twotone's 1UZ Swap Progress Thread!

[85GTSCOUPE]

thank you for that, I order everything yesterday. they emailed me back saying they wouldn't have the stage 1 clutch yet to send out and upgraded me to a stage 2 for free and refunded $200.

[twotone_ra64]

thank you for that, I order everything yesterday. they emailed me back saying they wouldn't have the stage 1 clutch yet to send out and upgraded me to a stage 2 for free and refunded $200.

What a nice little upgrade! I'm still waiting on them to finish with machining my custom PS pump idler and billet pulleys.

[twotone_ra64]

I'm definitely overdue for an update here! Almost 6 months since the last post... sheesh.

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To pick up where I'd left off last time, with the radiator hose, I got the upper hose sorted out. I used a 1-3/8" to 1-1/2" elbow from Pegasus Racing Supply, and a 1-1/2" Vibrant silicone elbow, coupled together with an eBay aluminum coupler with a 3/8"-18 NPT tapped hole. The coupler allows me to fit the temperature sensor included with my SPAL 185FH fan controller kit.



The lower radiator hose is another challenge; for this, I got a PS pump out of an SC400 (thanks silverliftback!) to act as my surrogate idler pulley, and mounted it to see what kind of room I'd have for routing the hose. You can see the blue hose in the background, somewhat blurred from the camera focus, and that's the direction the hose will take from the bottom radiator inlet.



Using an offcut from the Gates 20914 hose from earlier, I could route something over towards the RH side of the car, but need to figure out a solution that clears the pulley properly. It's really tight in this area.





As a pusher fan is needed for airflow when running A/C, I squeezed in a SPAL 12" fan between the hood latch vertical support and the radiator. You could even route the stock A/C condenser lines around the fan!



A bunch of washers are needed at the bottom of the support for spacing, about 3/8" worth, plus a longer M6 bolt to secure it to the frame.



It's a really tight fit, bit does work!!



I also added a nice little piece from Venom Automotive in the land down under- a billet thermostat neck! Never again will you have to replace the brittle plastic housings when they are heat aged. For around 100 dollarydoos, this is totally worth adding to your build.



Next up was to sort out the air intake piping and the SC400 box. As I started to think about wiring, I realized I needed to start mounting and packaging each and every component I thought I'd need to route a wire or plug to. This airbox is found in both the SC300 and SC400 (non-VVTi 1UZ). It's a clean looking box and has a neat flapper door feature for installing and removing the filter element.



In unmodified form, using the LS400 AFM, intake piping and surge box, we run into a little issue:





The airbox is pretty long, so to try to add some clearance, I chopped off a part of the front snorkel feature on the box and a couple mounting tabs. This wasn't enough, sadly.





In the end, I cut the entire front face of the airbox, and all mounting tabs. This leaves the filter element fully exposed when installed:



But, alas! A little bit of "CAD" (Cardboard-Aided Design) helped me to close off the airbox again and recreate the opening for the snorkel, like the uncut box had. This will help prevent crud from getting into the intake:



I cut this out of a piece of 1/8" thick ABS, a 12"x12" piece from Amazon (Install Bay 89-00-9031). One side is textured, and the other is smooth. I used the textured surface for the A-side.



I used some JB Weld 2-part plastic cepoxy to secure this to the airbox.



Seemed to work out pretty well! Some gaps weren't exactly flat, so a few more layers of epoxy closed those up.



This helped solve packaging the intake!



A Vibrant 3-1/4" to 3-1/2" silicone coupler provided a short joint between the AFM and intake piping.



Next was mounting the LS400 UCF20 overflow tank. The shape of the tank helps it fit in nearly the same spot as the 22R-E's original overflow tank! One of the tabs on the tank can be located on the bolt for the Main Relay mounting tab:



...and the other tab is mounted on a custom J-bracket, and bolted to a rivnut installed near the shock tower. Makes for a solid mounting solution!





