Little bit of a background story first (long winded, feel free to skip!):
I had a 95 supra for the last 6 years or so I did a lot of work to. Single turbo blah blah, you may have seen my holset he351ve (variable geometry turbo) build recently.
A few months ago I was driving to work in wet conditions (my daily miata was busy taking on a t25 turbo) and some pulled in front of me, as in they didn't stop at all
Long story short, car was totaled, insurance paid out nicely and I had some money to play.
I looked all around for another supra and almost bought one. Hard to find what I wanted (white hardtop)...
I just bought my first house in December 2011 so I had some bills to pay and wanted to do some upgrades so I made the financially responsible decision to pay all my debts and put about 10k in the house... new floors, tile etc... VERY happy wife (best upgrade ever)
So that left me with 15k to play. Not enough for a supra like I had so I decided to move over to a FD rx7
Picked her up from the bay area. Ran perfectly! Pretty fast too, very fun car even mostly stock. The previous owner had $15k in receipts! This included a complete engine overhaul with 3mm apex seals and a street port. $9800 bill on that alone!
Heres a pic of when i first got it:
I drove it around for a few months, knowing I was going to eventually swap the engine. The rotary is cool and all, but 15 mpg is not. Neither is the constant fear of something going wrong, the annoying waiting when warming up, no low end torque etc.
I was considering the ls1 swap, toyota v8s, even the 4g63 was a serious contender.
I've done a few swaps already, a few v6 mr2s, 1jz fc rx7, 1jz datsun 280z, 2jz 260z, recently a 4age 20v on my friends 87 mr2, custom turbo setup on my miata, and of course the na -> tt -> single swap on my old supra.
I really love the toyota JZ family and have always been interested in doing a swap with VVTI! If I had picked up another supra I would have certainly done a 2jz vvti
The vvti 1jz is the lightest of the jz motors and also quite a bit shorter than the 2jz. The VVTI and factory single turbo spool VERY fast (full torque at 2400 rpm) and get great gas millage.
So I ordered the engine from nagano USA (very good seller in my experience) Usually I would have bought it from my local guy (Venus Automotive) but he didn't have any with the manual r154 transmission.
Here's the progress so far:
Yes, it clears the stock hood (this was very important to me!) but just! Lowered the steering rack about 1/2 inch. Using the samberg bump steer correction kit.
More to come.
