1977 Toyota Celica - Cali 2AR Swap

Hello, it's another wreck racing alumni ready to start my build thread here finally. I was in Wreck during the E28 and S10 builds and have since moved to California for work. Soon after, I picked up one of my childhood dream cars, a 1977 Toyota Celica Fastback with much inspiration from my friend papamilad and his 280z. 

When I bought the car, it already had a ton of suspension mods including custom AE86 front arms and Fortune 500 coilovers. It also had a stage 1 cam and dual 40mm side draft Weber carbs for a somewhat racing setup. My goal is to make a nice street build, so the suspension upgrades were a huge plus, even though the paint had much to be desired. And so I got to work bringing the car back down to the bare metal, doing bodywork, and respraying it with 2K primer, and one year later, I have a single-colored car that will soon be wrapped until I can decide on a final color (currently thinking a blue). 

Also during the year, I was able to take the Celica to a Japanese vintage car rally with the Breakfast Car Rally (BCR) up in Sonoma. It was awesome, but I felt the pain of both the race setup and carbs with multiple tunes required and my day ending with a pretty big breakdown 2 hours away from home. That is when I decided to swap out this engine with a 2AR out of a 2nd gen Scion TC. This comes with multiple advantages:

• More power
• Better trans for better ratios (W50->W58)
• EFI (no more stink) 
• Reliability
• Lighter engine going from iron block to aluminum
• Random cult following from Frankenstein Motorworks with a ton of resources and huge potential for the engine

If you don’t know, California has pretty strict emissions regulations including smog. Cars only before 1975 are exempt, so my goal is to also check all the boxes and properly do the swap to get it approved and be able to smog my car as a Scion TC. Another challenge is to use as much of the parts bin as possible and avoid custom parts. Just finishing up parts stacking now and starting work, so I hope to document most of this as possible. Here are some pics of the before and after, and also the old 20R engine.

I always thought they were awesome looking cars! Carry on!

This, I like.

Did you follow the guys build on the FMW discord who cali legal swapped his MR2? 

I'm jealous... Always wanted one as well. If only I got in one! Look forward to this build.

In reply to MrJoshua :

Yes, I am using his writeup as a starting point for the smog stuff. It seems pretty easy as long as you check all the boxes, and also gives a cool challenge.

Andrewkim said:

In reply to MrJoshua :

Yes, I am using his writeup as a starting point for the smog stuff. It seems pretty easy as long as you check all the boxes, and also gives a cool challenge.

Awesome. Is there a need to start with a manual transmission donor? If so the manual transmission  2AR TC makes for an expensive donor-but that transmission can be sold for a fair amount of money to the MR2 Spyder swap guys.

Love this. I also have a 77 Celica Liftback. Mine has a W58 and 22RE (EFI) swap. Very fun cars, eventhough I barely fit.

intersting engine choice, does the ws-50 bolt on it?

In reply to MrJoshua :

I got a 2015 manual scion TC 2AR. It came with the engine, intake, exhaust manifold, engine harness and ECU for $1k! Got lucky on that one.

In reply to physician :

Crappy photo but this is a 2AR with a w58 and a 4Y bellhousing. It centers on 2 dowels and I have drilled two new holes into the block and threw some bolts through. I will make a more comprehensive update after I finalize the mating, but yeah not a perfect bolt on. The w58 should bolt into the car trans mount and use the same driveshaft, so saving myself there.

In reply to Andrewkim :

Score on the TC purchase-looks like someone was chasing the expensive transmission.

Lol at "not a perfect bolt in"-I see an angry hole where the starter would typically mount.   That tells me a lot about your skills or confidence which bodes well for this project getting finished. 

I'm excited to follow along!

Wow. RA28, right? It's been a while since I've seen an early Celica. They have such nice lines. As a kid, I really wanted one with a V8 stuffed in (kids can be so childish) and had forgotten how much time I spent daydreaming about that build.

My vote is for yellow (Toyota code 534) - same color I wanted way back when.

Please share lots of  details on how the BAR process goes in CA to legally swap the motor. I feel Iike some folks go to the BAR judges or stewards or whatever they are before they are done in order to get advice on the way. 
 

