1990 GT-S engine swap/rebuild, questions. plz help

[MotorJD8790]

Ok, a lot of history with my beloved celica but i'll shorten as much as possible. I bought my celica a few years ago and had it for about 4 months before it pooped out on me. I was driving and the clicking i thought was lifter noise became much louder (i.e. a knocking) and my car immediately lost all power. I was doing about 4 grand or so in first gear going only 5 mph trying to get out of the middle of the road. we'll its been sitting in a garage since then, i cant part with it. I'm currently in iraq and will be home shortly and now that i'll have the money to fix it i wanted to just replace the 2.2 N/A with the All-Trac 2.0 turbo...but i dont know what all has to be done. I've only gotten my hands dirty with old american muscle and dont know my way around under the hood of my lil ricer yet. How much am I looking at spending to put the 2.0 turbo in my car and would i HAVE to turn it into an all wheel drive vehicle?

[Rick89GTS]

You'll need the motor, ECU, and wiring harness from the 3SGTE. You won't be able to convert to AWD, so get that out of your plans. Count on roughly $1200-1500 for the motor, plus extra for the ECU and wring harness.

My advice to you is just replace your 5SFE with another one from a reputable JDM importer; it's way cheaper and easier. Especially if you've never worked on these cars before.

[Pineapple]

Or get a used 5S-FE and rebuilt it.

[TBayToyotaBoy]

I second those motions...the nice thing with American muscle is that you have room to work under the hood (usually)...the FWD Japanese imports with anything bigger than a 1.6-litre under the hood can be very tricky--especially with an engine swap like you're contemplating.

If you have a few bucks to throw around, consider just buying an imported, JDM GT-4 with the turbo already under the hood...you can get a decent one for around $7K here in Canada now. I'm sure it wouldn't be too much more in the US

[billyvgk]

you'll get a better kick with the 3sgte from the gt4/alltrac...but do it the right way...get the whole st185 or st205 front clip. that way you'll have everything and not have to worry about matching up missing parts that you'll need to get the car running right...my buddy did the st185 wrc swap in his 94 gt and so far hes sitting at about 9k as far as buying parts to work because he pieced everything together little by little. but you can always take the easy way out and stay with the 5sfe. good luck.