89 Camry V6 engine

[dtsiouts]

Looking for ways to get more HP out of my 2vz-fe engine. Planning a rebuild in next 6 months and want to prepare. Any suggestions on how to soup it up?

[marc780]

How much do you want to spend? Most cost effective upgrades i'd consider:

-have the parts balanced? This is where they weight the pistons and rods and file a little metal off to match the lightest one. Also they spin the crank and balance it too. One of the few mods that actually improves durability.

-add headers. Improve the breathing and it will give you a few more horsepower.

anything more and you are talking major increases in cost. You could have the block bored out and use bigger pistons and change heads for more performance, a more aggresive cam profile but then it may not idle right. And on and on. The V6 is pretty strong anyway, if you want to make it breath fire it wont be cheap but you can do it.

[te51levin]

That engine's not a popular one for performance mods. There are no performance parts available that I know of, so you're going to have to make your own or spend a hell of a lot of money having them made.

Mildly porting the head (concentrate on the bowl area under the valves) and performing a really nice valve job do not require new parts, and they should net you a little power and torque with no consequence (other than the expense of the operation). You might also look into unshrouding the valves and cleaning up the combustion chambers. Make sure they are all equal in volume.

If you are willing to put money into your car's performance, you should not object to buying Top Tier (Chevron, 76, Shell, etc) premium (91+ octane) gasoline. With that in mind, look into milling the heads or decking the block slightly to boost compression. It's only 9.0:1 stock so a little more wouldn't be excessive. Note that by milling the heads or decking the block you'll also end up moving the camshafts closer to the crank, a side effect of which is that the camshaft timing will be retarded. You may want to correct this with adjustable cam gears (you'll probably have to make your own). These may help you dial in best power even if you do not increase the compression ratio.

If you can make (or have made) a good set of headers, feel free. The stock manifolds are pretty tight. Stock exhaust system's pretty small, too. Bump it to about a 2.5" system with a perforated core resonator and high-flow muffler such as Magnaflow or Dynomax (not Flowmaster). The Dynomax Super Turbo does a good job of flowing air while keeping noise levels reasonable. Pick the largest (external, not largest tubing) muffler you can use; higher case volume helps reduce sound without restricting flow.

If you go to a muffler shop to have an exhaust system built:
DO NOT let the guy at the muffler shop install any muffler with a louvered core. He has these on the shelf and will try to use one. It will restrict flow, big time.
DO NOT let the guy at the muffler shop install a Flowmaster or any similar "chambered" muffler. He has these on the shelf and will try to use one. They don't flow worth a damn and they sound like crap on anything but a V8. And they don't sound that great on a V8, either.
DO NOT let the guy at the muffler shop tell you "you need some backpressure, or else you'll lose all your torque". He is wrong. Torque is aided by a moderately sized set of headers. It is in no way helped by a restriuctive exhaust system.

Regarding balancing - there's not much to be gained here because Toyota already does a pretty good job balancing their engines. But it wouldn't hurt.

Or, if you feel like taking on a project, find a cheap Eaton M62 supercharger and build a plenum to mount it in place of the stock plenum/upper intake manifold. As long as you keep the RPM reasonable, it should go like a cat and no break too many internals.

[Toysrme]

Swap & re-wire the car for a 3vz-fe. You oughta be able to make about 220hp with alot of torque on one of those without much work at all. AFA the 2vz-fe. Why are you rebuilding it? If it doesn't need a rebuild, there's no real point in it.
My vote, has always been to relocate the oil filter & modify the front exhaust manifold to hole a smaller t3's turbo. You oughta be able to make around 200-220hp with a good fuel pump & some fueling tweaks like that. Or swap it for a 3vz-fe... Take your pick.



Gotta be careful on the 2vz-fe's. They've got abit weaker parts in them than the geniration that replaced it. It's not a weak engine... But I wouldn't trust it to hold 300-350bhp on a regular basis at all. High 200's would probably be OK.

Without explaining any of it... Think of the 2vz-fe as the v6 version of a 5s-fe. About that quality of parts & the crankshaft is about like a 3s-fe's. It's weaker, but doesn't matter. The crankshaft is the last thing on the list of things to break as you get to breaking OEM items & replacing them anyways.