Congrats!!

it seemed like i was reading a magazine article, but WAY better! the swap looks great and I'm glad you got it done. you have been talking about doing this for a long time now.

Congrats, Luke! It looks great! I can't wait to see it in person.

Looks great Luke!

Are you going to bring it down to Joliet?

Good job! Have fun!

This thread delivers. Congratulations and very well-done Luke!

What a meticulous and intelligent build; the way that motor sounds in the start-up video just brings a smile to my face.

why didnt you mate the transmission up to the engine before you put it in? you just made extra work for you

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I'm gonna have to sit down and sift through the meet thread. Joliet isn't all that far from me so why not?!


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Thanks!


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Thanks bud, I spent the past few years looking over some awesome threads on here so I wanted to put in some effort and make something that would be a good read


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Thanks Dan. Hurry up and buy a clip already!

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Think so. My clutch is finally breaking in so there really isn't anything stopping me now

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Thanks bud

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Thanks mam, and thanks a bunch guys. I can say that it was all well worth it. The car pulls hard, and shifting from second into third on full boost is my new favorite thing to do

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because I'm a newbie to engine swaps haha, and I really didn't want to break anything trying to stuff the whole thing at once. I completely agree that it would have been faster to install them together.

Dibs on first ride!!

great job!

yay another 3s! now for me to start another project soon

SON! - nicely done. thing sounds MEAN!!

Just Sayin'

looks great man congrats!

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way ahead of ya man. I was lookin at that link the night of the meet. Luckily I found out the issue! The hidden bolt connecting the passenger-mount insulator to the engine bracket was loose


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Thanks man

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I recently had that same issue. Difference is, my other two bolts were broken/missing as well. Whoops. So now that you've been driving it for a while, any chance of an updated review? Brigette and I may or may not be changing something about our car next Spring.

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Good to know I'm not the only one struggling with post-swap adventures. And I like the sound of that change As for an update, here it is:


Hello 6gc,

it's been a decent amount of time since I've posted a real update; so I'm sure some people assumed I had indeed crashed into a median at 17psi, or blown the engine up....right before crashing into a median. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for them, neither of those things happened. Instead I've been keeping myself busy tracking down and correcting every last creak, rattle, and leak possible before I considered the swap complete. A certain 8 hour licensing exam has been keeping me busy too, but I never want to think about that ever again. Which is why today I want to focus on what has happened since the swap and what it's like to daily drive a 3s.

As mentioned before, the swap went very smoothly with no show stopping disasters or oversights. But that doesn't mean there still wasn't a lot of work to be done. As you can imagine I had a number of unforeseeable obstacles to overcome before the car would be a dead-reliable fire beast. The biggest of which was my clutch. Immediately after the swap the new pressure plate from the fx300 kit started destroying master cylinder after master cylinder, rendering the car undrivable to the point where I almost got stranded at work. It wasn't until I bit the bullet and sourced an OEM master that I could actually shift into gear consistently. But then I still had to contend with a clutch that had 1mm of travel before engagement. After lots of trial and error (mostly error) a custom adjustable slave cylinder push rod solved that issue. Finally I had to figure out why the clutch was shuddering so much from a stop. I assumed that something was installed incorrectly, or the flywheel was machined with the wrong step, but both of those things meant I would have to remove the transmission... Screw that, I got annoyed and just thrashed the crap out of the clutch around my neighborhood for a few days. Problem solved, just needed a good break in

Beyond that, the majority of my issues were limited to hunting for the source of bumping noises, and tracking various exhaust/transmission/powersteering leaks. My turbo also had an annoying tendency to loosen its bolts every few days. so I had to go through the process of installing nord-loc washers without taking anything apart, which was interesting . I'd like to say that fixing these things was fun, but it really wasn't. A lot of this stuff required hours of work, especially things like replacing a torn rear engine mount, or taking apart the passenger suspension just to replace an axle seal. That seal was particularly annoying because I could have easily replaced it during the swap (I even had it on hand ready to go). Thankfully I seem to have caught up to it all because the car has been phenomenal lately. Just start it up in the morning and go.

