Yea you'll be good, just don't expect it to be like a bank vault with some added butyl, my experiences have been that it changes the tone but doesn't really alter the volume. Adding to door panels tends to make the bass punchier and the doors close with a nicer thud but doesn't do a lot for road noise, doing the floor pans if there's large spans without anything on them makes a decent difference, but if you're adding to stock stuff then the results are meh.

It’s a cab made almost entirely of glass. I don’t expect it to be like my VW.


I did get most of the interior reinstalled this evening. I’m thinking about ditching the 12” sub behind the passenger seat and build a small box in the storage cubby behind the seat and put a 8” sub in it. Claim back some precious interior space.

I'd say doing the roof would help but...T tops. :rofl:

Whatever you do certainly won't make it worse. I have noticed in both of my cars that FrostKing sealing the doors for the purposes of better audio (better separation between front and back of speaker) also netted what feels like better heat and AC since there's no air leaking into the cabin from the door panels anymore. That was a nice bonus in addition to the huge bump in sound from the speakers, made the aftermarket in the Mazda hit cleaner and made the stock in the Celica get lower without distorting.

I pulled the engine lid cable out today and tucked it. I opened up an existing hole in the inside of the car behind the rear speaker, and ran it into there. The cable then runs all the way down the inside of the body and into the trunk, and through a small hole into the engine bay. Didn’t hook it up because of paint.

It was a nice day today, so I laid down the primer and basecoat.

I don’t have primer pics readily available, so I’ll insert them here later.
BAM


After a couple of hours, I came back and wet sanded the primer with 600 grit, and wiped it down.

Then came the fun part.






I ran out of basecpat before I could finish around the trunk, so more is on the way.

This post has been edited by 95CelicaST: Jun 4, 2018 - 4:44 PM

oh my god, so sad.......

i came here to see the 1mz-fe, and just realized it was yanked out.... replaced with a 3sgte with rusted manifold., jk

but the red looks goob bro!

You are doing a fine job, keep up the good work

I sprayed the clearcoat a couple of days ago, and did a small small amount of color sanding today. It’s not perfect, but not bad for my first paint job.

Looks at least as bad as the factory paint job under hood of my Celica from Japan, so I'd say you're doing just fine!

Ran into a bit of a snag over the last couple of weekends trying to get the transmission bolted up.

First, I thought I had ordered a 3S Fidanza flywheel way back when I did the 1MZ swap, but I never went to verify that. Turns out I was wrong, and it wouldn’t align with the 3S crank bolt pattern, so I had to order another flywheel.

This last weekend we couldn’t get the transmission to bolt up, no matter what we did. We quickly realized that it was due to the pilot bearing that comes with the clutch kit. It interferes with the input shaft. Since that bearing is only there to aid in clutch installation (but can’t be removed after the clutch is installed) we just threw it in the trash. So now the transmission is bolted up, and we’re working out the final bit of harness routing. This next weekend I believe the plan is to finish connecting the hoses up front on the radiator and wire the fans into the factory plugs, throw the gas tank back in, and install the new e-brake lines. Then it is all wiring. The fuse block needs to be relocated to the trunk, and some additional wiring needs to be added to the body harness, then the connectors that go from the engine harness to the fuse block will be extended to run back through the body plug to meet it in the trunk.

I decided I needed room in the garage before the weekend, so the tank went back in last night.

Thank goodness yours is clean, I had to work on one years ago where all the under body braces had rotted off the car. You couldn't touch anything without it just crumbling away!

^^ I agree with that. The one we had was a (fun) rust bucket. Cancer bars had been gone for years, control arms rusted and bushings dried out, nothing was free of rust but the frunk lid, engine cover and trunk lid. But that one despite some pretty serious issues was still a ton of fun and I can only imagine how great a proper MR2 like this one is.

SOOOOOO CLEAAAANNNN, keep it up man. I'm still baffled that the MR2 has the rear trunk. I felt like they should've just removed it for more engine room lol.

It took longer than I care to admit to install the intercooler, but it is there now.

Got a fair amount done this weekend.

Radiator is now completely installed. All hoses from the radiator back were replaced with new dealer parts.

New e-brake cables have been installed.

The fuel filler neck has been reinstalled. The evap canister that came with the swap is destroyed, so I’m trying to find another small evap canister that I can get installed behind the heat shield.

I picked up my ECU and installed it into the OEM housing. I have my base tune on my PC, so I’m just waiting until I can get power to the unit to load it up.


Today I put the stereo back in and wired the new crossovers. The previous owner did a REALLY bad job installing them and had left them zip tied to the airbag harness. I used industrial strength Velcro to get them tucked away under the dash. Feels like a car inside again.

Pics.

>

What spring rate are you using with this actuator?

It came with the 18 PSI spring installed, but I changed it out to a 12 PSI unit.

aah ok. How do you determine what spring to get or do you just wing it and hope for the best? I had my CT20B upgraded with a billet wheel and was recommended to get one of those adjustable wastegate actuator doohickies.

They’re color coded.

White .3 bar
Lt blue .5 bar
Green .8 bar
Yellow 1.0 bar
Black 1.2 bar
Dk blue 1.5 bar
Red 1.7 bar
Silver 2.0 bar

http://shopping.kinugawaturbo.com/adjustablespring-2.aspx

Well, the engine is now living in the car. It was late, so I didn’t get any shots of that, but I’ll take a few tomorrow.

For now, this:

This is where I stopped for the day.

I’ve been off in France for the last couple of weeks, but I got back yesterday AM and got right back to work. Got the subframe installed along with the front and rear mounts, axles, suspension, exhaust, and a bunch of other bits. Basically now I have to get some misc vac lines ran, a couple coolant lines that’ll require bulk hose because Toyota has decided they’re made of pure unobtainium, ground wires, fluids, and double check wiring.


Speaking of wiring, my own car wizard has finished extending the harness, and repinned the body harness plug.

I’m always jealous of how clean and proper everything looks in this car, but I never can find the time to clean anything up like your car.

It’s cliché, but if I can do it, so can you. It just takes time and money.

I really didn’t originally plan for this to become so thorough, but one thing led to another and so on and so on until I am $10k into an engine swap.

It's a lot easier when the engine is out, I've like buffed the underside of the hood of my Celica just cause, but actually getting down around and behind the engine is beyond me and my motivations.

Well we got all of the remaining coolant hoses sorted out last night, vac lines hooked up, cooling system vacuum bled, and the base tune installed on the ECU. Time to crank it over.

We prime the engine and find the oil line to the turbo was leaking a bit. Just wasn't tight enough. Tighten that up and the leak stops. Everything else looks good, except that I don't hear the fuel pump running on "Key On". I also notice that the fuel gauge is not reading anything.


The pump and the fuel level assembly share a common ground.

They also can't be accessed without dropping the tank.


UGH.


So we throw in the towel at about 10:30 last night and we'll be dropping the tank today to correct the ground. We did thankfully have another Whinebro pump to test that power was coming through the harness without issue, which it is.

Okay, tank came out and we found that the anodizing on the fuel pump hanger was preventing us from getting a good ground, so we sanded some of it off and tested it. Tests good. Reinstalled it and fired up the car.

It idles low on the VERY basic base tune I have, but it runs.

Only problem is a leak from behind the timing cover... fantastic. My tuner said I need to fix the leak and bring the car in on Saturday.

Tomorrow ought to be fun... I’ll snap some pics tomorrow.