Suppra87s Cressida wagon 1JZ swap/money pit

Hey everyone. I recently stumbled upon a deal on a 1985 Toyota Cressida Wagon (MX72) that I just couldn't pass up. One thing led to another and next thing you know its turned into a go fast wagon project. I'm generally not one to make build threads for my vehicles, with the exception of my 1JZ 4runner over on yotatech, but I figured Id share my build of this wagon with all you fine folks over here on Tacoma World.

Every since I sold my MK3 Supra in 2008, Ive been dying to build another 1JZ car...the 1JZ 4runner was a blast to build and drive but I really wanted a nice comfy car this time around. Fast forward to June 3rd when this 85 Mx72 with 143k on the clock kinda fell into my hands. I towed the car home and ordered a 1JZ VVT-i with automatic transmission from a 2002 Toyota Crown JZS171 on eBay that same evening. Everything has snowballed from that point on!
The first time I laid my eyes on this boxy 80's beauty. We had to push it on to my trailer due to a bad fuel pump. It had been sitting for 3 years.



Promptly towed it home and unloaded it.



I cut an "access hole" into the trunk floor to extract the old nasty fuel pump. Didn't feel like dropping the tank out in my driveway. I just needed to get the car started to drive into my garage.


Dropped in a Walbro 255 fuel pump that I had left over from my 98 Supercharged T4R.


And much to my surprise, the damn thing fired right up on 3+ year old "fuel"....it didn't smell like fuel haha. More pics of this beauty.




The next part of the project is waaay more exciting.

 

1JZ was delivered to my work in Annapolis a few days later. Backed my truck up the loading gate of the delivery truck and we just shoved it in...wish all swaps were easy as that! Had to removed my bedmat so it would slide. Cleanest JDM engine Ive every ordered. Hopefully the inside is just as clean as the outside.




Got her home and backed into my garage. Using my lift to unload everything was a bit sketchy but worked great.






First order of business was to freshen up as much as I could on the 1J before running it. Who knows how long its been sitting, dry-rotting the seals and ruining gaskets.
I replaced the spark plugs, valve cover gaskets, PCV hoses, PCV valve, coil pack connectors, front and rear crankshaft seals, both cam seals, rebuilt the VVT-i cam gear, timing belt, water pump (2JZ pump), timing belt tensioner and roller, thermostat and drivebelt. I'm sure there's more than that but we'll get there.



Motor mount brackets are from Excessive Motorsports. They will bolt a 1/2JZ into a MA61 Supra, MX72/3 Cressida, and with some persuasion, into a 2nd gen 4Runner as well.





The inside was not as clean as outside but still very workable. First few oil changes will be with cheap oil and quick intervals.


Added a Future Fabrication downpipe. Good for a dyno proven 26 whp..so they say. So far this is the nicest part on the whole car haha.




Then on June 15th I yanked the 5M-GE out of the engine bay. That was a piece of cake. Gave the engine bay a good powerwash then dropped the 1JZ in later that afternoon. It looks right at home.

 

In
Exciting build I love fast wagons

 

I love these threads, subbed

 

Awesome build! One day I'll be smart enough to move to a JZ platform. I'm a glutton for punishment and keep repairing/rebuilding the 7M's for my MK3.

 

Once I got the engine into place I quickly realized the factory 5M motor mounts werent going to work for me. While they do "bolt up", they are to0 large and make contact with the oil lines under the turbo. I had a set of bombproof Toyota truck mounts for the 3.0v6 laying around so I cut them up and made a new lower section to suite the Mx72 cross member. Quick weld and paint and they were good to go! Like a glove!







The factory MX72 transmission cross member was a near perfect it for the A340E that came behind my 1JZ. I used the stock transmission mount that came with the A340 also. Just had to widen all 4 holes on the cross member to utilize the factory studs on the mount.


The next part of the project I was a bit disorganized with. I began deciphering wiring diagrams for the Cressida and the 1JZ (all in Japanese). Making myself pinout lists, what pin goes where and what it does. Pretty straight forward stuff, minus the Japanese stuff. That sucks. A guy in Australia that goes by Wilbo666 has mapped out more 1/2jz wiring than you can shake a stick at. If you google his name you'll be met wit all you need to wires one of these engines.




