egesledder

I'll be starting back on it this week. I've got exhaust pieces on order and new power steering lines/fittings coming; plugs/pins/relays to wire up the fan controls. There are also leaks in the coolant and fuel system that I need to fix. It should be a busy week/weekend.

I had to take a break from the truck to make some money making these:

Which turn into:

In order to haul these:

Doitzel_Kaiser

Those are pretty cool! Do you sled as well as ditbike?

egesledder

I do snowmobile. In fact, I have pretty much lived and breathed snowmobiling every winter since I was 6. Its kind of fun, haha.

Update:

So I drove it last night. Doesn't have exhaust or power steering yet, but I just had to take it for a drive. All I can say is there was zero traction on my gravel road as soon as the turbo started boosting. YES!!!

I got the radiator fan wiring completed with relays and a new temp switch. I ended up finding a coolant temp switch through Carquest for a honda that has the correct thread size and pitch to screw directly into the supra thermostat housing. It's just a direct 190 degree switch, so hopefully it will work. The part number is Carquest 53-13812.

I also found the correct plugs for the Spal fan online for $.18/plug, so instead of buying Spal's harness kit for way too much, I built my own. I got a nice relay plug holder and all the pins to go with it. I've got it directly powered from the battery right now instead of switched with the ignition. This should help to cool the whole engine compartment when its shut off hot and the 190 switch is still flipped.






I also painted my intercooler piping and swapped the blue silicone for black silicone. Much better...



Its starting to look like a truck again! I need to pick up another grill from the junk yard, this one was cut to fit my last winch in there.




I should be starting on exhaust this weekend if it all comes in on time.

Doitzel_Kaiser

What size tubing did you use for your IC piping?

egesledder

2.5" I figured that is more than enough for my power needs considering stock is a bunch of mashed up looking pipe running everywhere with an average ID of around 1.75".

Doitzel_Kaiser

Cool! Thanks for the info!

Doitzel_Kaiser

Did you need a 2" to 2.5" coupler when you came off the turbo to the IC pipe?

egesledder

I think the turbo outlet is a little over 2" on the OD. Silicone is quite flexible though, I've found that you can also use a straight 2.5" silicone piece and a hose clamp will shrink it down quite easily.

egesledder

Finished my exhaust last week. Its all 3" mandrel bent sections that I cut up and fit to the truck. Its tucked up to the body as high as possible and the cross over section is fully removable.

Here is another picture of my supra down pipe that I had to modify for the truck. Like I said earlier, I had to shorten it both in length and height as well as a slight turn:


I bought a cat-back setup from Dynomax for some full size truck and used most of the piping and of course the nice 3" turbo muffler.


I also bought a set of 6 pre-bent pieces; 2 180's, 2 90's, and 2 45's. I could have done it with just 2 90's and 2 45's in addition to the exhaust kit above, but now I have extra. It was a bit of a long process, but it turned out very nicely. The muffler is much closer to the shock than I would like, but the shock is blown and I'm going to go with an "inboard" setup soon anyway.

Crossover section and muffler/tail pipe:







The motor runs soooo smooth and quietly now. The exhaust does sound very good when you rev it up a bit, but the smoothness of it is just impressive. I'm definitely glad I had all the internals balanced way back when.

Doitzel_Kaiser

Looks great! I am held back by a CPS that is denying me spark

Discombobulated

Soooooooooooo, is it done?? Pics vids I wanna hear the boost!!!!!

egesledder

Yep, its done, for the most part. I've got about 250 miles on it so far. 4.88 with 33's is way to low gearing wise. Anything over 60mph on the highway and the turbo is spooled, so I'm thinking 4.56 or even 4.10's with 4.7 in the transfer case for low range. On these steep, gravel mountain roads, its probably the most fun I've ever had in a 4-wheeled vehicle, and I'm still non-intercooled! I'm definitely going to need to upgrade the rest of my drivetrain, I just can't see it standing up to this amount of power for all that long, even though the motor doesn't make a ton of power down low.

I need to find someone with a decent video camera, all I've got is a dslr with no video capability. If anyone with a video camera in the area wants to venture up to the Boulder foothills sometime after Thanksgiving, I'd be all for ripping up some dirt roads on film. Otherwise, I'll probably have a video of some sort up in a few weeks.

Discombobulated

Yea I would love to see it you gatta know someone with an iPhone?? 4 or newer take great videos!! Yea can't wait to see and hear it

toastyjosh

iTrader: (1)

Dude sweet rig!!!!!!!
Cant wait to see this vid!

schwyter

iTrader: (1)

any updates? I'm really considering this for my 87.... about to pick up 2 7MGTE's and a bunch of parts for 400-500 dollaroonskis.

egesledder

So, update. I've got about 5000 miles on it now, just got back from a 3500 mile road trip for the holidays. Did some wheeling in Indiana and snow wheeling in northern Michigan. Its been running awesome, makes some pretty awesome power too. I've been getting around 17-18 mpg daily driving, but I still haven't gotten past the excitement phase yet, boost is too much fun. I'm expecting around 20 mpg eventually. With 4.56 gears and 75mph on the highway, I was getting about 15 mpg unloaded.

