Mechanic

[L1lflip]

Does anyone know a good mechanic that does engines swaps/installation....I called jdmtuners and jdmmotorimports and some other places and they said that they don't do installations on any cars under 1988

[azrael]

What are you swapping into what?

[L1lflip]

7mge into a 83 supra

[annoyingrob]

good?

RCTS.

Cheap?

Not RCTS.

[Funkycheeze]

7mGE as in non turbo?

not worth the effort - move on to something else.

[L1lflip]

i already got the engine

[Funkycheeze]

Still not worth it. Trust me.

[Bri-Guy]

I'm thinking that for the effort to get a 7M-GE in, you won't gain a whole lot over where you started. Bit more displacement, bit more ponies. 7M-GTE swap gets you a lot further ahead from where you started.

[Dan_Gyoba]

I dunno, a 7M-GE does have a fair amount more grunt, and in a Mk2, it ought to be a reasonably fun car to drive. Not as hard core as the turbo motor, but still decent.

I would not, however, go through the expense of paying someone else to do it. It would cost too much for me. That's a project that you do on your own, maybe tapping some of the resources around here for help figuring things out, or even some people coming out to help.

Fitting the engine physically in the car, no problem. Getting it running, well, that's the trick.

Keegan has some experience in this, at least he can help you avoid some of the things NOT to do. ;)

[Funkycheeze]

My point exactly - if you can do it yourself, and you already have all the bits and pieces, then ok.

If not, it is a huge waste of time and money - way better off to either turbo the 5m, if its in good shape, or wait and swap in something with more power.

[azrael]

If you want, PM me and we'll talk about what you need vs. what you have. For what it's worth, I've done a lot of research on this swap, and even more since I tried it and failed.

[Keros]

Would it be worthwhile to point out that, as far as I know from helping Keegan, the major obsticle of this swap was the wiring. Thus, paying pheonix tuning $500 bucks to convert your harness to work with a 7M-GE would solve most of the headaches of the swap.

However, I'm sure Keegan can provide better advice than I can.

[Dan_Gyoba]

Hmmm... $500 for a wiring harness that works vs X hours with a soldering iron and wiring diagrams for a wiring harness that MIGHT work, but more likely won't. Um... For $500, that's cheap...

[azrael]

Hmmm... $500 for a wiring harness that works vs X hours with a soldering iron and wiring diagrams for a wiring harness that MIGHT work, but more likely won't. Um... For $500, that's cheap...

People make it out to be much more of an ordeal than it really is. It takes a bit of practice reading a wiring diagram, yes, but the resources exist on the vast intarwebs to make it quite manageable, actually.

I, personally, would not pay someone $500 to mangle my engine harness to plug and play with my body harness. Other people would opt to go that route. I think there is a more elegant way to do it, and that there is also an easier way to do it. It all depends on which one you want to live with after the fact.

[Keros]

I, personally, would not pay someone $500 to mangle my engine harness to plug and play with my body harness. Other people would opt to go that route. I think there is a more elegant way to do it, and that there is also an easier way to do it. It all depends on which one you want to live with after the fact.

Please elaborate?

I was under the impression that Dr. Tweak at Pheonix put out OEM quality harnesses.

[azrael]

Please elaborate?

I was under the impression that Dr. Tweak at Pheonix put out OEM quality harnesses.

I'm not arguing the quality of his work. Sure, the harness looks like it was supposed to be that way from the factory. It lets your whatever year whatever engine plug straight into your whatever year whatever car. That's nice.

I own enough cars and enough engines that, should I ever desire, I would like to be able to remove the engine and transplant it into another car. You can't rightly do that if the stock engine harness has been converted to plug into another car. You're missing stock connectors, and that's the point. It means you're doing the same thing over again.

What if something happened to my 82? Let's say someone T-bones it, or rear-ends it hard enough to write the car off. (With these cars, it doesn't take much.) Obviously, I'm going to keep my built 7M/1UZ/2JZ/1GZ/Ferrari engine or whatever and put it into another Supra. What are the odds of specifically finding a rust-free, straight, clean 82 again? Not nearly as good as finding a rust-free, straight, clean 82-86.

On my car? I'm building a jumper harness. Retain all the stock connectors, tee into any lines that you can't hit with a connector. (There might be two or three on a car.) An 82 5M should plug right back in if it ever comes to that, and the 87 7M I have will also plug in and go. On the Cressida? I'm leaving the engine harness for the 7M intact, and grafting on any mk3 body-side connectors I need to. Any 86.5-88 7M-GE will plug in, but a 5M will not go back in its place. However, if I felt inclined, I could remove the 7M and put it back into an 87 Supra.

The former is what I would call the 'right' way to do it. Modular, portable - clean. The latter I would term as less right than the way Dr. Tweak does it, but at the same time, it's not hard-wired.

This is what I meant by 'mangling' my stock engine harness. I don't care if it looks OEM, I care if it works, and I'm not left undoing my previous work if I need to put it somewhere else.

[Keros]

A very keen explaination, thanks Keegan.

That was precisely what I was looking for ;)

[L1lflip]

Found a mechanic

[azrael]

Who, out of curiosity?

[L1lflip]

the guys name is Orlando he's a friend of my dad he says he specializes in Toyota