Ill be back to touch up more on the wiring. Trying to run through all this in the order I took all these pictures. Unfortunately that means progress jumps around a little.

 

Took a break from wiring to get back to making all the plumbing connections on the engine. First up was the fuel vapor line. It terminated at the charcoal canister on the right side of the engine on the original 5M. I opted to cut the line, bend it towards the motor and flare the end to meet up with the vapor line on the 1JZ.


Maintaining power steering was a priority for me. I removed the stock 5M lines which connected to the pump on the right side (JZ pump is on the left of engine). The return line is just a piece of 3/8' trans cooler line going from the rack to the reservoir. The high pressure lines is from Driftmotion. They make various lines to mate the JZ with different chassis.



I plan to plump in an external power steering cooler as well, that will come later once Ive got a few miles on the swap. The guys on the drifitng forums say the JZ pump will wreck the Cressida rack seals in no time fast without a cooler. I'm not doing much drifting here so im thinking ill be alright for now. Racks for these cars are super cheap anyway (~$140). Ill replace when it blows.
Got my oxygen sensor installed. Wideband will come later on as well. Factory Cressida return heater hose needed about 1" cut from it and it mated right up the the 1J. The feed hose needed a bit of an extension but I was able to make it work with the crap I had laying around.



Back to wiring. Got all my basic power and grounds figured out and ecu connected.


Then came the "fun" part of extending every wire in the harness. Almost every 1JZ if not all of them are in RHD only vehicles. Meaning the engine harness terminates on the left...far away from the ECU location behind the glove box on the right side. I wanted a clean swap so I opted to extend the harness by 5ft. I used the appropriate wire gauge, for each wire extended, soldiered and shrink wrapped every connection and extended the shielding on all the wires that had factory shielding. Cam/crank sensor wires, O2 wires, speed sensor wires, stuff like that. Not the first time of done this, wont be the last haha.

 

Sub'd

 

Had to take another break from the wiring. I can only sit and solider so many wires in one sitting. Mind you that I'm a mechanic by trade so I do this crap all day long at work then come home to work on my own projects. Splitting up large tasks is how I stay sane haha
Anyway....I decided to tackle the shift linkage next. I was anticipating a little more complication but all I had to do was lengthen the stock linkage (stock trans was A43DE) by 35mm and it bolted right up. No adjustment necessary. Got lucky with this one I suppose.


Next up was the driveshaft. This one I decided to outsource. I don't have the capability to balance a driveshaft let alone build one perfectly straight. The length of the driveshaft didn't need to change from the stock 1pc unit. The necessary change was a replacement slip yoke for the transmission end of things. See...the A43DE trans that Toyota used up until 1987 had a 21 spline output shaft. This is the same spline as a W58 (2wd 4cyl yota truck or NA supra) transmission. My new transmission is an A340E which uses a 23 spline yoke. Its also larger in diameter but lets not get into that haha. This spline is the same as a 2wd 6cyl yota truck and the R154 found in MK3 turbo supras. More importantly here, I had A1 Driveshaft make me a custom driveshaft with 1310 u-joints to fit this application with my provided specs. That was boring, here's some more pictures to keep you entertained.

Here's some driveshaft measurements and spline specs, in-case anyone cares.


Old Yoke


Old yoke right, new yoke left


New custom driveshaft

 

Next up was the cooling system. Because I chose to use a 2JZ-GTE waterpump, I had to pick the right fan clutch to bolt to it. The 2JZ-GTE waterpump uses a larger bolt spacing than the 1jz and older 5m/7m waterpumps. The new spacing is 74mm center-center, 1jz/m-series is 68mm or something like that. Anyway, I used a fan clutch from a 96 Lexus LS400 (1UZ), check bolts right to the 2jz pump. My 34 year old 5M fan bolted right to this setup and seemed to work very well....more on that in a later post since I'm trying to do this chronologically.


You can see the difference in bolt spacing between the old 5M clutch and the 1UZ unit.


Utilized the original fan shroud as well. New "factory replacement" radiator from rockauto.




