Just another corolla - DIY Caterham frame 7age and ´93 Liftback RWD

If this 3rd 7age will not live for more then a day or for a year for that matter I will toss everything 4a/7a out the window and never look back...

To day I still have my aluminum 200hp v6 engine that i was going to use as a first 4wd/rwd swap but when fitting the E250 4wd gearbox from a rav4 1998 did not fit because of the rear/center diff housing (for the driveshaft to the rear diff) on the back of the block. It missed by 7cm and the block was only 4cm away so it would never fit even after grinding away i would be grinding a hole in the block.

1MZ-FE v6 from toyota avalon 1997


E250 4wd gearbox from 1998 rav4 with center lockable diff


I have had this stuff for more then 5years now and just a year ago i found out that a lexus Rx suv has the sane engine and comes with 4wd auto transmission so i went on ebay and found a picture of the center diff to see if i could use that on my E250 gearbox and make everything fitt.

Low and be hold my savier


So yes this is now my backup plan. 200hp v6 rwd

I miss 3 days on this forum and i miss all this awesomeness

Loving everything so far... and that v6 ...

You would be the only person that i know off with a 4wd v6 corolla, i have seen 4wd corollas & I have seen 2 v6 corollas, but not a 4wd v6

I can't wait for the madness... I mean awesomeness to begin

Yea thanks bud

I covered this v6 stuff in my first two pages but not in details. I just gave up on it when the E250 gearbox did not fit directly and went for that 3sfe engine with 4age ecu and harness. In every aspect of the 4age and 3sfe ecu they are just the same but only the rev limit in 4age is littlebit higher. The ecu pinout was almoast identical but the engine never ran just cranked over. Couple of times it felt like it was going to run but then did not. I later found out why. I sold the engine to a friend and he rebuilt it from 3sgte parts i also sold him. When he opened the motor he saw that the headgasket had blown equally between 1-2 an 3-4. So thats why it never ran and when i thought something had to be terribly wrong inside the dizzy and even bought another to make shore it was not.

Thats when i went with the 7age idea and been a rollercoaster of engine teardown and builds for going on 3years now...
if only this v6 and E250 had made it togeather in the first place?

Back to the 7age build

Im only getting an hour a day into this crap so it is taking for ever to finish this. Im generally about a day rebuilding a motor and swapping them.



Done with the exhaust side. Now the intake side



All done now getting the surface ready for boltdown


Messured the length of all the headbolts, all with in spec

"if only this v6 and E250 had made it togeather in the first place"

but you wouldn't know all the things you do now, would you?

Well, yes i do actually. Apart from my engine hobbies at home i used to rebuild engines every day for a MMC Diesel engine company here in my country sometimes  going all over the place fixing them on the spot if i had to. I have been and still am studying mechanic engineer im just taking the school extra slow.


7age/4age
When i was around 17years old i bought a huge amount of 4age 16v engine's and stuff from ae86 along with all of the ae92 and ae95 GTi's i bought and sold for parts but kept the engines. I rounded them all up ones and if i recall right i had about 18 4age engines and then started selling them one by one. Some of them i held on to and still do. I have around 8-9 engines that are all in bids in boxes and are waiting to be rebuilt.


Im the most 4age 16v enthusiest in my country. If i see a 4age stuff for sale i usually try to buy it. I dont know why i love them so much. They are real good on power and happy reving engines. Low on fuel and still in present day you can get parts for them.



My fantasy was to turbocharge a stock/rebuilt 4age with low boost turbine and see how good i could get it on stock internals with everything stock and little by little start to add bits to it like injectors, fmu, fpr, walbro.


i have read about so many turbo builds in the past and always wanted to do one. I got a little taste of it when i boosted my stock 230.000km driven 7afe engine that i swapped into my G6 4wd couple of years ago.


It was a scrap parts turbo build using a used 12a turbine of a 1jzgtte with wastegate load spring at 6psi boost. 220cc green 3sfe stock injectors, home made tubular manifold made out of my dads extra black iron plumbing pipes and bents, 2.25" exhaust, mazda 323 turbo intercooler and pipes that i scrapped togeather from our local scrap yard...


Video.
I have a video of it running but cant paste the link address it was like 500words long link

That thing worked really well and i want to do it again and im really thinking about taking a step back and cool down a bit in the 7age rebuild and build everything around the engine to make it turbo befor putting it back into the blue turd. 7agte sounds so maad.

Headgasket copersprayed


Took couple of selfies bolting the headbolts snug


Then marking all of them


Then finished torquing them down 2x 90°


Head finally there.


Camshafts in



Then just some more stuff then called it a night and went to bed



Total working hours so far, around 5.

