So I drive a red 2006 NCP91 1.5L Yaris... Started off innocently enough:
I'll skip the boring stuff but here's how it spent most of the first 5 years:
Quick specs list:
TEIN Super Street suspension + EDFC
18" Works Emotions replicas + 215/35R18 Falken FK452, later changed to 15" Regamaster Evo replicas + 195/50R15 Maxxis Victra i-Pro (huge improvement!)
Semi-stripped interior with Momo steering wheel, shift knob, pedals and handbrake lever, Bride replica semi-buckets
Had a Pioneer 7" touchscreen head unit + boston acoustic speakers and a 10" sub, removed those after a while...
Not much done to the original 1.5 engine, mostly cosmetic really:
Anyway fast forward to October 2011... In trying to get a nice feed of cool outside air to the intake, I removed a foglight and ran some flexible tubing from the filter to the foglight opening... Worked like a charm! Until I went through a puddle that was just a little too deep, engine got a nice drink of water, and died...
So, as the car was freshly out of warranty (and I'm not even sure they would have covered repairs), Toyota gave me a pretty exorbitant quotation to rebuild the engine. It had hydrolocked pretty bad... I said screw that, might as well get a new engine for that price!
And the hunt was on... Looked into the 2ZZ (nice but lacking in grunt), 3S-GTE (badass but way too big and heavy), the 4E-FTE (badass lil engine but hard to obtain here), a previously-upgraded 1NZ (way too expensive), and finally we found a good deal on a JDM 4A-GZE... I was not too familiar with this engine but I had seen such a swap in a magazine before, so I assumed it would be pretty straightforward...
So the fun began... As I have no time or sufficient skill to do this myself, a recommended garage was hired for the job... Which ended up taking over a year...
Some notable things:
1) Supercharger (specifically its intake tract) would not fit without cutting up the firewall... So we decided to go the turbo route instead, with a VF32
2) Frame rails had to be notched to fit the whole thing, and they had to keep my original gearbox (C50), which should be good enough to 300hp... We changed the clutch, though, original one was already pretty cooked and did not handle the extra torque!
3) Management is handled by the stock GZE ECU plus an HKS F-Con Vpro2 (local tuners' weapon of choice)
4) I got the car back in December, and it ran GREAT: (here's a vid with a friend driving):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCTn7y8USM8
And some pics:
Anyway, the result is about 210hp at 0.7bar boost (starting low, I am not really used to powerful cars, this is already double of the stock engine!), but with good tuning and moar boost the engine can take 300+hp...
Unfortunately soon after, the engine was starting to have overheating problems... Water and oil temps over 110C... Thought it was insufficient airflow for the coolant, so I tried everything I could think of, lifting the back of the hood, cutting out some holes in the bumper, til I cam out with this monstrosity:
And it did not work.. even worse, we had some heavy rain, and despite me shielding the intake as much as possible from it, and not driving in the rain, I started to have some weird noises when driving... Ended up taking it back to the garage and they confirmed water had entered the engine again! And I was wrong about the coolant overheating, it was the oil, the pump was dying...
So they kept the car again, rebuilt the engine, added an oil cooler and a new pump, and now it's back in my hands... I do have to take it easy the first 1000km or so, though, which is frustrating to say the least
So, that about wraps it up for now! This whole adventure was a lot lengthier and more expensive than anticipated, so it will be a while until I do further mods... My goal for this car it to make it an all-out track weapon, something that can seriously surprise bigger, more expensive machinery... So I still need to get among other things, better brakes (already have a disc brake conversion at the rear, and I had some monster big front brakes with the 18" wheels, but now back to the standard ones), a LSD, more interior stripping and CF body parts, proper seats and harnesses, etc, etc...
Here's some wild mockups of what it may end up looking like:
Thanks for reading this far, any questions?
In retrospect I should have gotten a turbo kit or supercharge instead, but hey, hindsight 20/20 as the saying goes... And I suppose it's good to have spent 5 years at near-stock power levels, makes me appreciate the power hike even more!
