- Great, you've done what few have attempted,
you've pulled your engine out of your car
and now you're in the same boat as my boy, Pumphrey.
You got a big gaping hole in your engine bay
with nothing in it.
Well, today we're gonna talk
about putting something in that hole
that hopefully has a little more power, baby.
- So obviously putting an engine in
and getting it to work is a lot harder
than just taking one out.
So today, both Jobe and I are gonna be
getting our knucks greasy.
We're gonna talk about engine swaps in general,
we're gonna talk about why I chose
this particular engine for this car.
And then at the end, hopefully we can prove
that our research and due diligence
is gonna pay off when it starts.
(engine vrooms)
- I'm Zach, that's James, this is Money Pit
and the 86 shall live again.
- Welcome back to the channel.
Go ahead and smash that Like button.
(thunder strikes)
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Now let's go swap this engine.
(horse neighs)
- All right, so before we go get in our knuckles greasy,
we got to talk about a few things.
First off, why you're even pulling an engine
out of your car? - I don't know anymore,
I don't remember why we did this.
- I honestly kind of am in the same boat,
but there are a handful of reasons
and we can kind of boil it down.
Sometimes things break and you need to take the engine out,
so that you can fix it.
And sometimes you just wanna replace the engine
with the same one, just a new fresh one,
but sometimes, sometimes you wanna replace the engine
with a different engine,
and there's a handful of ways you can kind of
go down that road.
So there's kind of a spectrum to swaps
and some of them are kind of easy,
some of them are in the middle,
and some are pretty hard.
First, if you're gonna be swapping an engine into a chassis
that was designed by the manufacturer to go there,
well, it's not gonna be that hard.
Then you can kind of get into more difficult swaps
where you're putting an engine into a car
that was never designed to go there.
Think like an LS swap in a Miata.
Now there's a lot of support for that stuff,
so you can usually find the parts to do what you wanna do,
but it is gonna be a little bit trickier and more custom.
And then at the full difficult end of the swap spectrum
is full custom stuff that nobody has done before.
Think Ryan Tuerck and his 4586.
(man laughs) (car vrooms)
(indistinct)
- Yes.
- So depending on where you land on that spectrum
will kind of dictate whether or not
your swap is gonna be easy or hard.
Now my man in the field, James Pumphrey,
is gonna update us on how our swaps gonna go.
Pumphrey, over to you.
- This is a fifth generation 4A-GE engine,
so it's a newer version of the engine that came in my car.
These were made from like 1995 to 2000
and came in a bunch of Corollas in Japan
and some other places around the world.
It's referred to as a Black Top because the valve cover
comes from the factory painted black.
So why did I want a newer version of my old engine?
Well, independent throttle bodies add more power,
sound very cool.
Also this is a two liter,
so compared to the 1.6 liter that we took out of it,
so a little bit more displacement, a little bit more power.
The tricky thing about putting this motor into that car
is that Corollas in 1995 to 2004 were front-wheel drive.
So this motor was meant to fit in a car
this way, this would be the front.
We are putting it in a car
this way, so this is the back. (laughs)
Basically we're putting a hamburger and a hotdog bun.
(man laughs)
You know what I'm saying? (laughs)
And that caused a few issues.
One of them being the distributor
was on the back of the motor
and would either hit the firewall
and make timing the engine pretty hard.
It's just like a space issue.
So to combat that, we got a coil on plug conversion kit,
no more distributor.
Awesome.
For that same reason, we got this really trick
coolant relocation kit to clear up some room
on the back of the motor.
Also it's very important to just do basic maintenance
on the engine before you put it in.
So we threw a whole bunch of fresh gaskets at this thing
to make it fresh.
No leaks, leaks is for geeks.
So luckily a ton of people have done this swap,
so there's tons of resources on the internet.
We've done a ton (laughs) of research,
we've talked to a lot of really qualified guys,
guys who've done this swap a million times.
So hopefully all of the work that we put into it
before today will pay off today.
I hope.
- All right, the time is now.
I'm gonna put this thing in.
Always up.
- This reminds me of my days on the railroad.
- That's funny.
- [James] Okay, you come, come down a skosh.
We're gonna have to kind of slowly come down
and push in kind of at once, so.
(upbeat music)
- Well, so we've got a couple inches of tilt left here,
so we're gonna try to max that out.
Okay, yeah, we're just gonna need to manhandle it.
If you just push down, so that clears, I'll drop.
You ready?
(upbeat music)
- It's not cleared, but clearing.
- [James] Okay, now I'm gonna bring
the whole thing down to touch.
- And push forward, you gotta push that puppy.
It's working.
Look, how strong you are.
- [James] I'm a strong boy,
I'm a man.
