Hi guys, been a while since I was active on here but life has got in the way of things and my mk1 has been stuck at my mates house for a little over a year now untouched.

However this week I got the car back to mine and when I have spare time I'm going to start trying to get it running again.

I'll try get some pics tomorrow as its now pretty dark outside, but here's the story so far.

Bought the mk1 as a stock hardtop probably about 3 years ago now. Drove it round for ages as my daily and it drove well, gave the non turbo supras a good run up the ranges here. Shows what lighter weight can do in the twisties, altho I did add a 12"sub and a few audio upgrades for fun. I don't beleive its running stock suspension as it seems lower and stiffer than all the stock mk1's I ever owned and behaved more like the mk1 with the PI springs and KYB inserts. Anyway it decided one day it was going to spin one of the bottom end bearings and die. Nursed it to my mates house with the view of putting something else in it but had no idea what at the time.

then along came the donors.......
A nice little Lexus es300 1mz engine (had not been running for 3 years but that was because it just ran out of rego and the owner got a different car to play with instead.
and
a running AE92 with a DLI 4agze.

Unfortunatly the time and money in collecting all the parts along with having no access to welding gear and all the other things to make the swap possible the lexus got pushed aside for the AE92.

So we set into removing the old engine out of the aw and the engine out of the 92. All done no problems. Was just like I remembered, altho the last time I did this I had a 2post lift, this time I'm back rolling round on the floor. But at least its warmer here :)

Engine out, ripped the 4age into peices and kept some parts that may or may not be useful somepoint in the future. For now I'm just using the AWgearbox, see how it holds up if it gives up I still have the box from the AE92 I can try and fit instead.

Got the motor into the car, sat nicely on the mounts and called it a day. Had beers and celebrated getting a step closer to being back on the road. but then............

Me riding round on my bike all the time the car was off the road encoraged my boy Jake (who's supra was unregistered) to get his licence and buy a bike. followed by 4 other lads and every weekend we decided to go for a ride instead of work on the car. so thats where we stopped.

Now its back at my place and I can finally spend a bit of time when I'm free to try and get it running.

So this is the summary....

engine is in.
Pretty much worked out what plumbing I need to do. Using the stock mr2 thermostat housing and a slightly shorter pipe 2 of the hoses will plumb in with no effort.
The outlet with the 2 sensors on needs either an mr2 housing to be round or I just need to route a longer pipe to reach with a bend, should be easy enough.
The hose that links to the radiator cap outlet is also in the wrong location. Altho I'm pretty sure I can just route a different pipe for that as well.

I'm going to try and find the ABV mod instructions and try and remove as many unneeded vacuum lines as I can. (not sure what yet but on club 4A I found a post that said the 2 vsv's that control the fuel pressure and something else I can't remember off hand can be removed along withh the metal pipe). I'll look into that a little more.

Another thing I found was the fuel lines, on the fuel rails the feed line comes off at a different angle and using the stock mk1 line, altho it would be the right length it looks like it might foul on some of the wiring loom, gotta look at that more tho, it might be a simple fix. Or I'll go get somewhere to make up a line with the ends I need.

Oh the aircon.... I'd really like to use aircon but it seems the mk1 compressor will not quite work with the ae92 mount and the lines on the car won't mount onto the compressor from the 92 due to location. So I'll just leave it disconnected until I can afford to get an aircon company to see if they can make some lines that work.

So I think thats most of the hardware side I have a good idea on whats going to work, I'm sure I'll find more as I hook into it.


The next issue will be the wiring.
I still have to cut the 24pin ecu plug out of the AE92 but hey cutting it out is the easy part. Mating that to the body harness is going to be the annoying part as Icannot find any diagrams for the 24pin ECU, just for the 22pin. Does anyone know where I might find one. Anyone who has done this swap before, is it only this plug that needs connecting or do you know if there are any wires on the 10 pin and 18 pin plugs? I'm hoping not but you never know.

Other than that I need to work out what do do with all the power lines and splice them into the right location. The AW11 has the one fusebox in the bay with the AM1 and AM2 fuse, but this AE92 has the large powerlines going into a seperate fuse block of 3 fuses, AM1, AM2 and Alt (I think) need to check as theres no cover but pretty sure thats what it is. Hopefully its just a case of splicing some of those wires into the right location and remove one of the wires which looks like it runs power off into the AE92 body connector which I don't think I need to do. The AE92 appears to run some of the systems throught the engine loom that the mr2 doesn't, such as I have heard the wiper controls are on it somewhere, but I havn't got that far with it yet. I just want to get everything it needs before I start tearing apart the loom to get rid of connectors I don't know about. It's better to have an uncut loom to work with than one I hacked up without knowing what does what lol.

Only other thing I have is the intercooler location. For now until its running its just going to stay in the stock AE92 location, not ideal being on top of the engine but I'll change that as soon as I know everything else is done and the car drives again.

Anyway, I'm off to get some beer and relax so I can try and wake up before it gets too hot to be outside tomorrow. I'll Try and get some pics both for you guys and so I can remember what I'm doing lol.