Cost effective upgrades.

[Luspher]

Hey,

New to the forum, so I wanna start off by introducing myself. I'm 17, living in MD. Own a '93 Camry LE with a 5S-FE, and automatic trans.

I've grown to love the car. It's been doing a lot for me, so I'd like to start giving back to it. I've noticed that there are not a lot of performance parts available for the camry. I've seen plug wires, intake, and exhaust, but whats the point if its not tuned to my engine. Would only hurt my performance (correct me if I'm wrong)

I'd really like to see my car as a sleeper, but I'm not too sure that's a possibility provided my limited availability of cash. If nothing more I'd like to be able to give it a little more pickup.

I've pondered the following:

-modding the current engine (turbo, intake, exhaust, cams if i could find them, and whatever else i could find)

- another possibility I thought of was swapping out the 5s-fe with the 3s-gte motor. figured it would be pretty easy because the same year mr2, and both engines as options. also saw the ability to get it up to 280+.

- also thought of swapping it for a 6cyl and turbocharging it.

Not too sure how much an engine swap would run me, but I know that the 5s-fe doesn't really seem to be worth upgrading especially since my engine has 163k on it.

If anyone has any ideas, tips, or advice I'd love to hear it. I'm thinking an engine swap would be the most cost effective performance upgrade. Let me know what you guys think.

[brink]

Tony the Tiger has turboed his V6 but he had to do a lot of custom work to make it happen. It's pretty badass though. There's a TRD supercharger available for the V6. Also, swapping in a v6 will require new front suspension and some electrical stuff. I /think/.

The Wraith is/was (can't remember the status of the car atm) swapped for a 3sgte. Several other people have done this swap... but you have to get new front engine mounts and several other things I can't think of off the top of my head.

Rippmods (http://www.rippmods.com) has a supercharger for the 5sfe (what I want ). That's gonna run you around $3200 USD I think. Shook has done this to his car.

Burien Toyota has a turbo kit for the 5sfe (http://www.poweredbytoyota.com/ssfeturbo.html) but I don't know anything about it. As I recall a guy named Steve Meisner installed it on his ride at one point.

So, you've got lots of options. It's all about how much you want to spend and how much work you want to do.

These are all Gen3s, btw. If you search for any of the stuff above, you'll find lots of posts concerning what you need to do to make them happen.

[Luspher]

yeah, im willing to do a lot of work, i really don't like other people working on my baby. last time my dad went in for an oil change the a/c got messed up.

I'll probably have to have most of the work done for me on an engine swap though. I've been able to find the 3s-gte engine for about $1200 which makes me think that'd be most cost effective, but im thinking it didn't come with the ecu or anything, so it would probably cost some $$$. right now i'm just looking for some ballpark prices so i can figure out exactly what I want to do. so does anyone know what the v6, and 3s-gte engine swaps would cost. i see the + to the 3s-gte being that it's already turbocharged meaning it was built to withstand it.

Thanks,
Luspher

[Nick]

well a 93, that means 3vzfe if you were to go the v6 route, lots and lots of custom stuff to get the trd supercharger on. so that's not the best route

3sgte is one hell of an engine, but its expensive as hell, there's a front clip for sale in the buy/sell and that's pretty expensive, and if you're gonna go big on boost you're gonna have to build up the engine anyways

so i say get a 5sfe, rather low mileage, build up the engine and get the rippmods supercharger, they're coming out with some higher boost pulleys soon, its probably the best way to do it, even at 4lbs you geyt 190whp, that's about 50 more than v6 camrys

[Luspher]

I'm not really planning on big boost, I'd just like to be pushing arround 250hp but i could live with say 220 or 230. I'm not thinking I could get that out of my engine without lots of work, and I'm thinking that perhaps the 3s-gte would offer that kind of power stock, so I wouldn't have to throw the upgrades on, but I'd have the option when I had more money come arround. The thing I dislike about the supercharging of the 5s-fe is that i'd be maxing out my engine, and im not sure there would be anything else I could do one I hit the 200 mark. So, if I can get a 3s-gte in for between 4k and 6k I'll go for it, so long as that includes parts. It'll take some savings, but in the end nothing about it will be half assed. I want to do the best I can for my baby. If anyone arround who's done this swap could give me an idea of what I'd have to do to make it happen that would be nice. I could always try to do it in stages, more so preparing my car for the power with sway bars, and what not. my email address is vvteufelvv@hotmail.com if you don't want to share with the world. I just figure that if i'm gonna spend 3.5k on a supercharge and than quite a bit of extra cash on another low milage engine I might as well slap an extra thousand or so onto the price im willing to pay if it will get me similar results, but allow continued tweaking. And just so I don't phase out the option of the 6cyl what would I be looking at for that. If there are any resources that someone could give me. As well as maybe sites that sell more than a shillouette of a camshaft for toyota engines, it would be much appriciated.

Thanks,
Luspher