Sorry if its been covered before i did not see it in searches, but i have a question for any of you that have used the awd tranmission in your swaps. once you get it bolted to the motor can you drive it with out the propshaft and rear diff? my understanding is its gonna split 50/50 between the front and rear so i'm a bit concerned of burning it out with no load from the rear. is there a way to lock out the center diff and use it in a FWD configuration? Can someone confirm one way or the other? i'de like to drvie it to a friends lift but he's about 150 miles away

thanks

-jec

Nope. You'll burn the center diff.

bummer, thanks for the info

You can drive it with awd tranny and no rear end if you remove the center diff that powers the prop shaft and have it welded. I'll see if I can find pics but if you take off the end of the transmission that attaches to the passenger side axle the diff is right there. Unbolt the ring gear housing and what you need to weld is inside the 2 halves. It almost looks like a WWII hand Granade that ways about 15-20 lbs. lol.

As for the prop shaft you'll have to either weld up a hanger so the first section of the 3 piece drive shaft is in the tranny so it won't leak fluid or fab up a bracket off of the tail shaft to hold a plug in the seal.

My car has been running with the center diff welded and half the driveshaft under the car for over a year now and 20k miles on those mods with zero problems. I have yet to get my 4wd installed. And from personal experience. The car won't want to move at all until you get to about 30 miles an hour in 3rd gear unless you do these mods or put in 4wd and in this case as said above you'll burn out the diff if you try. Let alone have no fluid in your trans without the driveshaft installed. Hope this helps.

yeah unfortunatly welding the dif and blocking the shaft is out of the question for me as i'll want the awd functional. I just need it on the lift cause i dont weld well out of position. And since i got rid of the truck i don't have a vehicle that i can pull a heavy trailer with anymore.

actually the tractor will pull it no problem , lol i just cant pull it 150 miles on that thing

this is good info for someone who has no other transmission and need to use the once from the swap though.

yeah i just purchased another center diff to replace my welded one when i go awd. but you'll have to weld the prop shaft in anyway i just unbolted the back half of it and welled in the support bearing mounts and bolted it up. i did mine while the car was still on the car trailer. i still have those weld burns from all the flak. lol good luck on your awd swap!

This might sound like a daft question, but I might be excused for being a novice...:

What gearbox/transmission do FWD swapped-3SGTE celicas ST use? The standard ST isn't strong enough, the AWD box needs the center diff welded or it won't work, so is there something that will work easily?

Thanks,
M.

Yes. The e153 trans from an mr2 with a few modifications or the gt s54 trans are what people are using besides the awd trans. The easiest is the s54 by far but the mr2 trans can have a few more goodies such as LSD and was actually made for the 3s's power. That being said I'm not sure if anyone has posted about the limitations of either tranny as of yet. Hope this helps. The search button can give you lots of results on this topic.

After a little search, it seems that the proper way to do things would be to swap the 2.0 or 2.2 box in. Apparently it can take the extra power and torque.
Now, on the basis that the 3SGTE can be made to work, does this not mean that you can (rather) easlily make a FWD or AWD celica RWD (with the propshaft and rear dif)?
I wonder if anyone has done this...


M.

You can drive it enough to get it on a trailer. I drove mine around the back of my house with out rear axles. But i wouldnt do much more than that.

PEOPLE!!!!!!

you dont need an MR2 trans, if you want an E153, get one from a Camry or Solara. no mods needed.

^this

yeah, s54 is certainly the cheapest option i've found around here, and although some people seem to say it cant handle it, theres a pretty long list of fairly well documentd swaps abusing the s54 for many years now with little ill effect. My research on it seems to indicate the s54 could really benefit from exchanging the 5th gear from an s51 tranny to reduce your 5th gear rpms. found it inline for about 90 bucks

Gear, 5th: 33336-33030
Ring Synchronizer, Inner no 5: 33397-333012
Ring Synchronizer, Middle no 5: 33398-12010
Ring Synchronizer, Outer no 5: 33399-33010

also cant remember whos thread it was but they included some graphs of the the rpms between the s54 and s51 with an overlay in 5th. the math to figure it out is pretty straight forward but it might be a good idea to compile all the s54 info in a thread for future reference


also the s54 can be fitted with the oem helical lsd for the 2004+ mr2 spyders, there an obx option for about 400 bucks but the reviews have been less than encouraging,







yeah since getting rid of the truck i\'ve had a million uses for it,

was gonna link the thread but cant seem to find it but i saved the graphs so here they are

not just the 2004 MR2, its the same LSD that will go in 2000+ celica, mr2 spyder, corolla, or any transmission that got mated to a 1ZZ or 2ZZ. essentially the C60, C61, C56

Hey Smaay,

Are you saying that the auto tranny from the v6 camrys will also work? I've spoken to one guy so far who claims that the 3sgte's ecu has some problem sending signals to the the tranny to shift. If you can confirm that this will work I'd like to attempt it on my conversion.

where did you get auto? im talking about the 5 speed transmission