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 5VZ-FE V6 Turbo project

We have been working away on this project now for the best part of 18 months, both restoring its bodywork from a wrecked shell and also giving it a totally one-off engine transplant.

This particular engine originates in the Toyota Landcruiser, yes that's right a 4x4 truck!

The engine was sourced and built by Johnny Riglietti of Sea2sky in Canada, and at great expense the fully race built motor was shipped to the UK ready for us to work some magic on it. Here is the raw freshly built motor as it arrived in the UK at Woodsport.

Before hanging the engine we needed to make a drivers side engine mount for it, here it is in the first stage of construction.

We also ditched the single stock turbo fuel pump in favour of a twin walbro design.

With the E153 turbo gearbox, fidanza flywheel and RPS clutch all assembled onto the engine we were able to hang it in the bay for the first time.

Not content with having a 3.4ltr tuned v6 in the bay it was time to add some forced induction, the specs for this turbo are below....

Compressor
67.8mm inducer
94.0mm exducer
52 trim
0.72A/R

Turbine
77.0mm Wheel Diameter
78 trim
1.06A/R
Free floar

0.95A/R Turbine housing.

Suffice to say, that this will be pushing around 65lb/min which we're hoping will be north of 550bhp, but very drivable with positive boost from 2400rpm and holding easily to the red line. Here is the turbo first positioned exactly where we need it to sit in order to keep all of the plumbing happy.

We then fabricated the header to turbo exhaust pipes.

With that done we could mount the external Tial wastegate.

We had to fabricate the entire intake plenum from scratch on this build.

Then we added the Nissan Q45 throttle body.

With that done all of the boost pipework to and from the chargecooler could be made.

An overview of the whole set up.

The engine harness was then made to fit every sensor and connector on the engine, and 1000cc injectors installed.

With all of the additional plumbing added and everything detailed the finished engine bay looks like this.

The final chargecooler set up.

Ryan Griffiths from 2bar-tuning came and installled the Solaris S6GP ECU onto my harness and we fired it up for the first time.

With everthing completed the roadtesting and mapping has now begun, initial results look very very good indeed.

0.2bar @ 1800rpm
0.5bar @ 2400rpm
0.9bar @ 3100rpm
1.1bar @ 3300rpm

Because of the conditions (bad winter snow!), Ryan just mapped in 5500rpm and 1.1bar of boost so there is a lot more to come from this insane project.

This car is now featured as the cover car in issue 20 of Mr2 Only Magazine.

 

 

Later this month this car gets mapped again, rev limit raised and boost taken to 1.7 bar, that should see it producing some pretty scary figures.

 Wide arched Mk1 Mr2 V6

The car in question is a Mk1 MR2 V6 that we built last year, the owner just wants a pair of wide arches to the rear and also a way to make the factory side-skirt fit it like it would, had Toyota done a wide arch version. No problem!

This guide will help those just wanting to fit the arches without the skirt mod, but it will help both.

OK. I started by making sure the rear wheels were aligned properly, this is VERY important! Both tracking AND camber angles have to be spot on. I used my camber gauge to check it and i found the passenger wheel had too much negative camber which would make the wheel arch about 20mm narrower on that side. So its imperative that you get the wheel geometry perfect before even attempting this.

After I had adjusted the camber to get both wheels sitting as good as possible, you then need to determine how wide you want to go. Some wheels have huge offsets and big dishes on them so don't really need any spacers but these wheels although already dished did need a little spacing to make the arch look fuller. So before i went any further some longer wheel studs where added.

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These allow a 25mm spacer,which will then make this particular wheel stick out this much....

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We are not going wild width on this car due to the fronts staying standard so this will be plenty while still giving the wide arch look we love.

The next job is to place masking tape on the body just around the arch line,this is to give us reference points for measuring where to cut the new arch and by how much....

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Take some very rough measurements (within 20mm will do) of the needed arch width at 4 or 5 points around the circumference, then place a wide strip of masking tape on the new arch to "catch" the area we are about to cut, if you mess this up just add more tape.

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Now we are going to mark out some datum points, I start with one line drawn at 12 o'clock and then make several at various points on the radius where i think the arch distance is changing. Make the same marks at approximately the same place on the new arch.

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Now the method of measuring exactly how much arch to cut away from each datum point is as follows, obtain a straight edge, about a meter long, i use a plank of wood, but anything straight will do. Place this on both edges of the tyre and then measure from your quarter panel on each datum point to the straight edge.

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Transfer this measurement to the new arch at each datum point and then join them up with a solid line, the more datum points you use the more accurate it will be, but i find 5 or 6 ample.

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Then, get the grinder out and cut along your line, stay on the inside edge if you are unsure. You can always remove more!

What you end up with is this, I've taped it to the car to assess the fit.

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It might take a few goes with a little more measuring and trimming but it will get there eventually, take your time!

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Now we aren't going to talk about securing the arch to the car just yet, for now i have bigger fish to fry! Making the bespoke side-skirt section.

What I've done here is cut the original triangle so that it is in two sections, one part sits just before the arch and the other bit sits around the arch lip.

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Cover the arch in masking tape on the empty area between the two parts of skirt.

Then apply a good thick layer of fibral into this void joining both sections back together. We are just going for structure here, it doesn't need to be particularly pretty at this stage. This is going to be a detachable panel just like the original triangle with a rubber seal on it.

