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Isupra Conversion


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I have decided to revive my old thread with this fresh new one.

The reason being that I have not had the time to get anywhere near the car at all to get the boosting issue sorted

out. I am now starting to make time as it is dragging out too long.

You can see the original thread here....

http://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/ind...upra+conversion

So first is to remove the engine. This had to be done as I need to modify my exhaust manifold and down pipe

because I think this is what is causing the wastegate problem. I also want to tidy up the engine bay and get rid

of any unnecessary wiring etc.

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This is the messy wiring from the original installation and also the standard wiring loom that was taped up and

strapped to the chassis leg to keep it out of sight. I have already started to strip the complete standard loom

down to get rid of anything that is not needed. As it turns out, pretty much all of it is not needed. I would like

to be able to remove the factory ECU aswell but it is needed to run some of the auxillaries for the dash etc.

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I have pulled the head off the engine also as I want to get the head rebuilt with new valve seals, gaskets etc etc.

A new pair of cams may also be required as there is some bad scouring on the ones that came out of the head. I

would prefer not to touch the bottom end but it will be checked over to make sure it is in good enough condition.

I have also bought a new Autronic SM4 wiring loom so I can scrap the old one which is currently spliced into the

factory loom from the previous turbo conversion. This way I can be sure that any wiring problems that I may have

previously had will be gone. I also hope to do a wire tuck or "clean" the engine bay. In other words to re-route

as much wiring as possible in the engine bay to keep it out of sight. This will give the engine bay a clean and

simple look.

I hope to keep this thread updated regularly but forgive me if I don't get to do it too often.

As ever all comments and constructive criticism are welcome.

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Good to see it coming along.

Have you still got the angled exit zorsts? I'm pretty sure you will lose a lot of chassis strength from getting rid of 1/2 of your spare wheel well.

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Yeah still got the zorsts mate. The wheel well was all re-welded back up again but I am removing the sound system so I can put the Battery in the boot, add some strengthening in the way of strut braces etc and ultimately save weight. I already have the front and rear japsai under chassis braces fitted which make a big difference.

Will be attacking more of the wiring loom tomorrow hopefully so will have some more pics to show the extent of the wiring.

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Sounds good mate.

With the wiring did you have the loom from a manual or auto car ? Im getting the easy greddy e mang so it will be plug and play with the wiring loom im getting but is it hard to get all the lexus dash sorted ? If it is im thinking i might just scrap it and get some aftermarket rev counters etc.

Good to see this is getting finished :D

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To be honest mate I haven't done much in the way of the dash yet. I have got my rev counter running from the tacho output on the Autronic though as the supra engine gives a different signal to the standard IS engine. My temp sensor stopped working but I think that is due to a different sensor being fitted in the rad pipe so I will have to look into that. My speedo also reads about 20% fast but this is due to the different gearbox mated to the standard IS diff. I should really get a supra or IS300 diff which have different ratios and would bring the speedo back into line although there are other possibilities.

Other than that I think everything else will be run from the Autronic but I'll have to wait and see what is best.

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More updates. This post contains lots of wiring pics that prob won't interest many people but

I'll post them anyway.

Today I stripped down the factory engine loom right back to the ECU. Nearly all of it was removed.

The only factory engine wiring that was left in place was the alternator, starter motor, reverse

sensor and speedo sensor wires. Everything else runs from the Autronic now. The pics below show the

loom in various stages of stripping until finally I have only what I need to use. The remaining

cut wires are taped up in blue tape inside the ECU box.

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These two pics show the difference in thickness of the loom after I was finsished with it LOL

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After I was happy enough with that for the time being I decided to move onto the old Autronic

wiring loom. This was originally spliced into the factory loom from when the turbo conversion was

done on the standard engine. The same loom was then cut into again for some changes when the supra

engine was first fitted. This caused more problems than it was worth as the wiring was messy and

had to be traced back to both ECU's. Even more cutting and fiddling needed done when I thought I

had some bad wiring issues. To get around this I have decided to replace the complete Autronic

loom and start from scratch. So the Autronic wiring had to be removed too. You will see in the

pic below I have outlined some of the Autronic wiring. It is generally the wiring that is covered

in insulating tape LOL. I had to also strip this down bit by bit to ensure I didn't just cut

things without knowing what they were. This will make my life easier when re-installing the new

loom. This wiring is from under the Battery tray where it comes through the bulkhead.