I finally terminated my 1/0 battery cable and mounted the distribution post just forward of the Main Relay. I figured this would be a pretty accessible spot when everything on the RH side of the engine bay is installed, and is very close to the alternator as well.



Next was to mount the ignition modules. These are normally near the overflow tank and airbox on the LS400, but with this space nearly full from the overflow tank, intake and battery post, I chose to mount them where the ignitor and coil would normally go for the 22R-E! I bent the stock LS400 ignitor bracket around a bit to get it to line up with existing bolt holes near the fuse box.



This will of course mean that the ignitor wires on the engine harness will need to be extended to reach over to the LH side.



Next was the addition of a cheeky 'lil catch can! After looking at options from eBay, Mishimoto and a few others, I settled on the AddW1 Baffled Can v3 for the price, construction, customization and looks! I was able to get blue anodizing on the can garnish rings and hose clamps, and get a few feet worth of PCV hose with the correct diameter fittings to boot!





I tried to mount it pretty low in consideration of where I'd relocate the stock cruise module. The throttle cable length would be too great if mounted in the stock position.



Next up is the oil filter relocation. I used the Blake Machine 1UZ oil filter adapter block for easy positioning of the stock oil pressure sender (with the addition of a 90 degree 1/8" NPT elbow from Vibrant to point the sender outboard). Plus, the adapter comes with -10 AN fittings, so you can use some decently sized lines for your oil flow needs!



To mount the Earl's Performance 2178ERL oil filter block, I built a custom bracket out of various widths of 1/8" thick aluminum from Home Depot that locates the filter in front of the fuse box, and triangulates off of the battery tray for rigidity.





You'll need to pull off the 3/4"-16 oil filter fitting from the stock filter housing, and install it into the Earl's filter block.



But once done, you'll have yourself a tidy filter solution! This would have to be done in conjunction with the Whiteline swaybar since there would be little to no room for the stock LS400 filter housing.



I'd say the engine bay is looking pretty good at this stage!



However, after mounting the oil filter, I noticed I had a bit of space in front of it behind the headlamp bucket for something else... maybe the washer bottle? Since we had to delete the original one to make room for the charcoal canister.



After hours researching various bottle designs and sizes that would work, I found that the fairly common '95-'00 Tacoma bottle will work! Note there are two sizes of this bottle for that model year range of Taco; 2.5L and 4.5L (with a long neck). This is the 2.5L size, and even comes with a pump! You'll have to source a connector pigtail but those are super easy to get out of any 90's Toyota.



It will fit into that little space, but it'll need a custom bracket too (which, at the time of this writing, I have still not made).



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That's it for now! I have a couple more posts to write with the most recent progress, and those are coming very soon. In the meanwhile, check out Episode 10 of the build on YouTube!

[twotone_ra64]

Another installment of recent updates!

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Let's take another look at the front sway bar. I previously mentioned the current setup with the Whiteline AE86 FSB has clearance issues to the frame:



I turned my attention back to the endlinks, which truly aren't really ideal for my setup as they are pretty tall, pushing the swaybar up towards the frame.



I ended up buying some rod ends from McMaster with the correct insert size (3/8") and made my own endlinks using the poly bushings off of my previous setup with Energy Suspension swaybar endlinks!



They mounted up on the control arm just fine, and in theory, would bump the front of the swaybar down and away from the frame. Which, they did, but not enough.



Taking drastic measures, I got some 1" square steel and made spacers to bump the swaybar mounts down and away from the frame!





And, well, that gave me plenty of space now! Now the issue is just how close the swaybar gets to the tension control rods at full droop.



While it may be a drastic spacing of the swaybar brackets, what it did also help with was clearance from the RH lower radiator outlet! The brackets were really close to the outlet and I could barely get a silicone elbow on the end of the radiator. You can see the blue elbow in there.



