Basic turbo swap questions

[spills1969]

Aight, suffice it to say that I know how a turbo works and all. But my main beef is with the consequences of putting one on my 88 3sfe. Ive heard that I need to get a new metal head gasket, anything else? wud new pistons be in order, or not necessary? and aldo how hard is it to do the head gasket urself? i know its expensive as hell to get a shop to do it, and I wanna do it to mine regardless of if i get the turbo or not.

My main concern wud be the timing and resetting it. How long wud it take to do the gasket? Over a day of work you think? My Cam's dieing, and I wanna do some final mods so I can get some experience under my belt.

[88 LE]

Originally posted by spills1969
Aight, suffice it to say that I know how a turbo works and all. But my main beef is with the consequences of putting one on my 88 3sfe. Ive heard that I need to get a new metal head gasket, anything else? wud new pistons be in order, or not necessary?

I suggest that you rebuild the engine before turbocharging it. Especially if you have alot of miles on the engine.

You don't need new pistons unless your planning on changing the compression ratio (stock is 9.3:1) or the ones you have are damaged.

how hard is it to do the head gasket urself? i know its expensive as hell to get a shop to do it, and I wanna do it to mine regardless of if i get the turbo or not.

Its not easy. Your taking half the engine apart.

My main concern wud be the timing and resetting it.

All the stuff that needs to be aligned correctly is marked.

The camshafts line up to each other by the first set of marks (assembly marks) on the gears. Theres 2 sets of marks (assembly and reference). The marks are on the right side of gears.

The timing belt is put on by turning the crank to TDC (top dead center / 0 degrees). This puts the #1 piston at TDC. Line up the mark on the crank pulley to the 0 mark on the lower timing belt cover.

The camgear also needs to be aligned before the timing belt goes on. It needs to be postioned at TDC. Line up the hole on the camgear to the mark on the bearing cap. The knock pin on the camshaft should be straight up and down.

The last thing is the ignition timing. You set it by loosening the 2 bolts on the distributor and turning it up or down. Start the car, short pins TE1 and E1 (on diagnostic connector), hookup a timing light to the #1 sparkplug wire, and shine the light at the crank pulley. Adjust the distributor till the mark on the crank pulley lines up with the mark (10) on the lower timing belt cover.

Instructions for the timing belt are here:

http://yotarepair.com/3S-FEtimingbelt.html

Scanned from a Toyota repair manual. Theres more steps then necessary but, it tells you how to align things properly.

How long wud it take to do the gasket? Over a day of work you think?

I can do it in a day. Plan a little more time since its your first time changing one.

Cylinder head assembly and removal is covered in a repair manual. Read it over and go from there.

Good luck.

[Hotwheelharmer]

If you want to boost up to 10psi or a little bit higher you can get the 3sgte rods and pistons and put them in your block(they will fit and work with the 3sfe head) this will give you 9:1 compression or you can get JE pistons and put the compression down to 8.5:1 for more boost. As for the changing of the head gasket you might as well rebuild your head and your bottom end just so you don't have any weak points inside. Remember when you seal up one end you are going to blow the other end out. I know that from learning the hard way with my first car. My first car was an 83 celica and I put the 22rte head on it that I had built up but didn't do anything with the bottom end that had 145K on it. Lets just say 5000 miles later I had to rebuild the bottom end because I couldn't keep oil in the thing. If you are going to rebuild your head I do rebuild heads for 3sfe's along with doing some performance mods to the 3sfe head so if you are interested let me know and I will get your prices on what I do.

[djprefix]

Yes, definately make sure that you rebulid your engine before turboing it. Make sure to use good rings, like chromlies, so that they don't end up at the bottom of your rod. HKS makes a copper head gasket for the mr2 that will drop the compression ratio by .3. That'll save you the time of having to put in new pistons. But I would strongly recommend that you put in the 3sgte rods, our 3sfe rods suck. You should be able to put a new head gasket on yourself, just get a toyota manual(not haynes or chiltons, those suck) and if you follow the instructions it should be pretty straight forward.