For those that do not know... I am doing a 3.5 swap.

While I am doing this, there are about 10,000 things to "do while you are in there."

SO I decided to overhaul the engine bay. I'm not great at keeping a work log of pictures, cause I am too busy actually working. But here is a general idea of what I have been up to over the last month.

Here is a shot of the engine bay right before I pulled the engine out:


So, umm, not tooo bad--until you pull the engine. Here is the driver side fender:


Right. Now you see the 10 years of Ohio hell I have been through. Here is the passenger side:


Now I had my work cut out for me. I pulled off as many accessories as I could. Sanded from 80 to 120 to 240 grit, primer'd and painted. It's just rattle-can paint, since this is the engine bay and mostly covered.

Below is the same drivers and passenger fenders, after the paint job:





Big difference. I am glad I snapped some pics and also glad I took the time.

 

I was also bothered by how the brake, A/C and PS lines corroded up. This is a sample of what they ALL looked like before some polishing with 2000 grit sandpaper:


And after the sanding (and I mean light sanding) and polishing:


I also cleaned up some brackets. Anything that wasn't too far gone, I just polished up. Like the Power Steering adjuster bracket. Here is a before and after:


Anything that need to be sanded or blaster was sanded to bare metal, primered and painted a gloss black. Here's an example of an untreated bracket and a finished bracket:


Nealoc once said "a transmission case so clean you could eat off it." SO I took that as inspiration. I dont have finished pics, but here is the transmission mount on top of the transmission. So, it will give you a good before and after. It's all done with the polisher:

 

I pulled the engine mounts and cross member. Here's a pic of the X-member:


While I was doing the swap I needed to cleanup the timing case cover due to a P/S leak. Here is a before pic:


Here is an after:


And here it is, polished and waxed installed on the engine:


After a few more odds & ends, this will be going in:


When I am done with the whole swap, I will post up the finished engine bay.

 

ill be waiting bourne identity

 

i like threads like this that you can actually learn something from or it's very intertaining because it's something cool. keep up the good work SNOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Very impressive work. Make sure the engine bay isn't cleaner than the car!

 

finally a thread worth reading in the 4rth gen forum lol.

keep us updated.

 

Here are my two helpers:


If you look closely on the children, you will notice I labeled them. Like any thorough tear-down, that is so I know where they go when I put them back in.

 

LOL. You have beiutiful children. Gotta keep the family car a family affair lol. Great work.

 

great detailing. make sure you post pics of the bay After you install the motor. im sure its gonna look sweet

 

Wow, that looks like a lot of work but the results look great! Great props in doing all this cleaning by hand and sanding as well. Furthest I took when I cleaned my engine bay was a can or two of brake part cleaner.

Can't wait til you post the final results.

 

Great work man, Excellent thread, LOVELY KIDS man hahaha i like the fact you are organized and label the kids hahha.

like g4nismo said - FINALLY not a BS thread about souping up cars, asking where to put the air freshener (up ur @$$), hide spare keys (up ur @$$) or where to put stickers (up ur @$$)

Keep up the great work, and take more pics !!!!

 

yea man. excellent job.

youve given me a goal

 

Amen.

 

The car looks great so far. Looks like you have three things to be proud of. Very cute.

 

LOL labelled the kids too. Heh gottta know where they go, if you loose one of them the wifey might not be to happy.

Looks nice man, i wish i had the time to clean up my engine bay like you!!

 

Killer. Those brackets look great, that's the kind of stuff that makes the difference.

 

Your work is on par with those MKIV Supra guys that go all-out even for their street cars. Good work, I wish my engine bay looked half this nice! Admittedly, those with white paint seem to get screwed over with the engine bay. Seems like it always shows the worst on white

 

Looking great! I too wanted to do something similar when I had my engine out, but got way to lazy. It's a lot of work and something only an owner would really appreciate. Instead I cleaned the fire wall and stopped there.

 

which one adds more horsepower?

