2zz swap general discussion thread

[Jiff Lemon]

Anything coming out of the swap thread, discuss here please. :thumbsup:

[Paul Woods]

Great info so far, that is going to be the holy grail bible of 2zz swapping, about time too!

[Goldy]

I'm loving the swap thread jiff, great work. Just out of interest the vvti bolts you swapped were the old ones worn down or did toyota change the design?

Keep up the great work

[Jiff Lemon]

A little bit of both Goldy; they did change the design but they also wear out. If they snap when they're in then it's a whole world of pain! Hence why for less that £4, you swap the buggers out!

[Phaeton]

Brilliant information, which manifold have you decided on in the meantime been reading a rather heated debate over on ROC about them. On th removal side from the Celica, I have removed, engine, box, wiring connected to the engine only as far as the fusebox, matched key, do I need anything else?

[Jiff Lemon]

Its the ebay manifold for now - There's a huge debate over the effectiveness, to which I'm inclined to agree with; The celica one is 4-1, will relatively short primaries which you'd expect from such a high reving engine. However, I'm not going to commit to a zero exhaust till a see some results! Plus some of us also have to have Cat's for the MOT.

Im terms of what you've got, I think you're good to go!

[Jiff Lemon]

Just a little note to say I've been frantically updating the build thread. Harriet is coming along nicely and should be ready for JAE - I'll just add my usual "if I've got time" caveat!

It's been a hugely frustrating build, not because of any complexities, just my usual 1 free day of the month to do stuff and then had a MASSIVE hurdle with the ecu.

The car simply wouldn't start. I'd always suspected there was something a little funky, as my keyfob looked like this:


The observant amongst you will notice that the keyfob, whilst being a Toyota one, has a boot lock button.... something not really required on an MR2. When the 2zz wouldn't start, i went digging and pulled out this:



Some oddball 3rd party remote central locking. The plot now thickened. Roadster's are immobilised from the factory. Mine clearly had something odd happen in the past (too many things to think about there!) but we're back to ground zero now. Oddball shite ripped out, celica ECU with matched key. This should be working. It'd start and then stop. We had ignition, we seemed to have fuel. It sounds like the immobiliser, but we've a 2zz master fob and matching ECU.

In steps Super hero Headcase. He'd already spent tons of time helping me over the phone and web and offered to nuke my ECU, turning it into virgin state. This means the first key that hit the ignition barrel would be treated as the master key and thus solve the mystery. The path to 2zz'dom hit a minor detour, as the Wednesday my ECU arrived at Pat's was the same morning he'd arrived at work to find he'd been broken into and his Laptop used for Nuking Ecu's had been stolen. He was also heading on holiday on the Friday for two weeks!

Thankfully, Pat got sorted and on his return, sent me this, which explained a LOT.



That's the immobiliser chip of my ECU. And someone has, quite simply, rogered it within an inch of it's life, reducing the ECU to scrap. He then very kindly shipped me his spare Virgin ECU, which guess what? Yup, worked first time!

Huge, huge thanks to headcase - the man is a legend! :thumbsup:

So, the 2zz is in and running with a couple of little things to finish it - MOT being the main one! Ooooops!

[Phaeton]

Excellent update about the gear change, another myth busted

[Jiff Lemon]

yeah, when I looked at them side by side, I realised it'd never work "properly". I did contemplate swapping over the lever before slapping myself around the face screaming "stop being stupid"