What's up with the TE27???

First of all I have to apologize. If it's not one problem it's another!! My 3 year old son wiped the last 50 or so pics out of my digi-cam. to top it all off the 2TG only made it about 100 miles before all 4 exhaust valves hit the pistons. I only managed to bend one valve if their is any good luck to be said about that! So here is the lowdown and how the car sits as of this evening!

05-15-2004

Arrived at local pull-n-save ready to pull any 3TC available and drop it in the TE27. Found a 81 corolla wagon auto with only 80,000 on the odometer. the outside of the engine would not have been worse! valve cover gasket appeared to have been leaking for about 10 years. internals checked OK. could not help to think that I have enough time to get motor freshened up in time for the drift showoff coming up here in a few weeks. I ordered all new bearings, thrust washers, rings and a set of ARP rod bolts. drop the motor off at the Toyota Dealership to have one of the lead techs "freshen" up the motor. that same night I decide to tear down the old 3TC to find out it is really a 13T. if you have ever seen one of these it

If you are familiar with any "T" series motor you will notice that this setup is weird!! the pistons are domed toward the front of the motor and have a "sub cylinder" behind the spark plug (see hole near sparkplug) This is Toyotas old technology "lean Burn motor" in stock format from the reference material I have drug up makes 95HP which comparing to the normal stock 3TC 75HP. I decided to take this motor and head to the dealership to see what is salvageable. Did I mention that this motor was knocking really bad? I figured it was was beyond repair but if I can get away with the pistons and the 13T head in a 3TC block I figured I have made out pretty good! 

06-12-2004

The tech has been slammed with work and has not had much time to get the motors apart to see until today. the 3tc I pulled at the junkyard was in great condition, the really shitty news (depends on how you see it) there was no bottom end problems on the 13T. all the bearing looked immaculate and the wrist pins were in good condition. We didn't look ant further than the followers must be beat to hell. I should know more in the next few days. so basically the 13T was not in as bad a condition as I thought but may not be useable if their is another problem other than a bent pushrod or mashed follower.

 OK I will put things in perspective for you! I spent $500.00 and traded my Mikuni's for a 2TG that lasted less than 100 miles, $220 for Dyno tuning, a Broken Laptop $82.00,LOL  (dropped on floor at Dyno) I spent another $125.00 on a motor from the junkyard $100.00 on 3TC Mikuni Manifold so I can run the ITB's and another $350 on gaskets, bearing, bolts, rings and so on just to come to this conclusion. the upside is that the 13T pistons did fit a bit sloppy in the bores. I am assuming the person who previously rebuilt the 13T honed the bores to far, the pistons pretty much fell to the ridge when the rods were not bolted to the crank, that explains the Blow-by! The other upshots to this are not certain yet but if they come to fruition I will post them!

Autronic EFI

Now that I have had a few hours to get in depth with the EFI. I am really loving it! the start up and tuning has been a breeze. the only problems I have had have been of my own making. with the Autronic you have to add a sync reference shortly after TDC and also run the normal distributor. I decided to modify the dizzy for the extra signal needed. I dismantled the dizzy and cut off all the springs and arms that attach to the bottom part of the inside housing and rigged in a pickup. well my mod didn't work at first! I spent a full day of work trying to deal with my stupid mods. I eventually ended up redoing the pickup and it worked great until the motor started bending valves! the bad part is that I used a big distributor since it cleared the manifold on the 2TG. now that I am running the (1)3T(C) head I have to go with the small dizzy. that was not as big of deal as I thought it would be! all the guts swapped over from big to small dizzy no problem! I just had to drill a few holes in the bottom of the housing to mount the pickup! Now that I am understanding of the system a little better I can't even imagine going with a Haltech or lesser of the brands! I can't wait to get the fresh motor back on the dyno to get it tuned! I pray I will not have any more nightmares and that I can make it to the driftshowoff in the Mango!!

07-03-2004

For once I am the bearer of good news!! The motor was installed in time and running in time for driving the 100 miles to the driftshowoff! the bad news WAS I had two bad spark plug wires and the first day on the dyno only managed a whopping 65 HP. well that 2 hours didn't go to a total waste! once I figured out what the problem was I hastefully removed the Magnecor plug wires off of my DLI 4AGZE and tested. all worked good but the engine was running so rich it was really bad!!! after a quick tweaking of the ECU I called MAC Autosport for more Dyno time on Saturday. The bad news was they were booked up but if I hung out for awhile they would get me on for some tuning. at the stroke of closing time they were getting a 550HP DSM off the Dyno and Nick Called me up ready for my time! DAMN I was so happy to see the first pull was already at 30HP more and running really rich! 1 hour later I managed to pull 107HP and 99.5 FT LBS of Torque out. I do have to thank, Nick, Skippy, Matt and Bill for helping me out so much!! The motor is not completely tuned yet but I will have it when the budget allows.

The TE27 Is officially back on the road and running great! just need a alignment for now and then time to finish up the rest of the Autronic toys like Launch Control and Traction control which would have really come in handy on the Highway coming back from the Showoff in the Torrential rain last weekend. So Stay tuned and get more updates!! and more pics!!

Here is a picture Courtesy OF COSR.com from the Drift Showoff