 

wow this thread is actually interesting reading. Well keep us up to date.

Great job with everything!!!

 

not sure that this thread is as educational as everyone says, but it is interesting. great attention to detail. i wouldn't be able to resist chroming and powder coating EVERYTHING if i had my engine out. i was planning on having my engine rebuilt...

 

Nice work! I am probably going to take off some of the exposed brackets that are rusted and repaint them after I put my MEVI in....to clean it up a little bit.

Also, when polishing the P/S lines, just use 2000 grit sandpaper and what kind of polish? Haha youre motivating me to go all out now....

 

Nice work.

I love a clean engine bay.

 

hell yeah, thats awesome. when i had my motor out I put a wire brush drill tip to everything I could but there was just sooooooo much to do like you said.
I need to get a sandblaster!! that tranny mount looks awesome.
im inspired.

 

wow man i dont even want to compare this to my engine haha

 

looks great, try to get a pic of the tranny now that its clean. that would be awesome to see. gl with the rest

 

veryy niceee mannn!!! Cant wait too see it when its done!

 

outstanding......i plan on following suit when i pull my engine to replace my exhaust studs just can't wait until my son is old enough to help!

this kind of 'deep cleaning' actually increases powertrain, and electrical system longevity.

mad props!

 

very interesting, keep up the great work man !!

 

Nice work but I have some tips. Dont leave any metal bare or it will corrode. The block and tranny get all ugly and scaly quick. Either clear coat it or paint it silver. Last year I spent a week straight from 4-10pm detailing my old SER's engine bay and engine. I painted everything but the distributer.
It went from this when I picked it up

To this with a month of work off and on:

And finally when I really went to town:

 

Cool thread. Nice work OP.

Jon, nice work too. I can eat off that intake manifold.

 

Hahaha, to every part of that. Good job, except for the part were you insult the rattle can, it's all in the prep.

 

You have no idea man....haha.

To the OP: VERY nice man! I wish (1) I had the time for that, and (2) I had the patience. Enjoy it man!

 

awesome jsutter. new parts help alot though haha. what did you use to paint the strut tower parts?

 

Attetention to detail! VERY nice job! I really like how "since you were in there" ... lol I really like the pic of the kids. Reminds me of working on my dads 55' Bell Aire Chevy as a kid.

Keep up the good work and keep us posted!!!

 

hmmm...grea job guys.Remember to put back the kids where u got-em from.

 

Taking it to the extreme, very nice!

 

looks great, can't wait for the final pics

 

Well the swap is all done. Here is the pic of everything in place:


A pic of some of my new engine grounding. Thanks to Irish for the inspiration:


And finally just a pic of coolant lines and headers:


Here is a pic of my ghetto fabb'd throttle body:



Now... the cost of my swap was $2236. That includes an engine hoist and engine stand. Without those it would be just over 2 grand.

It took me 3 months, working <very> part time on it. Or about 100 hours total. Keep in mind I was refurb'ing quite a bit of stuff in the engine bay, so not all that time was spent purely on the swap. I could probably do the swap in 2 days now.

I also did the swap completely alone. Meaning no help with the engine, lifting, cleaning, etc. I don't really suggest doing it that way :/ But it is possible.

I am not super-mechanically inclined, and wiring is not my strong suit, but all the information I needed was in the stickies of the All Motor section. I also needed some odds and ends and searched to find bits of information. That and having the parts in front of me helped a lot.

The biggest challenge (besides removing axles) was fabricating the throttle body. I found setting the timing pretty easy. I got it spot on the first try, but I didn't like the fact that the slack was all on the wrong side of the tensioner and was worried about skipping teeth. So I redid it and made sure all slack was taken up by the tensioner.

Next biggest challenge was the soldering. I did the injector connectors (thanks gtr rider), crank sensor and 02 sensors from the 3.5--they were lower mileage... by 110,000 miles.

I still have a lot of projects left to do. But the car runs now, so I can tackle them as I have time and one weekend at a time.