Bumpin' Yota

Updates supra?

I have to pull the other cam out and then send them off tomorrow after I fix breakfast for a lady friend of mine, and still get to Tae Kwon Do on time. Once those are back, off my heads go to engine builder too! And what REALLY pisses me off is that I cant afford NWOR headers right now! And here I busted my butt to get the full exhaust mani's off too! Oh well.

Supra Im not going to beat you getting mine done am I? LOL jk!


M3 - I have seriously given that thought....but are the results worth it? Did you notice any increase in performance on top end, MPG, or on the bottom end?

suprathepeg

I hope not, lol. I've had quite the year here with injuries and work its been a bit rough nd hard to keep on top of both my gun hobby and the truck. I'm back on the truck for now though. I have just this week gotten my clutch in the mail after cancelling the centerforce from summit when they made me wait 4 of 10 weeks of back order without telling me and then it took forever to get the marlin one. At least marlin gave me a t-shirt.

Should have the new engine in and running in a couple weeks now as all the parts are finally here.

Bumpin' Yota

Injuries? Yikes! Thats not good, but at least you are getting better! The biggest trip up here has finding a credit card with a nice low APR for the ~1000$$ im dropping...and thats without the headers!

suprathepeg

Yea tell me about it. I've been paying cash as I go and not being able to work for large periods of time has made that a slow go. Anyhow tonight I should have the long block ready to go and then Its just the install left to do.

I'd skip the headers and fab up a crossover pipe for now. Then if you feel you aren't getting what you want out of it then you can buy the headers later when you have money and mate up your crossover with them then.

TNRabbit

Something else to consider with headers is a few folks here have posted issues with underhood temps, especially killing starters, associated with headers...

Epic Ed

My Downey Ceramic coated headers cook everything. I've burned through four speedo cables and one starter. Last weekend I pulled back the carpet on the passenger front side to route my CB antenna -- the carpet was completely stuck to the floor. Why? Everything I had routed under the carpet toward the front/lower part of the firewall was COOKED and melted from the headers. I'm surprised I haven't had a fire yet. All of my audio cables (RCAs, speaker cable, Sirius antenna) had the outside sheath completely melted off into one big gob of goo.

Headers were the WORST mod I've ever done on that engine. Very little performance gain and the cost goes well beyond the price of the pipes, in terms of damage to other stuff and severely increased engine temps. I am so sick of this F'ing 3VZE engine that I'm praying it gets hit by a freight train.

Ed

photomike72

Ed,

Sorry to hear about your troubles.

Is this about right for everyone else as well?

Mike

Bumpin' Yota

I have heard that this was not an issue with NWOR headers. That and the fact that NWOR headers seem to have a lot less issues during installation pointed me that way.... Downeys are apparently notorious for this.

Epic Ed

I'll take some photos of the damage -- it's pretty impressive. I'm not sure whether to line the floor board with asbestos or just pour gasoline in there at this point.

suprathepeg

Well believe it or not I finally got the longblock installed last weekend. All thats different now is ported heads, OS SS Valves and block decked to zero. Instantly I noticed the powerband is way better. What was 2500-4500 pulls good from 1800-almost red line. Next is exhaust then take weasy's cams to the dyno.

Bumpin' Yota

did you already buy weasy's cams?

My heads are almost done at enginebuilder's place. It sounds like you and I will have fairly closely modded 3vze's!

Do you have a auto or manual tranny?

MonsterMaxx

This is an interesting thread I have to say.

Your goals of 220HP for $3000 are quite lofty. I have to say, when I read the first post my eyes rolled back in my head and I thought: “another fool and his money will soon be parted.”
I'm very interested to see what your real results were now that you have it running and how much you spent.

