1984 Toyota Corolla
I bought this beater off a guy named Poncho on the south side for $100. It was a real pile of shit. This car had no redeeming qualities except for a straight body and a working transmission. The interior was trashed and it was the crappy SR-5 model with the super powerful(70hp) 4ac engine. It was tempting to just modify the 4ac but sadly it had a spun rod bearing and I had a 4agze sitting in my carport. I knew my next project was going to be an ae86 but I found a good deal on a JDM small port 4agze with all the electronics before I found the car. My search for a ae86 lasted a few days until I found this sweet ride sitting in Ponchos front yard. Me and Mat loaded our guns and headed for the south side. He hooked up the tow rope while I stood guard. We handed poncho his hundy. He wouldn't budge on the price, something about the sixth rock being free. Mat finally put his S-Runner to good use and towed me home. I yanked out the 4ac and installed the 4agze. I had already purchased a Toysport header, HKS pulley and installed bigport cams to give the engine a little more zip. To make the 4agze work in a SR5 is a lot harder than a GT-S. I had to convert the car to fuel injection and install a GT-S rear end. Getting under the car and bending fuel line was a real pain. I used a front mount mk3 Supra intercooler and had the aluminum pipes on the supercharger re-welded to face towards the front of the car.
Since this car was such a beater I never really took any time to make anything look decent I just wanted it to run. Once I had fabricated the intercooler piping and found a place for the afm I needed to connect the wiring harness. Since the harness was for a US spec mr2 many of the wires weren't long enough. I had to lengthen a lot of the wiring harness and install a few relays for when it had power. There were a lot of little problems along the way like finding a place for the thermostat and overflow tank. I called my friend Mike over (he wired my Celica too) to put power to the harness. The car fired up right away but it ran really bad. We checked the injectors, ignition and cam timing, afm, everything we could think of and the car just ran poorly. When I would drive it it would sputter and backfire. At this point I basically gave up. Every so often I would walk outside and mess with it but no matter what I did it just ran like crap. After a month of just letting it sit I decided to advance the timing to 15 degrees to see how it would run. It actually ran better but still pretty bad. I kept advancing it more and more till I would guess the base timing was around 35 and the car ran great.
I had so much fun in that car. It was literally falling apart but had a 180hp engine in it. This was not enough power so I bought a Diabolique pulley, and milled the head 1mm to increase compression. With the new pulley I was seeing about 11.5psi. This engine was supposed to make 10psi stock so 11.5 seemed pretty low. It could be the larger intercooler and extra piping had a bigger pressure drop but regardless the car ran great. I was delivering pizza in the ae86 and my friends would come into work and ride a long with me while I taunted other cars. Baiting people into races was pretty easy, most of them would just laugh at me then get this shocked look on their face when they would lose. I tried not to rub it in, sometimes I would laugh at them but A few of my friends would have some choice things to say to the losers. One poor guy in a newer mustang who made the mistake of saying, when asked to race, "it's only a Corolla" was the recipient of my friend little Mikes ultimate jesture of "you lose". Being him hanging out the window to his waist with both thumbs pointing down yelling comments such as "you wasted your money" and "it's only a Corolla". We weren't always this bad but people would make some pretty nasty comments about my car before hand. On the dyno the car made 159hp and 154tq, pretty good for a 4agze considering my only mods were a pulley, header, and a milled head. I was pretty suprised during my dyno session to find out how sensitive the 4agze is to adjusting the timing. With my timing advanced like it was, my car was making lots of low and midrange torque, but if you retarded it back to normal, the low-end would suffer, while the power above 6500rpm would jump up by nearly 10hp. My peak power checked in just under 170whp but the loss of low end power wasn't worth it so I left the settings to get maximum power in the midrange. With a timing control device to retard it on the top end and some aftermarket cams, getting 175+ whp on a 4agze would be pretty easy. I think these motors take well to higher compression and more aggressive tuning. This could be a reason I've seen 4agze's with a lot of money dumped into them making less power. The problem I was having with the 4agze set-up was the supercharger bearings would go bad. I replaced the supercharger and the bearings and that one went out also. I didn't want to keep buying used sc12's so I began looking into replacing the sc12 with a Eaton m62.
Project m62
M62's are roots style superchargers made by Eaton. They come stock on a lot of cars so sourcing one is pretty easy. I went with a Mercedes SLK 230 because it basically doesn't have a snout and the pulley runs on a magnetic clutch like the factory Toyota blower so you can turn it on and off. I found it on Ebay for something like $250 and purchased the inlet pipe for it at the dealer for about $70.
