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

[Box]

Still, 34 highway on premium is cheaper than 26 highway on regular. Especially save money in city driving where the V6 really hurts you. Still, rather have BEAMS purely for mpg and convenience. **** it, drop in a 350.