My previous engine went something like this

K&N
Porting & polishing on upper & lower intake, heads, and gasket matching all thru to the NWOR Headers.
2.5" high flow cat and 2.5" Gibson Exhaust (my truck was the prototype for their production kit.)
Nice smooth flow from AFM to the Exhaust tip.
Injectors are balanced
Cams are Crower grinds
Bored .020" over
Jacobs uber super duper ignition kit
(that's all I can think of)

With the royal fu(king Tim of DOA gave me this took nearly a year of downtime (read: rent a car or ride the motorcycle) and three blown motors before I had one running. $ invested somewhere in the $10k neighborhood. :pat:

Performance wise it's a little stronger on the bottom, but not much, wakes up right at 3k just like the stocker and pulls hard to redline. I believe this 3k spurt is more due to the computer than anything else. There is a noticeable change in the O2 reading right at 3k. On the dyno the peak RWHP is about 25% stronger than a stocker - unless you compare them above 4200rpm where the stocker has nothing.
I’ve lived with it for 5 years and 30kmi now (I ride the motorcycle whenever possible and only use the truck in the rain, for a load and when needed on long trips.) I still had my stock '91 which I drove when mine blew the rear end and the powerband difference was noticeable, however, it's never been strong, just a wider powerband of 3k to redline instead of 3k to 4.2k. I accepted the fact that it's gutless below 3k and likes to be revved. Keep it in the revs and it does ok, but nothing to brag about. Not a big deal for me, coming from bikes I like a motor that revs anyway.

Then I put 305/60/18s on it which are equal to a foot wide 32.5" tire and it went in the toilet again. Overdrive was useless on anything but dead flat roads. Regared with 4.88s and the rpms come back up into the powerband and it's ok again.

Towed a uhaul 6x12 trailer (which has all the streamlining of a parachute) to Nashville and back, NOT loaded, just the bike in it and a few parts and it burned a hole in a piston. Only thing I can find wrong is the plastic on the knock sensor is cracked. Still waiting on a new one to get here to compare and see if it's actually bad. It pulled it, and at speed too, but in 4th gear - that’s 700 miles cruising at 4000 rpm, often over 5000 on the hills when I had to drop to 3rd. Yea, I worked it’s ass the whole way. It gave it all and got it done, then gave the last gasp as I pulled into the driveway – burp, fart, bang, puff and my girlfriend says “oh, that didn’t sound good”.


Yes, I'm rebuilding again...arrr...I want to swap. I'm capable, but I have a one car garage which is full of crap and the darn driveway is tilted at 10° and everything round heads for the storm drain across the street. When pulling the engine there’s a strap from the cherry picker to the building to keep it from running me over. Just not a good place to try to do a swap. Not to mention winter is nearly here and riding the bike is getting darn cold – last night I got home and it was 40°F brrrrrr.

This 'next' rebuild (#4) will include the 1mm oversize valves from EB, ceramic coating on everything that sees fire (piston tops, combustion chamber, valve faces, exhaust ports, headers & y-pipe.) I will also be ducting the K&N so it only gets outside air as there is a noticeable difference in power when it's HOT outside and the truck's been working (hot under the hood.)

EB’s stuff just showed yesterday so machining will start on Monday - .040 over on the pistons, .010 under on the crank, shave the heads and machine for the new valves. A new clutch is on the way from Marlin because my CF dual is shot (30kmi.) I expect (hope) it’ll be running in a couple weeks – getting cold here on the bike. Some parts from Toyota of Glen Burnie (knock sensor, etc) should also be here end of next week.
Then it’ll be off to the dyno again.

This rebuild will come in somewhere in the $2.5k range.

With the exception of a throttle body I think I’ve done about all that can be done to the 3vze short of the $3k stroker kit or a turbo. I expect to see 130-140RWHP on the dyno, w/ the peak up around 4500 but a large area under the curve in the 3k-redline area. I think I’ve done the research that all of you want to know and have proven that with enough money small gains can be had with the 3VZE, but was my Money well spent? HELL NO! I was a fool. I’m kicking myself for not doing a swap 6 years ago when I had the space, time and weather.

