Photo by: Paul Lopez, http://www.everythingdrift.com

My twin in Japan.

Back in November, the engine in my MR-S had a piston catastrophically grenade itself into thousands of little pieces. Since then, it had been sitting in the garage collecting dust and waiting for another engine to replace it. Earlier this year, myself along with a few very good friends spent an afternoon pulling apart the back side of my car just to get things started. We found that the piston in cylinder 4 shot through the oil pan as well as through the side of the block, destroying the starter along with it.

Notice in the passenger side wheel well is a larger oil cooler than previously. The old one was placed poorly and was only 1/2 the size. This placement should get better cooling from the side vent.

I had contemplated a number of variations to go with. Perhaps a 2gr-fe, v6 engine from a late model camry. On paper it sounds great. 260 some horsepower and torques on a 2200lb mid engine car? Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be easy. I decided to stick with the simple 2zz-ge platform. Since the engine harness was hacked and put together hastily, I took the liberty to undo all of the factory looming and tape to replace with Expando nylon loom. This also gave me the opportunity to extend and fix some of the wires which were exposed due to rubbing.

This is what the engine harness started as.

New sleeving and fresh connectors!

Here’s Wes setting up the hoist to have the transmission mate to the engine.

A replacement engine was purchased and opened up for minor inspection. This low mileage engine was showing no sign of damage so in it went. In all entirety, the engine was installed in just a little bit over 5 hours. Not so bad considering we didn’t really know what we were doing.

Ready for a supersonic install!

We filled the engine with oil and all the other fluids and at the first try, the engine starts, and it started strong. The garage was filled with smiles and relief. At long last we overcame this huge obstacle.

The meters say the engine is spinning at 1500rpm.

The next day, I installed my newly acquired VIS carbon fiber hardtop. Fitment is pretty good. I’ll be leaving the rear window off to reduce turbulence.

Also just for kicks, I now have music in the car.

The exhaust I had on was quite poorly modified, by myself of course. So I carefully measured and cut new 2.5″ piping and redid the second half of the exhaust. Now it looks good.

Extra thanks to Wes, Brian, Sean, Myke380, Kevin, Gary, and everyone who didn’t want to be mentioned. Couldn’t have done it without you guys!

it’s been a few months since i last brought the racecar out to a proper track for some spirited driving. since the beginning of the year, i’ve been stuck running redline time attack which took a lot of my time and money away from actually enjoying the sport. when i found that my teammate derek dicker [driver of the KINOD na8c] was competing at streets of willow for speedventures’ miata challenge, i saw it to be a great opportunity for us to finally have one track day together as a team.

we headed up on saturday evening to ensure we’d wake up refreshed for the long day ahead of us.

during my downtime, some minor setup changes took place. ride height was lowered approx 1 inch all around and the old toyo r1r’s were replaced with derek’s discarded 225/45/15 hankook rs-3 all the way around. rear swaybar was set to its softest setting to compensate for the extra front grip.

i switched back to the factory 00-01 celica gts ecu for the drive up to gather as much obd data as possible. since the event in las vegas, i haven’t been able to diagnose the problem behind the sluggish 6000-7500rpm. i did get a few codes out of the 80 mile drive, but none of it helped. for the event, the powerfc went back in.

right off the bat, the setup changes were incredible. i’m not sure if it’s the size or the rubber compound but they’re not sticky at all when cold. after the first lap of warming up, the tires were alive. because the car has been set up to have tons of aerodynamic downforce, i had always struggled with mechanical grip at sow but with the rs3′s it was all there. turn-in felt amazing everywhere. not a single ounce of front end grip had to be combated. it was a lot of fun and i got very comfortable very quickly.

the most notable moment of the day was at about 12:30pm. about 5 laps into the session i put down a 1:27.1 in this counter-clockwise configuration. i continued to lap the track once more. coming to the last corner onto the front straight, i pass a kraftwerks rotrex supercharged miata and hear the engine wind up past 10k rpm then heard a loud thud. frightened about what, i turned off the ignition and rolled past the skidpad and back onto the paddock. derek ran towards my car and yelled for me to get out and get the fire extinguisher. i knew this had to be bad. we got outside and opened the engine lid to find it smoking, but no flames. i was slightly relieved. a minute later, 949racing’s william chen found a hot piece of metal that fell out of my car. a hot piece of mangled up metal that looked as if it were the result of a nuclear explosion. it was a rod cap and part of the connecting rod. this 2zz-ge was finally done.

bought the car in 2006 with 68k miles and approx 30k miles on the engine. the car now has 123k miles. 90k miles of on and off hard beaten 8000 rpm miles. it was a sad day, but i can’t say i’m disappointed. the bone stock 2zz-ge off a salvaged 2003 matrix xrs had served its duty well and died honorably in line of action. r.i.p.

we’ll have an autopsy performed soon.

Thanks to KINOD, City Tire Online, J’s Graphics, Pho Broadway, V/T Engineering, BC Racing Suspension, Carbotech Brakes, LittleRocket, Erik @ JNZ Tuning, brian linga, all the don-t-hut guys, MR2OC, TrackHQ, everyone that i forgot the mention, and the extremely resourceful derek dicker aka dickerpedia.

photos by Jordan Yeh