Engine Swap?
 

My project cars have all been Hondas so far and even though my tC is a daily, not a project, it's the first Toyota I've ever owned and I was wondering how common engine swaps are in these.
I know with Hondas, you can bolt in pretty much anything made by Honda in the same 5-10 year period that the car was manufactured.

Has anybody on here swapped their tC? If so, what did you put into it/how complicated was the swap? I honestly don't know if there are any notoriously good Toyota engines for a fwd platform.

Shouldnt be hard, but hopefully not blowing engines to need a swap either.

It's more for building. The 2.5 has a pretty low Redline and from what I hear, not a very long life under forced induction. I can totally see why somebody would put something more beefy under the hood if they were using it as a project,
but the only build stories I can find are by race teams with a nearly unlimited budget, or they use the factory 2.5.
The only problem I can think of when swapping a different engine in would be getting mounts and axles to line up. If it's not an engine from a car with identical splines on the axles, a wheel hub swap would be required and that gets complicated.

The reason I brought up Hondas is because every Civic and Integra built into the 90s has either a B or D series engine and they use the same motor mounts and same axle splines so they just drop in.
I could pull the 1.5L non-V-tec D-series motor out of a CRX that makes about 90hp and drop in a 1.8L V-tec B-series out of an Integra type r that makes about 195hp without making any chassis modifications.

I was wondering if there was anything like that in the FWD Toyota/Scion/Lexus family of vehicles, or if it takes a lot more to drop in a higher-revving or more powerful engine.

-Edit-

I don't plan on ripping apart my tC for several years, if at all. I'm mostly just curious.

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I guess theoretically the 3.5 V6 out of the current Camry should fit in a new tC. They use the same 2.5, so it would make sense that the engine bay has the same mounting points.
Would have to fab a custom exhaust to get that lined up, but I'm sure the Camry axles, ECU, and engine harness would plug in easy enough.

I think I answered my own question.

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Turbo with moderate boost would be WAY more cost effective and practical than swapping a much larger 3.5L Camry engine. You'd achieve more power to the wheels and your engine will still be reliable. There are several members on here that have been boosted for years on stock internals with no issues.

You'll be adding considerable weight over the front wheels as well which will screw your suspension geometry and weight distribution. Don't overthink the car...it's a simple car and only needs simple mods.

I'm an engineer dude, I overthink everything haha.
I'm pretty sure if we don't count labor as a cost (because I love doing this ____ in my free time anyway), that I could get all of the equipment needed to swap the v6 for less than a safe turbo setup (no ebay snails/manifolds) if I wait a few years for the next model to come out. By the time the next generation of engines is out, I should be able to snag a 3.5 full swap for no more than $1500-2000. I've never seen a turbo build that I would put in my car for less than $5000 unless there was home fabrication or donated "free" parts.

And when I get bored with the v6, I can turbo THAT and make even MORE power and my car will only be good in a straight line MUWAHAHAHA

But really, I'm just brainstorming. I'm at least 5 years away from doing anything to this engine.

You make a few good points man! And I was totally expecting you to mention turboing the V6 lol.

How do you feel about the impact that engine would have on the car's handling and suspension though? I'd like to hear an engineer's perspective on that since I am far from one lol.

Like you said, it would totally destroy the suspension setup. It's already a pretty heavy car, but it's balanced well enough that if you play the gas pedal right, you can kick the back end out pretty easily on a turn. A v6 in the front would require a lot of fine tuning of aspects that I'm not totally familiar with, but I do know the front springs and dampers would have to be stiffer (or at least taller) to avoid over-compression and even then you would still be fighting understeer constantly. The easiest way to counter the understeer would be to add weight to the back to even out the distribution some, but making the car even heavier than it already is kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

Like I said, a straight-up swap with no chassis work would pretty much only be good in a straight line, but it's fun to entertain the idea of it.

For the record, my wife does all of the suspension/brake work. I pretty much just focus on engine performance and weight reduction with our cars haha

I did that. My engine blew up on me, can you help me out?

I had this idea of doing a custom JDM EJ205 Short Block swap, I think it would be a really unique idea.

The 2GR is only ~50lbs heavier than the 2AR, doesn’t sound like much of a difference, let alone enough to destroy the suspension setup.