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This is the loom removed from the car and below that is the new loom, taped up and ready to feed

through the bulk head

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I obviously can't install the new loom until I get the engine back in place so it will stay as is

for a while. Next I want to tidy away some of the wiring aroun both sides of the engine bay and

give it a good cleaning through out. I would like to remove all of the wiring but unfortunately

the main part of the factory loom that travels up the passenger wing and through the bulkhead will

have to stay put. There is not enough length on the loom to re-position it out of sight and it is

simply not practical to comletely re-do this loom just to lengthen it. I am not that worried

though as it is just one big pipe of wires running along one side and looks neat enough for me.

There are other bits though that will be hidden and tidied which should make a noticable

difference.

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After reading all the threads related to your project, I have only one word...RESPECT!

Mostly for sharing all this knowledge and troubleshooting with everyone here. Thank you!

I am thinking of making this exact transplant, but having almost none of your knowledge (this is a shame being a mechanical engineer myself), I dont know if random mechanics will spent so much time to fine-fit this engine and all the things needed to my car. The one and only workshop here in my area, that have already done 2-3 of your so called "Isupra modifications" will ask for 18.000 Euros (that is about 14350 GBP) for everything shorted out. Is this a fair price by your experience so far?

I bet the smile in your face driving your car now worths a million....but being short on money myself...I am still staying on the "thought".

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It really depends on what setup you want to run and what parts are used. For a straight swap to a standard 2jz-gte engine with standard turbos and ECU then it would be cheaper than to do a big single turbo conversion too. This because there are are many more custom fabricated parts needed for the single conversion. There is also a lot more wiring to be covered when going for a single turbo. Putting a price on this work is very difficult as there are so many variables and there are always suprises along the way that you wouldn't have anticipated. Then there are things like the aircon. With the supra engine in place the aircon will not work on the IS. There are ways around this but have the workshop in question taken this into account?

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I am thinking going for stock engine with stock setup. If it is able to produce still 300Hp....it would be fine for me to have this power on the rear wheels.

(ok ok...I know....I will want more after 1 month). A/C is an issue in Greek hot summers...

Sorry for being offtopic in your thread.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Having never cut up or really opened up a car before I just didnt realise how many wires there are in there, keep up the good work. Looks tough stuff, but from your pics it looks alot cleaner :D

I forget how complicated things are I just get in start it and go lol...

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Update,

So I left off with the new Autronic loom to be fitted but I also wanted to clean or wire tuck the engine bay. This would only ever be done to a certain degree as I am not prepared to go to some of the insane lengths that I have seen some show cars doing just to hide wires.

So to start with the driver side of the engine bay. This side is simpler to do as the main loom all comes from the passenger side of the car and then travels to the driver side so I didn't have lots of looms here to work around.

The first pic shows the wiring outlined in red that I wanted to move and the yellow line indicates it's new home.

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Below shows the loom in it's new routing

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I have outlined a patch on the metal body below which is a large lump of glue which used to hold the ballast for the HID's. This had to be scrapped off.

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First a quick clean up of the engine bay with some degreaser

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This is a pic of the passenger side of the engine bay. I have tidied some wiring here and gave it a quick once over with a cloth but that is all for now as I still have a lot of work to do on this side and there's no point in tucking wires away until I have all te wiring routed where I want it

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Now to feed the new Autronic loom through the bulk head. It was already taped up but I want more protection for the loom so I bought some cable tidy and started to wrap the loom. This was done from inside the car.

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Through the bulk head and into the engine bay under the Battery tray. The hole will also be sealed with plenty of silicon to stop water etc and also hold things tight to stop movement.

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The remaining length of the loom is now spread out across the engine bay for the fun to begin.....

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Seperate from the Autronic loom is the wires for the Blitz boost controller and also the wiring for the driver side HID headlight that I hade removed when tucking the wires here. I have now re-routed these to items across the back of the bulk head but they are lower down than before to keep them out of sight. You will see the cable arrowed below which is clipped to the existing loom already fitted

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These then follow the main loom in it's new position around the suspension turret. Youe will see below the boost controller soleniod mounted in postion.

