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]

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.

From my earlier post. I fully admit that a V6 is a superior engine to the BEAMS And you still didn't answer my question. Given the choice between a stock ST or a BEAMS-swapped Celica, which are you going to choose? Parts for the BEAMS aren't bad. 95% of any part you will ever need can come from a 1ZZ.