Motor In... — Apex Attack

Back to our regularly scheduled build "progress." After TSL Day I was amped to make strides in the swap. I can build cars like those, maybe even better! With a newly found sense of motivation, I hit the garage, turned on some Neil Young, and fired up the impact battery charger.

First up, let's finish that body harness wire tuck in the engine bay.

The fusebox and harness attached to it going to the front of the bay are all going to be hidden out of view, and it's a fairly straight forward process. First we spend about 45 minutes swearing at the damn harness pulling all the connectors in the trunk and engine bay. It's helpful to use a small flat blade screwdriver to lift and push the brittle plastic tabs on the connectors, but don't worry, you'll break a few.

Once you pull the longer and bigger than you expected connections from the firewall back, move to the interior.

The harness runs through the rear firewall and through the entire the serengeti desert alongside the interior of the rocker panel. Not sure, but maybe this clean car had a former life as a rally car? Baja buggy? Rock crawler? Anyways, follow the harness up and pull all the connections up under the kick panel. There's about 47 of them. There's also a connection to the main battery terminal that I thought I was going to chase into the frunk, but it come undone via a bolted connection up there.

Complete body harness out! Axle shown for scale, and because it was sitting there. It's bigger than we all thought, eh?

Now, time to fish it through the cavity between the exterior quarter panel and the interior engine bay panel. To do so, you have to pull apart the interior behind the drivers seat completely. I pulled out an electronic gizmo I later found out was the factory subwoofer amp. Since all that is going at a later date for a roll bar install, I yanked most of it now to make room.

Once it's all out of the way, drill baby, drill! I used a step drill bit to achieve these results. This hole is behind the drivers seat, as close to the exterior panels as possible. The hole goes to the cavity we want to run our wire harness through to avoid going through the engine bay. I had to go back after this picture was taken to widen the hole and make it pretty ugly. Good thing it'll always be hidden behind some interior plastics.

Back in the trunk (with more evidence of the Baja 1000 races this car has entered, and presumably won), we throw the body harness in, and attach it via pink duct tape to a mechanics best friend, a coat hanger! The coat hanger was attached to some legit bailing wire, then attached to the harness. Once you fish it through...

The first part of the harness will follow! Then you get to shred your fingers on the razor sharp hole you just cut to fish through the remaining 46 connectors to the kick panel. Half way through this very painful process I lined the hole with tape to help. It did. Take my advice... or don't.

Now we can run the harness back like it ran from the factory. Yay! OEM!

While we're at it, you're a total dummy if you don't also run the engine lid release cable through this route. I unhooked it from the latch in the cabin, and pulled it through into the engine bay. To route it to the trunk you have to drill a hole in the bay near the latch.

You can even re-use one of the grommets to give it all those OEM feels! ...No I don't know why my engine bay looks like it was also just won the Baja 1000 now. It's pollen season here, so all my cleaning is going to crap. It'll all wipe down easy.

OK! Time to pull that pesky subframe again, let's get to the fun stuff!

Refreshed heat shields back in, no more body harness, and other not needed vacuum lines are now gone, still looks busy as hell, I know.

I hoped Toyota's overspray would be better in the bay, and it would all be a gorgeous jet black. But I can live with it. I didn't spray paint it like my old one. When this motor has to come back out eventually, maybe I'll get a wild hair and paint the bay properly. That's a big maybe.

Final motor touch ups! The water neck was painted by a previous owner, so I stripped it with Mr. Wire brush again. This didn't satisfy, so out came the paint.

Works for me. You'll barely ever see this under the IC piping, but while I'm going down the slippery slope, might as well do what I can.

Let's re-install the clutch! After talking to many people, almost everyone agreed the hot spots were not a problem on my flywheel. They appear to be common on aftermarket flywheels, and if I didn't notice modulation in the clutch pedal, it probably wasn't a problem. Fingers crossed I don't have to pull it 20 miles later!

Looks flat to me.

Flywheel on! Pay attention to those torque specs people, and be sure to use red locktite.

Clutch and pressure plate on! Dirty, ew, brake cleaner applied after the picture.

Next, pull the motor off the stand and wrestle the transmission into place, find out it doesn't fit, pull the transmission, pull the pressure plate, re-align the clutch, tighten pressure plate again, install transmission again (this time tweaking your back). Simple, easy! Notice the leaky, dirty, grimy gen2 motor in the background, sweating even more oil with envy of the new sheriff in town?

Throw the starter in, otherwise you can't start the car, duh.

I cleaned up the portion of the engine wiring harness that connects to the starter. I removed a bunch of flex shield and shortened the temp sensor wiring. I also ran this part of the harness hidden under the water neck area of the motor.

Ok, hoist the car another 5 feet in the air! Don't drop it. Slide the motor underneath and swear you'll buy a new furniture dolly soon....

Lower the body onto the engine, and now use the hoist to lift the motor/tranny into place. But you already knew that, didn't you? Pro tip, use a towel to protect your valve cover from the hoist chain... even though the chain will fall anyways and scratch it.

With the motor almost in I grabbed the passenger side mount to install, noticed it was dirty, and went to town on it with the wire wheel. That thing is paying for itself rather nicely.

With the motor in and supported by the side mounts, I got under and started attaching all the underside connections; shift cables, coolant lines, and the clutch slave. It was filthy, but still worked great when pulled, so I cleaned as best I could and decided to hit it with some paint. It'll be hidden, but why not.

Motor in! Coolant lines in! Clutch slave and shift cables in! Fuel supply/return in (to be rebuilt in the future)! I need to tuck more wires/hoses and hide the transmission grounds... any ideas? With the big stuff going in smoothly, I got under to get the axles and subframe in, and then the exhaust will follow.

I gave my old axles the same treatment as everything else, clean the shit out of them. Then I realized my old drivers side outer CV was seized (probably from hitting a wall at 50 mph), and passenger side boots were trashed and carrier bearing had play in it. Ugh. I go to the set that came with the new car...

Double ugh. The splines aren't too trustworthy, I'd rather not destroy the hub. Upon further examination, the other axle also had two bad boots.

4 axles... none are road worthy. My worst nightmares are coming, rebuilding CV axles. This is something I knew was coming though, and an open invitation to build stronger. 300whp is about the safe limit on OEM axles anyways, and I would hate to blow up the inner cages with some sticky tires and a hard launch. A local was selling the ATS axle cage upgrade kit, so I picked that up, along with 2 OEM boot kits. Check the next post for the greasy horror show!