Alright, here is the list of everything I can remember that you will need to remove/undo in order to remove the 3SGTE from the top of an N-Spec Toyota Caldina GT-Four ST246.
- Radiator and coolant lines
- As much of the loom as possible (Some clips beneath the fuel rail are near-impossible to get to, but can be done with the engine partically out)
- Throttle body
- Intercooler
- Entire bonnet
- Front drive shafts
- Rear drive shaft from transfer housing
- Automatic shifter cable
- Power steering pump (A mechanical pump bolted to the engine. The bolts are a little hard to get to, but can be undone from beneath, and is probably easier then undoing all the hosing. You can leave all the hosing done up this way.)
- All the various brackets and mounts that you can see from the front (too many to list, but there are plenty of little brackets here and there for securing wires and hoses.
- The entire Turbo and exhaust assembly.
- Down pipe and first exhaust section that goes from down pipe to long pipe.
- Air filter box
- Front bar/grill
- A/C compressor
- All engine mounts and associated brackets to allow for extra clearance around engine
- Subframe cross bar that goes between subrame and front bar
Difficulties I ran into:
- The Caldina is a four wheel drive, so it has a transfer case to a rear drive shaft. This case juts out a fair bit, and sticks right between the front sway bar and steering rack above it, and the sub-frame below it. There is barely any room for play here, so the engine must come forward to allow the engine to lift up and out. This is why so much has to be removed from the front of the engine to give it the clearance at the front to swing forward.
- The Intake manifold is nigh-impossible to remove with the engine still in, and it will give you only approximately 20mm of room to travel up before running into the rain-guard metal wall that runs along the bottom of the windscreen. Annoyingly, the rear mount that connects to the subframe has two studs that need about 25mm of vertical movement to come free from the subframe. This caused a huge delay in the removal. We took the easy way out of cutting the rear mount studs pain-stakingly with a hacksaw blade/reciprocating saw (I do not neeed the mounts), but if you wanted to do it flawlessly, the steering rack would need to come out. It would be doable with the engine still in, but a lot of awkward angles and contraptions would be required to torque the bolts off. The sub frame would need to be loosened, but it can't be dropped due to the sway bar/steering rack resting on top of the transfer case.
Honestly apart from the mountain of parts you need to remove, it is a straight forward process. I'm just a novice with this sort of stuff, so take everything I say with a grain of salt as it is just my personal experience with the process. I don't know if I can say I truly got the engine removed from the top, as I did cut two studs, but I fully believe it is doable if you were patient enough with the steering rack/sway bar removal.
Once the engine was loose inside the engine bay, it was easy to maneuver the engine/transmission around the space so that it could come forward and rotate to clear the various pieces that jut out.
It would be easier to remove from the bottom, for sure, unfortunately, we did not have the luxury of setup that needs.
Any questions anyone has, feel free to PM me or post on this thread, more than happy to help and share my own experience with the removal.
A timelapse of the removal is coming, I'll link it later once it's up.
Enjoy some photos:
- Engine just before removal, stripped as much as possible
- Engine now loose but still stuck between subframe and steering rack
- Engine free now, just a matter of spinning and going up/down to clear the various snags
- Engine and Car
- All done, waiting for a full rebuild and upgrade treatment
