Over the course of the weekend I swappened the newest engine in.

To recap: I bought a Greytop, learned that the harness was drastically different, then found a dirt cheap Redtop with no trans or ECU and a cut harness so I bought it for parts. Because I bought it for parts, I never asked the seller for a compression test and I never checked it myself. However, when it came in, it was surprisingly clean and the harness was not cut so I opted to use the Redtop rather than the Greytop. Later I bought a third Redtop but all I needed was the ECU and despite the seller sending me a compression test, that engine was junk so I put the first Redtop back in. It ran great, pulled hard, and never gave me any issues. Then I drove Dustin and Stef’s BEAMS and it pulled a fair bit harder, and a couple of other BEAMS owners have confirmed that their cars are quicker as well. Last year I finally did a compression test on mine and it came up low. It has been losing power over time up until recently, when I’m fairly certain that a 5S Celica is quicker. My most recent compression test came up at 90 psi across all four cylinders after the engine had warmed up. Needless to say I found the issue. Granted, altitude affects the result but it still wasn’t anywhere close to where it’s supposed to be. It still runs great, dead reliable, but no power at all. Recently I saw that a local acquaintance was selling a Redtop so I sent him a message. His pictures only showed the engine but the price was right so I picked it up. When I picked it up, he also had the S54-06D and ECU with it, which was definitely a huge bonus for what I paid.

I ran into a couple of small complications here and there. Nothing too serious. I got started at 9:30 yesterday morning and had the new engine started by 2:00 this afternoon. The only serious issue I ran into was the driver side axle. The inner boot ripped when I pulled the axle out so I bought a new boot and I don’t like it. It doesn’t seal well at all. But more importantly, the locking clip on the axle broke and bent when I popped the axle out. It’s not usable anymore. Between both issues, I have opted to order a new axle. I would have been driving the car today if not for that. The new axle will be here Tuesday so the car will be back on the ground and on the road Tuesday night. I’m not happy about it but if the only issue I ran into over the course of a rushed weekend swap is the driver side axle, I’ll call it a success. It’s nice to know that I could have been finished in a day and a half even though I took some breaks. I wanted to pull an all nighter and finish it up last night but I’m sure the neighbors don’t like listening to my air compressor or heading me look for that f***ing ratchet I just had.

Anyway, pictures.

Gotta use the good stuff. Toyota FIPG costs twice as much as black RTV but it’s a small cost and FIPG is awesome.




The COP’s in the new engine have the red ring of death, so I opted not to use them.




New parts for days!









I had a difficult time with the timing belt on this engine. The tensioner would only take up the slack on the back of the engine, leaving the smallest amount of slack between the exhaust cam and crankshaft. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get that slack out until I turned the engine over, so the crank roared about 10 degrees before the cams even started to rotate. On my fourth attempt I decided to set the crank back before putting the belt on. The tensioner is surprisingly stout and I was getting tired of fighting it each time I lost timing. It worked perfectly, and timing was dead on once the crank took the slack out and moved it to where the tensioner could take it up.




Old engine ready to come out:




New engine in and running:




The broken c clip from the axle:




As close to finished as it can be for now:




Hopefully Tuesday evening I’ll have time to get the new axle swapped in and the trans filled with Redline MT90. I’ve always used Castrol, Mobil1, or Syncromesh in the trans but I’ve decided to give MT90 a try on Skyler and Luke's recommendations.

First impressions of the new engine, it seems to idle smoother. The old engine had a slight random misfire at idle. It was always there even before it lost power, very slight, and never misfired any time besides idling. The new engine idles perfectly. It also sounds different, presumably because it’s not low compression. I opted to use the factory flywheel rather than move my lightweight flywheel from the old engine, but the new engine is still more responsive and revs quicker. Hopefully the first drive carries my positive impression over.

Wooo not worn out engine, I'm surprised the old one ran worth a f*ck with 90 psi across the board.

You and me both. Alex arrive it back in 2015 and Luke just drove it about a year ago. Neither were impressed by the power for obvious reasons but more importantly, neither noticed anything mechanically wrong. I had a loose battery connection when Luke drove it so it would die on occasion when coasting but it wasn’t apparent that the compression was that low. I would trust it to take me on a tour of the US but it wouldn’t get me anywhere quickly.

Very nice!
So wished I could have helped you or at least be there for moral support.