- Huh!
Okay, so the progress is good.
We've gotten the engine
and transmission into the general area they need to go.
And that's really the trickiest part,
you saw how much we had to tilt it
and battle with that to get it in, but it's in.
Now the trick is actually just lining up the engine mounts
with their spot on the sub-frame.
- So right down here, there should be a rubber piece
that goes between these, it's like the OEM engine mount.
I thought it was weird
that it was just gonna be metal on metal.
It turns out I was right, it is weird.
We forgot to order a part that we need
to literally bolt the engine in.
So the cool thing about working on cars is,
you make friends doing it.
We realized we need the rubber part of the motor mount,
and hit up my boy, Geo.
And he was like, yeah, I have some.
And I was like, can I have them?
And he was like, boy, when?
I was like, now if at all possible.
Car friends are good friends.
Thank you, Geo.
- (mumbles) all the way down.
Oh, beautiful. - Beautiful.
- That motor is in, dude.
That motor is in for the first time in months,
we have a motor bolted in the roller.
Really wishing I've painted the engine bay.
- But look at how much are the blacktops.
(James laughs) Now it's (indistinct)
- Okay, so when you're putting an engine back in the car,
first thing you gotta do is bolt up the engine mount,
but the second thing you gotta do...
- Is bolt up the trans mount.
I'm gonna hop under the car.
Right now we have a jack under the transmission,
I'm gonna put the trans mount back on
and then we should be like...
BattleHawks sitting pretty.
- Sitting good, we got the motor in.
The trans is bolted in,
it's late so we're gonna take a little break for the night,
come back tomorrow, connect exhaust, connect drive shaft,
figure out the electrical with the Panic harness.
And hopefully fire this guy up.
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so go get them while you still can, donutmedia.com.
Tell him James sent you.
There's actually no way that you can do that,
but maybe tell yourself under your breath
when you hit the cart.
♪ Pop-up up and down the headlights ♪
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- Hey, welcome back, good morning.
We're back in the shop,
we got Pumphrey outside cleaning some nuts and bolts.
And I'm gonna go over what we have left to do today.
There is kind of a lot of stuff,
but hopefully none of it will be too hard.
We gotta get the radiator back in,
we gotta fill this thing full of fluids,
engine oil, trans oil,
we gotta get coolant in it as well.
We've gotta do the shifter, exhaust, drive shaft,
we gotta get the wiring harness installed
and connected to all the things.
So then once all that's done, all we gotta do
is connect to our ECU, our new Link ECU
and fire this thing up.
No problem, right?
I am currently connecting the fuel line.
We got a nice new braided line
with an end fitting on one end.
So getting this connected to the fuel,
- I'm gonna hop under the car
and put the drive shaft back on.
Seem relatively right. (laughs)
Welcome back to James's Lube Corner.
Today we're lubing up my shaft.
- [Zach] Corner, baby.
- You know, is it immature?
Yes.
Is it funny?
Yes.
Sorry, I don't make the rules.
It's how it works.
With the precision of a surgeon.
- I'm putting the heater core hoses on right now,
and it's pretty tight in there.
Whatever, it just...
- So, well, Joel is goofing off in the front,
not really doing anything,
I'm gonna put the shifter back in.
Like that sucks at working on cars.
How's this go?
(upbeat music)
- All right, most of the big stuff is in place.
So now it's time to play with the spaghetti.
This is our old stock harness,
which we could try to reuse,
though we're not gonna.
- Instead we're going with an aftermarket harness
made by a company called Panic.
It's made specifically to put this
20 valve motor into the 86.
Every one of these is handmade,
and should be plug and play to get this thing started.
We're also going with a standalone ECU made by Link,
and Panic has gone ahead
and loaded up a base tune onto the Link,
so we should be able to start it
without fudging with the laptop too much.
Clean up that bay, should have painted it.
- [Zach] Should have painted it.
- Should have painted it.
- Well, let's jam that in here.
(laughs)
So I mean, there's a handful of things
that at first glance I don't really know where they go,
but the nice thing about most of these electrical connectors
is that they're unique
and you can't plug them into the wrong place.
So there's gonna be a little bit of guessing,
a little bit of check-in, but it's no big deal.
- Satisfying.
- All right, so we're down to the passenger footwell,
where the stock ECU was.
We've got our harness fished through the firewall,
and now I'm just gonna plug it into
what it needs to be plugged into.
We'll go straight into the Link ECU here,
and then these plugs will connect to our factory ones.
Okay, plugged in there.
So we've also got a built-in map sensor on the ECU,
so we're gonna have to run a vacuum reference
into the cabin straight into the ECU,
and that will let it know what's going on in the engine.
