Chris' '90 Toyota Celica All-Trac Turbo (aka "The Shuttle") Tranny Swap Summer (or, "How I Spent My '02 Summer Vacation")

Updated: September 25, 2017 visits to this page.

I'm done!  The Shuttle returned home during the early morning hours of Sunday, December 15th, 2002. 

The Original Plan:  During the period of May 22 - 29, I had planned to perform a short list of mods to The Shuttle at Alamo Autosports facility in Arlington, Texas.  At that point in time, the short list of mods included the following: installation of HKS 272 cams, HKS cam gears, various oil and trans coolers, a ST205 trans, and a large FMIC. a camera mount, and new 13" front brakes.  The was the plan, and we all know that life happens when we make plans.  Enter plan "B".  Without going into all the details (as that would require more time than I care to dedicated to this story), we were unable to accomplish everything on my short list in the allocated time and thus The Shuttle would be staying at Alamo till I finished all the work, with me driving up on the weekends to work on the car.  So, as things progressed, plan "B" evolved into a work list of all items I had planned to do to the car, not just the major items. As a result, Tranny Swap Weekend became Tranny Swap Summer.  In the end, I believe the net result was worth the effort.  Yes, I still have a few more items on my Future Mods List, but the major hard parts are over.  Now the fun begins - tuning the Autronic SMC as I continue to increase boost to the 24 - 26 psi level.  That should put me at the 500-525 HP range which should make for quick trips to the grocery store, when necessary.

I have to thank Brice for graciously opening his shop to me in order to afford me with the greatest opportunity to accomplish loads of miscellaneous work.  I ended up giving Craig, Alamo's fabricator extraordinaire, loads of "stuff" to fabricate and weld for me.  The extra good news is that Brice's new AWD dyno has arrived!  Now, it's just a matter of time before he has it installed and ready for the litany of AWD cars, like The Shuttle, that he has in his shop on a weekly basis.  So, at some point, I'll actually get to dyno my car without the fear of thrashing another transmission. 

The big disappointment was the inability to make use of the JUN intake.  As designed by JUN, it hits the firewall on the All-Trac, thus I could not us it.  My plans are to gently modify the runners in order to relocate the plenum forward about 25-30 mm, sometime in the 2003 timeframe.

Here's the listing of all the work that was accomplished during Tranny Swap Summer.

Various Mods

• Installed New Brembo 4-pot 330 mm Front Brakes - along with Stainless Steel Brake Lines
• Urethane Reinforced Front and Rear Engine Mounts
• New Fuel Filter and Fuel Pressure Regulator Mounts
• Engine Crankcase Catch Can
• Whiteline Rear Adjustable Sway-Bar:  Fabbed sway-bar mounts to keep the Whiteline sway-bar from banging against the brake hose mounts on the Teins.  Details on the Suspension Mods page.
• Whiteline Front and Rear Control Arm Bushings: There's not much interesting to see, but after a few hours work, they're in. 
• New Sparco Torino seats
• Engine Cooling System - New Aluminum Radiator with Spal fan; Fabricated a new 1.5L coolant recovery reservoir

Engine, Transmission and Power Steering Cooling Systems

• Remote Oil Filter & Oil Cooling System
• Upgraded Transmission Cooling System with a large Setrab cooler
• Implemented the stock transmission cooler as the cooler for the power steering system

Turbo System Upgrades

• Intercooler:  Fitted a new HKS S-type 600 x 300 x 65 mm tube & fin FMIC.   2.5" inlet; 3" outlet.  I relocated the IC temp gauge probes from the WTA IC to this new FMIC. 
• Innovative Turbo Systems T04E-50 / T3 stage 5 .63 a/r triple ball-bearing turbo - replaces the Turbonetics turbo I had previously used.

 ST205 Transmission

• Installed the ST205 transmission which I had received from a mate in Australia. 
• Installed transmission temp sender in the line to/from the front trans cooler.
• Upgraded Transmission Cooling System with a large Setrab cooler installed between the FMIC and a/c condenser. 

Exhaust Work

• Custom Turbo Header:  Brice fabricated a custom tube header with 1.5" (id) weld-els.  This thing will flow the Mississippi!  Once completed, it was then sent out for heat-treating to reduce the probability of cracking.  Afterwards, it received a nice ceramic coating.
• New 40 mm Tial External Wastegate:  The aforementioned turbo header was also fitted with the Tial waste-gate with the dump exiting back into the down-pipe.  Dumping to atmosphere may provide the "race" sound, but I can do without the added attention it'll bring from Mr. Police Man.. 
• New 3" downpipe:  Brice and company fabricated a new 3" down-pipe which mated with my existing 3" exhaust system.  They also fabricated a "test" pipe to replace the Random Technologies 3" catalytic converter.  Several v-bands were utilized at convenient points to section the exhaust pipe into manageable pieces.  Everything in front of the flexi joint, which is directly under the rear transmission mount, was ceramic coated.

Cylinder Head Refresh

• 1ZZ Bucket Conversion:  Replaced the stock shim-on-top buckets with shim-less buckets from the 1ZZ engine.  The 1ZZ buckets are available in various thicknesses much like standard shims.  I had the lash set to use either #16 or #18 buckets on all valves, with .008" clearance on the intakes, and .010" on the exhausts.
• Oversized Valves:  Brice had a set of new .5 mm oversize valves (at a good price!) so the head went to the machine shop to have the valves fitted, along with the installation of the cams and setting of the proper lash.
• New HKS 272 Cams:  Installed new cams, along with new HKS cam gears.

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