Well gents I think I call this one done now. It's been a long time in the shop, due to that nasty engine failure, but it's sorted out right now with over 100 miles on the engine swap and seems to be running fine. I did get a CEL the other day for a misfire on cylinder 4, so I have to change the coil out with one from the other car and we'll probably be good to go. So here's the rundown on the project.
I bought this clean but tired out Celica with a non-running engine for just $2000 quid. After getting it back to the shop (my garage) I went about diagnosing that no-start, turns out the compression was low due to a shoddy rebuild. After much searching, a suitable doner car was found and purchased for another $2200 quid.
The engine was swapped out for the good engine, but it wasn't a straight plug and play deal, the DBW system from the newer car had to be retrofitted to the older engine, which meant the whole intake manifold, throttle body, knock sensor, and wiring harness from the new engine had to be swapped over. But that process went by quickly and without a hitch. After that it was simply a matter of mating the new engine to the transmission, and setting it back in the car. Connecting a few connectors and doing up a few bolts, and she was ready to turn over.
Before starting her up, she was treated to an engine oil change, new transmission oil, and new Toyota pink coolant.
With a turn of the key all that hard work payed off, the engine fired on the first turn, and ran great. So with that bit sorted, it was time to move on to the other parts of the car needing attention.
Those red accents in the interior, were really dragging down that lovely black leather cockpit, those parts were swapped out in favor of the factory black pieces form the donor car, and some polish and elbow grease got that face and white paint off the dash board. The rear hatch struts were swapped with good units from the donor car, and the package shelf retainer chords were fixed with some electrical connectors. To top it all off a new set of OEM floor mats were purchased on eBay and installed.
Turning my attention to the outside, the headlights were polished up to get rid of the dingy dull yellowing. The lower rocker panel plastics were swapped out for the nicer units from the donor car, and the traded paint on the rear bumper cover was removed with some rubbing compound and a good mopping. A missing roof trim piece was sourced form our donor car and the last bit was swapping out a couple of the wheels from the donor car, as one was missing it's center cap, and another had some fairly rough curb damage.
So in total, there was: * Blue Celica - $2000 * Silver Celica - $2200 * Fluids - $75 * Exhaust Gasket - $12 * Other parts from donor car = Free
Which brings us up to $4287. Now I can probably recover the complete cost of the Silver car by parting it out, and selling the head and other parts from the bad engine. But right now the car owes me almost $4300. I'm going to be a bit cheeky and price it out at $6500 on Craigslist and eBay and see if I get any bites, I checked previous sales on eBay and they range from $3000 to $10,000. So I think mine is priced right at $6500 since it's so clean and runs so nice, but the proof is in the pudding so here's the pics of the finished car.
So that't almost it for this episode, I'll be glad to close this one out when I sell it on, and hopefully put a little coin in my pocket. I will be a little said though to let this one go, I wanted one of these when they came out in 2000, but just graduating from highschool as a broke teen they were way out of my price range, so having one now has been a great experience and this thing handles awesome.
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