Engine How would YOU build your car to FI?

How would YOU build your car to FI?

There's no doubt that most of us on this forum are interested in making the most out of our Corollas. Most of us are seriously considering FI (or have all ready gone there). I am looking for those who have done the SC or the turbo to say what they did or would have done to take the car they started out with to the car they have today.
Why did you choose turbo/SC?
What order did you choose to build up your car and why?
What would you have done different?
What should us future FI wannabe's look out for?

I am hoping this post will build up enough practical wisdom to help answer the millions of questions that everyone always asks when the word "turbo" or "supercharger" pop into our power hungry minds.

While I have never boosted a car in my life, I kind of have a road map to take my 04 LE into the higher bhp range.
1. Wheels and tires (the cardinal first upgrade for any stock car IMHO).
2. CAI (just until I have the money saved up for the turbo/SC)
3. Catback exhaust
4. Suspension (springs and struts)
5. Headers
6. Unichip?
7. FI kit?
The last two have question marks because I am not sure which way I am going to go. Unichip seems to get mentioned a lot around the new Corolla but there could be something better down the road when I finally am ready to push the limits. As for which FI kit, I am still debating between turbo and SC. Turbos are more efficient, produce more power and easier to adjust but there are no real "kits" for the Corolla just yet as people are still developing them. The TRD SC is all there and simply needs any Toyota dealership to install it. You keep the warranty on your car (minus the hassle of any mods you have in place when you get it :roll, it passes emissions, and still produces decent gains while leaving your daily driver in one piece for years to come.

Remember, this is what I WANT to do to my car and I have never done more than NA before this. All you FI fore runners, let the wisdom flow.

Id strongly suggest better pistons at 8.8, or the big bore kit and 8.8 pistons. However if u dont want ur car to drop to like 100 hp, make sure u do it with the turbo simultaneously. The better pistons will help alot.

Honestly I would wait on the forced induction for a little while, unless you don't mind being a guinea pig. All the FI options are still pretty new so longevity and durability are still unknowns. Monkeywrenchracing has recently put out several new parts for the 1zz engine, so we at least have the comfort of knowing someone is out there messing with our engine(although we can probably thank the celica gt and mr2 for that) but as of now the research isn't really out there. The best piece of advice I can give anyone, regardless of age or experience is go to a HPDE(High Performance Driving Event) at your local track. Around here its $200 for the whole day, which includes about 80mins. of open tracking with instruction and about an hour or so of class time, they even have skid pad time to boot. Its the best way to learn the limits of your skills and your vehicle, just throw on some good tires and brake pads and you should be ready to go.

i am just waiting for them to drop the price on the TRD SC =]

Well, there are a lot of postings in this forum about turbo's and superchargers. If you read some of my post, you will see how I feel about it.

Turbos are great to have and I love the boost you can get from it, but they can be a headache and at the same time you need to do some modification to your engine and tranny. Some vehicle from other manufacturers come with stock turbos and you can see how they tweaked it.

I've been running a supercharger for a few weeks now and love the extra boost I'm getting from it. I didn't do anything at all as far as making mods for the s/c. I did have to get extra set of spark plugs so it runs colder with the extra load the s/c is putting on the engine. I already have an exhaust, but the intake I had to take off. The s/c comes with a new thermostat to run cooler too so you don't have to worry about that. Whenever something goes wrong, take it to the dealer and they'll worry about it, but majority of the time ,things won't go wrong because the TRD Supercharger was designed for our cars.

what I want to know is if I go with an 8.8.1 compression and slap that S/C on will I have less hp/tq? then someone who has a 10.1 I belive hoolala said that the TRD S/C came @ 8.5 psi.(can only upgrade to a 9psi pulley @ this time) Or is it by putting on an 8.8.1 comp. give me the abelity to play with the fuel management more then a 10.1(stock) set up and be able to come out on top? One thing I do know is that with FI lower compression is safer.

Did everyone forget about beefing up the transmission? The extra hp and torque from the turbo is going to require some upgrades on the transmission. Most importantly will be the clutch. You'll have to get something better if you're going to hold all that extra torque. Might also be good to get a full cryo treatment to strengthen the tranny as well. And to get all the max. power you can to the ground, you'll probably want to go and get the Quaife LSD or TRD LSD also.