Wow that awesome, tbh I think you are one of the only people I know who has that many 4age / 7age engines lol

Took the saturday off and went with the family down town to watch our Icelanding rescue team and the coast guard "rescue" our precident out of the ocean in a helicopter... jeij fun



Then checked out the search and rescue glacier offroad vehicle
We got alot of these "trucks" here


Then spent the evening chilling and netflix.

When everybody went to sleep and i went out and finished the engine


I timed the new engine in to be extra safe.


Nice to have the inner camshaft timing notch for a reference when timing those camgears.


Dug up my t3/t4 cast iron hedders



I have couple of these TD04. They come in so many cars. These one have a 3bolt flange on the hedders side and two of the bolts fit so i have to weld one nut for the 3rd bolt or get a new t3/t4 exhaust housing on ebay i might actually do that to make this look good.



Its sitting little to high dont think its room to close the bonnet.
Might need to turn it 180°

Awesome work as always

Started moving stuff over from 7age nr.1 and nr.2

Waterpump and pipes


Then remembered one of them had a leak on the back of the engine where i could not see where it was coming from. Woulden you know it i found out where!


Sneaky, i actually had thrust my hand back there when it was in the car but did not feel this part dripping. So i took the other waterpump  and pipes off and used them instead



Then robed the intake of nr.1


Now stock 182cc injectors are in also some plastics and wheels


Then turned the TD04 180° and small part of the intake hit the valve cover so i took it a part and im going to grind the intake for clearence.




Then remember i had another TD04 somewhere that had everything still on it like wastegate and downpipe and started looking into boxes and found it and tried it on. It also need little bit of grinding



This could turn out quite nice



Then it was time to take the new 7age out of the engine stand to make room for 7age nr.2 so i could rob the clutch assembly and E57 gearbox but had to rob the gearbox from 7age nr.1 because it had a new clutch bearring the other one did not so i ended up using everything of nr.1. But it was good that i took the gearboxes off because im going to rob the crank from nr.1 over to nr.2 to make that hole again in case the new one exsplodes...



This is getting exited

I cant wait for the final result

Then wait no more...

This is how i roll



It is extremely hard to make it fit togeather when your alone
This how i do a two men job


Finally all to geather



And over the lift and to the door and into the dolly



And into the turd



Had a problem finding the right time and finally in 6th try i found the correct spot.


And now a video of thst 6th time, finally running
and in the video it kept reving to 3000rpm wich i know has something to do with a plug somewhere but i did not find it on google so i started spreying the intake for vacum leak and found a pipe thst was unplugged. Now its running 2000rpm as it should to warm up.

Tomorrow i hope to change out those turbo heddrs for the stock ones to drive the car littlebit. Maybe i will take a video but i will have to drive safe while the piston rings have to sand them selfs from the honed cylenders.

damn bro, you work fast!

I don't pork around...

I can see that lol

So the engine is leaking coolant in not one place and not from two places but three places!! I cant catch a brake with these cooland leak's. This also happent to engine nr.1 and nr.2.

I will fix them later. I had to drain the coolant from the engine. I already fixed one of the leaking hose on the back of the engine. The other two leaks are the header core inlet hose bracket bolted to the head and the god dam water pump again. I have to lift up the motor to gain room to take it out and glue the sandwitched pump togeather properly!!!! Starting to hate cooland so bad

I have not driven it yet so dont know if i everything works or not. I got fed up when i found out about the pump today and went home to figure out how to turbo the engine. Opened all of my boxes and bags trying to find what i had turbo related...

bags of hoses and retainer clamps and intercooler pipes


Found my hydro ebrake that i bought almoast a year ago just when engine nr.1 gave up, hopefully i will be able to use it this year.


I had these 7mge supra 312cc injectors in the engine nr.1 when i first started driving and found out the hard way that they did not work to good, engine boged on high rpm's around 4500-5000rpm then just cut out around 6000rpm. I thought my timing was the case and for a wheek i was constantly pulling and retarding the adjustable cams and the dizzy then switched to 200cc injectors and the corolla was acreaming to 8000rpm


I also have these 4agze 365cc injectors so i think im al set regarding fuel and also the intake in these 4age's contain a extra injector for when the Tvis system kicks in it fires extra fuel into the intake!


Now figuring out how to lay the charge pipe. Im going to run with out an intercooler. Im going to be running 6psi of boost to start with i know its always better to cool the airflow and i will plum for that later. I have around 6 intercooler laying around as is but need more pipes to plum to and from them.


Also found an boostgauge i did not know i had so only thing left is boost controler, new downpipe and a intake of somekind


I will need to go shopping for some downpipe material and this extra stuff later. Now i want to just make it run, stop leaking goolant and dfive it for more the a month hahaha

I know that feeling, getting so close towards the end and then something else happens lol

So i fixed the coolant leaks and fixed the waterpump then start the engine and let it run waited for it to warm up then adjusted timing to 10° ans as soon as i knew everything was running right and i was about to close the bonnet and take the drive i notice littlebit of greyish smoke coming from the back of it, opened up the bonnet again and saw this!!!!!!!