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After a few more skims of fibral and a bit of profiling we have this.

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This section will now peel off the arch and can be hand finished later on, we think it should look almost OEM when done.

The rear part of the arch has also been trimmed and profiled to suit.

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 The next step is to mark a line where the arch meets the bodywork.

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Then cut the outer arch lip away to just leave the slope. Make many slices in the slope right up to the line, we will then bend these tabs outward to give the arch a good surface to bond onto.

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There was quite a lot of filler in these arches so i had to grind that away.

Bonding of the arch will happen next, for now I did the other side as well, which is a lot easier because you don't need to repeat the whole process of doing the first, just mark out the measurements you cut on the first arch and mirror them onto the new arch, it takes all of 20 minutes to do the second one.

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With the arches now bonded to the car i have been putting some time into the sideskirt sections, these are slowly being built up to fit better than they did before, I've always found the standard fitment a bit "gappy" where it meets the body.

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These are still in the rough n ready stage, but it won't take long before they are ready for final paint, hopefully you will see the full effect!

The arches have now been blended and several coats of spray can primer added just to keep an eye on how its progressing,its very hard to judge the blend when its all different colours so priming it as you go helps a lot....

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The sideskirt triangles are now completed....

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I think these have turned out better than expected,they will look 100% different again when painted and trimmed with new rubber on the top edge,very OEM look.

The arches themselves have now had a thick high build primer layer,just happens to be white which will help with coverage on the final top coat of paint....

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 Today i got the arches painted... the keener eyed painters among you will notice it still needs flattening and polishing but you get the idea...

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here are the new triangles trimmed with a rubber seal and fitted,now tell me that doesn't look like an OEM fitment....

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All that remains is a custom wheel arch liner and sealing the arch inner against the elements. 

The finished car below...

 

Mk1 MR2 Conversions and Bodywork

Here are just some of the Mk1 Turbo Conversions we have carried out, at Woodsport.

We start with what we call a "rear clip" which is essentially a Mk2 MR2 Turbo cut in half so that it contains all of the parts we need for the engine swap.

From this clip we strip out the engine/gearbox/driveshafts and everything else that is needed.

Here we have the Mk1 that the engine is going into.

This gets the old engine removed,engine mounts cut off the chassis,new mounts fabricated by us and welded in.Then the whole engine bay gets resprayed the same colour as the car.

The engine is then fully detailed and installed with new timing belt/filters/clutch etc.

We also make custom intercooler pipework to suit each application. In this case it was a boot wall mounted intercooler set up.

The ECU is then wired up.

More Mk1 MR2 3SGTE Woodsport Conversions

We were the first in Europe to carry out this conversion so as you can imagine we have carried out quite a few of them since the first one in 2002.

Below another 3SGTE conversion this time with a Celica GT4 Charge Cooler set up.

And here is the intercooler set up for this one,we can mount the IC virtually anywhere but this placement works very well.

We modify ANY Mk2 MR2 exhaust system to fit into the Mk1 MR2 so that it fits the 3SGTE engine.

The engine bay of the car that got this system.

We also transformed the bodywork on this car from this.

We cut out all of the rot, welded it solid and then fitted a Eurosport bodykit before priming the car.

And then giving it a high gloss black respray.

Our attention to detail is second to none.

Here is another project Mk1 MR2 we undertook, it arrived at Woodsport with a blown engine and poor bodywork.

All conversions come with the option of having a lightweight Fidanza or Chromoly flywheel as below.

We even clean and detail the gearboxes before installing the whole package.

This particular Mk1 got a TRD supercharger fitted to it's 3VZ-FE V6, the first time in Europe anyone had done this to a Mk1.

We also gave the car a wide rear arch conversion.

The completed car, a V6 supercharged Mk1.

Another Mk1 MR2 that came in for a wide arch fitment and full respray.

All primed up and ready for paint.

The completed car below.

One happy customer.

Here is another Mk1 MR2 3VZ-FE V6 conversion we carried out.

And below the finished car being shown at the NEC with Mike Brewer and Ed China (from wheeler dealers) inspecting our work

 

Here we have a Mk1 Mr2 4AGZE (Supercharger) conversion. This engine was rebuilt/fully detailed to our usual high standard.

Another Mk1 MR2 V6 (3VZFE) that we built.

This car also had a Woodsport wide rear arch conversion.We also made bespoke sideskirt triangles for this car that gave it a very OEM look.

The finished car below.

 

 

Interesting one this one,we took the original 4a-ge engine out below.

And replaced it with a revision 3 Mk2 MR2 NA engine, again the first time this had been done anywhere in Europe.

Below is a 1MZFE V6 installed into a customer's Mk1 MR2.

And yet another Mk1 MR2 V6 we built below.

Once again,another Mk1 MR2 V6 that we completed last year, we made a custom brace on this one too.

All of our Mk1 MR2 conversions require a battery relocation, be that in the front compartment or relocated elsewhere in the engine bay.

It's the attention to detail that separates a Woodsport conversion from the rest, here we even gave the cam covers a crackle finish as per the customers instruction.

Finally the car that started all of this many years ago, my own Mk1 MR2 3SGTE engined custom bodied car, everything you see below is what we do best, hand-crafted bodywork, and a beautifully detailed engine conversion.