(upbeat music)
(Zach whistles)
- Oh yeah.
I'm not sure of the acoustic.
Everything is pretty much wired up,
we ran into some hurdles with some unidentified connectors,
but the dudes at Panic were awesome
and helped us out toot sweet.
So Jobe is finishing, putting the header on,
we've got to figure out exhaust,
but I'm gonna start putting fluids in this thing,
all of them: oil, coolant,
transmission fluid.
(upbeat music)
- [Zach] What?
- This little guy, this guy hasn't had anything to drink
since he left Japan.
- So we've got oil in the engine,
we got most of the coolant in the cooling system,
and then we need to put some gear oil in the transmission.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so Pumphrey got the battery in,
which means the system has 12 volts
for the first time in some time.
So now it's time to hack into the mainframe
and get our ECU up and running.
So I just plugged into the ECU for the first time,
and I brought up the Link software.
Now I have to unlock the ECU with the unlock code
that Panic supplied us,
and then we're off to the races,
got to load a map, probably do some calibration.
I don't think there's too many steps
between here and starting.
- So while Zach is calibrating the ECU, I'm gonna put on,
basically the whole reason that you get this engine,
shiny trumpets for the ITBs. (laughs)
Ah, yeah.
I really wish I painted the bay.
Just it would have taken five, six hours,
just really wish I would've done it.
Now there's an engine in there,
I can't paint it now. (laughs)
- I'd say this thing is ready to crank.
- You never know what's gonna happen,
but we know what has happened.
Okay, we took the engine out of this bird months ago.
I spent all that time, and even before that time
researching, talking to experts, making new friends.
I started relationships because of this.
We put the engine and we wrestled the crane.
- [Zach] It's working, push forward,
you gotta push that strong.
You are, you're a strong boy.
Okay, keep pushing.
- Oh! - Okay.
- Mm-hmm.
- [Zach] We wired it up,
we cleaned up gas.
- [James] I really wish I painted the bay.
- [Zach] We put on the choke that's in now.
- I really wish (mumbles)
We're gonna try and start it.
Collective fingers crossed.
Come on, Money Pit nation. - Everybody out there.
- Come on, Money Pit nation. - And you can do more in
just one. - We need this luck, baby.
We need this luck, all right. - Y'all got us.
- Did we do a good job?
- Now we're worried.
Well...
I think we're running,
I think we just need to adjust timing.
- Yeah. - In a pretty, for real way,
so let's get that figured out,
and then this thing will run.
You can see the proof.
- All right, so I just went into the ECU
and I attempted to adjust our base timing at idle.
So hopefully it will be a little bit closer
to where we need to be,
and hopefully it'll run a little bit better.
(engine starts)
Give it a little.
Well, we gave it a little rev,
then as it came back down, it shut off.
I mean, not too sure beyond that,
but I wanna make sure all cylinders are making heat.
Rear two are a lot hotter than the front two.
What does that mean?
- There is a chance that
it means we forgot to put gas in the car.
- [Zach] The most precious fluid of all.
All right, we got some gas in there.
Let's see if she acts like she wants to run now.
- Let's see. - Let's find out.
(engine starts)
(engine vrooms)
We technically got this car started,
and we're one step closer
to driving this thing every weekend.
- Shredding the streets,
and I think this thing is honestly gonna be a load of fun.
The engine is sweet.
It sounds pretty cool as is,
but it'll sound great once it's shredding.
So as we've been kind of harping on throughout,
Pumphrey did a lot of research at the beginning of this
and I did a little bit,
which is important to making a project go smoothly.
And I think we had a lot of I's dotted and T's crossed,
but you can see that we still ran into some issues,
and that's kind of how it's gonna go.
- I mean, this is a relatively simple swap,
but we did put a front-wheel drive engine
in a rear-wheel drive car.
That took a lot of little parts,
little pieces to come together.
The amount of research we did,
the number of conversations I had with people
who have done this swap before really helped out.
And I can't wait to see how fast we can do it
the second time when I pulled the engine out
to paint the bay.
(laughs)
- Well, thank you guys so much for watching.
I hope you learned a thing or two
watching us slam this engine into Pumphrey's 86.
So if you did, make sure to like this video
and subscribe to the channel.
And you can follow me on Instagram @Zach Jobe,
follow Pumphrey @JamesPumphrey
and Donut @DonutMedia.
- And if you wanna see more Money Pit episodes
or just videos in general featuring this car
or any of the other cars you've seen in the background,
let us know, we make these videos for you guys,
and it helps to know (laughs) what you wanna see.
- (laughs) Tweet us for real. (James laughs)
All right, we love you.
- I love you.
I love you.
(laughs)