Is the general rule that  the motor must be same year or newer with all emissions in original location on the new motor? How does that work if you are putting a FWD engine in a RWD car?

Andrewkim said:

In reply to MrJoshua :

I got a 2015 manual scion TC 2AR. It came with the engine, intake, exhaust manifold, engine harness and ECU for $1k! Got lucky on that one.

In reply to physician :

Crappy photo but this is a 2AR with a w58 and a 4Y bellhousing. It centers on 2 dowels and I have drilled two new holes into the block and threw some bolts through. I will make a more comprehensive update after I finalize the mating, but yeah not a perfect bolt on. The w58 should bolt into the car trans mount and use the same driveshaft, so saving myself there.

Watching with interest! A 81 corolla sedan just came up at a fair price. Could be a fun project, more familly friendly than the current miata :)

In reply to DarkMonohue :

In the US market is was RA29. But yes, the liftback is so cool and the UZ ones I see online look sick

In reply to GTwannaB :

The rules are pretty simple for Cali Bar swaps

1) Require the same model year or newer (US compliant meaning no JDM engines)

2) Same class of vehicle (car, motorcycle, truck, etc)

3) Requires all the donor car's emissions equipment in tact (including intake and exhaust)

4) Requires a sniffer test for acceptable emissions (needs to match or better the body model year standard)

In general I do not think there is much issues with a FWD engine in a RWD car and in fact there is a ton of k24 s2000 BAR legal swaps I have seen. The biggest challenge will be packaging when using the stock intake which is placed very inconveniently for a rwd application sometimes.

I have nothing of value to add but a thumbs up as a show of appreciation for your build.

I am making videos on this swap, although the most up to date stuff will probably be here. If you're interested in following along with what I remember to film, here is the first episode: https://youtu.be/ceuzoqUDSDw?si=G1wZ5P8x280O_AYd

Can't wait to see the result! With all the smog crackdowns in the news, it's good to see some examples of smog-legal upgrades.

I have a new youtube video here! https://youtu.be/TXGQl78Dgoo

I go over all these things in my video, but I will go into more detail here

So after some measurements, I realized that the trans and engine are 10mm too far apart for good spline engagement on the clutch. The secondary issue is the pilot bearing has to be extended to reach the end of the input shaft with the 4Y bellhousing. To solve this I got the bellhousing face machined down 8mm and added a 2mm spacer for the flywheel. I left the bellhousing un-machined where the starter was due to the fact the starter was already interfering with the flywheel, and needed to be spaced. This modified bellhousing helps fix my clutch spline engagement, places the starter in a better position, and makes it easier to install a pilot bearing. Here is what that looked like:

Since the two holes with the dowels were tapered, I had to drill out the holes again so the dowels fit back onto the bellhousing. I believe that will be all the modifications needed to the bellhousing and I would like to keep as much stock parts as possible for this swap.

With this the input shaft sits nicely into the cup of the crank seen here:

I then tapped in a pilot bearing from a MKIII supra. This bearing was chosen after measuring the input and output diameters needed for the crank and input shaft and that tapped in snuggly.

With that we have the trans and engine back together!

Adjacent to the engine swap, I am also swapping in a AE86 subframe into the Celica. This is fairly common on these cars to do a steering box to steering rack conversion and comes with the extra benefit of a better crossbar placement for the new oil pan on the engine. Here is the RA29 one (top) and the AE86 subframe (bottom).

Some issues with fitment is the AE86 is wider and has holes drilled in different places. This interferes with the pinch weld on the car so it needs to be spaced. After some measurements and online references, I figured out the back holes are in line so the lower control arm mount is in the same location front to back on the car. Then after that it was as simple as bolting it up, and then throwing in bolts with paint into the frame holes and marking where to drill the next two holes. 

For the subframe spacers, I decided to use aluminum bar for whatever reason, however, had no ability to actually cut and drill them. Rather hilariously, I 3d printed some jigs and used a hacksaw and hand drill to make them.

And the spacers were perfect. Lot of extra work, but we did it. Here is the new subframe and spacers installed with new motor mounts. Up next is to place the engine in and start making some motor mounts!

That subframe looks at home in there.

Also, hand tools for the win!