So while contending with all of these things, I also had to break the motor in properly. I never understood the reasoning behind a 'soft' break in, and no one could ever justify it to me in terms of what was physically taking place inside the motor. So I took the more aggressive approach where the point is to load the rings without overheating them. This meant lots of short, low boost power pulls. Within 50 miles I knew I was 99% done with the break in. However I still drove the car conservatively until I hit 300 miles, at which point I ran a compression test:


That was a good day. The FSM states that compression is supposed to be 164 psi I was almost afraid to look at the gauge the first time haha.

All together I did 3 oil changes in the first 1000 miles. At 100, 500, and 1000. The last one had me switching from 10w-30 dyno to synthetic and there have been zero problems in the few thousand miles since. Obligatory disclaimer: your results may vary.

Long-winded paragraphs aside, here are some photos of the celi as it stands:


It's interesting to think about how much this car has gone through over the years, yet it looks so unassuming. I kind of like that.


At long last, the bay sits as it always should have.


The ceramic coating is holding up pretty well and doing a great job keeping the bay temps in check. I've seen some turbocharged cars get so hot that you couldn't hold the hood prop for more than a second or two!


I really like the gauges, and I recommend prosport to anyone looking for a set. These have been working flawlessly and look great, particularly the opening sweep. They are currently wired to run off of the stereo's power source so they can be shut down when needed.

And now a small video of the engine idling away. I have a few videos of power pulls, but I'm saving those for a future update:

Nothing exciting about the motor idling in my driveway, but I thought it might be interesting to post anyway.

As for daily driving a 3s, well the only word that comes to mind is smooth. The twin entry turbo gives just a moment of pause before unleashing pure thrust. My open-diff s54 means I have to fight the wheel to keep the car on the road, and as the revs build, so does the acceleration. That's one thing I love about this engine, it NEVER STOPS PULLING. I've caught myself dipping into redline because I was waiting on the power to taper off like it did in the 5s (which was previously my que to shift). 1st and 2nd gear are useless from low speeds; leaving me spinning and wheel hopping all the way up to third, which is the magic gear. Everything just conspires to launch the car forward in in that gear, with fourth being just as fun. 5th is jail time, so I don't mess around there too much. However it's nice to consider 5th as a highway passing gear now

It feels great to be at a point where I can just enjoy the car. Frankly I've been getting a little burned out lately. That's why I don't plan to make any huge changes until next spring. In the mean time I'm going to slowly work on welding up my exhaust cut out and preparing an LSD transmission. Ultimately working into a meth injection kit and boost controller. Speaking of the exhaust cut out, here's what I have waiting in the wings:



should be fun

This post has been edited by enderswift: Nov 5, 2012 - 8:23 PM

Lovin' it! So jelly right now.

Very nice build.. congrats

I got ahold of a kaaz lsd for the mr2 trans if your interested. I got it out of a donor mr2 trans for my all trac project.

3S-GTE swap, still uses AutoCrap battery. Looks good. I'm not sure about this unassuming look though. I've always been one for tasteful flamboyance. At least you get to mess with a lot of Honda kids this way.

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Gotta cut costs somewhere haha. As far as Honda kids go, they seem to be a dying breed around here because I haven't been able to find any. I guess ignoring basic maintenance/rust finally got to em.

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Come to where I live then. It's yet to stop Honda kids around here. They just had mommy an daddy buy them a newer Honda

They're all Nissan guys down here now. Funny thing is, they've all put Toyota engines in their Nissans...

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240 + 2jz? O.o

My buddy bought a powder coating gun:

Before:


Powdered:


Baked and installed:


It's amazing to see the powder get applied. It's positively charged by the gun, while the part remains neutral. So the powder literally zips right toward the part, even if you point away from it. The end result being even and comprehensive coverage. After coating it just needs 15 minutes in a convection oven at 350 degrees. It's easier than painting. Cheaper too. Unfortunately the photo doesn't do the coating justice, it was raining and lighting was crap. Looks much better in person

This post has been edited by enderswift: Nov 10, 2012 - 8:51 PM

Looks good! I'd still be powdercoating but my oven went on the fritz and well.... You remember the story of my IS 300 headlights.

No 2JZ 240's yet. They're all 1JZ's. The 2JZ is going in a G35.

