After 16 years of ownership I did finally decide to bite the bullet. My car is a very good example of an s-chassis and the one thing that always kind of let it down was the engine bay- granted it was a pretty good KA-T setup, just tired and not up to par with the rest of the car. It was time for something else. A single turbo 2jz setup with paint matched bay and quality components should really help with that. Anyone who's been on here a while has probably seen pictures of my car "before", but here's a little refresher.
So I'm a pretty good ways into the swap at this point. The goal is to use quality parts and fabricate what I could myself- the intercooler, exhaust, charge pipes, etc. The engine is a jdm non vvti, stock internals, freshened up with studs and HG, BC 264 cams springs and retainers, new waterpump and timing components. Stock r154 trans, light flywheel, aluminum DS. Here's a few photos of the engine tear down and refresh. The engine covers will be painted closer to the end.
made a water rail without all the unnecessary nipples
pulled the ka
Next, I mock up the tucked radiator/condenser/IC core and trim a few areas, as well as patch the battery tray and corresponding area behind the DS headlight.
Up next painting the bay and dropping it in. Sorry if some of the vertical images are huge- trying to fix that.