For radiator hoses I used oem MK4 supra TT radiator hoses. Had to trim them slightly but everything fit pretty well afterwards.


Intercooler piping was next. I used one of those 2.5" pipe universal kits combined with some of my own crap I had left over from other projects. I cut 2 pretty big holes in the front support to route the piping. Lined the holes with vacuum hose to cover the sharp edges.







Made my own "bead roller" to put a bead on my aluminum charge pipes. Works pretty well.




I forgot to mention earlier about my throttle cable solution. The factory throttle cable to way too short. Most people used a MK4 supra throttle cable but they're like $90 so I used a $23 96 Toyota corolla cable. Fits perfectly!

This is my original mas air meter and air filter setup. I'm using some sort of aftermarket air flow meter housing with a driftmotion filter kit. I later learned that the positioning of my AFM was causing erroneous readings and making the computer cut boost. More on that later...

 

I relocated my coolant overflow reservoir to the right side of the engine bay because the charge piping coming off the throttle body took up the factory space for it.


The next part of the project I jumped the gun on completing. The exhaust. I ordered a builders kit of 3" 304 mandrel bent piping. The first system I built was a straight pipe from the downpipe to the rear bumper. Don't know what I was thinking with that one....I knew it was going to be too loud, I guess I just really wanted to drive the car. That lasted about 150 miles of driving it, then I rebuilt the exhaust. Version 2.0, I welded in a 6" long flex pipe, vibrant high flow catalytic converter, vibrant resonator, another v-band to make it 2 sections, and a vibrant highflow muffler. Muuuuuch better. Here's the first version.....









Below is the updated version 2.0, I was very proud of how this one turned out.

 

I've got to jump back in time a little bit to fill y'all in on a few missing points that I jumped over. I'm terrible at these things, especially when the car is running and I'm trying to do this in order.

So once I finished wiring everything (ill post my pinouts later) and went to start the car for the first time, it just cranked and cranked. Found out I was getting spark for about 2 seconds then it was cut by the ECU. Well upon further research I discovered that the ECU that came with my engine was an Immobilized unit. Keep in mine the donor car JSZ171 Toyota Crown is labeled at a Lexus LS430 over here...big expensive luxury car. The immobilizer thing makes sense. My solutions were limited to the following: finding the original key associated hardware from that exact car....which was never going to happen, have an immobilizer defeat box made for my ECU by shipping it to a guy in Australia or a guy in Russia, orrrr buy another non-immobilized ECU. I chose to buy another ECU, which came from Russia. Few weeks later I plugged it in and the damn thing fired up just like my Tacoma!

Also I need to go back to when I mentioned I bolted my 34 year old 5M fan to the new fan clutch. Well that lasted 1 mile of driving. The old plastic didn't like being spun up as fast and with as much coupling force as the 1UZ v8 fan clutch allowed. It exploded...blowing apart my fan shroud and went right through my brand new radiator and air filter. Lesson learned I suppose. Bought a new Aisin 5M fan blade and new radiator (again). As a precautionary measure I also made some new lower radiator mounts to bring the radiator forward about 1". Wanted to make sure the new fan had plenty of breathing room.

 

Then I rebuilt the brake calipers and turned the rotors. I hate captured rotors but it made for a great excuse to repack and adjust the front wheel bearings. Aldo rebuilt the rear drum brakes with new wheel cylinders, shoes, and hardware. No pictures of that though...sorry. Its boring anyway.

 

Then came time to troubleshoot my first major problem with the car. I was getting a hard boost cut right around 9lbs of boost under part throttle acceleration or around 15lbs at full throttle. Pretty unusual for this to occur on the VVT-i version of these 1JZs. The previous twin turbo, non VVT-i, 1js were map sensor based (speed density) and would cut fuel at 1 bar (14.7 lbs) of boost because it was the limit of the map sensor. However with a mass air flow meter on the newer version the ECU should be able to correct fuel all way until the turbo is no longer efficient and is just pushing hot air. This is when I learned about air straighteners. Almost every factory application mass air meter had a honeycomb like screen at the inlet. That is designed to straighten the airflow to allow for accurate readings without turbulence. So I made one. I bent a steel rod around a pipe with the same OD as the ID of my mass air meter pipe and welded it inside as a backstop for my plastic air straightener. The straightener came off a 01 Audi 1.8t MAF. Late model 1jz VVT-i motors use a 2 5/8" diameter MAF housing and the correct MAF for a JZS171 is P/N: 22204-46020 (replaced with P/N: 22680-AA310).

