1nz-fe Cam Swap

Hey "Just" are you currently driving a Gen2 ….
Also wanted to ask if I am understanding this correctly which model years of the Echo and Yaris would be possible donors for valve/cam body head swap....
Could a person or could I get a gen 2 exhaust manifold and then have that "used/salvage exhaust manifold ceramic coated by a established business?

 

I totalled my Gen2 in 2017.



I was in the process of turboing my 1nzfxe but swapping out the 1nzfxe head for ANY 1nzfe head was always a plan. Just never got to it after owning 2 gen2 Prii. Better off with a DC Sports header like I had than using the stock header considering you will be putting more airflow thru it than designed.

I still stay fairly active on this forum but have moved to a v6 Toyota with Nitrous.

 

Just an update, this Frankenprius video has turned into a bit of a creative project with a plot and characters based around my dash cam vids of getting coal rolled on, Priuschat, and Frankenstein('s monster) himself. I've been getting everything together for that (including a lavalier mic that works surprisingly well taped in the chin of a Frankenstein mask), anyway one thing has led to another and the Frankenprius will live!

If any Bay Area Priuschat members want to participate in a somewhat satirical car mod instructional video, I'd love to figure out a way to work you in, just PM me!

 

We have plenty of characters at our meet ups .

Maybe try that out.

 

Thanks for the reminder, I've been meaning to! I'll keep my eye on the thread

 

If you have suggestions on dates, post em up there .

I won’t need any maintenance any time soon, so social aspects are all I will be doing .

 

If you were anywhere in TX, I'd help...

 

Come out to the Bay Area .

Plenty to do and see, outside of helping to make a Prius related video anyway.

 

We haven't heard anything from Toyota Jesus, I've PMed him myself, but it's said that he will return. Nobody on this site knows the day or hour though so you may not want to hold your breath...

I had mentioned the 1NZ-FE having VVT-i but it appears that the Echo engine that i picked up did not have the equipment for this, so I think I misread the Wikipedia article. That's a plus though since I don't want to have to deal with any VVT-i compatibility issues.

Another update, last Sunday I was getting all the recording setup together for this, and while taking a break from that I managed to spill a gallon of near-boiling broth from an instant pot onto my feet. When running cold water over my feet in the tub, that somehow messed up my circulation and I passed out and hit my head on something metal, getting 3 stitches. So this past week I've had stitches on my face and bandages on my feet and shambling around like Frankenstein on pain pills, so good practice at least.

Anyway I'm just getting healed up now so I'll be back to work on this soon!

 

Ouch man. Sorry to hear... hope all heals well.

 

Wao! So sorry dude. That's a hell of a pain you went through.
Wishing speed recovering.

 

Me 3 and second that emotion.

 

Thanks for the well wishes, it wasn't too bad as long as I didn't walk around too much, now I have a cool scar on my eyebrow I guess. Well after taking care of a few other things that have come up I'm taking another look at this.

Toyota Jesus got back to me on PM, he mentioned that the car is running fine at 345k km (214k mi); he had installed the cam at 310k km (193k mi). He also said that he is getting less power due to a possible decline in battery performance but he doesn't think the swap has hurt the engine.

I've been doing some reading just to make sure I've got everything straight about Echos, Yarises, and VVT-i. Seems that the Yaris is just a hatchback Echo and the service manuals are basically interchangeable.

Looking at this site which provides an overview about the 1NZ-FE:
Toyota 1NZ-FE (1.5 L) engine: review and specs, service data

So I'm wondering if these shims has anything to do with the spacing issues way2coolwheels had. I've messaged Toyota Jesus to see what year Echo he got his parts from, to see if this could be a possible issue, as has been mentioned in this thread. I've actually found it pretty tricky to find information about 1NZ-FE engine variants out there, and I'm not even sure if the above quote means that some engines did not have VVT-i, or that instead they had a hydraulic variant of VVT-i. Looking at this video it looks like the valve spacing is reasonably correctable if that's indeed an issue:

And this seems to be the equivalent procedure on the Prius/1NZ-FXE, and also seems to have enough information to do the cam swap:

https://attachments.priuschat.com/attachment-files/2018/09/153659_Valve_Adjustment.pdf

So I figure I'll get the spacing tool and check that out just in case. It seems clear anyway that I'm dealing with the equivalent to the non-hydraulic lifting 1NZ-FE engine, wherever its VVT-i functionality comes from.

I've been looking at this post:

Here's my overall understanding, someone correct me if I'm wrong on any of these, still trying to piece together information:

- I already have the pistons I need, as the Prius pistons are necessary for the 13:1 compression ratio (?), so I don't need to worry about those or the rings for now (guess I'll be burning oil forever, or am I getting this wrong)

- The crankshaft is buried in the engine and it's not worth removing the whole thing from the car to replace it. Is the crankshaft only different because of the hybrid/MG2 interface? I'm curious if anyone has any insight into what the difference is, and if it could be even marginally worthwhile to replace it further on down the road, for instance if I service the pistons. @Justdidit suggested that the crankshaft is probably different due to MG2, but yeah no plans to swap that out just yet.