About that, I upgraded the gearing and rear axle about a month ago. Previously, I had the stock '85 rear axle with 4.88 gears in the 4cyl diff. I wanted to upgrade this to something more stout to stand up to the power, but I didn't want to mess with narrowing down a full size axle. Instead I went with the newer IFS axle housing and the FROR full float setup. This is a pretty sweet setup and was pretty easy to install. The chromoly axle shafts are STOUT.



For brakes, Brian at FROR recommended the '81 FJ40 rotors and the IFS non-V6 4 piston calipers. With the big V6 calipers up front, I had to go with the larger 1.5" GM master cylinder conversion to get enough fluid moving. Holy ˟˟˟˟ though, the brakes are incredible!

Gearing wise, I picked up two stock V6 diffs, one to build, and one with stock 4.56 gears to throw in the front. First, I installed a solid spacer in the front and cleaned everything up. I guess its recommended to have a solid spacer in the front due to the different gear forces seen when its up there.

For the rear, I picked up a set of Nitro gears with their 29 spline upgrade. This upgrades the pinion size quite substantially, which is pretty nifty. I also installed the Supra LSD following Zuk's direction:
http://www.gearinstalls.com/supralsd.htm

The one thing I found while doing this is that the setup kit didn't include a bigger oil slinger, so it had to be modified with a dremel before it would fit. I talked with Nitro about it, and they said they hadn't been able to source new ones yet or something and that modifying the original was the correct way. Seems dumb to me...



The gears set up really well. The friend that was helping me (he's done a few, but never with Nitros) said it was the easiest set he'd ever done. Solid pinion spacer was installed in the rear as well.



Overall, I think this rear axle is going to hold up pretty well.



Unfortunately, the transmission has not been upgraded yet... It made it about 4500 miles before it started making noise. Its kind of bad now and I'm kind of done with working on it for a while, so I'm just driving it when I need it. I should be able to get the parts around to do the Tacoma R150 swap in another month or two. This also means no video for a while...

egesledder

I'll also add, I'm very happy with this swap! If you can build the motor well, these straight 6 turbos are super fun. Even at stock boost, its pretty awesome. At low elevation, this thing is a beast and it was still pulling good AFR numbers, so I'm thinking of cranking up the boost a few psi up here in Colorado once I upgrade the transmission.

Rinker

Awesome review egesledder! I've really enjoyed reading this and I am inspired bigtime. I picked up an 89 turbo supra and I'm just waiting for the right time to yank that 7mgte out and slap it in my 94 pickup. It may be awhile, as I'm in deep with a historical home restoration and my 22re is still purring like a kitten, but this review and others keeps me enthusiastic to say the least. Thanks for taking the time to post pics and detailing this amazing transformation. Happy trails to you my friend!

nothingbetter

for me to get 23mpg highway on 87octane fuel is typical. Of course I'm on 35s and with 5.29s. 14% throttle to hold highway speed. I'd like to see your long term fuel economy and see how they compare.

my 5.29s have held up fine to ~300hp at the crank. That includes the odd burnout and finding out my 0-60 time (which you should post of your truck)

Which transmission are you using? The only thing I've done to mine is kill 5th gear from pulling a steel trailer up a long hill. I've done that twice. 1 L series and 2 W series trannys and all 3 and have been silent when I put them in, and all 3 sounded like crap after a few hill pulls but show no signs of wear. I think the thrust washer gets squished from the extra power.

p.s. I'm jealous of your rear axle. I found a guy a few months back with the same full float kit and rear disc set up. I only wish I had money at the time.

egesledder

Yea, I think it's still just spinning the motor too fast on the interstate to get decent mileage with 4.56 and 33's. The turbo is pretty much constantly spooled at 75mph, which is around 3500 rpm with my setup. Power is NOT an issue, you really can just feather the throttle. I probably could have gone with 4.10's and have been fine with some 4.7's for the low range. Oh well, I guess it just means I NEED bigger tires, haha.

I think these gears should hold up fine, they're super quiet right now. My Yukon gears made a decent bit of noise even when new and set up correctly. One thing I did notice was that the Supra diff runs larger carrier bearings. I ran one of the stock supra bearings and one truck bearing when I swapped all the LSD stuff in, although with the full float setup, these bearings won't see nearly the load they would have.

I'm running the stock W56 transmission right now. It was rebuilt around 45,000 miles ago and worked excellent before I did the motor swap. It now makes bearing noise in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th, so all the gears on the intermediate shaft. I'm just going to baby it for a few months and only drive it when I need it. To do it right, I'm figuring I'll need to spend around $1300 to swap in a Tacoma R150 with the Supra bellhousing/clutch, Marlin adaptor to my transfer case, new cross member, lengthen/shorten driveshafts, etc. After that's all done, this drivetrain should be super stout, ready for some more fun!