I'll see how that all works out when the car is on the ground and the suspension is fully bolted up again. For now, here's a sneak peek of things to come:







Can you guess what those brackets are for?

At this stage, the next big thing that I needed to sink my teeth into was the engine wiring harness. My original harness that came with my engine was sadly absorbed by someone who claimed they'd do a plug-n-play conversion for my car, so I shipped it to him; but that person was never heard from again and even his friends (ra65gts and others with 1UZ swaps in the Southern California area) suggested I look to someone else, as he wasn't even answering their calls. So, I went out to a junkyard and pulled this harness out of a 1991 LS400 with silverliftback (he's awesome, if I haven't mentioned it already ).

It was in even worse shape than my original one. MORE broken connectors, and to even release it from the donor car in as little time possible, I had to cut the upstream O2 sensor wires and break away the plastic housings on the back of the engine. But alas, the wiring was freed. I made sure to get the 4th ECU connector, alternator charge wire and alternator 3-pin connector.



To make life easier working with the harness, I got a piece of wood and some screws to mount it up, so that way I could work with the harness vertically.



The first order of business was to remove all of the transmission related wiring. A white connector and many of the wires coming off of the LH upstream O2 sensor branch were pulled out and de-pinned from the ECU connectors.



With that out of the way, I started removing all of the old tape and loom to expose the wires I needed to access, firstly to extend the ignitor wiring







I also bolted up one of my SC400 exhaust manifolds to understand what length I'd need to make my upstream O2 sensor wires.



This was very easily done! I even got some shielded 1-conductor wire to extended the sensitive O2 sensor signal. This was terminated and plugged into some brand new connectors from Ballenger Motorsports.



I went through replacing every single connector for which I had a replacement for, and replaced the old loom with some nice braided loom from Summit Racing. Fuel injectors, IACV, O2 sensors, coolant temp sensors, EGR temp sensor, knock sensors; those, and a few sub-harness connections, all had connectors replaced with exact replacements or similar pairs of TE AMP Econoseal 2-position connectors.







After more than a week's straight of work, I had a fully refurbished harness that looked the part with harnesses from mywireshop, Panic Made or Wiring Specialties. I was very proud of my work.



The 4th ECU connector has a few extra outputs, but most importantly has the two shielded lines for the downstream O2 sensors. This I'll have to run down the car and through the chassis so they can meet up with the O2 sensors.



Although, this is still not the full solve to get the car running. I still have to figure out how and where to integrate all of the body wiring for ignition power, main relay and circuit opening relay signals, key switch start signals, and what wires/connections I can delete. For whatever reason, Toyota didn't put all of the 22R-E engine connections through the firewall bundle; instead, they run along each of the fenders and into the bulkhead. I'll have to remove those fully at some point. Some of these are obvious 22R-E connections to be removed, and others are body connections.





I have the 1984 wiring manual as well as these puppies to help figure everything out, which have full diagrams in the back of volume 2.



What I can easily figure out so far is;

Starter motor power and start signal wire can go directly to the 1UZ starter.



The alternator connectors need to be swapped, but Toyota made things easy and hooking this up is just a matter of matching wiring colors.





My battery connection has to be consolidated, and run cross-car to the distribution post via a 4awg cable.



The oil pressure sender is pretty self explanatory though; extend and connect to the 1UZ unit!



Then there's the connections under the dash. Still need to figure these out fully, but I think about 6-7 wires are to be spliced over to the 1UZ ECU connections.





I'll go into more detail about that in another post. I have plenty of notes on the subject, but need to just study and fully understand it.

That's it for this little saga! I can totally understand why wiring is so expensive, now having done it myself. Great learning experience!

[twotone_ra64]

Last update for today, mainly focusing on welding operations! Bzzzt. I don't have welding equipment myself, but a local friend of mine was looking for handyman work and had both GMAW and GTAW welders! (mig and tig for the layman)

First item here is the radiator. As I was checking the thread size of the overflow tank inlet fitting off of the radiator neck, I ended up breaking the fitting off in trying to remove it. I later found out it was 1/8" NPT.



