Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

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Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby charlesjm » Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:43 am

Hey guys!
My name's Charles, I'm currently 19 years young from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
I'm currently a student at Red River College in Mechanical Engineering Technology. I work at Sobeys as a cashier (have since I was 15), but just got my first engineering job at Magellan Aerospace.
I've had my car for three years in June this year, and it's been quite a process to get it to where it is today.
I'm joining up here because it's another MR2 specific forum, and a Canadian one at that.

The car is a 1991 MR2 Turbo with a JDM Gen 4 3S-GTE, from a ST-215 Caldina.
The colour is the factory Steel Mist Grey; T-Top with manual steering (factory) and manual transmission (of course).
Bought it off autotrader.com for 4grand, shipped it up from California.

In the summer of 2012 my USDM Gen 2 3S-GTE (engine that came with the car) detonated and cracked the ring lands on three pistons. After looking into rebuilding the Gen 2, swapping a Gen 3 3S or a V6 into it, I decided to swap the Gen 4 JDM 3S-GTE into the car.
I chose the Gen 4 because the engines were made from 1998-2002 and were never seen in the MR2. The Gen 4 featured coil pack ignition (vs. a distributor), MAP sensor (Gen 2 had MAF), many many less vacuum lines (thank god, Gen 2 was a rats nest), but most notably more power.

A USDM Gen 2 3S-GTE is rated to have 200hp.
A JDM Gen 3 is rated to have 250.
The JDM spec Gen 4: 265.

The Gen 4 has a different turbo, head, intake manifold, cams, fuel rail, injectors, ECU, different crank, rods and pistons, a higher compression ratio and thicker cylinder walls than the Gen 2.

The mods list:
-Engine:
-Kept stock
-Stock JDM CT15b
-Stock Gen4 boost control system (15PSi)
-Tial Q 50mm BOV
-Greddy side mount intercooler
-Custom Mandrel bent intercooler piping
-KO Racing mirror polished dual fan engine lid shroud
-Walbro 255 fuel pump
-F1 Racing chromoly Flywheel
-Exhaust
-Blitz NurSpec 3inch catback
-Factory downpipe with hollowed catalytic converter
-Transmission
-Rebuilt Transmission (orginal MR2 trans, not the JDM Caldina trans)
-Brass shifter bushings
-F1 Racing Stage 2 Clutch
-Interior
-Prosport Boost Gauge
-Prosport Fuel Pressure Gauge
-Prosport Oil Pressure Gauge
-Innovate A/F Ratio Gauge
-Dual Pillar Gauge Mount
-EMS Powered Dual Ashtray Gauge Mount
-Blitz Turbo Timer
-TRD Short Throw Shifter
-Corbeau C4 Racing Seats w/ modified factory seat rails
-Alpine Touchscreen Deck
-Nardi Deep Corn 350mm Steering Wheel
-NRG Hub
-Relocated Cruise Control
-LED Dash Lights
-Tinted Windows + T-tops
-Wheels:
-17" Sportmax XXR 962, Gunmetal finish, with machined 3" lip (rear)
-Federal Tires Front and Rear (959RSR in 255/40R17 on rear, 215/40R17 front)
-Blue finished Lugnuts
-Slotted/Vented Rotors
-8mm Spacer (Front)
-Suspension
-Tokiko Adjustable Shock Absorbers
-Tein S-Tech Lowering Springs
-Exterior
-Shine Auto S-Type Front Lip
-Shine Auto Carbon Fiber Rear Add-ons and Lower Center Piece
-1994+ OEM MR2 Taillights w/ JDM amber corners
-Custom LED reverse lights
-Carbon fiber vinyl wrapped tail light center piece
-EZ Lip Side Skirt Extensions
-Clear Front Corner Lights
-Home Made License Plate Mount
-Custom "Gen-4 Twin Cam turbo" Side Decals


Possible spring projects:
- New wheels (Secret)
- GE nighthawk LED replacement headlights
- CF rear tail light center panel
- Paint matching front lip, side stripe, and lower side trim
- LED for lights (Getting tired of replacing fog light bulbs)
- Center console gauge pod (Campos "pure sex style" gauge pod)
- Piano black interior trim
- S2K start button
- Toggle switch for deck lid fans
- Rewiring of tail lights so DRLs light up all 4 tail lights instead of the outer 2
- Smoke corner lights
- Wire horn button up

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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby charlesjm » Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:44 am

History of the car:

When I first saw an MR2, I knew I wanted one. The look of the car is what really drew me in, sleek, sporty and kind of exotic in a way. Loved how clean the lines were.

