joelc984 Posted June 3, 2015 Report Posted June 3, 2015 Hi All, I drive a beautiful 1975 KE30 2door, running dedicated LPG on the stock motor with a 5speed K50 transmission. Car is a dream and a keeper, bought from a rolla club member Dale AKA doityourself on rollaclub. I have been driving the rolla for a few years now with no problems, runs beautifully and usually won't give me much starting trouble even on cold winter mornings, really reliable and well taken care of car. The praise should go to Dale (doityourself) for his beautiful work on the LPG conversion, custom exhaust and a lot more tlc. After a while the little engine can be a bit tedious and sometimes you itch for a little more excitement and oomf to match the cars personality, so on that note the time has come for a new heart... or engine, whatever you want to call it. The point of this thread really is to find the perfect Engine Conversion for me and my car. I want to make something beautiful, reliable,fairly economical, powerful, but not ridiculous. For the most part I am hoping to have JapaneseMotorsport (South Australia) handle the conversion and upgrades. I do want to one day do a project car at home by myself but this car isn't that project. This rolla is and will be my one and only daily for a long long time, I can't really see myself driving anything else. I want a professional, quality conversion and I don't trust my knowledge and skills enough to dive into an engine conversion at home. Money wise, for now lets just imagine its not an issue (of course it'll be an issue) I just really want intelligent, unique ideas, don't hold back! SO I want to make a final decision as I've been racking my brain looking and thinking about all the different engine swaps that have and haven't been done on the net. I want the overall best engine conversion for my 2door KE30 Corolla bringing these factors into thought: - Daily driver - Power, but will not be racing or drifting, just a little oomf and grunt - Sound and Looks - A big one, I DEFINITELY want to keep running dedicated LPG on the new engine I put in my rolla (don't have much info on how difficult that will be but any info would be appreciated!) - Decent-ish fuel economy - Preferably not turbo So thats about it, hopefully this sparks a good conversation over which is the overall BEST KE30 engine swap for a daily driver just looking for a better performance out of his favourite little car. Any unique conversions would be awesome, would love to do something that hasn't been done but not going to do something just because its different if its not the best choice overall. After all the reading I've done my mind at the moment sways towards a well built 20v 4age running LPG. Sorry for the long read and any dumb questions. Cheers! Joel Quote
joelc984 Posted June 3, 2015 Author Report Posted June 3, 2015 One thing to add, I would like to keep it Toyota but I could be persuaded to use something else if it was the obvious better option. Cheers again. Quote
Clapped out Posted June 3, 2015 Report Posted June 3, 2015 Unfortunatly there isn't a "best engine conversion", maybe 7k? cheers! Quote
It's_AUDM_Yo Posted June 3, 2015 Report Posted June 3, 2015 Give Hilux motors a look if your keen on N/A and not the usually 4AGE or 3SGE beams 2RZ-FE / 3RZ-FE or the Newer 2TR-FE Lots of these motors around. All around 160hp lots of power in low rpm and loads of torque Plus I'm sure there is already tonnes prep'd for LPG Quote
joelc984 Posted June 3, 2015 Author Report Posted June 3, 2015 Appreciate the replys, was thinking about 7K for a while. Still mostly leaning towards 4age but it is a bit of a copycat conversion these days Quote
joelc984 Posted June 3, 2015 Author Report Posted June 3, 2015 Also much information on what you can do with a 3t? The guy I bought the rolla from was hoping to put a 3t in so that's another conversion I'd look in to, keep it old school Toyota Quote
styler Posted June 4, 2015 Report Posted June 4, 2015 Any motor that uses one of jordans conversion kits would be a great choice, check out his thread and see how much work he puts into these kits, its a lot! Theres the next stage of connecting everything up so look into that side as well, some motors have a lot of aftermarket adapters for this, some don't. Quote
altezzaclub Posted June 5, 2015 Report Posted June 5, 2015 S2000 motor and box. or one of the Mazda MX5 motors and the same 6-speed box. Getting the most modern 4-cyl motor in RWD format would be the most practical route, something cheap on fuel and reliable & the RWD format makes it all easier. Quote
Bueno Posted June 10, 2015 Report Posted June 10, 2015 (edited) Umm why do you have LPG on a car that already uses bugger all fuel? I say leave the gas for bbqs and go either 4AGE or SR20, as they are both tried and true, easy to get parts for and probably the most affordable conversions you can do. My mate read up on lpg heaps about some cars making more power than on petrol when setup right. Then he put his 2.5l turbo nissan stagea on LPG and guess what? Like nearly every other lpg converted car in the world it lost power and doesnt run as smooth. Darn hey? Sure we'd all rather something unique that hasnt been done heaps of times before but in the world of engine conversions "unique" is kindof another way of saying hasnt been done before so usually costs more and takes longer as you have to do all the research and development yourself. Whichever way you go, Keep us posted and start a thread? Bueno Edited June 10, 2015 by Bueno Quote
Mechanical Sympathy Posted June 10, 2015 Report Posted June 10, 2015 He may be considering running LPG because an engine built to run on propane exclusively can have a much higher compression ratio than one intended for pump grade petroleum. Quote
kickn5k Posted June 10, 2015 Report Posted June 10, 2015 My mate read up on lpg heaps about some cars making more power than on petrol when setup right. Then he put his 2.5l turbo nissan stagea on LPG and guess what? Like nearly every other lpg converted car in the world it lost power and doesnt run as smooth. Darn hey? He didn't do enough reading then. There are only a couple of tuners SMART enough to get lpg to work right. He obviously didn't see one of them. Quote
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