The M62 looked like a good replacement for the sc12. The 62 means it displaces 62 cubic inches (about 1000cc's)of air per revolution. The 12 in sc12 means it displaces 1200cc's (or 75ci) per revolution. Even though the M62 is smaller it can spin about 20% faster than the sc12 so what it lacks in size it makes up for in rpm's. Since the Mercedes m62 has a 95mm sc pulley on it and the sc12 has a 120mm pulley on it (125mm if it's the us model) by bolting the Mercedes blower onto the 4agze you will end up with about the same boost. You can sit and crunch numbers all day on pulley diameters, cubic inches, etc. but my boost levels were almost the same with the m62 as with sc12. I began by taking off the old sc12 and having it's outlet pipe modified to fit the m62. I replaced the sc intake manifold with an n/a manifold. I called up my friend Lil' Mike to come over and help me weld. For 4 days before work we would sit out in my carport and make brackets to bolt it on and cut holes to make it fit. The part you have to be most careful with is making sure the ribs line up on the pulleys so the belt won't fry the bearings. I used a bracket on the bottom that would let the sc swivel back and forth like the old sc12. And I made one solid bracket to bolt it to the intake manifold and another to bolt it to the head.
Once it was secure I went about desiring the intercooler piping. I decided to set the sc up like a turbo so if it wasn't all that fast I could just bolt on a turbo instead. The air entering the engine would first pass through the air filter, afm, supercharger, intercooler, throttle body, and lastly the intake manifold.
I put in a HKS blow off valve between the intercooler and throttle body (because I like the noise so fuck off to all you "it's not functional" people). The design flaw in this is placing the throttle body after the supercharger instead of before it. It would lead to an erratic idle if the supercharger would activate while the car wasn't moving. Again the reason I did it like this was because this was just a fun little project and I really wanted to turbo the car. We started on a Monday and finished on a Friday. The moment of truth came. I started the car and while it was idling I had Mike connect the wires to the supercharger. The supercharger screamed to life. My idle shot up to 3000rpm's and the boost gauge was reading 12psi with the car idling in my carport. The superchargers whine was louder than any I've ever heard. It actually drowned out the exhaust. After a few seconds of the car idling my vacuum caps began blowing off and shooting across my yard. The rest of the day we fixed some minor problems and then took it out on the road. With the Diabolique 176mm crank pulley the car was making about 12psi. It was really cool hearing the whine of the supercharger and the car blowing off between gears. I decided before taking it out for some racing that night it would be most fun to have the sc on a toggle switch so I could turn it on while idling or cruising. That afternoon I took it to work at the Pizza place. We would active the supercharger at lights to scare people or to see the look on their faces when it came on. If I could explain the noise it made, I would have to say that the sc12 with a pulley at 7000rpm's wasn't anywhere near half as loud as the m62 at 2000rpm's. People in the car next to you would nearly jump in their seats when you would turn it on. If you had it on while accelerating and blowing off in between gears people for blocks would just stop what they were doing and stare. Myself and everyone who heard it said it was the craziest sounding car they had ever heard. When you were rolling down the street you could bait people into races with the sc turned off but once you hit that switch and blew off at them a few times it was impossible to get anyone to race. Even some guy in a Ford Lighting who was laughing at me one minute would have none of it once I turned the sc on. The funny part is my car with the m62 was nowhere near as fast as a lightning. I wanted to dyno the m62 set-up but after driving it around for a weekend I can tell you it felt exactly the same as the sc12. I was having some bearing trouble with the m62 by the end of the week so I sold it and put on the turbo I had waiting in the wings.