 

Keep it coming man, good write up

 

oh man...I can't wait for an update. I got to the end here and was disappointed. I love the 1jz/2jz motors and love Cressida's.

 

Thanks man! Ill try to get an update today. Its great to see the some interest from the Tacoma community. Hopefully some of the more refined information that I post will be found by others that want to do a similar swap.

 

Time for some more updates! When I rebuilt the brake calipers and redid the whole braking system I cheaped out you decided to try a set of 77 cent front brake pads from rockauto. How bad could they really be?! Lets just say, they don't stop on a dime.... They're horrible! No grab, no bite, almost immediate fade. I wasn't expecting much to be fair. Upgraded to some much nicer pads and am now very confident in my braking.
Also too a page from the Tacoma headlight upgrade book and put in Hella high wattage bulbs and made my own harness from them. These use a ground switching harness.


Also I painted the engine cover with 3 coats of VHT Epoxy paint. I think it looks better...


When I did the lighting upgrade, I also put new Toyota battery terminals on. Added another ground wire from battery to chassis and massively upgraded the charging feed wire to the battery. Its comical how small the stock Cressidas 14ga charging wire is...



Put some fancy new hood struts on. The car came with a very nicely finished piece of wood for a hood prop. I liked it but it wasn't really my style.


This is where the factory cruise control module was located. I chopped up the stock bracket from the cruise control and made it work for the 1JZ Igniter. Looks pretty stock..ish. Don't mind the ziptie. The retaining clip broke.


Boring picture here but it shows how well the 1JZ trans cooler lines mate up to the factory Cressida radiator. I plan to add an external trans cooler soon.


I didn't have to do much for the fuel feed line to work with the 1JZ. I cut a section out of the factory line and added a fuel filter from some sort of Ford that I had laying around. The line then bolted up the stock 1JZ fuel pulsation dampener banjo bolt. A lot of higher HP guys like to delete/bypass the fuel pulsation dampener but I chose to keep it because of my power goals at the moment. Its designed to smooth the fuel pulsation created by the fuel pump to deliver a more linear flow to the injectors. Ill take it.



Got some silicone reducing couplers to replace the crappy blue ones I had on my engine before. The blue ones worked great but I'm slowing refining everything and needed a cleaner engine bay look. Also new brake hoses.


New couplers in place, this is an up-to-date engine bay picture by the way.

 

I realize I moved away from all the wiring crap earlier. Its really difficult to say to someone, this is exactly how you wire a swap. For starters, I had to extend all 103 wires of my engine harness by 5ft to get everything behind the glove box like it was from the factory. Ive got some pin-out diagrams I made of the MX73 alternator plug and how to wire it to the JZS171 alternator. Also a pin-out of the MX73 Body plug C1 behind the dash. The C1 plug is where you get most of your constant and ignition switched power sources for your new ECU. It also contains the temp gauge feed wire, the circuit opening wire ground wire to control the fuel pump and the wires you need to have the gear shift indicator illuminate properly on the dashboard. Connector C2 is also a body plug but you only need to use one wire from it to feed 12v to make your reverse light circuit function. Connector C3 is located below the fusebox in the engine bay. It contains only 3 wires that are solely for the switching of the main relay. All 3 of these wires need to be extended to the ecu If you want to wire it like Toyota did. There's another 2 pin round connector with 2 large Black/Red wires under the engine bay fusebox. This connector used to give ignition switched power to the 5M coil and Injector driver. I used these to supply power to the 1JZ ignition and injection system.





Factory MX73 charging circuit diagram.


I also wired in an OBD2 port to make diagnostics easier. Wiring for that is super simple. You've got to use a scanner that allows you to adjust the baud rate of serial communications.


The JZS171 ECU pinout is the same as a JZX110 ECU. Ill have to upload those pinout from home tonight.

 

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