550hp 2JZ 1978 Hilux Build

The cage and parachute I can accept, the filled block is where I draw the line

 

Looks like there's damage to the front passenger side strut area

 

I appreciate it for what it is. That's nothing more than f-around money needing a place to put on a show and to continue sinking more f-around money into.

 

Sold for $59K
WAS about 30 minutes from me.

 

I agree. If a guy is willing to take a chance on a pre-built race car, it might be the way to go.
I still have the go-fast bug, but the competitive racing bug flew for me a couple decades ago. I want a fast street car that can go around corners. (It still might have a cage though.)

 

I love racing, but it's hard to justify how insanely expensive it is. My buggy could've made it to a couple races this year, but I just wasn't feeling it, every time I go racing there's a host of things that need fixing and stuff just gets beat up. You can own some fast toys, not go racing, and buy more fast toys with the money saved

 

Interesting build. 2jz short block + 1jz head = 1.5jz engine build in a 97 tacoma

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1997-toyota-tacoma-45/

 

I've seen people do the 1.5JZ, I think in both configurations of which side is block and head. I'm not sure why you would do that over just a pure 1JZ or 2JZ. I see things claiming the heads of the 1JZ flow better, but no actual facts and testing to show that. It's like arguing the GE vs GTE head flow since they're slightly different. I think it's neat though, but why go to that effort of swapping parts when you can get a 2JZ for sub $1000 since they came in nearly everything in the early 2000s.

 

My thoughts exactly. Totally agree man.

I think the main appeal and probably what started it was being able to have a bolt in displacement increase in factory 1jz cars. Such as jdm mk3 supra, soarer, chaser. Blow a bottom end or simply want more displacement? Bolt the 2j block in under the 1j head. No need to change wiring or literally anything else. Kinda neat. But also pointless in my opinion if you're doing a swap or starting with a blank canvas.

 

Truck is running great! Been taking it for a bunch of drives and at this point pretty comfortable to fully open the tap on it. Went to the car meet in town for my once every 4 months visit



I still need to get a dash hooked up, but the truck has failsafes for oil pressure and temperature, and it's absolutely locked in on both so most of the time I just drive around with no gauges. By this point I probably have 200-300 miles on it, and the gears are well enough broken in compared to the instructions of "please at least drive around the parking lot before hitting the strip". I did realize the 9in 3rd member has a level plug on it, the rear end started leaking a little from that plug (which was barely tight) so I popped it open since I had kind of arbitrarily filled it. It turns out that the 9in only takes like 2.5qts of fluid which seems insanely low, so I had it way overfilled by a quart or so.

The passenger fender flaring bar was coming into contact with the tire since the suspension twists so much under power, so I cut some new ones that sit 1.5" taller and are also 0.5" wider and now all the rear tire clearance issues seem solved. The front rubs occasionally, usually just sharp turns and hitting a bump or reversing out of a spot at full lock. Not bad enough to care, but I may like to tweak the fenders eventually for it.

Today going to lunch I had a couple issues with the truck stalling. As I've mentioned before, I thought an electronic throttle body would be needed since if you punched the clutch the rpms would fall and by the time the ECU was trying to correct with timing it might be too late or the truck would stumble a bit trying to bring the rpms back up since it can't mechanically adjust the air intake. Today it was very hot out, and seemed like it was having more issues than normal, both just getting going and died twice from the rpms dropping coming to a stop. I looked around in the ECU Masters software and was able to find some additional settings for idle control.



The truck is setup to use ignition timing to control idle, and before it was just setup to kind of randomly keep increasing or decreasing timing to try and hit the target idle, but I then discovered this table on the right (which is enabled via the correction table checkmark on the left) which gives you an open loop idle correction (compared to essentially the closed loop control before). What's nice about this and how I now have it setup, if the idle falls much at all it can "prematurely" crank the timing to bring it up before the idle has fallen too far. You can see I have it set so by 150rpm it's already adding in 4deg of timing, and by 250rpm it's 7deg. This is in contrast to before, where it seemed to add degrees of timing in a closed loop feedback of adding a degree, then a degree, then a degree, and by the time it had added enough timing to be useful the rpm had fallen so far it was hard to recover. Now if the idle drops much at all it instantly cranks the timing to bring it back around.

The wife and I just went for a test drive and it seemed to make a HUGE difference. I can punch into neutral and the rpms will drop and once it hits 900rpm it is locked in. It also seemed to make taking off a lot smoother, letting the clutch out the truck didn't fall on its face as easily, but it might just have been the cooler weather or me doing it, but that seems like an added perk I wasn't aiming for.



I've also done more research and testing of the boost control settings. Last time we tried to dial in boost control it was very confusing the values for the boost solenoid we were getting. What I realized is that turning boost control to closed loop just activates additional tables that build off of the base duty cycle tables, where as open loop uses the same base tables but there is no corrections applied. This was a bit confusing at first, but makes a lot more sense now. However the truck is still running in open loop boost control right now. Today we made a lot of progress with the boost control and getting the duty cycle table dialed in.



At the end we made two pulls for the draggy and that's the two spikes in the datalog, and you can see the engine is coming up to ~30psi MAP and holding there pretty well, with a max peak of 32.78psi (~20psi boost) which is right where we want it to be. Having the wastegate duty cycle at 50% closed seems to be right where we want it. What I can do next is activate the closed loop mode, and that will then take the base duty cycle table and adjust it like a fuel trim to try and reach the target boost. I'm not entirely sure if that's worth doing, the main issue to overcome is to make the turbo spool fast and then not overshoot the boost target, but if it spools too fast it seems to blow past the boost target. Turning it into closed loop mode might make it too slow to respond (similar to the idle control). Already the boost duty cycle lags behind the actual boost by quite a bit, so it's kind of a balancing act. With all of that said, these last two pulls are really nice, the truck gets into boost and isn't doing the surging it was before as the boost keeps getting pulled back, it's holding pretty flat and there might be a psi or three left on the table but that's it.

And this seems visible in the dragy, we only did the two launches and they weren't great, but there's a few G spikes that are higher than we've gotten before. And this is without launch control or any boost at take off.



The truck is an absolute blast though, and the rear suspension and handling feels awesome. 1st gear of course spins, and 2nd gear can spin too but the whole thing feels very nice and controlled. The slipping in 2nd gear is just enough you can feel the rear end step out a little bit, but it doesn't want to get crazy, just the right amount to make you smile and not be scary. It's a lot of fun just since it's so small and lightweight too. It's not the fastest thing, but it needs such little throttle and braking to get a huge response, it just ends up feeling so effortless to do what you want. Like it'll hit full boost at 60% throttle and 4000rpm, so a little throttle gives you a ton of feedback, and the brakes are a hilarious combination of having good feeling and just being so incredibly overpowered that you never worry about braking performance. It never feels like it's working hard to do what you want and that makes it a blast to drive!

 

⅛ and ¼ mile is where the jz shines let 'er eat

 

I don’t know about you, but I live my life a 1/4 mile at a time.

 

https://youtu.be/IIM_gt1c-_c

 

Congrats! Nothing better than working through bugs and getting the product you envisioned and hoped for. Such a cool, unique ride.