5lugfury's v8 swap and sas

I do want AC. The truck is essentially a Restomod, interior is mint, so I'd like my creature comforts. Luckily I dont have any emissions to worry about here. Been researching and reaching out to Northwest Toys and some others regarding the odds and ends I'll need. motor mounts, harnesses, plumbing, etc.

 

The 5 lug drums/axle shafts are too short for an elocker axle. I'm 6lug in the rear and 5 in the front. I tried adapters but after one almost fell off and another got stuck on I just changed my rims to 6 lug. Luckily I use cragars and they make the rim in many sizes.

 

So I’d have to get new rims if I want all the wheel to match...

 

Yeah because you'll be 5 lug in the front and 6 lug in the back. It worked well for me because I use steelies

 

So you bring 2 spares?

 

Nope just have a 5 lug spare and a tire repair kit. Also if you wheel with any other tacomas I bet they would have a 6 lug spare.

 

Keep one of those adaptors in the toolbox.

 

Sooooo I decided to get another transmission because I feel like I touched too much for diagnosing right now. Just need the truck moving lol so I picked up a jdm a340e from a 1jz vvti with low miles and was super clean. Now this transmission uses 5 solenoids. The extra solenoid is for line pressure and without power it's on max. For now I'm leaving it this way and the only real issue may be the lock up solenoid since it's pwm now.


Slapped the transmission in and everything seemed good so far. I drove around the block with no electronics and just used the manual part of the a340e to shift throw 1st and 2nd (can't get to 3rd because open headers in a neighborhood lol)

So I decided to get on it a little and shift. I rode out 1st (not even close to rev limit) and shifter to 2nd. Annnnnd then I had nothing and when I shut the truck off I could hear a grinding sound coming from the tranny.

I had a feeling it was the input shaft as when I swapped the torque converter over the new transmission seemed to have a shorter shaft. I figured I didn't reassemble the old transmission right so the shaft stuck out more. Nope there is a difference between v8 and straight 6 a340e's



I didn't realize it was that much shorter and I rounded the shorter shaft as it was barely engaged.

Notice the nice chamfer on the end



So I swapped the input shafts as well, as part of the pump because there was also a difference in length.



Now onto the headers, the driver side still leaked. I decided to go back to the stock headers for a 01-05 2uz. The ones for the second gen 2uz still didn't clear the steering shaft without major modification. I won't touch my steering shaft as I don't want my steering changed. The new headers will ship soon and then I can make a new crossover pipe to match the new placement.

Took some time to get to this point but the truck moves on its own power. Just need to quiet it down before I anger the neighborhood.

 

Would your Tacoma A340 have worked, shaft and all?

 

Im going to say probably not because the shaft and the pump size is related to the torque converter. Now that being said if you took the bell housing, torque converter, input shaft and oil pump from the donor car or a junkyard thats essentially what I did. The only other issue is the tacoma a340e won't directly connected to the v8 ecu. You would need a shift box or modify the harness to work.

 

Would it be possible to make an adapter harness or that still wouldn't work?

 

The biggest issue is the line pressure solenoid. Unplugged it's at 100 the whole time. For me treating it as a manual that should be ok, but it may have issue if wired to the stock ecu. The rest of the solenoids I'm sure you could make work.

 

So I have a new set of log headers inbound and while I'm waiting I decided to start the front area.

The first task was to install a new cross member and cut the old one out. The new cross member is higher making my front clearance much higher. I've also added some new shin destroying recovery points. Eventually the winch and front hitch will also attach to the new cross member along with some more bar work to protect the grill.





Unfortunately the winch won't be able to sit that tight as it was too close to my new coolers, but it does look good for pictures lol






Started to figure out the coolers for the transmission and power steering/winch







Now I will lose alittle clearance when I add supports for the skid plate but I'm going to try to maintain it as much as I can.

 

Super slow progress but I got the exhaust back together. I had to ditch the ebay headers and go with 01-04 tundra headers. They are log style and clear my steering shaft with alot of extra room. I did so try the later year tundra but it was still too close. Yes they are all rusty and the ones I'm using are on the bottom and already have the 3 bolt flange replaced with a marmon flange.



The next step is finish up adding my coolers and then more road testing.

 

About that Tundra header, did the OEM setup have a crossover with one side longer where it tied into the opposite side then back to a single muffler exit? Could Toyota have possible calculated the length of pipe joining the two banks so that they functioned as long tube headers would as for exhaust pulses not on top of each other? Makes sense what I’m asking in my head anyway. If you dual pipe it I don’t see it being a noticeable HP difference between this and the fleaBay style pictured.

 

No

 

I don't think so. I'm mainly doing a single because I feel like it's slightly simpler and I'm reusing my exhaust from the 4cly (not stock though)

 

So the engine was running super rich and had all the fun symptoms like black smoke, fowled plugs, engine shake, negative fuel trims and it sounded like it had cams. I ended up going through a lot of the engine to try to diagnose the issue. In the process I went through the wiring and didn't see any thing that really stood out. I then decided to yolo an ebay fpr because I had suspicion that the stock one wasn't keeping up with my dw200. I now have a different engine, its no longer boggy and running super rich. I found out my tps sensor was broken as well so I have another one inbound. Even with the tps sensor remove it revs like a normal v8 now.



Yes the engine bay is a bit of a mess and I've already cleaned it back up for now.




Next is to mount the coolers and work on the electronics for the manualizing the transmission. Its getting real close for me to take it on longer test runs.

 

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