Swap in TT engine in place of NA engine

[ducky]

I'll be doing a complete engine swap in a week or so. Just bought a jdm tt engine, tranny, ecu, harness. Basiclly everything except the intercoolers. I still tend to dissagree with just buying the parts and adding them to the dohc n/a block. After you add up all the costs and parts needed here and there plus look at that you will probly need to go with the awd tranny if you want it to be stronger. There are a lot of factors that take the total cost of a conversion high. For $2700 I got a jdm engine with everything plus a warrenty and it was from a company out of texas that looks like they have been in business a while and they look good. The shipping is going to be free and yes I am doing the 60k/120k tune up on it and I figure for at most $3500 - $4000 I will have everything in and running good on a engine that has the compression and was built for the tt's. I just think it saves ALLOT of time and money to just buy a tt engine. If you tt your engine whats the milage? Will you fully trust it? Can you really bost it? and questions like that will go through your head. I thought long and hard about this my self and was planning on doing it down the road as I drive my car as is but I was just forced to buy the engine now because of a possable spun bearing. Now if I did the tt upgrade on my engine say 1000 miles ago I would be really screwed as then I would have put all this time and money it an engine that just would not be able to handle it. Sorry for the long post and this is just my .02 cents and on some engine it has been done without no problems what so ever so you really have to think about it and see what it is worth to you. My time is far to valuable to just throw away. When I do it I want to do it right. Ok I will shut up now, lol. Like I said just my .02 cents.

[dsr935]

Originally Posted by Tricky222

The block and heads are physically the same, as in how the bolt up. As in NA heads will bolt up to a TT block and the other way around. Yes there are differences internally between the blocks and heads. Rods are the same, pistons are different due to different CR's between the two, and obviously the TT heads flow more than NA, none of which did i deny. However, in relation to his answer, yes the will physically bolt up with each other...



Well the bracket that mounts up to the engine is different yes, but the motor mount itself is the same. Sorry should've specified.

Since they flow better, would it do someone any good to put tt heads on an NA and then add a slightly larger injector?

[starbucker42]

Ok i understand that the ecu and wiring harness needds switched altho the harness wil work. In order to switch the narness out what all is need to be done. I mean is it a plug and play or what. Does stuff need to be sodered or what? thanks Pwoler actually started this thread for me ha

[maTT]

OMG this thread is full of mis-info.

The heads are different
The blocks are different
It is NOT cheaper to buy all the conversion parts separate!

The ports on the heads are different. The n/a block is missing the oil squirters AND the girdle stay brackets. The cheapest way to do a conversion is to buy a crappy vr4, use all the parts you need, and then sell the rest. Most of the time you can do it for free if you do the work yourself.

[VRFury]

Originally Posted by maTT

OMG this thread is full of mis-info.

The heads are different
The blocks are different
It is NOT cheaper to buy all the conversion parts separate!

The ports on the heads are different. The n/a block is missing the oil squirters AND the girdle stay brackets. The cheapest way to do a conversion is to buy a crappy vr4, use all the parts you need, and then sell the rest. Most of the time you can do it for free if you do the work yourself.

God, thank you matt. I hadn't checked back. I didn't realize the cranks were the same, as someone posted, altho I thot they were different. I thot I understood somewhere along the line that NA rods are different, as in weaker. I'm thinking this is from way back when chris was first doing T2 on his own, or maybe right after going to 3sx.

Anyway, the point that the heads MAY bolt up to a tt block or vise versa, is fuking stupid. There is absolutely no reason that would make sense for what he is looking to do. I'm sure 2.8L chevy v6 heads might bolt up to a 3.8L v6 chevy, but they arent doing anything in that condition. If there's some info you wanna pass along, thats fine, but make sure it isn't in an assbackwards direction, just to show you know something.

I'm not sure if this was intentional, or unintentional, but the way some of the posts were made, you'd be putting pistons thru heads and other assorted stupidity.

Best of luck on the swap and/or conversion

[rush6432]

Originally Posted by maTT

OMG this thread is full of mis-info.