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I have started to sort through the new loom and have taped all the connector plugs from the old loom to the corrosponding wires on the new one so that when I come to actually wiring it in, it will be much easier as everything will be there. This also helped me to position each bunch of wires in the correct general direction that they need to go to get to right sensors etc.

I have a new oil pressure and temp gauge that need wired in and then I can start taping and cable tidying each individual 'smaller' loom which will also allow me to postion them correctly. I will then have lots of open ended, labelled wires already in the right place so I can easily connect them up after the engine is back in.

Speaking of the engine itself I had some bad news about that. After stripping the head off the engine I took it to Marty and Colin at Supra Specialists Ireland. They know these engines very well and can source parts quickly and easily for them. I got them to check the engine over and after taking the bottom end apart it was found that every one of my bottom end bearings had spun. This had caused the con rods to oval and rendered them useless. My head was also scrap as the cams had badly scoured the mounting caps and the head itself so it was now useless too. Luckily enough I had a spare head in the house and this was deemed in good nick so it is being used.

For the bottom end, new rods were needed and luckily again, another customer who I know kindly donated his used standard rods and pistons which are also in good nick as he is going for a forged rebuild. (thanks again Darragh). So the spare head and pistons have pulled me out of a big hole as I had hoped to get a clean bill of health for the block and just bolt it all back in again but hey these things happen. The engine is being built back up after the head and block get a light decking and all new parts used including a full toyota gasket kit, new oil pump, Clevette bottom end bearings, ARP head bolts, full piston ring set etc etc. I am now safe in the knowledge that my engine block is fresh and healthy so at least it can be counted out if there are still some problems come mapping time. I will also not be worried about throwing a hefty amount of boost at the engine as I know it will easily take 800BHP+++++ all day long. 600bhp will be plenty for me though LOL.

For now I will be continuing with the wiring side of things and once the engine is in and wired up I have to move onto my exhaust. The manifold needs modified for the new wastegate position, a new down pipe needs made for this reason too and the rear section where the exhaust splits into twins will be re-done so the single 3" pipe will split into two 3" pipes instead of two 2.5" pipes as it is now.

Gav.

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Sounds good stuff mate, lucky about the spare bottom end and rods :D Are you ever gonna bring this over to the UK, im guessing JAE is out of the question only being a few weeks away.

I'm taking my car up on sunday so work can being yippy.

Is your car going to be a quick road car/show car or will it be seeing any tracks ?

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Elliot I have being trying to get the car finished to get it over there to some shows since early last year lol. Just never got the time to get near it. I deffo still plan on getting over as I would like to get to WIM aswell.

As for it's use well it will still have a full interior but maybe some front bucket seats and harnesses. It will deffo be taken to track days as much as possible as I wouldn't waste the work I have put it. The boot will be stripped of its sound system though to save weight with hopefully a Battery relocation to the boot. I will also attend what shows I can as the car will become a promotional vehicle for my new business that will be starting next year.

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Elliot I have being trying to get the car finished to get it over there to some shows since early last year lol. Just never got the time to get near it. I deffo still plan on getting over as I would like to get to WIM aswell.

As for it's use well it will still have a full interior but maybe some front bucket seats and harnesses. It will deffo be taken to track days as much as possible as I wouldn't waste the work I have put it. The boot will be stripped of its sound system though to save weight with hopefully a battery relocation to the boot. I will also attend what shows I can as the car will become a promotional vehicle for my new business that will be starting next year.

Good stuff mate whats your new business venture ? Or is it secrete squirrel stuff at the moment LoL

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I have been continuing on with the wiring in of the new Autronic loom but it is really just a lot of routing wires together in groups, spiral binding them and then securing them to stop movement and wear and tear. Rather than fill the thread with lots of pics of tiny differences I will wait until there is a noticable improvement and then post some more pics. For now though I just have the pic below of the power cable for the starter motor. This was originally lengthened but the extra cable length was never protected. I wanted to sort this as this cable does not get fused and runs straight to the live Battery terminal.