The first one I saw was in the Tim Hortons parking lot on king edward street; I was maybe 11 or so and out for a drive with my dad. When I spotted the yellow car I instantly asked "Dad dad! I have no idea what that car was, can we go look at it?!". Being a car enthusiast himself, he turned around to go see it. That's when I learnt what an MR2 was, and how rare they were here.

When I was about 15 and anxiously waiting to get my license, I often dreamt of what my first car would be. Needless to say, many hours were spent on Kijiji and Auto trader for some thing that was cool and affordable. There were few cars that WEREN'T considered, but for whatever reason, the MR2 was always the one I wanted the most.

I had saved some money up for a few years by that point, and started working a job strictly to get a car. When I finally had enough money saved from the two jobs I had worked, the serious car hunt began. Even though I had the cash, I spent a solid 6 months looking out for the right MR2. After a few deals that didn't work out in the Minnesota/North Dakota area, I found my car on AutoTrader.com, located in Clovis, California.

My dad was the one who worked out the deal, and even had one of his friends in California check out the car. The car was originally posted for $4800, but my dad managed to get it for $4000.

Here's the original ad:

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The car had some slight front end damage (Front bumper cracked, fog light broken, front subframe bent) and the engine was not running 100% correctly. But the car looked fairly clean, had ZERO rust (southern states car all it's life) and relatively low miles.

Once all the paperwork was cleared and finished, the car was being shipped home. The seller sent us a picture of the car on the trailer, being shipped to us:

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Needless to say, that week of waiting was a very, very long time.
Met the shipper in grand forks, then trailered it home!
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby charlesjm » Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:46 am

Winter 2012 Rebuild:

The engine had oil coming from everywhere, so my dad and I decided to replace every seal and most of the hoses. We knew that it was a pretty freaking large job, but what we didn't account for was the time cleaning the oil off all the parts.
This is what we started with:
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How the engine looked when we pulled it out
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Turbo before:
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Turbo after rebuild by Western Turbo
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General pics:
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Block painted blaaaaaaack
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The head, pressure checked and shaved 6thou of an inch
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Things comin back together
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The custom "high flow" cat
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We did it! *drool*
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Finally going back in the car
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The day we got the deck lid fans installed:
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First test cruise
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My favotire picture from highschool. (note: still didnt have the front trim/lip on the MR2, thats why it looks funny)
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Got 2000 very happy miles, then disaster struck; oil out the blowoff.
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The car began to idle roughly and was misfiring, in addition to the oil spraying from the blowoff. I figured a seal went in the turbo, hence the oil shooting out, and something was up with ignition (either with the distributer, or fouled a pulg).
I was wrong.
Compression test confirmed the worst, low compression on cylinders 2 3 and 4. Figured the rings were done.

Car on the trailer:
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The car then sat over the winter in storage, as I did not have cash for a rebuild at the time.

The following posts are from the next spring:


Spring 2013:


The MR2 ran (had some difficulty starting) but started to refuse to idle or run well when warm.
Had low compression on three cylinders...
Started removing intercooler piping and found oil in the pipes. Was expected, even though the car had been sitting for 10 months.

This is from the first night. Got the trut bar, intercooler piping, wheels and whatnot off.
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A couple of hours and the engine was out. It was pretty simple, disconnected the harness from the car and left it attached to the engine, drained all the fluids and disconnected all the oil, coolant, A/C and vacuum lines, loosened the struts so we could remove the axles with the engine and transmission, dropped the subframe, loosened the motor mounts, then lifted the chassis away from the engine & transmission. I imagine this would be pretty hard if you didn't have a hoist...
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Everything still looked pretty clean (only got 2000 miles on it that season)
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To save some time we took the header, turbo and downpipe off the engine together as one. Took abit of wiggling, but it went fairly smoothly.
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After removing the engine we began the teardown. Once we got all the way down to the pistons and removed them, we found something we weren't expecting:


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The ring lands were cracked. This one was the worst of them, you could actually remove a chunk.

At this point I wasn't sure what to do: rebuild or engine swap.
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby charlesjm » Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:47 am

After a large amount of internet research and pricing out, we figured we had a few options.
We could either:
1) Rebuild the engine, for around $2600
2) Swap in a gen 3 3S-GTE
3) Swap in a V6
or 4) Do a gen 4 3S-GTE swap.

We got the idea of a gen 4 swap from primemr2.com. They're a shop down in the states and takes customers MR2s and converts them into gen 4 powered MR2s. My dad and I liked the concept of a gen 4 swap, but didn't want to ship the car down or have them do the swap when him and I could just do it ourselves.

So thats exactly what we decided to do: do it ourselves.

Prime does offer conversion "kits" (an assortment of the bolt on parts required to get a gen 4 into an MR2) and thank god for it; finding out what we needed and getting the parts would have been a real headache to put up with.