You wanna know what doesn't get you anywhere very quickly... a toasted clutch.

need to clean the grease off that fender, the car looks so pretty, that grease is offending...

glad you were able to complete it with minor problems, and not having to run back and forth to the salvage yard to get more and more parts...

you need to post videos of it running once done.

Excellent work.
We'll have to compare 0-60 times now! I'm super stooked for you. Hoping this one is finally the one to give you the BEAMS power you always wanted.

Just took 4 engines to do it lol

Nice work man.
LMK if I can provide any factory installation information you may be missing.

MY TURN TO SEE WHAT ALL THE BEAMS HOOPLA IS ALL ABOOT!

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You just missed it by a few weeks! I can’t remember if we even had the new engine when you were here. Your clutch is getting worse?


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The grease got on the fender when I was fighting this puny one ton engine hoist I have. I sold my eight ton huge mofo before moving since I didn’t want to move that thing halfway across the country, then bought this one ton on a great local buy but it’s not big enough to get the engine in and out of the bay. It’s now for sale. The car will be getting detailed this weekend. I’ll send you the 7 second video of the new engine running.


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I am a disgrace to the 6gc swap club, taking four engines to do the simplest swap. Its my own fault though. Your 0-60 times will likely still be quicker than mine thanks to the altitude up here. The Supra didn’t lose a ton of power thanks to the turbskies but the 4Runner took a noticeable hit. I don’t know how much power the Celica lost because I’d guess it was roughly only 100 whp before this swap, so it’s not fair to guess how much power it lost at altitude.


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Says the guy with a single turbsky Supra and a GTE swapped Celica! Who just spent the weekend at TX2K... I’m just gonna say it now. Inb4 the “meh.” The BEAMS likely won’t impress you when you’re used to driving a GTE swapped Celica but it’s still pretty fun once you feel it bounce off the rev limiter and beg for more.

I'm all for the fun aspect of cars moreso than just going fast. Either way, I honestly haven't been able to fully enjoy both cars. That's the sad part. TX2k wasn't as exciting this year as it was in previous years and I really didn't do much during the event weekend, so meh.

The new, high compression BEAMS should be a blast now. Time to rebuild the old one and do a twin-charged set-up on it for ****s & giggles.

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I told him a while back that depending on where the compression leaked from, he could have a monster in his garage. Beams head flows great, and the rods are already gen4 gte rods. Little boost in that application with the engine fixed could be an animal. Mount that thing to a blacktop 6spd, and there's a project car somewhere that needs that engine lol

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I think you got it the weekend before.
Yeah. I've been baby-ing it when driving cause especially after 3k rpms you could feel it. But I was driving it to work last Wednesday morning in lovely traffic, go to give it some throttle (maybe a 1/2, I dunno) in 5th & she shoots to 5k rpms & really goes no where, lol, sorry traffic. That smell is really nasty, haha.
But on the plus side hasn't overheated, yet.

A few days late but it’s back on the ground and driving again.

Nice man, did you get to test out the MT-90 yet? I'm thinking about trying that as well as I replace my axle.

Yes, I took about a 10 mile drive so far. The MT90 makes the S54 feel much smoother. No long term test yet but shifting feels much smoother. So far I feel that it’s well worth the extra $3/qt I paid. Small different in price for noticeably smoother shifting.

Wooo driving!

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10 miles and no report on perceived increase in power?!?

can't wait to come and drive it so I can get a feel of what's to come.

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I'm still in the shakedown phase right now, still testing for any issues and making sure it’s running alright. Gotta break the clutch in and then I’ll find out how it pulls. Besides, I didn’t really want to test it from stoplight to stoplight at 9:00 last night.

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You’ll be less and less impressed at you climb to the top of Pikes Peak. Power drops quite a bit at 14,000 feet. Maybe I’ll let you drive it downhill instead.

I'll take the 4runner up and take the celica on my way down.

Have you gotten a chance to switch out front lower control arms yet?

This post has been edited by navseal345: Mar 23, 2018 - 6:46 AM

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Not yet. I’m probably going to end up throwing these bushings in the garbage where they belong and try a set of BRD bushings and see if they are any better.

Word.

