College car 2000 Toyota Celica GT Swapping in GT-S 6-speed, brakes and JDM engine

[STINEY]

Picked it up - PO said it was making funny noises and losing power but made it to home and barely in his drive before stopped rolling. Stick shift, but still locked and won't roll in neutral. Okay....his jaw dropped when our winch rolled it right on to the trailer. So who knows what's wrong with it.


I was pretty positive about it just being a weird worn out clutch issue that popped loose........until we tried to roll it off the trailer. It had decided to not roll again. Makes no difference being in neutral or no. And its not brakes - removed the calipers and retracted them just because. So started dragging it off.......and it suddenly started rolling again.....then promptly locked again.


Got it in its new home.


Got it to fire and run. Lots of white smoke, and coolant dripping out the downpipe. Ran a camera down a spark plug hole and found a couple of cracks in a cylinder. Guess that partially explains the random locking? Does not explain the neutral part of the question though....still maybe clutch issue.

[STINEY]

Cracked cylinder




Decided to powder coat the wheels it came with. Wish we could find new centercaps for these....no luck.

Blasted clean, they had tons of chips, lifting, and corrosion.




And coated.




Continuing to strip and clean. This thing sat for 9 years outdoors, all those poor homeless spiders now.

[STINEY]

The lichens and algae came off easy once I switched to Lucas INTERIOR detailing spray. The Lucas Exterior spray didn't have much effect, but the Interior spray turned it into goo that wiped off well. Took a whole roll of paper towels.

And more spiderweb removal. Lots of spiderweb removal. The PO must have been overrun with arachnids, wow.






Old engine removal.






Working on the transaxle mounts and linkage. Will is really getting into his work.





His buddy Fisher helped a bunch over several days. Thanks Fisher!

Switching all the ancillaries over to the JDM engine. This is from a Japanese home market Corolla as some of the bosses are machined/drilled/tapped where the US market Corolla blocks are not. Good news.

The GT-S 2ZZ 6-speed C60 trans can be swapped in as long as you use the flywheel off the GT 1ZZ engine (which only came with the 5-speed C56 trans).

Will swapping flywheels and installing the new pressure plate/clutch assembly. New throwout bearing too of course.....that old one probably was original, at 243,000 miles it was nasty sounding.




Some pieces were missing when we bought it, so we added pieces back in and connected the two halves of the exhaust.

[STINEY]

One of the more involved items was replacing the gas filler door. Bought a nice rust free one on Ebay and had to remove 70% of the interior to access the fasteners on the backside to install it. Interior got a good cleeaning as well while it was apart. No pictures of that.



Since the brakes were looking pretty rough - wavy rotor faces, stuck calipers, broken badly corroded drum brakes, springs and clips - we went ahead and sourced new GT-S spec larger front setup and totally rebuilt the rears too. This car is a 2000 model year so swapping was cost-effective as well. The front brakes were smaller on the GT in 2000 only, 2001-up got the larger setup that the GT-S got in 2000. Cheaper than a one-year only setup .


New wider tires fitted to the freshly powder coated wheels, fresh wheels added to the fresh brakes, and with a 40,000 mile engine and trans in place it is mostly back together.

Working out some minor glitches. (won't call them "minor bugs" - have had enough of the spider nests)

Note: The painters tape isn't to block a license plate. Its to protect the paint as both metalish license plate bolts are broken off and need the old nut/welder trick performed. (that was a fiasco...welded a dozen different nuts a dozen different times. Bolt would come out a couple mm and the bolt (not the weld) would break off again.)

Rinse and repeat. Just one of the "minor glitches" referenced above.







Moved it to the She-Shed and fitted new headlights. Old ones had all the mounting tabs broken and were badly hazed. $120 for the new pair - seeing at night is a good thing.





Automotive Boudoir shot with the funky disco light on a delayed exposure. (is it still an "exposure" on a digital device?)








Anyone need some leftover Toyota parts?






Calling this one done. Stick a fork in it.

Total $ came in at under 3000.

[STINEY]

And this rolled into the vacant spot about 15 minutes after the Celica rolled out. Join us next time for yet another episode of "As the Barn Turns".

[74NovaMan]

Thanks for sharing. I miss taking a vehicle someone else has given up on and turning into something again.