Hello 6gc,

I have another update for you. A few months back I spent a decent amount of time searching for the source of an acceleration thud that started shortly after the swap. It sounded a lot like the engine was hitting my firewall upon full throttle, so the first place I thought to look was my rear engine mount. Sure enough there were a few tears in it, which didn't surprise me considering it was the original 13 year old gt mount. No doubt the 3s was more than it could handle. So I bought a new one and went through the maddening process of swapping it out. Upon reassembly I damaged the first several threads in the lower bolt hole on the rear of the trans that secures the bracket. No big deal I thought, its only the first 3 threads and its and inch long bolt. So I chased the hole with a tap, changed the assembly approach, and had the rear mount together in short order. Did all of this work solve the issue? Nope, still had a bump on full throttle Strangely, I would eventually find that the thud was being caused by the passenger mount of all things

Fast forward two months and I'm going over a parking lot speed bump before hearing a loud bang. Uh oh. Immediately threw myself on the pavement and started looking. Everything seemed alright, and I thought that maybe the k-member simply smacked the hideously tall bump, but assumptions are a bad thing in these situations. So I Promptly got the car home and continued investigating. What I found was a missing lower bracket bolt and a fractured transmission casing where the upper bolt was... I distinctly remember collapsing back on my creeper and taking a deep breath. I knew this was gonna be a pain in the ass.

The only direct cause I can think of is a worn thread. This allowed the lower bolt to work its way loose over time, finally leaving the upper bolt to take the full engine torque on its own. To make matters worse, the bracket acted like a crowbar on the upper bolt every time I would accelerate. Cast aluminum is very frail so its actually surprising the casing lasted as long as it did.

So with no intention of driving on just the front mount, I knew I either had to try and salvage the situation by drilling and re-tapping the lower bolt hole, or swap the trans. I chose to re-tap the lower thread to hold me over while I accelerated my e154f conversion. A ton of cramped and uncomfortable work ensued before I had the mount secured to the trans again. Unfortunately this temporary solution was more temporary than I had hoped.

It was at this point that I leveraged the collective resources of midwest 6gc and got a replacement s54 in literally two days. Many thanks to Richee3 for treating his transmissions well, Bloodmoney for asking around for me, and Zake for parting with Richee's old trans for only $50! You guys are awesome


With a replacement trans on hand I immediately got to work:


Here are a pair of images of the replacement s54 when I first brought it home. Everything worked smooth and there was no slop, so I was confident it would hold up to my abuse.


Challenge accepted.


Two days, several cans of alternator cleaner, and a soda blast later.

I chased all of the threads on it to allow me to easily thread bolts all the way by hand (because I knew it would be damn near impossible to repeatedly reset a wrench on some of them later). I also replaced the axle seals, and lubricated all of the moving parts with white lithium grease.


I had my buddy powder coat the rear engine bracket to commemorate the sheer of the amount of money and grief the stupid rear mount had cost me lately.


Here is a picture of my tools and materials getting staged for a move to a nice and warm dock. It's December so working in the driveway is no longer an option.


Once at the shop I wasted no time in setting everything up before tearing into the car. There's just slightly less work compared to an actual engine swap so time was certainly a factor.



After many hours I arrived at this point. I was very tired, and only half done, but it was nice to see that everything I was taking apart was holding up well these past few months.


And here is the reason for all this work . It's a real shame, the transmission is still in perfect working order. But it's not worth building the aluminum back up and machining

I wish I took more photos but a trans replacement is just so labor intensive that you really don't have time to document everything. Thankfully all that work paid off because the car is running and driving beautifully. I was expecting a bunch of gremlins but all I had to do was tighten a few things a little better after my first few test drives. I'm very happy with the new trans, its smooth, tight, and quiet. My old one had a soft, part-throttle whine in certain gears. All that is just a bonus though, I'm mostly happy with the fact that I can go back to driving the car normally, and not like it's made of glass

Anyway this weekend I think I'll bolster this update with a few post-replacement photos and a long overdue driving video

This post has been edited by enderswift: Apr 7, 2013 - 10:11 PM

Nice.

I'm glad it's working well for you