2zz Engine Removal & Swap


Unbolting the two 19mm bolts that hold the cup to the strut. Incidentally, this is how you adjust your camber alignment if you’re curious. You buy different diameter sized bolts that allow the cup to tilt in or out a specified number of degrees and tighten them up while holding the hub assembly tilted one way or the other. My friends tried to explain to me that there was rocket science involved in automobile alignments…if they only knew.
btw – caster is not adjustable on these cars, if you have adjusted it you are not concerned with your alignment so much as the butt pillaging that the insurance company is going to give you for wrecking your car.


Removing the 17mm bolt that holds the forward locator bar to the hub. At this point the hub moves really easily.


As you can see.

Every detail shown regarding the hub must be duplicated for the other side of the car.


Removing the three 12mm bolts that hold the battery holder in place. The third one is way down low next to the strut. Its hobbies include making you go find a magnadoodle pen so you can retrieve it when it drops out of sight.


Removed the intake that was behind the battery. I am running a Pelican Racing style intake on my car. Stock intakes will need a little different finagling so I didn’t even go into it here…just remove your entire intake if you would still like to keep up.


Make sure this ground wire comes off the transmission. You will embarass yourself in front of your friends if you don’t when you go to lower the engine out of the car. Its a 10mm or 12mm as I recall.


Remove the 10mm nut holding the starter wire to the fuse panel.

This documentation in no way replaces the Toyota MR2 Repair Manuals. The purpose of this content is only to provide supplementary information to fellow MR2 enthusiasts. Midship Runabout and its contributing authors will not be held responsible for any injury or damages that may occur as the result of practicing any of the methods or procedures described within this website. Article and photo submissions are property of the contributing author.


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4 Responses

  1. Tony Higgs says:

    You sir are a star! i have to do this job in a week or so and this write up will help no ends. your right about the best tool being common sense, i didn’t use mine once to do a small job on a fiesta, you know how it is” i’ll just nip under this car without axle stamnds as its only a quick one” then the car falls off said jack. A night in hosptal and resulting brain damage tends to make you think twice about stuff lol lesson learned me thinks.
    Thanks again for the write up. wish there were more people who took the time to do great work like you with the photos and so on.

    Tony

  2. Jared says:

    I cannot believe I go online to find a tutorial to re-install a motor in a spyder and I find my car used in a step by step picture guide! I recognize it by the tape pulled off mark behind the license plate, the stick welds on the modified header, and the way the wire was poked through the firewall grommet next to the main harness wires! Out of curiousity, why was the motor dropped for this tutorial? Was that when it was opened up and some of the rod caps not installed back onto the correct rods? I would love to know some more history for this car from before Brad owned it!
    -Jared

  3. Jeff Dickey says:

    Thank you. I’m glad the write up has proven to be handy. I had originally hosted this document on my own personal web site and was not aware of this site until I was looking for other 2zz related details and stumbled across it. Just as a reference for anyone who finds this document instead of the other; I totally glossed over the disconnection of the coolant lines. I imagine it would be fairly obvious to someone performing the work, but just in case, they get disconnected after the coolant has been drained from the car.

  4. Jeff Dickey says:

    Hi Jared, I apologize for missing your post. I don’t recall it being there when I posted my response to Tony several months back.

    I dropped the motor for this tutorial because I needed to weld some coolant ports for the 2zz swap. Truth be told, this engine may as well been installed with a zipper because I removed it so often for various repairs/modifications after the swap. I had rolled the car during a Fall Dragon Run and the 1zz started using oil afterwards so on a whim, we decided to swap the drivetrain while I was visiting Little Rocket. This was David’s first 2zz swap and we didn’t know to weld the ports at the time. We used rubber coolant caps as I recall and they failed which was allowing coolant leak hassles. Sadly, those aren’t stick welds on that header. I just had no idea what I was doing back then.

    If you’re curious about finding more of the car’s history, my username on SpyderChat.com is dmc-4359. I owned it from 2001 until I sold it to Brad in 2005. If you still have the car, and are ever interested in selling it, please hit me up on SpyderWeb or on SpyderChat.