Just moved from IL to CA. To make a long story short ran into engine trouble so I pulled it. Its out and I want to know if anyone has gone all motor with this engine sucessfully. I checked with the local smogman and basically I cant legally do a 3sgte swap. Is there anyway to make the engine better in its current state? Also local engine builder not speaking highly about working on. Are custom titanium rods worth it?

I've post quite a bit on this. Overall, it's fair as an n/a motor at best. Because of the stroke design, it's pretty limited. Search. Also... titanium rods are race only items. They'll eat away at your internals...

even NA mods will make u not legal, you know that right?

not only that, im pretty sure that any signifigant NA mods will cause you to fail the sniffer test.

the lack of cheap parts is also a bitch.

Well smogman say that you are alloud two engine codes and if you have certs crap for mods its legal. It didnt make much sense to me. We also said if I swap emgine I should get a cali motor and not a fed motor. I am assuming becuase I orginal bought the car out of state its a fed motor. I have a 97 5SFE. This is becoming a horror movie...

You could build it up. From what I have been readinf ro the past twqo years your not going to get much power. but some power is better then nothing.

Start with a rebuild. You can use the 3s-ge head, which I have read it will give you about a 10% increase from the lack of the eco fe design. Im sure you can find some performance pistons and a new gasket set to raise the compression. Then a nice intake free flow heaer to cat back exhaust. Then some nice tunning.

You might get 160hp maybe a little more.

Your best bet you be to swap out the engine and just pay some people off where an when ever you need it to be checked.

too bad you have a 97 if it was like 94-96 you can actually do a 3sgte engine swap as long as its not a jdm motor! i research this for like months ca rules are

1) newer motor (1 year diffrence you can get slide on)
2) engine must be coming from a car with simlar weight (3sgte or 3sge)
3) either us model or jdm replacement for same motor .. (only can do a jdm swap with a jdm 5sfe if your going jdm)
4) has to pass the sniffer it should if you register it as a mr2 motor

but man its hard finding a 3sgte us motor with low milleage that be less then 3000.00 dollar..

yeah, but no one have done this yet... i wish people that have done the swap in cali can try..but the mr2 are mid rear and a celica are front wheel. i guess they can't get a way.

Well at this point I just want old power back. I know this is going to hurt. After reading through the 52 pages of posting by kwanza26, I do not think its safe to heavily modify this engine IMO. I just want my ride back. A little more power would be nice. I pulled the motor in hopes of just putting another 5sfe back in. This forum is great but when I bought this car back in 97 there wasnt much around as far info about performance for this car. I never wanted insane power gains just a little more performance. More than I\H\E. Any good import junkyard south of riverside, ca... ?