I was a bit confused before about a head swap before but I've been reading through the repair manual and I think I understand it now. This would avoid the valve spring switching process and any valve spacing issues, primarily? It seems that I don't need to drain oil or coolant for this? (or just coolant?) It looks like I need to remove a few bolts on the timing chain cover, as well as the cams and the exhaust manifold.

One last thing that I'm not sure about is the exhaust cam -- Toyota Jesus mentioned only changing the intake cam; does it not matter about the exhaust cam for this particular mod, or is there any effect that would be expected with one or the other? (again, sorry if I'm totally getting it wrong here)

As a side note, this looked interesting for a semi-related future mod, no idea if it would be compatible though, would have to look more into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKjVH_hz6ZA

Sorry about the mega post, just trying to get all the pieces figured out here before I start disassembling anything...

 

Well, I think I've figured out this confusion I was having about VVT-i. The 1NZ-FE is always stated as having VVT-i, and most sites didn't show the 1NZ-FXE as having VVT-i, or at least it was inconsistent and the lack of different parts that could comprise this VVT-i system was throwing me for a loop...could it be software only?

However, the 1NZ-FXE does have VVT-i, as I figured out by ctrl+f-ing a few times in the 2005 Prius repair manual. It's ECM-controlled. Here's some information from the manual about it:

This information from the manual about VVT-i being self-learning makes me think I shouldn't have to worry about anything VVT-wise, at least if Toyota Jesus wasn't throwing any codes:

So that solves most of the worries I had there about VVT-i. I'm still trying to understand the differences between the cam gear and crankshaft parts though. The one thing I would like to figure out about the crankshaft is whether it has the same interface as the 1NZ-FXE crankshaft, as that would go a long way towards figuring out if a 1NZ-FE Echo engine would be compatible with a simple engine swap.

This site has some information about the crankshaft:

1NZ-FXE Toyota engine

Although I'm not sure about the original source, I found this document to be a very informative resource for learning the basics of the 1NZ-FE engine (and for the most part the 1NZ-FXE); it was good for understanding its various systems described in clear terms:

(PDF) ENGINE -1NZ-FE ENGINE EG-2 1NZ-FE ENGINE | Christhian Melgarejo Castro - Academia.edu

 

WRT putting a 1NZ-FE Yaris/Echo engine into a Prius, this user claims to have done so without any issues:

Can a 1.5 prius C engine be installed into a 2006 prius | PriusChat

 

I have swapped a Yaris pistons complete with its rings into a Prius 08 Prius, without issues.
Now, swapping a 1nz-fe camshafts into a Prius, I don't know if that would work fine though.
I have not taken that time to look at the numbers technically, to see if their camshaft lobes would fit perfectly on the top cylinder (,especially the valve bearings).
In my thinking, I an assuming that the since the exhaust or intake valves are allowed to opened for a long time whilst the bottom dead centre is halfway, it might be that the camshaft lobes on a Prius, maybe different from that of a 1nz-fe.

 

Posted this in that Prius C engine thread:

In short it seems that the Prius C engine is a possible candidate for a swap, and while the performance seems like it would be roughly the same, you might get a few reliability improvements. It would also be interesting to see if this maniverter was a direct bolt-on for the Gen 2 manifold/cats. In researching this head swap, it seems there's a good chance i might be removing the timing chain cover, and if I am, maybe I should go ahead and throw in this "low friction cam chain"

Another bit of trivia, according to this thread it seems the Prius C engine still has the non-hydraulic valve lifters, so that part should be the same: Prius C hydraulic or solid valve lifters? | PriusChat

 

Since the 1NZ-FE and the 1NZ-FXE have the same parts aside from the pistons, rings, cams, cam gears, valve springs, and crankshaft, I think that the cam fitment shouldn't be a problem. The one issue that I see could be the valve spacers, which are tuned to get the correct cam spacing with the valves. Way2coolwheels may have encountered a problem with this. Toyota Jesus was able to do the swap without any problems, but it seems that checking the valve spacing might be advisable if swapping the cams alone. If doing the head swap, like I'm planning to do, I'm thinking that the valve spacers shouldn't be an issue because they're already (hopefully) specced properly within the same head. (since there will be a delay between me removing the head from this echo engine, and installing it on my engine, I'll probably check on this just in case.)

Also it just occurred to me that the differences in cam gears might just be due to the alignment markings on the gears, as they might connect to the cam in a different orientation. My plan right now is to use the 1NZ-FE cam gears, unless I find additional information to convince me otherwise.

