Sw20 3VZFE turbo journey

[blown]

been along time comming but i have finally got around do building my dream car

the car is a hardtop 1990 Sw20 i originally bought it about 3? ish years ago sight unseen from auckland i had it brought down to hawkes bay on transporter some here may remember it on trademe it was listed as overheating and needing a new motor. it almost made the 25km drive back to my house from the transporter before the temp started going up long story short once i bled the water system it went pretty good for a few months and i got to enjoy it however that didnt last it starting overheating again so out it went and i took the 3vz out of my uncertified sw20(now parts car) and thats been in going strong for the last couple of years then i got the turbo bug

my mr2.jpg (52.99 KiB) Viewed 3194 times

after looking at options on what to do regarding turbo charging an engine thats got a history of head gasket issues i looked into a k20 swap but that was abit out of my depth and price range. 2GR swap again to much needed. getting a motor wasnt an issue as i work at a car wrecker it was actually getting the motor in or paying the crazy price for mounts etc.

then looking around on trademe i saw a red mr2 that was already turbo'd in wellington. so again i basically bought that sight unseen but grabbed a trailer this time and went to pick it up this is that car here

from what i know this car came from tauranga and was tuned at megasquirt and has a ms1 with 250hp tune.. it was meant to be certified for the v6 and the turbo but it was only certified for the engine... so of course i still bought it just for the parts i felt it was more then worth it

the good part about the red car purchase it came with a ridiculously low km rev3 E153 fitted with a TRD 1.5 LSD, full turbo setup which is all steampipe, alloy side mount and a fully rebuilt 3vzfe motor not in the car

now the bad stuff once i got the red 2 home i started checking into it more and more. the motor was knocking checking it out i found a cam breather routed pre turbo, wiring wise the only thing that actually made the engine work was the ecu maf sensor... thats it..

so now to the journey

[blown]

righto the new 3vzfe


motor has rebuilt heads, bottom end, ported intake and exhaust ports, intake manifold ported and was fitted with some 1mz head gaskets with factory head bolts.

now i wasnt to keen on running an engine with alot of money spent on it with incorrect head gaskets. i also wanted to do the arp head stud conversion as i had bought a set years ago

so after pulling the motor down and getting the heads off i was actually surprised to see that the 1mz head gaskets look like they'll work i hadn't planned on making this build thread and i didnt take a picture of it but compared to a factory 3vz HG it lines up with everything

the 1mz gaskets on my motor are TRD 0.40 MLS 1mzfe head gaskets. if they dont work i have 6 factory gaskets ill cross that bridge if it comes to it

[blown]

now to where im at currently, new motor and rev3 box are now in the car

[Benckj]

Nice to see a tubo'd V6 sitting in SW20 engine bay with loads of room around it. I'm sure that will change very quickly as all the necessary components get added. Look forward to your build.

[blown]

this weekend ive got the intercooler in throttlebody/intake on so i can modify the cable wheel i want to go behind the manifold, rather then currently it has to go all the way around over the cooler piping and bend around to the firewall

red is how it currently is now, green line is where i want it to sit

i have heaps of spare throttlebodies so i started looking at the cable wheel parts.

im not sure which wheel is for what in a camry but in my car it uses the upper wheel with the bigger cable end. its always been semi sloppy and not so great throttle feel. and there is heaps of slack in the upper cable wheel,

just need to rotate the cable end part a bit more and it should work

[blown]

rotating the throttle wheel worked perfect. i've roughly made temporary bracket to hold the cable to the intake plenum cleared the exhaust perfect

red mr2 had a upgraded fuel pump so i dropped both mr2 tanks and swapped the pumps over, white mr2 now has a 500hp pump

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spend a few hours cleaning up the intake lower and upper then primed and painted

intake plenum.jpeg (63.73 KiB) Viewed 3100 times

i spaced the exhaust out roughly 25-35mm from the block so i could run some heater pipes and coolant pipes to the turbo did this on the engine stand. no gearbox.. starter motor didnt fit anymore removed the whole exhaust again to remove those extensions and go back to how it was when i picked it up.

still having 2 dead motors in my shed i lifted one up with the crane and got to work removing the extension parts i'd added. decided i would just remove the need for water pipes by adding a different turbo water pipes blanked off coolant temp sensor i drilled and tapped into the intake manifold

had a go at using exhaust wrap and sprayed with some high temp paint

test fitting looks good. dump will be easy now with a v band housing. just started messing around routing the fuel system.

[blown]

started a rough idea of how i wanted to get the fuel to the engine. i was able to swap the bridge pipe from the timing belt side to the gearbox side and away from the exhaust/turbo up pipe

i ordered a inverted flare adapter fitting from speed science to convert the factory hardline to -6, got my fuel routing towards the drivers side and travelling up towards the rh engine lid hinge. very quickly running out of space in here, fuel line goes through a aftermarket filter just on the fire wall up around near the intercooler and up into the valley of the engine and into the fuel rail, return does the opposite, everything is just roughly sitting there currently. i have some ideas to hold the lines away from rubbing on bits and pieces

another first for me never attempted braided lines/an fittings before took a few tries getting it right but i figured it out with some youtube videos i used 200 series -6 an fittings from nzkw

mounted the FPR to the intake plenum

primed the system and had 5 of 6 injectors leak from the top. have some o-rings on the way to sort this

going to start wiring up the megasquirt soon too. never done any major wiring before but im looking forward to giving it a go. i have ordered brand new plugs from nzefi