I found this Vibrant 10mm vacuum fitting, which was a perfect replacement candidate for hooking up the overflow hose once I drilled out the 1/8" NPT thread. It slid right into the bored-out overflow hole, just needed it welded in!



Since the overflow tank is pressurized, I wanted to delete the cap on the radiator as well. This would help provide clearance to the hood if your radiator solution wasn't as low profile as the CXRacing S13 SR20 rad. I drilled out a little 1-1/4" coin from a 1/4" thick aluminum sheet, and my buddy tig'd those up beautifully.







'Ery noice!

Next, the big one; exhaust! Had to pull out the materials stash from storage; 3" oval pipe, 1-3/8" and 1-7/8" mandrel bent J-pipes, V-bands, a 2-1/2" to 3" reducer, 3" round to 3" oval converter, a Vibrant muffler, Summit Racing slant-exit rolled exhaust tips, Federal/EPA pre-cats, and an eBay replacement LS400 Fed/EPA catted Y-pipe.



As shown in the previous post, the RH SC400 manifold fits just fine. The LS400 manifold fits this side pefectly well, too. The LH side is where the challenge lies. We have this annoying component in the way. Sadly, we can't just cut it out since it's the steering shaft.



Bollocks.



I should quickly define some terms that I'll be using so you know what I'm referring to; the primary runners, I'll refer to as runners; these are the 1-3/8" pipes coming off of the head. The collector is the larger, 1-7/8" pipe that connects the four smaller pipes and runs rearward to the flange, which expands to 2" at the tri-bolt flange, the exiting flange at the end of the manifold.



We decided to tackle the manifold step-by-step in order to make it fit. First, we cut the exhaust flange off between the O2 sensor bung and runner #4.





We went for our first test fit, and whaddaya know; it fits! But, the collector exits right into the steering shaft. That's no good.



To facilitate easy install and removal, we decided to route the collector between the steering shaft and the frame rail. The space between the steering shaft and block, where one might route 2UZ log-style manifolds, is just too tight. So, we re-made runners #3 and #4 and routed the collector outboard toward the frame rail.



Note the surrogate 1UZ engine block, so labeled on the wooden plank.



Well, a little bit of test fitting later and we had a good solution!





We took the tacked-up manifold, bolted it to the RH manifold to keep the flange true and provide a heat sink, and we fully welded up the runners.



Bam!



With a little bit more fiddling, we got the tri-bolt flange routed and tacked into place!





Routed nicely, and was easy to install and remove given the amount of space available!



And, after positioning the pre-cat, we welded the rest of that up!



The replacement Y-pipe I bought was meant for a '90-'94 LS400, made in Canada, with a Fed/EPA cat attached to it and gross crush-bends. It gave us a basis on which to build the rest of the exhaust to the main cat, but definitely needed some re-routing, cutting, shortening, re-angling, and even rotating of the pre-cat output flanges so the bolt holes would be parallel to the ground for maximum clearance.



A few sections of 2" pipe with slip joints (where the ends of the pipe are flared to around 2-1/8" for some wiggle room), some mandrel-bent J-pipes, and carefully tacked sections later, we had a full Y-pipe! Still missing the hangers, but we'll get there.



At this point, I have an exhaust that I can start the car with and not stink up the place, and potentially test drive with. The last item we put together was the beginning of the catback section; a beautifully tig-welded 2-1/2" V-band, to a 2-1/2" to 3" reducer, to a 3" round to oval converter. I'm going to use as much 3" oval pipe as I can for ground clearance until I route the exhaust over the rear axle, which will go back to a 3" round pipe.



#weldporn



The 2-1/2" two-bolt flange at the end of the main cat will be cut off and changed to a 2-1/2" V-band for future serviceability, hence the creation of this piece.