I think this recipe could probably be duplicated for $6-7k (if you can avoid the fubar), with results of 130-140 RWHP and a wider powerband. In my humble opinion 220RWHP for $3k can not be achieved without a swap.

I'll be very interested to see if you can prove me wrong, for your sake, I hope so.

suprathepeg

Wow Max you had a rough time. I did Ted's valves right away, when I talked to him he was pretty clear that these were where he found the most gain, somewhere in the 30hp area IIRC with the appropriate exhaust mods. I'll bet a lot of your hair pulling comes with the DOA that is/was under your hood I have yet to hear from a happy customer. So far I'm just under $3000 into the engine itself with about $4000 once the exhaust is done into the project overall. Now before you go flaming me on that price tag That number is pretty much in line with or below what a 3.4 swap would have cost me and good 3.4s are few and far between in these parts a what I could find was at the very least not cheep. I'll bet that a complete 3.4 swap would have cost me $5000 easy, add the TRD supercharger and it would be an easy $10000 after dealing with all the cooling problems etc. Cheepest power might be a chevy 350 or ford 5.0 but I would never own a chev or ford so why would I want one of their engines or the added weight?

I'm hoping to do the blower and SMT for $2000 so a grand total of $6000-$7000 I'd imagine that the bast results will come from the SMT, valves, and the blower. Will it be cheep? Nope but I got the truck for a good deal so I'll be $11500 into a truck that sells for around $10000 here. I'm not sad about that at all. Currently I'm looking for a truck/runner with a blown engine to put the one that was in my truck into and make a couple/few grand and offset the cost of this project.

BigBen

good luck...keep posts on hows it goes

Weasy2k

what kind of blower you looking at?

If anyone is interested standalone ecus are a possibility with these engines Going to sequential injection helps with some gas milage....maybe one day ill buy a dead 3vz-e and see what kind of work i can do on it just for research.

MonsterMaxx

Not flaming you Supra. As I said, I wish you all the luck. I personally have not had a good experience. It'll sure be interesting to see what you come up with for a blower.

I can tell you this, your reasoning to FIX and not buy NEW is pretty well the same as mine and I really liked the new taco. But went home and Sunday morning I made a list of stuff I've done to my truck (more than the engine.) Just working from memory I had 3 pages.
Then I got to thinking about South Carolina's Personal Property TAX. That Taco would cost me $1000 a year in taxes alone, not to mention the insurance hike I'd have to. SCREW DAT. My truck is rust free and clean. I'd have to be an idiot to buy a new truck and start over.

I'm rebuilding this one up for now and looking for a rolled '03-'07 4runner and plan to swap the whole drivetrain and interior into my '94 or maybe I'll do the LS1/2 and modern Chevy drivetrain. One way or another I want to update my current chassis - just so happens I still really like the body style. Meanwhile I'll have the 3VZE fixed and running. When the time comes I'll be able to sell a complete drop in (air filter to exhaust tip) that's fully debugged and tuned to someone - it'll probably be run just long enough to get the the rings seated by then. That's got to be worth $6-8k which'll pay for most of the conversion.

suprathepeg

I'm thinking either a blower from the previa or a mercedes at ~6 pounds boost. The SC should be available for less then $300 used and will be mounted where the AC would be on the engine with a custom mount and plumbing. That won't be till at least next summer/fall. The idea is that with the awitchable clutch I can off road and such without much risk and then hit the hwy and make fools of the unwitting suckers.

These valves are awesome BTW I have power pretty much whenever I need it. Before I would shift first to second at 4k now I can do it at 3k no problem. I never thought I would have any power on the bottom half of the powerband, I'm very happy.

Bumpin' Yota

Suprathepeg - you have a manual?

suprathepeg

Wouldn't even bother with an auto.

aviator

How would one switch to sequential injection? Stand alone ECU?

I might add a MSD when I get some cash and after the body work is paid for... any thoughts?