7mgte in progress!

[Xanatos]

Well folks, I'm soon to join the lower ranks for the turbo blessed. My poor 87' keeled over this last weekend and well I can't bear to part with her. Being that this is also my daily driver, you can imagine the first words out of my mouth were $#@! Then luckily I also realized that this last week I was up at a place called Jarco near my city that does JDM imports. They just happened to have a 5-speed Turbo front clip in stock. Unfortunately this one is from Canada and higher mileage than a typical JDM, but seems to be in good condition.

I don't have the time to wait for a rebuild, so I'm taking the risk and dropping her, tranny and all into my beloved 7mge/Auto chassis. That's right, doing a tranny and turbo conversion in one swap. Taking pictures at the moment, though they've been sparse in the beginning.

Haven't run into any major issues yet, but here's keeping my fingers crossed. I'll post some pics when I get a chance. We're expecting to be done by this weekend if I can locate a used manual drive shaft and my ECU comes in on time. Anyone know if the manual and turbo 5 speeds are the same? Just thought I'd ask.

The engine tranny actually slid out quite easily, so aside from the extra parts, I expect the transplant to go very well. One tip I can offer to those of you who want to try this is to go ahead and swap the entire engine harness at the same time. When removing your old engine, leave the harness attached to the motor and disconnect it from the ECU behind the firewall. There's only like 6 connections and a rubber boot to undo versus like 50 connections on the engine which some are quite hard to get to without dismantling the entire intake. We spent like 2-3 hours trying to get all of them off the engine before pulling and then realized that it'll be easier to do it the other way, thus saving quite a few hours.

Those who are thinking about the conversion, definately get the front clip. Much easier for making sure you have all the parts for the transfer. I never would have thought that I'd need to swap the condenser and lines, but they are different on the turbo model. Also comes with an electric fan for the condenser.

If anyone knows of anything else to keep an eye on while doing this conversion, please divine your knowledge upon me. I'll update this with my progress and pics later this week. Wish me luck.

Hopefully when I am done I will be the proud owner of a 7mgte/5speed/targa MKIII!

[kwnate]

Metal Head gasket, arp studs torqued to 80 ft/lbs. Better to do it now...