1jz-gte vvt-i swap into 1988 chassis

[ttsupra2503]

I am thinking about selling my 7m-gte motor that is currently being rebuilt at the machine shop and moving into a 1998 1jz-vvti motor since it might better suit my needs as a base motor. I want the front facing intake manifold, the vvt-i is a bonus even though I will have to get a special controller when I switch off the stock ecu. Basic upgrades to reach my power goals and ability to move further by getting rid of the vvt-i later.

I will be listing some parts later in the "mk3 parts for sale" section later. I have seen a couple of the requirements but I would like some opinions and comments on the engine I am looking at and where I might buy one if my choice is bad.
Plus I need to source a engineless front clip (only r154 bellhousing needed of transmission) to do the swap easier. Help sourcing out these parts would help greatly.

 

[ttsupra2503]

Anyone from the west coast of north america know of people who import cars?

 

[te72]

There really is no good reason I can think of to get rid of the VVTI if you get one of these motors, it's good stuff.

As for finding swap parts, try throwing a stick around here.

 

[destrux]

Yeah I wouldn't get rid of the VVTi either, you can get upgrade cams for the VVTi the same as you can get for the non-VVTi. VVTi is not like Vtec. There's no switchover point, and the lift stays the same all the time. All it does is adjust the cam timing on the fly, which gives the motor a much wider torque curve. There are no cons to the system, other than extra time tuning and performance cams might be a little harder to find or take longer to order in.

You don't need a special separate controller for it either, there are plenty of aftermarket ECUs that can control VVTi, and any good tuner can tune it.

I know there's a plug and play power FC for this motor, and some people are using AEM on them (although I have heard it is not simply plug and play, there's some changes that need to be made to the ECU), and there's a bunch of non-plug and play ECU's that will run them.