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There's still so many small items to get to before I can start her, but these welding operations helped get me one big step closer to that point! Big thanks to @mg_zenki at the Project Daily YouTube channel for being such a big help. Also nice he's only a short drive away!

Stay tuned folks, as there's much more to come.

[85GTSCOUPE]

Looks awesome, just curious rear end staying stock? 6.7” straight axle correct?

[twotone_ra64]

Yes! User CELEXUS84 races his 1UZ-swapped space-shuttle coupe in the 24Hrs of Lemons, on the stock 6.7", and it has held up. So I'm confident mine will too.

Check out his thread: https://www.celica-gts.com/forums/index.php?topic=30821.0

[85GTSCOUPE]

Cool,
I would imagine with mine being a gts I have nothing to worry about then?

[nick83]

Twotone, be careful with that rear end, remember what happened when you went drifting. Just a thought for you. Congrats on your progress and very nice with all the attention to detail you are doing.

[twotone_ra64]

Cool,
I would imagine with mine being a gts I have nothing to worry about then?

You have more to worry about as the 6.7" IRS pumpkins have been known to be more fragile than the solid axle actually... so a 7.5" Supra F-code diff and rear subframe would be a good upgrade for ya'. Or, if you want to be the forum MVP, do a Ford 8.8" IRS conversion with custom axles. I've been wanting to see that for a while now.

Twotone, be careful with that rear end, remember what happened when you went drifting. Just a thought for you. Congrats on your progress and very nice with all the attention to detail you are doing.

Thanks Nick, appreciate the kind words! On the rear axle walking out of the diff when I went drifting; remember, that was not a power issue, but a failure of the bearing retainer on the axle. To be safe, I'll pull the axles out and tack weld the retainers in on a few spots to prevent the slip before some track time. Abuse on the diff from a power increase would accelerate wear on the ring and pinion bearings, or shear teeth off of the ring gear. Or snap axles. It would be more catastrophic, in other words.

[85GTSCOUPE]

You have more to worry about as the 6.7" IRS pumpkins have been known to be more fragile than the solid axle actually... so a 7.5" Supra F-code diff and rear subframe would be a good upgrade for ya'. Or, if you want to be the forum MVP, do a Ford 8.8" IRS conversion with custom axles. I've been wanting to see that for a while now.

Since I have a LS400 sitting here wonder how I could use it’s differential under the celica???

[twotone_ra64]

Since I have a LS400 sitting here wonder how I could use it’s differential under the celica???

Ooh. Well, how... with a lot of fabrication required to fit the differential to the rear subframe, I'd say. Then definitely custom axles and driveshaft flange modifications. The G922(?) diff in the LS400 is an 8.0" ring gear, 3.62 ratio final drive, but compared to the Celica final drives (3.58 for A/T, or 3.42 for M/T) it's at least not too far off and won't affect speedo readings.

[85GTSCOUPE]

Things changed,

[twotone_ra64]

Looks great!~ Please create a new thread in General Discussion to document your build progress.

EDIT: Decided to post up my preliminary wiring notes of what signals & wires need to go where; I have used some specialized nomenclature for the connector names and mixed in references from the ESM as well; I'll clarify all of these and whether or not my initial thoughts here actually worked after wiring it up! There are some simpler connections that I will document as well, like the oil pressure sensor and alternator/starter. I kid you not, this took at least 20 hours to go through the LS400 and Celica ESM's to translate and understand what everything does.

Don't mind the Ford letterhead, it was from my old job lol.

[cmtremor]

thought i would just mention as i am currently dealing with this issue.

I recommend ensuring all your valves are working correctly. had my 1uzfe sit for a bit and it caused two exhaust valves to stick. i currently have the heads out waiting to get work done and reassembled. these are literally the cleanest head's I have ever removed from a used motor so i was very surprised to find this!

i know you pulled it from a junk yard and i am assuming its been sitting for almost a year since then so may not be a bad idea to check!