Camry/ES engine swap project!

found a rack for cheap online, but we need to put our solenoid on it before we can use it. ordered axle seals, trans pan gasket, front oil pump seal, rear main today.

once all that comes in, the fun begins!

 

with any luck, the engine and trans are coming out of the ES this weekend. hopefully the weekend after that, the camry engine and trans will go in and we'll be good to go! we're all excited

 

engine and trans are out of the ES. fortunately, the camry engine-trans removal will be much cleaner than this, that engine compartment was a mess. the camry is much cleaner, no oil leaks or anything.

first few things out of the way


shot of the engine in there


hooking up the cherry picker


and it's out of there


engine compartment pretty much empty


engine and trans in their current resting place

 

:lol: and imagine, he did all that in like 3 hours! he can do work on our cars after hours so long as he follows their rules. otherwise this would have been much harder.

everything's here but the rack- that should come in on tuesday. if you look in the empty engine compartment pic, you can see the old rack still in there- the black tube way in the back toward the bottom. it's so simple to replace with the engine out. we're just going to reuse the old solenoid, it was obscenely expensive to buy another.

so once that's done, he will do the same thing to the camry as he just did in all these pics. chances are the engine and trans will come out separately, though. then the engine wiring harnesses have to be swapped out, couple other little things to swap, and finally it can all go back together. he isn't working next weekend so that will probably be when the rest happens.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Frank Hudon @ Jul 11 2007, 01:05 PM) [snapback]476909[/snapback]</div>

when he's actually home

----------------------------

sooooo the verdict is GAH.
gah, as in, it didn't get all the way finished and will have to be done sometime next week before we leave on vacation. which in itself is a whole 'nother gah. :blink:

friday just sucked, plain and simple. we ended up getting the camry engine almost ready to take out by the tiem 11:30 rolled around and we had to leave.
today, the camry engine came out, wiring harnesses were swapped, knock sensor was installed, valve cover gasket done, valve cover taken from es engine. rear main and oil pan gaskets done, uhh... intake manifolds swapped. reassembled camry suspension to roll it out to the parking lot. spent lots of time investigating which car has the better part, ie which one to keep. put the collective good motor mounts on the es, installed new cooling system hoses. parts guy gave him one of the wrong axle seals for the trans, that's *wonderful* news. i'm so excited i can't sleep actually i don't know why i can't sleep.

so the trans needs its seals. the pan gasket is being done once it's hanging in the car, it's currently sitting on the pan so that's not quite feasible. rack still needs to go in, and the camry needs to go away from the dealership but not away to the junkyard because we're trying to part it out. no sense in junking what might make us some money back to defray costs.

and we're leaving town at the end of the week. so as i said multiple times before... GAH.

 

it liiiiiiives!!!!

pictures coming when i have time to put them up, which may be a while!

 

plans cancelled on me tonight, DH is out, i have some peace and quiet... so what else did i do but get comfy and upload pictures. here's an abbreviated overview of the rest of the process:

camry with engine.


camry and engine, separated.


recipient, donor, and engine in question.


engines side by side, after swapping wiring harnesses, intake manifolds and front valve covers- the one on the left is the bad one.


engine dropping in


engine hanging by a couple motor mounts and the bar


enter the transmission


ready for the first drive around the block


whew!!! got all that and cleanup done just in time to walk out the door, LITERALLY.

and the cause of the knock in the old engine: a rod bearing. the thing was toast anyway, the block was a real mess. he saved the heads, and the rod bearing for amusement value of course.

needs some suspension work eventually and a couple other minor things, but otherwise it runs really well shame we had to leave it right away.

 

i actually did put up one post over there in your es forum, SW03ES. i used a different handle

well now that DH is driving it a lot, we find it really needs struts, springs, and all that other suspension crap. i am *not* amused.

 

nah, the camry's are shot too. not as bad as the es but that car bottomed out on nearly everything. the es is scary to drive around curves. we're looking at $800 in parts- not cool. <_<

so far we've had promising offers for doors, hood, headlights, etc that have fallen through. we're not even asking much for any of it, but when people are selling whole camrys for parts cars for $250, well, we can't match that. we can only keep the camry for a couple months, so i will probably have to start listing on ebay to sell stuff.

have been keeping eyes out for a cheap camry with bad transmission, since we do have the extra trans... but so far no luck. that would set us even on the whole experience.

but at least we're not racking up huge miles on the prius anymore.

 

we're going the oem route with the exception of the struts, which we found on ebay for $70 for the set incl shipping. reasonable strut options for the 2g camry/es250 are pretty limited anyway. we're going a/m on those because they're insane even with employee discount through the dealer.

there's a reason we're going oem. a/m strut mounts crapped out on our 88 camry in under a year, so if we're gonna do the work we would rather do the job right once. otherwise it's cheap out now, pay the price again later and spend the time and labor, which is worth as much as money to us we learned our lesson back in '03 on that one.

labor/time/physical comfort is at such a premium for us right now... if he's gonna rip the whole thing apart he's only gonna do it once.

 

DH had a back procedure done a couple weeks ago (discogram, highly painful) and spent a lot of time laying down since. he's finally cleared to go back to work so the project is up and running again.

OEM parts.


gabriel guardian struts.


one front and one rear strut assembled.


two of the struts were bad, unfortunately. he discovered this on monday evening. i called up the place we bought the struts on tuesday afternoon, the guy there was really nice. said he would double check the struts personally before they went out. this morning i received a ship notification with an anticipated delivery date of friday. so these guys are good to deal with and have really good prices- cerell distributing company known on ebay as "stocklifts"

anyway, hopefully this will be done on saturday then, and since the brake line needs to be disconnected we're gonna flush the brakes too.