Here's the conversion kit:

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Things that needed to be converted:
- Engine harness
- Water neck
- Fuel lines
- Turbo plumbing
- Minor mount modifications
- Downpipe
- Throttle cable
- Tach signal
- Timing belt tensioner and pulley
- Power steering pump delete
- A/C compressor relocate
- Alternator relocate

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One of the major delays was the downpipe. Had a downpipe on order from KO Racing, but production kept being pushed back and pushed back, so eventaully it was decided that modifying what we had was a better alternative... so father and i spent afew hours busting out the guts of the cat.
The other issue with the downpipe is that it had a different flange than the Gen2 downpipe, meaning that my midpipe could not bolt up

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Big shoutout and thanks to the guys at Extreme Performance for creating a whole new section of pipe and welding on the proper flange!

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One of the mods done while the engine was out was the fuel pump!

It's not very often you get to see a fuel tank from an MR2, so here:

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This would have been abit more difficult to get out if the engine wasn't out already.

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While looking alot online, found alot of people complaining the Walbro 255 is noisy.
Well, it is.
Only on startup though, it quiets down after that.



Overall the gen 4 swap wasn't too hard, the big thing was doing the research and getting the parts. There was no way my dad and I could have done the custom harness, so we're real thankful that there was a service to make a gen 4 harness that worked with the MR2 body harness.
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby immorality » Wed Apr 02, 2014 8:37 am

Great job Charles! Those gen4's always look so pretty when installed.
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby Goopi » Wed Apr 02, 2014 5:32 pm

Now this is a great way to enter a forum! :P
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby charlesjm » Wed Apr 02, 2014 6:50 pm

immorality wrote:Great job Charles! Those gen4's always look so pretty when installed.

SSJMR2 wrote:Now this is a great way to enter a forum! :P


Thanks guys! Learnt a lot with this project, and almost thrown literally all my cash into it. Finally the engine (performance, show appeal and reliability wise) is up to where I'd like it to be, so this year I'm going to be doing some minor body work! :
-My front bumper is in rough shape (bumper and paint cracked). I have a new OEM one that needs to be painted. Not sure if I want to take it to a shop, or try painting it myself.
-I'm ordering a Shine Auto Type-S front lip in a few months, planning on painting that myself.
-I'm going to be painting the charcoal side stripe and black below-the-doors stripe to match the body (factory SMG)
-I recently picked up 94+ tails, and will be painting the centre piece.
-Since the car is going lower, I'm planning on some fender work. Going to be doing it with some friends that are experienced in fender rolling though.

Other than that, it's a few simple mods. Installing the HKS SSQV, installing my new steering wheel, strip and re-clear the rear rims, and install coils!

I'll update this thread once there's some progress on the car. Thanks for the welcome
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby tedv » Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:20 pm

Wow what a post !! Great job ! Only 19. Amazing determination and vision Welcome and all the best in the rest of your mods
My 87 Mk1 is sold :( Owned many KE1#'s, currently a 2015 Yaris and a 2001 Rav4
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby dh4ever » Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:25 pm

What do you think blew the pistons? (I've rebuilt twice because of the same reason. Last time was 3 pistons fubared)
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby charlesjm » Sun Apr 06, 2014 7:43 pm

dh4ever wrote:What do you think blew the pistons? (I've rebuilt twice because of the same reason. Last time was 3 pistons fubared)


Through forum research over the past while, I think the turbo is to blame. Apparently the CT-26 does not have enough flow at higher RPMs, which then causes some exhaust reversion. The reversion causes your intake temps to spike, and eventually leads to detonation. Detonation causes your cylinder pressure to go through the roof, which then lead to the demise of the ring lands or rings.
That's a theory as to what caused the detonation; I had just had my head shaved + pressure cleaned and engine overhauled only 2000 miles before it detonated, so it's not like buildup was to blame. I also think I was alittle high on the boost, 18Psi. I've heard of people running more though...

I've also read that the factory gen-2 3s-gte fuel rail is unbalanced, and that it leans out cylinder #3, which explains why #3 was out of round.

So if I ever get around to rebuilding my gen-2 and swapping it into a donor car, low boost and a new fuel rail are on my to do list :p (and maybe a ct-20, because i love the ct-20)
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby dh4ever » Mon Apr 07, 2014 12:32 pm

I converted my fuel rail to dual feed to reduce the fuel starvation equation. A suggestion I was given was the oil was too hot and doesn't cool the pistons sufficiently. There's alot of theories out there.
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby charlesjm » Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:08 pm

dh4ever wrote:I converted my fuel rail to dual feed to reduce the fuel starvation equation. A suggestion I was given was the oil was too hot and doesn't cool the pistons sufficiently. There's alot of theories out there.


