and final tune to be done at about 1000.
 
Time to start charge cooling!

 
 
did a large order from FrozenBoost, got the water pump, heat exchanger and core itself from the US for a fairly reasonable price (even if i did get boned on import taxes because i ordered 2 of each for a future 2ZZ-GTE project)
 
As much as I try to support local business, there's no reasonably prices W2A parts in this country and I can't justify spending $600 on a core alone when you can get everything from the US for little more.
 
So far the heat exchanger and core are mounted, I got a 2nd hand turbosmart BOV to replace the factory one, keeping it plumb back because i like not being defected and expect to have it back on the road this coming weekend.
 
Once that's done, I have a RacerX 1ZZ COP conversion kit to go on, and about a billion coilpacks to choose from.
 
That said, I'm unsure how to actually do the conversion and am open to suggestions on whether to go wasted spark or not and how to set the whole thing up as a whole, since I have no clue what I'm doing there...
 
Upon retune, with effective cooling and reliable ignition system (currently blows spark out occasionally), I'm told I could be expecting in the area of 220-230rwkw still on 12psi with a good tune, still on PULP and without upgrading injectors.
 
 
wish me luck and I might see you at the track some time!