Turbo 4ag
I picked up a t3 turbo off a Saab at the junk yard for $35. It was pretty small (.42/.48) but for the money I figured it would work good on a 4ag. To mount the turbo I bought a HKS turbo manifold for a ae86 from Toysport for $250. It was flanged for a t25 so I had a t3 flange welded to it. Since I already had a mk3 Supra intercooler from my sc set-up and a bov in place it was merely a matter of bolting on the turbo, hooking up the oil lines and making a new intercooler pipe. Once I got it all together I took it out for a spin. The car ran pretty good with the boost set to 5psi. About a mile from my house I ran into a 95 Mustang GT. We raced from a light and around 40mph he started pulling ahead of me but for 5psi I thought I gave him a good race. I drove back home and set the boost to 8psi and the car seemed to pick up a lot of power but I knew it still wasn't close to what the engine could handle. I bought a 10psi wastegate and drove it around like that for a few weeks. At 10psi it was fast enough to beat most cars but I lost a race to a 12 second Z28 by a few car lengths. I was worried the stock 370cc 4agze injectors were nearing their limit so I picked up some supra 440's and installed a 3sgte afm and a S-AFC. The car ran pretty rich but I knew I had lots of room to turn up the boost. I took it to the dyno on 13psi and it laid down 208whp and 216tq. My a/f ratio was near 10:1 and the s-afc worked when the car wasn't boosting but once the turbo spooled it would just run rich no matter what I set it to. I think it could have pulled 225 if I could have leaned it out but i didn't think it would be safe to put my old injectors back in. The turbo I was using was pretty small so I should have left the boost where it was but i turned it up anyway. I learned that the t3 I was using was good for 18psi with the wastegate unplugged. How do I know this? Because I unplugged it for a few months. 18psi with that small turbo and my crappy intercooler plus my restrictive 2.25" exhaust definitely was choking off my power. The car pulled like crazy anyway, especially around 5000 rpm's it would just put you back in the seat. I never got a chance to dyno it like this but I would say it had at least 240hp/tq at the wheels. After driving my Ae86 around it would make my Turbo MR2 and Celica feel downright slow. I raced a few 14 second cars and I pulled them like they were standing still. The best part was with the drag radials and 6 puck clutch I ran on the street, people couldn't even hang with me from a light or from a roll. I'm still amazed that with that ghetto set-up and poor tuning the car could handle that kind of boost. We would take my Corolla out on the weekends along with 5 or 6 other ae86's that belonged to friends of mine and we would race people. It looked funny, all these loud ass crappy looking Corollas driving down the street sounding like a pack of bumblebees. Anyone who would taunt us would wind up having to race me and they had no idea that my beater Corolla had nearly 300hp under the hood. The look on peoples faces were priceless when I would pull them by a few buslenghths. My car was so beat there was never a shortage of people wanting to race. After a few months of beating the crap out it it was time to run it at the track. I thought for sure it was good for 12's. On the way to the track my thermostat stuck closed and my car overheated. Of course I was driving like a maniac when I noticed this so my motor was gone. We took out the thermostat on the side of the road and my friend Mike in his ae86 followed me home. Even with a blown engine we got pulled over for speeding and we ended up serving traffic school together. I took the motor apart and I had fried all my pistons and warped my head. I decided why throw another 4ag in there when I can get a 7a from the junk yard.
Turbo 7age
I picked up a high mileage 7afe from the junk yard for $300 and installed it in my car with the 4ag head. I wasn't new to this (read about my 7age project on my mr2 page) so it went together pretty easy. There were a few differences with doing the 7age in the ae86 as opposed to a mr2. First the water line that goes from the head to the water pump needs to be lengthened about 1/2" to make up for the increased deck height. Second the motor sat too high in the engine bay so I put some washers between the crossmember and the frame to give me a little more room. Once this was taken care of I slotted my cams and put it all together
I didn't modify the 7a block whatsoever. I used stock pistons, rod bolts, rods, everything. Me and Mike drove it around once it was running. I was really surprised with how fast the turbo spooled with the extra displacement. I had the boost set to 10psi and although it wasn't anywhere near as fast as the 4ag at 18psi it still felt pretty good. I drove it down to the track the next day to see what it would do. I ran a 13.7@102mph on only 10psi, not bad. I made a few more passes and it was more of the same so on my 4th pass I decided to try to turn up the boost to 12psi. Well I made a little mistake and it ended up at 18psi again. I knew the 7a couldn't handle that and it didn't. The engine literally blew up about 1 second after I messed with the boost controller. There was so much smoke the fire crew came out to see if my car was on fire. I limped it home and upon inspection of the pistons I discovered I blew up both ringlands on all 4 pistons, well done. I bought another 7a block and replaced my broken one. I replaced my turbo compressor with a t-3 60 trim and set the boost to 12psi. The bigger turbo really woke up the engine and it felt fast again like when the 4ag was running 18psi. I drove it like this for a few months and the 7age held up to the boost pretty good. If I tried for anything more than 12psi it would run pretty crappy. I'm sure this had something to do with my poor tuning. The 4agze electronics just weren't up to this. During the summer there was a flash flood and I submerged my car in an intersection turned into a lake. It broke one of the pistons in half, I guess water doesn't compress as good as air. This was pretty much the end of the car. I had a stock bluetop 4ag sitting in my yard I put in while I was doing the turbo project on the del sol. Once I had the Honda finished I decided that I'd blown up enough motors in my Corolla and I parted it out. I really enjoyed having that car, it was alot of fun and the guinea pig for a lot of projects. I learned a lot about the limit of 4ag's when I had it and did things most people were afraid to do. It was so run down that I just didn't see the point in dumping a bunch of money into it fixing it up.
This is the last night it ever ran.