New Member (swap talk KA24E VS 2RZ VS 22RE)

[Bradp17]

Hi Celica fam,

My name is Brad, I am from Calgary Canada. I purchased a 72 RA21 about a month ago as a winter project.
I currently have the entire car apart. Motor is coming out this week, then will hopefully be taking the car over to get sand blasted in the coming weeks. So I can begin taking on any fixing of rust or modifications to the sheet metal for fitting a new motor/trans and adjusting ride height etc.. painting the engine bay, floors, door jams and anything else other than the body will also be tackled by months end (fingers crossed). A lot of my parts for the rebuild are either in my garage or currently be delivered in the next few days. Interior is off getting redone, (front coilovers, new rear lowering springs/shocks, wheels and tires, new suspension all around including breaks, ended up buying some flares and front spoiler from PonRetro which arrived this week.

The big question I have is: whats the best motor swap? I am wanting to get the old 18-RC motor out of the car as it has one foot on banana peel and the other in a grave. Has anybody done a KA swap before? It's hard to find info on this potential swap. The KA and 2rz both put out good peak HP and all 3 motors have great potential for rebuilds and added HP but the KA24 is way easier/cheaper to find over the 2RZ and 22re.

I'm not trying to spend a small fortune on the engine swap all 3 swaps are fairly moderate cost wise. But also don't have to sell my dinning room table to afford the swap. Some of these questions might be like beating a dead horse. But after some searching a lot of the talks on forums are "wanting to do it in the future" or threads without any valuable information regarding what goes completing the swaps.

22re- is basically a "bolt in" swap from my understanding, fairly straight forward slightly more challenging than a 20r because of the EFI but rather moderate in terms of swapping the 18-RC out.

2RZ- I know people have done it a bunch, but finding a good build thread on this swap is challenging to say the least. If somebody could shed some light on this, and what was needed to perform the swap that would be appreciated.

KA24E- 0 information really found on this swap but maybe somebody in the group has already done this and can shoot some info over my way. I know its not keeping it Toyota and making it a bit of an inbred but it might be a good solid swap with a 5 speed attached to it.

I looked into doing a Beams swap, but finding parts for those engines seems like a bit of a nightmare so I would prefer to stay clear of it.

Thanks for adding me into the group and hopefully some kind folks can help me out

[FushuMan]

Hello Brad - welcome to group. It’s been very quite in this forum as of late. Hope some members can shed some light on your motor build questions.

Info on the one you said you don’t want :

I purchased a beams with the intention of swapping into my 75 RA22. Several posts in this forum that went this direction. Parts are available from Xcessive manufacturing for the swap (motor mounts, crossmember with rack and pinion, steering to r&p, shifter relocation for 6 speed trans, driveshaft and more). Matt Panic (panicmade.com) makes a custom wiring harness kit for the beams. Dave Pratte from Speed Academy has a channel on YouTube that he put a beams into a 76-77 Celica coupe. He also did suspension updates and drive axle updates. Pretty cool build if you haven’t watched them before. Parts for these can add up quickly. I think the engine itself is closer to 2-3k USD with the 6 speed. I know you said you wanted to stay clear - but hey now you know if you didn’t already before .

Again, welcome to the group - hope the other members can pitch in!

Joe

[Bradp17]

Hey Joe,
Thanks for all the info. Hopefully discussions on the group pick back up, from reading there is plenty of very knowledgable members! I have done a fair bit of research into the beams. It is a very promising swap it is basically a match made in heaven for the car. Like you mentioned, parts for the swap are already being manufactured which helps a ton to speed things along. My issue is maintaining it, a lot of the parts for the beams all have to imported unless you can find some floating around in North America..
Have you completed the swap or still in progress?

Thanks,
Brad

[FushuMan]

Still sitting on the floor in the garage - contemplating if I really want to put that much back into it - also have concerns with parts. Was thinking about maybe just rebuilding the 20R now to keep it more a stock look. At least parts would be fairly easy to get still.