The last few weeks have been interesting. Decided to look into my wiring and figured that my car is a slow turd because the ECU is pulling timing and dumping fuel. Decided to focus on the knock sensor wire specifically, spliced in a new piece of wire that I was much happier with, plugged the harness back in and it seemed to be a great success. Then I pulled the harness again, loomed it back up, plugged it in again and..... no start. Pulled the harness again, unloomed it, checked my splices and soldering, everything was fine. Plugged the harness in again, everything was fine. You guys get the idea. There were times when it would start but ran like crap with a CEL. Finally got everything sorted out and drove the car to work one day and everything went well right up until it didn’t. On my way home, in rush hour traffic, it died on me. Given the issues I just had with wiring, I was frantically checking over my harness, but couldn’t find any issues. Just when I was ready to call a tow truck, I noticed I had no CEL. Decided to check my fuses and sure enough, the EFI fuse had blown. I thought I was going to have a difficult time finding the issue in my harness but it seems that the fuse was just corroded and popped because of a poor connection and had poor timing. In the end I decided to make a new knock sensor wire to completely bypass the rest of my harness, which has seemingly cured 75% of my issues. It’s running better and power is up but it still seems to be pulling a little bit of timing. I think I’m going to proceed to not care anymore.

I’ve finally had it with the poly control arm bushings and said no more. Bought some rubber bushings from Amazon to replace the poly bushings. Unfortunately I could not get them pressed in and no shop wanted to do it, so I got annoyed and went to the junkyard to pull a set of control arms from the only car they had. Never mind the snow, getting new control arms was more important. Got those put in, got the car aligned, and so far it’s still holding the alignment, the steering wheel doesn’t twitch, the car doesn’t pull, and the control arms no longer shift around while driving. Great success from super old used control arms!

For the record, I’m on my second subframe, two sets of control arms, and three different sets of poly bushings over the course of 6 years because of this issue. The bushings are 100% the problem and I can not recommend them to anyone. There’s an issue when brand new bushings fit like this...





They look great once pressed into the arms, and even now still look like they should be just fine.



But once mounted in the car, the control arm goes wherever it pleases and there may as well not be a bushing at all. All three sets of bushings have done this since day 1, and I know others claim they’ve had great results with these but I cannot and will not recommend this garbage to anyone.

After getting the new (used) control arms in and getting the car aligned, along with the new knock sensor wiring, I thought things would be going pretty smooth with this car for a little bit. Nope, wrong again. Almost immediately started having alternator failure. Turn the headlights on, car nearly dies. Hit the brakes, car nearly dies. Turn the a/c fan on, car nearly dies. If I waited a second, everything smoothed out again but any sudden electrical draw would nearly kill the car. Luckily I have a few spare alternators sitting around that I had rebuilt maybe two years ago, so I swapped one in and that issue went away.

.... then my ISCV decided to act up again. Haven’t looked into that one yet but the hanging idle and hunting idle are dead giveaways that the ISCV is on the way out. Can’t have anything nice on a daily driven 20 year old car.

But I did decide to treat it to some new brakes anyway. You guys will be stunned to know that the Wilwood front brakes are way more powerful than the tiny rear GT calipers so my brake bias was way off. I’ve had a few incidents of the front brakes locking up while the rears did nearly nothing. I decided it was time to get my rear brakes to match my front so I fount a set of bargain ST205 rear brakes from Japan.




Rebuilt the calipers, although they really weren’t too bad. The rotors, on the other hand, were a bit rusty and pitted. Given the prices of new rear rotors I decided to gamble with cleaning these rotors up. They still aren’t great. These cane with Akebono pads, too bad they weren’t usable.





Painted the calipers silver to match the Wilwoods and got everything mounted up today.




Before and after:



Exactly as expected, the brakes are noisy due to the putting in the rotors. I’ll give them a few days to decide but I anticipate that I’ll be ordering new rotors soon.

Very nice. Except for the part that the car is not letting you fix it.

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I think it's still mad at Daniel for selling it.

Brakes bolted right up like we discussed or did they require some spacer?

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I had to have two washers on each bolt to space the calipers out, the washers were about 5.8mm. Then I had to Dremel out part of the dust shield where the caliper was hitting after it was spaced out. It’s a little difficult to describe where but when the caliper gets pushed out, it starts to hit part of the dust shield by where the parking brake hardware sits. Easy mod. I got stainless brake lines a couple of years ago that were slightly longer than stock. I didn’t do that on purpose but I’ve read that the stock lines won’t reach. Overall it was extremely straightforward. The only issue that I ran into was needing longer bolts. The stock GT bolts are m10-1.25x15, and I had a ton of m10-1.25x30 that I hoped would work but they went through the caliper and onto the rotor so I had to run to Ace Hardware to get some 25mm bolts.

sweet. I'll look into a set once my car is up and running again.

Calipers look nice!