Sounds like an excuse to install an oil cooler!
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby RePete » Mon Apr 07, 2014 3:56 pm

Looks pretty good, lots of work there.

If you don't mind a wee bit of advice: I'd lose the idea of coils unless you're going custom made sleeves, TRD coils or something like multi-thousand dollar Ohlins. Otherwise, you're swapping in Chinese made shocks which are akin to mounting something that came out of a box of Cap'n Crunch (whether BC coils, Megans or all the other sub-$1,500 crap). None of those coils have any sort of R&D behind them and all of them have no racing experience - they are generally for poseurs only and given your mods, doesn't seem like you.

Replace those Tokicos w/ infinitely variable Koni yellows or Bilstein HD shocks (which ship w/ the struts) and you'll have a true handler in your possession that also happens to be comfy-wumfy as a DD.
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby charlesjm » Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:21 pm

RePete wrote:Looks pretty good, lots of work there.

If you don't mind a wee bit of advice: I'd lose the idea of coils unless you're going custom made sleeves, TRD coils or something like multi-thousand dollar Ohlins. Otherwise, you're swapping in Chinese made shocks which are akin to mounting something that came out of a box of Cap'n Crunch (whether BC coils, Megans or all the other sub-$1,500 crap). None of those coils have any sort of R&D behind them and all of them have no racing experience - they are generally for poseurs only and given your mods, doesn't seem like you.

Replace those Tokicos w/ infinitely variable Koni yellows or Bilstein HD shocks (which ship w/ the struts) and you'll have a true handler in your possession that also happens to be comfy-wumfy as a DD.


I'm going to be strait up honest, my reasoning for wanting coils was to have the car sit alittle lower. I'm not big into auto-x (only going to my first event this summer), and the car isn't 100% daily driven (only in the summer, on dry days). My reasoning for coils was pretty much just for the looks. I don't imagine that swapping a set of coils in would totally kill the driving dynamics of the MR2; it seems that many people who run the "cheap" ($1200 isn't a cheap item in my books...) coils on their MR2's don't have complaints, I've read positive reviews.
However I'm very open to this suggestion, and there is forsure a chance this is the route I will take. One of my friends here in MB just bought Koni Yellows to replace his Tokicos, so before I make any decision I will ride with him and trade cars for abit to get a feel for the Koni's.
In response to the "little to no R&D behind coils", do lowering springs or the Koni/Bilisten shocks have racing R&D? If their claim to R&D is the adjustability, I'd assume a set of coils would have the same/similar adjustments available. With either the shocks or coils, the settings would still have to be determined by the owner, which in my mind puts them on a level playing field. Feel free to correct me on this, I don't know too much when it comes to suspension setups.

Either way, thanks for the feed back :) It's certainly an alternative I'll keep my mind open to.

I'd like to hear from a few of you guys, who's running coils, and who's running a lowering spring & adjustable shock setup? How do you like it?
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Re: Charles' Gen-4 Swapped MR2

Postby RePete » Wed Apr 09, 2014 9:57 pm

In the 15 or so years I've owned SW20s (that's only 4 years short of your age Image) I've had coils and a number of lowering springs/shocks too. Nothing comes close to a Koni/spring setup (preferably TRD which sits quite low) or the '93+ springs. You can carve up the track (and win) but still bring along your girlfriend to dinner without her getting annoyed because her tits keep bouncing up & down. Yes, it's quite entertaining, but not for her - believe me.

Yes, $1,200 is cheap for coils - the Chinese versions are crap, quite honestly. Living in Vancouver, you get to have lots of Asian friends who import this stuff and let you know that it costs less than $200 to manufacturer and ship an entire coil-over package. The associated hardware is OK, the shocks are not worthy to be on the car. The reason you keep reading good reviews is twofold:

First (and don't take offense to this please) is that most (not all) of those reviewers have very little driving experience and don't know a good setup if they tripped over it. And those owners storing their rides in the winter will give them 50% less driving experience with their deuce than drivers like me who've been driving an SW20 through all 4 seasons for years & years.

The second reason is, (again, don't take offense please), $1,200 is a lot to a young driver as you've already indicated. This is normal as most under 25 year-olds don't have their potential income yet. So when a couple or three paychecks go towards a complete suspension system, there's very little chance the owner will honestly review them - especially since he might not have ever drove his deuce with a really good suspension (see point one).

As for racing experience, the shocks I mentioned are on the winning-est cars in all sorts of classes for decades. Those German shock manufacturers have poured hundreds of millions into R&D over the decades and it shows in their shocks which still astound me even after all these years.
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