The heads are different
The blocks are different
It is NOT cheaper to buy all the conversion parts separate!

The ports on the heads are different. The n/a block is missing the oil squirters AND the girdle stay brackets. The cheapest way to do a conversion is to buy a crappy vr4, use all the parts you need, and then sell the rest. Most of the time you can do it for free if you do the work yourself.

no need to get butthurt.

[maTT]

Why would I be butthurt? I already know this shit.

BTW, the heads will bolt up fine and the block will work fine as well. They are just not the same. Performance wise, I don't have hard numbers on the heads. I'm using n/a heads on the Panda conversion so we will see how that goes. On paper the block is weaker but should be fine in most real world applications.

[Tricky222]

Originally Posted by VRFury

God, thank you matt. I hadn't checked back. I didn't realize the cranks were the same, as someone posted, altho I thot they were different. I thot I understood somewhere along the line that NA rods are different, as in weaker. I'm thinking this is from way back when chris was first doing T2 on his own, or maybe right after going to 3sx.

Anyway, the point that the heads MAY bolt up to a tt block or vise versa, is fuking stupid. There is absolutely no reason that would make sense for what he is looking to do. I'm sure 2.8L chevy v6 heads might bolt up to a 3.8L v6 chevy, but they arent doing anything in that condition. If there's some info you wanna pass along, thats fine, but make sure it isn't in an assbackwards direction, just to show you know something.

I'm not sure if this was intentional, or unintentional, but the way some of the posts were made, you'd be putting pistons thru heads and other assorted stupidity.

Best of luck on the swap and/or conversion

The heads DO bolt up, there is NO MAY here. They DO. Do you get that now?

From the first post- "
5. Can you just buy a TT shortblock and put everything from the NA engine on top of it? Yes, I know I'm showing what I don't know. lol"

So YES there is a point to me saying that they will bolt up. Anything else you want to say?

[ProwlerGT]

Ok 3 things.

1. Which of you responding have actually done this swap, witnessed it being done or even assisted in the swap process?

2. Which of you are going off of knowledge from others or readings?

3. I'm sure someone swapping to a TT engine would not care if NA parts work on the TT engine if it means a performance "DROP" and that said people responding (I thought would) should assume that I or my friend wouldn't want to put NA heads on a TT block if they do not FLOW as good as the TT heads do. So please if there's a performance drop or "strength issue" using NA parts on the TT engine setup I or my friend would not want to use those parts or know about it. When I ask what NA stuff can be used on the TT engine I'm asking about stuff that can move over without concern and with the intent that it will perform the same exact task the same way. If not then its of no use.

The main thing I was hoping to accomplish with this thread was really a "swap list" in LIST form, but I'm not even sure which of you guys is right vs wrong and while I'm inclined to believe some of you more than others there is still a lot of overlapping information here.

I have personally never done this and I'm not even doing it to my car. My main concern up front was that the frames on the TT vs NA are in fact different and I didn't think the TT block would mount up at all. The rest of the stuff ..... please let us know if you done this or if you are just reporting info you've read up on.

[VRFury]

Originally Posted by Tricky222

The heads DO bolt up, there is NO MAY here. They DO. Do you get that now?

From the first post- "
5. Can you just buy a TT shortblock and put everything from the NA engine on top of it? Yes, I know I'm showing what I don't know. lol"

So YES there is a point to me saying that they will bolt up. Anything else you want to say?

Yeah, fuck your mother, james. I did not argue that they do not have the ability to bolt up, I'm saying there is no point to it.

I have rebuilt both engines, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see they are VIRTUALLY the same. However, there seems to be almost no sense in doing this cost-wise. Yes, THE DOHC'S BOLT UP TO THE DOHC, N/A OR NOT. But if your doing one setup, there are certain parts that are necessary, you can't just bolt some of this and some of that and make it work. Just saying, "yeah that will work", is like saying you can bolt a caravan motor into this car. Sure it will bolt up, but try closing the hood over that huge intake.

So check your ego at the door. Trying to help so there isn't half-info being given to a good guy. Enough of us have gotten fucked by half-info, we don't need it in our own forum.