My Daily, Thread for my DD Celica Options

[stephen_lee]

So this is for the daily. Plain, boring 95 ST auto. I bought it with 150k miles or so... now 3 years later it sits at about 260k miles. I use it for work and i drive A LOT of miles. (but get reimbursed for every mile i drive ) So anyway at one point of owning it, i managed to suck up some water into the engine. I pulled the spark plugs and cranked it to get the water out... fast forward a year. I did a compression test and found cyl one to have low compression (160-185-190-190) and a cap of oil did not increase it.. valves right? so i pulled the head to replace it with one of my spares, and found that piston 1 came about 1 mm lower than the rest... i bent a rod..

so now comes the decision of what to do. the chassis is in great shape, most new suspension stuff(replaced cxause i wanted it to be tight ) and decent body.
replace car(most likely with an Lexus ES, or LS) or replace engine. Now this car has been through hell w/ me and i love the celica... so its pretty obvious replace the engine.

So comes the choice what engine? rebuild the 7a spare i have for about 1k or beams swap for about 2k.

7a: easier and cheaper. same 30~ mpg. still SLOW
beams: about 2x cost, not terribly difficult for a redtop, 35~ mpg, quicker.

so i want to go beams on the daily... but keep it auto cause houston traffic and the miles i drive in it will SUCK with a stick... plus i have the V6 when i really wanna play lol

[richee3]

I don't know that the BEAMS can out-MPG the 7A, since my old 7A auto got 34 mpg highway and the BEAMS manual is doing 33-34. Seems like the 7A can do a little better, unless you're trying to drive it a little harder. The BEAMS can do everything the 7A can but do it much easier. Smaay raises an excellent point of the V6 in an ST, as the work load involved will be similar in changing all the mounts, etc. The BEAMS has a couple more hp than a 1MZ, but significantly less torque. And as Stephen and bloodMoney have enlightened me, the torque curve of a V6 is much much better than a 4 cylinder. Truthfully, once the V6 swap is covered a little more widely, I'm strongly considering pulling my BEAMS and throwing a 1MZ in the Celica.

In Stephen's case, the BEAMS is comparable gas mileage to the 7A with loads more power at all speeds. He already has a 3VZ swapped Celica, so that defeats the purpose of a second V6 Celica. I vote BEAMS but I'm biased

Ah, so it's not as bad as most transverse V6 then. All the ones I've known, had to remove the air intake plenum to reach the rear spark plugs. Still, I'll take the convenience of the inline 4.

Sounds like my IS 300 Intake plenum/throttle body have to come off and cylinder 6 plug? Eff that business.

This post has been edited by richee3: May 15, 2012 - 4:09 PM