1JZ-GTE VVTi Big Single FD

[cr-rex]

I recently lost an apex seal on the front rotor. I made a promise to myself long ago and said when this motor goes out, a 1J will go in. That day has come and that day now. For anyone interested in the background of the car, please feel free to check out my build thread on rx7club. I started the thread in 2013.

https://www.rx7club.com/build-threads-292/half-ass-2-whole-ass-1-a-1048550/

With moving on to new things with the car, I have made an account on this site as I feel it is more appropriate for this than posting on rx7club. the "other engine swap" section doesn't get much traffic it seems and I don't see there being much help coming from there either. At least here, I feel more its likely that someone with knowledge and experience with this swap/motor will show up and chime in.

I've already started doing stuff so I will get this thread up to speed. I already have a motor and its from a jzx100. The motor is already in the disassembly stage as the head has already been removed and the block is mostly apart. I havent touched the FD yet as far as taking it apart goes. It's still sitting there as it was the night when the apex seal blew. I already have a transmission. I ended up buying 2 R154s: 1 is stock and the other has an OSgiken gear set in it. I still need to make a decision on which i want to use. My plan to stay organized is to focus on 1 thing at a time. Everything head related is going to be taken car of first. So all of the valvetrain and everything that attaches to the head will sorted then i will move on to the block, then the transmission, then the chassis. The deadline I set for myself is to have the car running by August or September at the latest.

Parts list:
Engine- JZX100 1JZ-GTE VVTi
Transmission- R154
Turbo- Turbonetics T67 hybrid something or other i dont remember what the guy said the specs were
Manifold- CXracing. this manifold is going to be modded to not suck as bad
ECU- looking at a power fc d-jetro or an ECU master EMU. havent decided yet
Harness- dr.tweeks whatever whatever plug and play whatever
Swap Kit- KSracing-thailand. if you dont know what kind of baddassery is going on in thailand, look them up. those guys are legit

The plan forward is to upgrade everything that I feel needs upgrading on the motor along with a rebuild while keeping it mostly stock. Nothing will be upgraded internally. Stock bottom and stock head. For my power goals it will be more than sufficient. I'm going for practical and usable power on a street car. It will be very conservative.

At the moment, my next move is to get the head broken down and get it to the machine shop for cleaning and to get the valve stem seals replaced. In reality, getting the head broken down means removing the shims because I don't have the tools to remove the retainers or anything else. So maybe this weekend the thread will be updated with some progress

 

[freeskier7791]

This should be cool, I checked your build thread on the club out, car looks great

[bwrx7]

oooh this should be cool! If my 2JZ plan doesn't work out because of the deck height, a 1JZ was my next option. Excited for this!

-Edit: After reading your whole thread on RX7Club I'm very impressed with the restoration? you did. Also if you're still in Florida it'd be awesome to see the car once it's done Keep us posted! Would love to see it at an event 

[Four]

Doing the same. I'm interested to see how the mount kit works.


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[cr-rex]

oooh this should be cool! If my 2JZ plan doesn't work out because of the deck height, a 1JZ was my next option. Excited for this!

-Edit: After reading your whole thread on RX7Club I'm very impressed with the restoration? you did. Also if you're still in Florida it'd be awesome to see the car once it's done Keep us posted! Would love to see it at an event 

lol yea man, i guess restoration would be an appropriate word to use. i live in tampa and will definitely bring it out to a big meet or two  . i dont like going to "gatherings" because of all the shenanigans. i pretty much go exclusively to cars and coffee events because the crowd there is typically more mature and civilized.
 

Doing the same. I'm interested to see how the mount kit works.

as am i... from the looks of it, it will replace the stock mounts on the 1j and then just bolt directly to stock fd subframe. talking with them, they are saying no hood modification and close to stock shifter placement. the kit also comes with steering rack spacers so i guess that may cause some issues but we'll see. i'll be getting their driveshaft too which is less than 500 shipped with the mounts. the owners car of ksracing is a 2j swapped fd with all sorts of madness. using a stock hood as well..... so i would say they seem pretty credible with the claim.

This should be cool, I checked your build thread on the club out, car looks great

thanks man. im hoping this all works out better than i am anticipating. ive only gotten serious about this in the past few days and my plan has changed a million times lol.

[cr-rex]

i got some organizing and cleaning done today. the goal was to get the motor on the engine stand BUT then i realized i dont have any hardware to do that with 
so great.... its still on the floor. i didnt really DO anything today. it was more of an organizing day. everything that could be disassembled, was. i have a box full of ziplock bags with a bunch of hardware and parts. i just wanted to make this post to show where i started and what has been done.

heres the motor as its been sitting for a few years. it was wrapped up everything.







the start of this was to disassemble the motor. just about everything on here will be replaced, upgraded or painted. i am not using AC, PS and the clutch fan, so that was the first thing to be removed.


then the intake manifold and everything on that side. there was a lot of black rtv all over the mating surfaces of the two parts. im guessing the last owner was chasing an intake leak.




then i got into it and the next thing i knew, the head was off. the cylinders and pistons look great. there isnt any scratching, pitting or any imperfections on them actually. im going to take the block to the machine shop for a hone anyway.

Removing the crank pulley
https://youtu.be/AV1irGKvkoE




once i got to this point, everything was everywhere and a mess.



the goal for today was to get all this organized and cleaned up so i can better get things done and i'm tired of stepping over this stuff.

[cr-rex]

The beginning of this process kind of sucks because i have to figure out everything i need and find parts for this thing. i didnt know that the 1j wasnt offered in america so finding interchangeable parts has been annoying. then the actual 1j parts are crazy expensive. anyway, this is the life i asked for. first thing i had to find was an igniter. an actual 1j igniter is over 100$, one from an is300, 20$ shipped 

i have the rear sump assembly in the mail to work with the swap kit and i got the swap harness too. its a dr.tweeks harness. i got it from a guy that had ordered it on accident. he has a 2j and got a 1j harness. so his mistake was my blessing. the world works out sometimes.


i already have the turbo i will using as mentioned in the first post along with the wastegate and bov. its all stuff that i was going to use on the fd but.... you know 
i measured the tial and its a 38mm. i dont know what spring is in it.








both the r154's are next to each other and i need to figure out which one to use. theyre a little different. i dont know which is from what but i see the shifter is longer on one of them. that may or may not work out for me when it comes to shifter location for install.


i am currently in search of the correct valve stem seals. thats step one to all of this as far as forward progress goes. theres a lot of conflicting information saying what VSS are interchangeable and which arent. i'll figure it out eventually.

this is the engine bay that will be receiving this motor in a few months. i think its perfect like this, except for the whole apex seal thing.

[cr-rex]

good news.... i found the bolts to mount the engine to the stand. so the plan for this weekend is to get the block on the stand, remove the oil pan assembly, remove everything else still attached and maybe do some cleaning of the easy parts. depending on how that day goes, maybe even do some painting  the rear sump parts are supposed to get here on friday so i can clean that stuff up too. hopefully i can get it to the point where the only thing left is to remove the pistons. for the sake of space, i wont be doing that until its time to actually start doing block stuff though. it would just be nice to have it to that point. so friday and saturday should be full of progress and updates.

dont forget sunday is mothers day

[cr-rex]

so................................... change of plans... i wont be putting the 1j in this car anymore.

this car is gonna get another 13b graciously donated from the red fd. this 1j will be going in that car instead. more details to come later

[digitalsolo]

That red FD is not ugly.   Very nice.