Central Valley Classic Cars

There’s a little automotive show that airs in Britain, where the hosts frequently try projects to see as they put it “how hard can it be?” Often they are forced to sum up their plans in the end as, “ambitious, but rubbish.” I think now I can safely say I identify more with them than I would prefer.

You may remember that last year I bought a 1970 Louts Europa. This was a relatively affordable mid engine car which was simple and down to earth enough that it could be modified and improved without an advance degree from MIT. Or at least it was. Until I heard about a man in Texas by the name of John Pels, who helps other Lotus owners take out (now I’m quoting here) ‘the French lawnmower engine’ that is in our Europas and replace it with a near fire breathing engine from Toyota which is a good 15 to 20 years newer.

Now I’m sure there are those of you out there who aren’t fazed by the sight of a modern engine with its myriad of wires running everywhere controlling, every aspect of the engine as well as monitoring the engines performance, its emissions and what it had for breakfast. But coming from a stand point of working on old Fold V8’s, a modern EFI engine with variable valve timing and multi port injectors, separate coils on each cylinder, sandwiched between knock sensor and mass air flow sensors and multiple oxygen and temperature sensors sends a shiver up my spine, into my brain and causes what I can only describe as a mild stroke. Not that I don’t love these advancements in technology, and don’t desire an engine with them in my car. But the idea of me installing such a engine in a car it doesn’t belong in is at best overwhelming.

That all said, I suffer from another condition. A mental disablitly summed up by the phrase “eyes bigger than my stomach.” Hence I often drag myself into places I probably for sanity reasons shouldn’t venture.

So the project began when I bought both an adapter kit from Texas and my very own Toyota 4A-GE 1.6 liter EFI engine. I went the JDM route (Japanese Domestic Market) not because I would gain a few more hp if I used 98 octane fuel (their gas is higher octane than ours and their engines are thus tuned for it) but because JDM engines are often sold for engine swaps so it is easier to get all of the components you need with the engine as opposed to buying a long block and then needing all of the electronics and accessories. I didn’t go for the most sophisticated version of the engine, the 20 Valve version. I opted instead for what’s called a “Red Top” 16 valve engine. It has multi-port EFI but no variable valve timing or multiple coils or other advancements that might have made it more complicated. Or at least that was my reasoning, I have since decided that logic was somewhat faulty as I often find many more parts for the newer 20V engines than I do for the older 16V engines. But that’s water under the bridge at this point.

The next phase of the project was to obtain all the other parts and tools I would need to do the engine swap so that I could bring the car to my father’s shop (he is a rice farmer and works on a lot of his own equipment) and take a week’s vacation to preform the engine swap. Those of you who have done it know that for a first timer, this wasn’t the best of plans. But I tracked down and bought everything I knew that I needed, and yes. . . I knew I would find out more once I got into the project. A big thanks needs to go out here to Jim Blair who has also been working on an engine swap in his Europa with the same model of engine as I am using. He had already done a lot of work getting correct part numbers for everything and he shared what he found with me, saving me countless hours of ebay headaches (that is that pain in your head that comes from trying to determine if the part in the picture that looks like it was taken with a cell phone is indeed the correct part for your car). So with a truck piled full of parts I set out for my week off work to preform what I thought would take less time then I was allotting.

Can you hear the laughter in the distance?

My good friend Niles came with me for the first weekend, and he and I wasted no time yanking the old engine out and getting the alterations done to the frame. To be honest he did most of that work, I was busy working on my new cable shift linkage set-up. I obtained plans that are online at the Lotus Europa Yahoo Forum for a system that would replace my current tube style linkage. Now in my mind, I thought, that Niles could be working on the new engine mounts and reinforcements and I would be installing my new shifter. I had already made the mechanism it just needed to be installed and adjusted. But just as some foreshadowing of things to come I’m going to admit that Niles finished the frame modification Sunday afternoon. I finished the shifter on Tuesday.

Now seems like a good time to take a moment to talk about complications. Before I jumped into this project, I talked to a man who runs a custom car shop and asked him about an engine swap like this. He told me he’d probably have the engine in and out four times checking things before it was all finished. I couldn’t imagine why he’d have to do that SO MANY times. That was before I took the engine in and out 5 times. FIVE! And I’m not sure it won’t need to come out again at this point.

Now this isn’t to say the conversion kit I got isn’t great. It is saving me months of trial and error. The problems just come from attempting to make logical decisions about how to connect things, or the proper order to ease assembly and then finding out I was wrong, but wouldn’t have known that until the engine was in place. And if any of you know anything about fabricating or modifying anything you know it always takes longer than you think it will: “Okay now I just need to connect this and this. . . .Oh wait, it doesn’t fit this way anymore, okay I’ll just grind this, weld this in, re drill this and we’re good. . . . What do you mean its 6 o’clock I’m not half way through connecting this first thing!”

What wasn’t great was the condition of the wiring harness of the engine I ordered. I was told I was getting a JDM engine out of an 86 MR2 with its wiring harness intact. That is not what arrived. I thought it was odd that the flywheel wasn’t attached to the engine when I received it, but what was more alarming was that the wiring harness was all hacked up, connections were missing and the relay box had been smashed to bits. Oddly this may have been the best thing for me. Rather then attempt what would have been a complicated wiring job if the wiring had been all in one piece I sent the harness off to Phoenix Tuning (oddly enough not in Arizona) who customized my harness to being wired into the much simpler wiring of my Lotus. Besides saving me hours or sifting through wires and buying new relays and other components, they also were able to tell me that my engine was actually out of an (around 1989) AE92 Corolla with an automatic transmission. Hence my flywheel had come separately. This is all fine, its a better engine than an 86 MR2, and at least now I know what engine I’m supposed to be getting parts for. Or at least that’s what I tell myself at night when I’m lying awake thinking about it.

But back to the swap:

I wanted to have the engine bolted in and wired up so I could test the starter relay and spark by the end of Monday. I actually got to preform that test on Thursday. What happened was, that after I finally got the shift linkage working properly (I tested it with the transmission in place so I would know it worked before I blocked my access to it with something silly like an engine) on Tuesday, my dad and I bolted in the engine. Then on Wednesday we found out that my oil filter relocation lines stuck out too far and that the headers had to be installed before the engine was bolted in. So we spent Wednesday undoing Tuesday’s work and then re-doing it. . . twice. Lets just leave it at that.

But the engine cranked over and had spark. Even after the car decided to hide its new engine beneath a cloud of electrical smoke. . the result of a stray wire which just happened to find its way to the battery terminal.

That unfortunately was about it for the week though. The last couple days was spent putting in the transmission, re-doing some more things, and putting as much of the car back together as possible as it wouldn’t be coming home with me any time soon. I still need to get a new fuel pump, run coolant lines, hook up the exhaust, clean up and mount all of the electrics as well as connect all the gauges and such before its done. My week of vacation is over and I suppose I should be really proud of what we accomplished. But I’m just left with this feeling that I’m going to spend the rest of my life pulling and re-installing that engine. Maybe I should take up bird watching. . . .