[Bradp17]

I ended up going against what I said I was going to do.. a Beams black top with a J160 came up for sale locally.. only had 70,000km with a brand new clutch and lightweight flywheel. Long story short, I bought it. Ordered all the conversion parts from Xcessive. I need to order a rad, have a drive shaft made, get a new break booster and clutch master cylinder and I need to figure out which stand alone ecu to buy. I am currently well over budget as this swap is super expensive. But hopefully its worth it when its finished..

[FushuMan]

Very Cool! I may throw mine in as well - keep going back and forth with it - good luck with the build!!

[dsp979]

Welcome.

As for BEAMS parts, i believe that ToyGarage, Cabe Toyota and BattleGarage carry maintenance parts.

As far as keeping R-series engines, you could do the 20R head on early 22R block for the 20/22R hybrid for more power. Do not use the later 22R blocks.

I'm intimately familiar with the KA-E. I rebuilt a KA-E with a ported/polished head by Rebello Racing (Datsun specialists) and 9.1:1 early pistons vs the 8.6:1 late KA-E pistons. It's for my autox 240SX.

[noidretlaw]

I am doing a 2RZ swap on my '73 RA21. Honestly I thought it would be less work than it is. But I don't think any of the swaps are not without their own challenges
The front sump oil pan in the 2RZ made the crossmember a real project. I enjoyed the fab work on one level but if you don't want to cut & weld I do not know how else it could be done. Here is a video on the my efforts with the crossmember: https://youtu.be/czys9qv89xU
The 2RZ is also a tall engine for a small bay. So it sits low....
I have not gotten too far on the engine at all as its been mostly bodywork so far on the project so not a whole lot of insight to add right now BUT I am really looking forward to the 2RZ coming to life! I am rebuilding the engine block up and putting in the LCE single mass flywheel and ITBs which should wake it up nicely

[Sturla76gt]

Hey Joe,
I'm a new member myself. I have a 1976 RA24 that I'm looking to do a rack and pinion swap on as my first BIG mod. I've done pretty much everything else on the car (Bushings, timing chain/ headgasket, suspension and currently a tailshaft rebuild on my w50) but something I'd definitely like to do is get some tight steering in there. I was going to order a custom U-joint so I don't have to weld my steering column for the xcessive manufacturing swap, but I've seen some people run spacers on their subframe. Did you have to do this? One of my buddies is a rally car driver/builder and he says that running spacer on my subframe will mess up the handing in the front suspension. I want to get as much information on this as possible before I jump in.
Best,
-Luca

[73GTV]

Hey Joe,
I'm a new member myself. I have a 1976 RA24 that I'm looking to do a rack and pinion swap on as my first BIG mod. I've done pretty much everything else on the car (Bushings, timing chain/ headgasket, suspension and currently a tailshaft rebuild on my w50) but something I'd definitely like to do is get some tight steering in there. I was going to order a custom U-joint so I don't have to weld my steering column for the xcessive manufacturing swap, but I've seen some people run spacers on their subframe. Did you have to do this? One of my buddies is a rally car driver/builder and he says that running spacer on my subframe will mess up the handing in the front suspension. I want to get as much information on this as possible before I jump in.
Best,
-Luca

https://youtu.be/RxRb3unTH7k?si=qnARZGnmGuyibv9n

https://youtu.be/fzSeqZZxIiI?si=Yr3gZa1OFLpAnP-G

[73GTV]

Still sitting on the floor in the garage - contemplating if I really want to put that much back into it - also have concerns with parts. Was thinking about maybe just rebuilding the 20R now to keep it more a stock look. At least parts would be fairly easy to get still.

https://youtu.be/9igv2tLG3gA?si=Qx2xS6L9jlHXCUvk

Beams installation.

https://youtu.be/BEs_YRh9y4U?si=EHMHybb4OwznNXW0

https://youtu.be/7h8FnwYCccE?si=XgtxNX_aHZ3BZ5U2 How they blew-up their not so fresh engine but never oped it up so bottom end was stock..