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I also decided to have a quick look at my manifold as it was needing modified for the new wastegate position. My intentions were to cut off the wastegate feed pipe and re-route it towards the rear of the manifold as opposed to down underneath the manifold. This would then allow me to bolt the wastegate on directly beside the down pipe coming from the turbo and route the dump pipe straight into the down pipe. The reason for doing this is to shorten all the piping and so the wastegate is not fitted way down below the engine. The shorter these pipes are, the more responsive is the wastegate in it's function and it will also be more precise.

Upon inspection of the manifold I have found that it has cracked on one of the runners. This is still even after I welded on strengthening braces on the bottom of the manifold. It is now scrap. You can see the crack in the pics below

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This prob isn't a bad thing as the quality of this manifold was always doubted and it would have been a nightmare to modify to the way I wanted. Marty and Colin in SSI have found another manifold made by a guy in the states which is exactly what I am after and positions the wastegate exactly as I want it too. It also clocks the turbo slightly so the induction pipe doesn't fowl on the water pipe coming from the side of the head. This will all become clear later when it is in place and I will post some pics to show what I mean.

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You're doing what? Sticking a 2JZ-GTE in an IS?

The first thing I think about is WHY but I'm not gonna go there.

I have a Supra so I'm a little sad that another Supra has died but happy that its heart goes on in another life.

Good luck with the project

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Latest....

Had a couple of hours today to do some small jobs so I decided to continue on with the wiring but more specifically the Battery re-location side of things.

The reason for the Battery re-location is to make some room in the engine bay. This then makes the whole bay much simpler and less cramped and messy looking. I am going to use the space where the Battery used to be to fit my power steering resovior and the Bosch ignition module for the coil packs along with the relay to power them.

I started with the huge 1/0 gauge power cable that is coming through the bulkhead from the Battery in the boot. This obviously can't be left to dangle on it's own as it is live and not fused. It can't be fused for the starter motor and alternator cables. I will be using a Battery cut off switch in the boot for safety.

Below is a pic of a quick bracket that was made up to hold the main power cable and bolt the various outputs to. This may be changed to a proper power distribution block but I will see how it goes.

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The ground cable will either be extended to the boot to bolt straight onto the Battery or a suitable grounding point will be used in the engine bay.

Next was to move the power steering resovior bottle.....again. This bottle is located on the driver side of the IS engine bay as standard because the pump is on that side. As the power steering pump on the supra engine is on the passenger side I had re-located the resovior to the postion in the pic below. Although this worked fine it wasn't ideal as the rubber hoses would fowl with the inlet manifold and the ECU box. I wasn't happy about this so I will be buying new longer hoses and routing them correctly.

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Below shows the new position of the resovior. It now has it's own 'space' and I can route the hoses below the inlet manifold where there is now much more room due to the old wiring loom having been removed

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With the new resovior bottle in place all that is left to fit in this area is the Bosch ignition module and it's power relay. These two items were originally placed on the front of the passenger suspension turret on an aluminium plate to dissapate heat. Again this worked fine but was messy looking and meant that wires were being fed through the strut brace brackets which I didn't really like either.

I knew that I needed some sort of aluminium plate mounted in here to fit the ignition module but as the main wiring looms were already here it was making it very difficult to fabricate something that would be professional and neat. I decided to make use of the factory Battery tray as it wasn't needed anymore. This Battery tray was already the perfect shape to be fitted here around the wiring and the mounting points were already there so back in it went. I can now simply cut a rectangular piece of flat aluminium plate to fit straight into the top of the Battery tray. This will then be my mounting surface for the ignition module and relay. I will also feed the wires through drilled holes ( a la boot install false floor idea) to tidy things further.

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I ran out of time at this point so will continue soon.

On another note I got the phone call from Marty at SSI to say they were ready to complete my engine rebuild and they wanted the rest of the parts ie; sump, cam covers, timing belt pulleys etc etc. I dropped the parts off on saturday and had a look at the block which was already built up and it looks pretty good. some exterior parts need cleaned up again to keep the engine bay looking smart so I will do this when I get the block back. I will also be able to complete the wiring in of the Autronic loom with the engine in place.

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