 

Taking a closer look at this 1NZ-FE engine:



It looks like removing the cylinder heads, contained in the piece that the black plastic intake manifold connects to, will require removing the timing chain cover (the plate on the left side) and re-sealing it.

This post gives me some hope that servicing the timing chain in-place is at least approachable:

But it appears that I will have to re-seal it. I'm thinking that if I need to go through all that, why not put on a new timing chain as well, even though I don't hear much about users having issues there. I have yet to figure out if this Prius C in fact does have a different part number for the timing chain, but if it does that might be another mod to try out.

This article also mentions the "low-friction timing chain": PRODUCT EYE: Toyota forsakes Prius C for Yaris hybrid | Automotive Industry News | just-auto

 

Some more Prius C info:

Comparing the cam/valve parts for the engine on these pages:
https://www.toyotapartsdeal.com/parts-list/2005-toyota-prius/camshaft-valve.html?PNC=Standard%20Parts

https://www.toyotapartsdeal.com/parts-list/2012-toyota-prius-c/camshaft-valve.html

It seems there is a new timing chain part number, so there's a good chance I may end up trying this (again, unless I come up with a good reason not to).

The plot thickens (or actually gets simpler) -- it turns out that this intake cam gear assembly on the Prius C is the same one as on the 1NZ-FE. The exhaust cam gear is the same on all engines mentioned. So it looks like I'll be conclusively using the 1NZ-FE intake cam gear assembly, although no idea why it's used on the Prius C and not the Gen 2.

The Prius C uses different valve lifters than the Gen 2, and both varieties of valve lifters seem to have been used across a wide range of Toyota vehicles and engines. What's the difference? *shrugs*

I've decided to compare some more models and years from the site. This list is by no means a complete list of differing parts, but it looks like there have been a few upgraded parts. I found putting a 2018 Yaris as one of the vehicles I was looking at parts for very useful, as i could see a number of parts for the engine that were only released for later Yarises.

Timing chain (Apparently there's an updated model which is listed as fitting all 1NZ-FXE and 1NZ-FE, but the first one shows up as the version if i search for Gen 2. Not sure which one I have)
1NZ-FE (all), Gen 2: 13506-21021
1NZ-FE (all): 13506-21050

Slipper, Chain Tensioner
1NZ-FE (all): 13559-21010
>2013 Yaris, Prius C: 13559-21030

Chain Vibration Damper
1NZ-FE (all): 13561-21010
>2013 Yaris, Prius C: 13561-21040

Valve Springs
1NZFE (all): 90905-01049
Gen 2, Prius C: 90501-23135
>2013 Yaris: 90501-27040

Seal, Exhaust Valve Stem Oil
1NZFE (all): 90913-02092
>2015 Yaris, Prius C: 90913-02128

Intake cam
1NZ-FE (all): 13501-21030
Gen 2: 13501-21060
Prius C: 13501-21070

Intake Cam Gear
1NZ-FE (all), Prius C: 13050-21041
Gen 2: 13050-21051

Exhaust Cam
1NZ-FE (all): 13502-21030, 13502-21031 (the latter item appears to be an updated one; not sure which my Echo engine has but either should be fine)
Gen 2, Prius C: 13502-21021

Exhaust Cam Gear
All the same

Harmonic Damper
Gen 2: 13407-21040
Prius C: 13407-21070
Echo/Scion: 13407-21020
Yaris: 13407-21031

Crankshaft (The Prius C uses the same crankshaft as the 1NZ-FE)
1NZ-FE (all), Prius C: 13401-21020
Gen 2: 13401-21040

Flywheel
1NZ-FE (all): 13405-21030
Gen 2: 13451-21070
Prius C: 13451-21081

Pistons
1NZ-FE (all): 13101-21070
Gen 2: 13101-21110
Prius C: 13101-21130
>2013 Yaris: 13101-21160

Piston Rings
1NZ-FE (all): 13011-21041
Gen 2, Prius C: 13011-21100

Rods
All: 13201-29737
>2016 Prius C and Yaris: 13201-29757


COVER SUB-ASSY, CYLINDER HEAD (the top cover of the engine)
All 1NZ-FE: 11201-21050
>2012 Yaris: 11201-21051
Gen 2: 11201-21062
Prius C: 11201-21080

This gave me a start because I was worried that the head itself might not be compatible. However,

HEAD SUB-ASSY, CYLINDER
All 1NZ-FE: 11101-21062 (or an earlier, but compatible version)
Prius C: 11101-21080 (interestingly, the Prius C has a different cylinder head assembly than any other 1NZ engine. Perhaps due to the exhaust gas recirculation system, that it seems was never brought over to the 1NZ-FE)

The above item confirms that the head swap should not be a problem.

I'll leave it there for now, but this has provided a lot of information about the engine variants. I still have to look into other categories of parts. It seems that there are several opportunities to swap parts with updated versions, especially if I ever did an engine rebuild.