P.S. ToySport in SoCal can turbo charge your car for you. They'll prepare a brand new 1ZZ block for you with reinforced steel liners, forged pistons, etc. etc. etc. and do all the work for you. You're probably looking at a grand total of $3000-ish, but they'll build you a block so strong that they claim it will survive up to 700hp, but that all depends on what kind of turbo they put on for you. Of course, that's not very practical if you plan on driving around on the streets, but if you want to have a pure drag/track car, it'd be nice.

This is why I made this post. So I would have someone catch my mistakes before I made them. :shock: Definite on the clutch. Probably on the LSD. What is cryo treatment?

Colder spark plugs wasn't mentioned by me earlier but that will go in when I go FI for sure. Right now I am leaning towards the SC just because I don't want too much power to abuse (I am an acceleration junkie) and I don't want to deal with all the details that a turbo setup can create.

I read the post where Hoola was having problems with the Unichip with the TRD SC. So this combo is a bad idea? I have read other posts where people still recommend it.

Good info...keep it coming.

As I understand it, lower compression = lower hp/tq. You want to lower the compression when you want to increase the boost. So if you lowered your compression to 8.8:1 with an unmodified TRD SC then you will get less hp/tq. Since the SC is all ready setup for your stock engine I wouldn't lower the compression on less you have plans on increasing boost down the road, but if you are going to do that you might as well go turbo since this is what lowering compression is more commonly used for on our models. But I am no expert

I don't know much about the unichip, but won't Toyota notice that the mapping has been changed? THe TRD s/c comes with a TRD ECU that connects by means of an adapter to the stock ECU. Now, you have 2 ECU in your car. The TRD ECU monitors and controlls transmission shifiting as well as supercharger input/output. It optimizes and effieciently controls the overall compensation of the supercharger to your stock tranny and engine.

.....which equals more torque and horsepower without damaging your vehicle's powertrain. No oil cooler of any kind is needed (transmission). If you read up on the TRD Supercharger at a TRD web site, you'll see how the supercharger works and the so-called "cooling effect" it has (that's what TRD calls. I'm just quoting from them). I dropped in a K&N filter to push more air into the supercharger. The stock filter is a piece of crap and very restrctive on air flow.

You don't need any mods to go with it. You'll notice a big boost in performance by running stock.

For those who are looking at making big power, besides the transmission, they may also want to look at strengthening the axles and driveshaft as I doubt they can stand that much stress. This will probably require custom fabrication, but snapped axles and a driveshaft punching a hole through your floor will make your day bad in a hurry.

For a brief description of cryo treating, click here

I wonder what that cryo treatment runs? I guess I would have to give them a call and find out, but I can't imagine it being cheap or everyone would do it.

Tom, the only reason I mentioned the Unichip is if you wanted to remove the stock intake with the SC and put a short ram on it. One of the posts mentioned that the SC ran too rich unless you plugged a programable ECU to override the one that came with the SC for more gains. But I hear ya there. If I am going with the SC I am just going to leave it as they install it. I want more punch but I also want longevity and this seems the best way to get both.

I know this is kind of a retarded question to ask when you go FI, but what kind of gas mileage are you boosters getting? I read one post that with the TRD SC he was getting 35 mpg (that's pretty damn good if you ask me). It's just a point of curiousity with the way gas prices keep climbing.

Thanks for all the good advice so far. 8)

here's a price list I found on the cryo, its not too bad actually.

clicky

So is it bad to run a cold air intake with the S/C?? How about the TRD exhaust?? I have heard also that the only CAI that will fit the s/c is the TRD one. ANy one have info on this?

Only TRD's CAI fits w/ the s/c and yes you can use any exhaust w/ it.

You dont really need a cai if u got the turbo set up though. sc, might want it. but u got the intercooler with the turbo so u dont really need to suck in cold air if ur going to cool it anyway. at least this is what im told.

There are no issues with running a CAI and exhaust with the TRD SC then? You can hook it all up and not worry about the SC running rich, over heating, etc? If so, that's awesome, but didn't Hoola have a problem with that (I can't find his post where he was having problems)?

I just want to be sure so I don't mess up a good thing when I get the ball rolling here.

hooolala's problem was with the UniChip in his '04. He had to replace his stock cat, and ended up changing his exhaust system.
topic 5596 <--KingKuei explains it well here.
topic 5713

no one is answering the question though... will a cai give you problems with the s/c?

So far, it seems to be working fine on Blk03Corolla's car. And I don't recall AESC having any trouble with it when he had his corolla. I don't think there is a definate answer for the long run since the CAI wan't tested when TRD did their testing to assure the long-term reliability of the engine equipped with the TRD Supercharger.

polo708, where do you live in palm beach? I liive in the same county