Oil burning on cyl 4. And oil bubbles coming out when running.


Im telling you guys, cars will kill you on the inside little by little until there is nothing left to kill, you die! Im about to set this car on fire.
I cant catch a brake.

To morrow i will compression cheack all of the cylenders hoping it is not the piston rings, but im hoping this is just my fault putting intake valve stem seals on exhaust side and vise versa... then i need to change them all again f$ck my life. What if there is a crack in the head... lol just my luck then

sonur wrote:

Im telling you guys, cars will kill you on the inside little by little until there is nothing left to kill, you die! Im about to set this car on fire.
I cant catch a brake.

Story of my life bro

This build is leagues beyond what I understand, but from what I've read and seen this build looks badass man. I'll definitely be referring to this thread later on haha

Thanks  im always glad i can help out others and to make others feel/see how much fun it is to build stuff.

Well this day turned out to be the best one so far

But first, the night at the same day as hell striked, i was feeling so down so i went out to check on the next mission, the real 7agte if i ever get over that oil burning face, listing down what to buy


Then at work the next day found some 32mm pipe material, from the trash, that i could use for coolant rerouting behind the injectors and to the radiator to make room for the turbine.


I went to school this morning on my kawasaki and at lunch i  was going to check inside all of the autostore's for a special impacked tool to get valve retainers off the valves with out taking off the head so i could drive the corolla hopefully soon so i went on the bike to be faster around the town.


But i could not find it anywhere and no one had even seen or heard of this tool ever. But i found it on amazon and i was going to buy it and wait for it to arrive but i got it in my mind that the trouble with this oil leak burning could only be from two things, damaged piston ring when i inserted the pistons into the block or damaged valve stem seal.

So to rule either one out i could compression test the cylenders to narrow it down wich one it could be. So i went to the garage and did all cylenders, starting on nr.1 cyl.

(Picture of cylender 4)


All of them messured around 123psi and the highest of them all was cylender nr.4  so now i knew what i had to buy online and so i put the sparkplugs back in and fired up the shit box, just to feel the pain again but woulden you know it an hour later still running the whole time not a single oil smoke/burn/smell/bubble's came from the head

So i finally took it for a spin around the block. Did not have the car registered but to hell with that. I had to be sure that this oil burning was over for good. And it seams to be gone. Have no idea how why?

First testdrive
https://youtu.be/1H1sTLcWGTY


One happy guy writing this post, now finally that ebrake is going in

I went to the shop to buy fittings for the ebrake to day


Then went to my storage garage and picked up couble of boxes with mostly toyota coolant hoses in it


And rouited the coolant pipes to the back of the valve covers


Not 100% done, have to fit it into the car to cut to final length


Grinded the charge part of the turbine


Then picked up my 18" wheels will fit new tires on them soon but cant put them under yet, my left front fender is smashed hace to buy another one then fit the 18"



Hope you enjoy

Looking awesome as always bro

Thanks toybro

Yea, im super relaxed right now, just finally happy that its running again. But im letting it sit for couple of days befor getting the number plates.


I just dont whant to drive it much on bald tiers so i bought these 15" under e30 bmw i found online



The same day i did the first testdrive in the blue turd i got a super fixing power and started fixing alot of cars i had and ny friends cars.

Fwd wagon 4afe ae100 "rat rod project" fixing in a new timing belt




Towing my other friend ae100 hatch home with no brakes, they gave up when he was going through smog hahaha, the smog guy had to help him get the corolla out of the shop and put a banned sticker on his registration. Talk about luck, he has been driving it for a year and the brakes give up going through smog!


I might end up fixing his brakes also next wheekend...

Then i bought a "flip" corolla, to fix and sell.
Ae111 facelift 3zzfe 1.6l with the one and only bad rep gearbox main bearring rattle so i dug up my 4age ae92 fwd gearbox and im swapping internals over or i might just swap bellhousing's.




Those ballbearings are trying to leave the party


About the Turbo setup, im trying to find the right fitting for the oil feed to turbo and a nice sandwitch fitting for the return line from turbo, so i will need to drill the aluminum top half of the oil pan for that.

Hopefully next time i post there will be alot of new good stuff

So. . .

It started snowing. Even more now while im posting, took this photo this morning, so im really thinking about pluggin the front axles back in to make it 4wd again and drive it.
Im getting stuck on my daily chrysler voyager 2004 everywhere.


I found a good spot for the hydro ebrake, i just love how it sits



I will probably mark the holes and weld bolts upside down and stick the ebrake on top of them then use nuts to thigning down.
Or i will cut a metal plate and weld it into the floor and bolt it to that.


Then i test fitted the td04. I have grind littlebit more



Number plates tomorrow hopefully