Hi, my name is Mouse. I am now working for Dr. Tweak at Phoenix Tuning. I have always been interested in imports, but am new to the Toyota scene.

So, Dr. tweak and I have been talking about me needing another car since me and my girlfriend are new here and currently only have one. Dr tweak wants to provide me with a motivator for the work that we do and give me hands on experience with the joy of being a Toyota owner.

In the middle of the day as we are working on our wiring conversions. He turns to me and says, "Do you want a Celica?". Then tells me that he received an email about a project car that never got completed and needs to be gotten rid of by this weekend. This was on Wednesday. So the guy send us pics of the car. He tells us it is in pieces but everything is there. He originally wanted to do the motor swap to the 3SGTE and had planned on upgrading the suspension.

So on Saturday I meet Dr. Tweak here in Savannah and we go get a trailer from the local u-haul and head off to Daytona Beach, Fl.

When we arrive at Dennis's house I finally get to see what we are working with. I had assumed from the pictures he sent that the front fenders and bumper were removed as well as the engine. This is what we saw when we got there.

We have dubbed this: Project Stuart Little.
Because, as you all now know, everyone calls me Mouse, and Stuart Little drove a convertible:)

Here are the pics as we unload the parts from the car. Dennis didn't just attempt a motor swap, although I'm not sure why he stripped the car this far down, he took out all the harnesses, seats, instrument cluster, disconnected the shock on the drivers front, and removed the headlight and the transmission. The stock motor was still in the engine bay but ready to be removed.

Putting the 3SGTE in the Tundra

Dr. Tweak strapping the engine down

So as we are unloading the part from the 6GC I begin to wonder what Dr. Tweak has really gotten me into. His eyes are as big as mine as we work together to unload the car and see just how much work there is in putting this back together.

Then its time for the top to come up. It was a lot easier than we thought it would be. There is a switch to unlock the motor for the convertible top in the trunk, so it went up fairly easily.

We were told that the stock motor ran good when Dennis decided to park it and attempt the motor swap. The stock motor never made it out of the car.

With the help of the guys that were there we got the Celica loaded and were almost ready to head back to Savannah. Note the chains dragging on the ground after the Celica and parts were Loaded. When we pushed the car on the dolly I was in it. then tried to open the door only to find that the fender wells on the trailer were too close to open it. All the windows were rolled up and the top up so I had no choice but to climb out the door.

Here is all the parts loaded in the Tundra.

The Stuart Little Project loaded and ready for transport

Dr. Tweak and I with the new 6GC project

So to begin with we are going to reinstall everything including the stock motor and manual transmission to get it back on the road for now. We are going to sort out all the parts that came with this and figure out what is missing for the 3sgte. The turbo was gone, and with all the parts strewn around god know what else. Then we are going to order the parts we need to do the 3SGTE swap.

So I will keep you posted as we decide what else we are going to do to make this a one of a kind build.

Update 12-17-08

So last week we made it over to the shop to work on the 6gc. We decided first thing was to reinstall the fenders, hood, seats, and front bumper so it wasn't an eyesore. Plus i wanted to see what it looked like as a whole:) Dennis was kind enough to re-thread all the body bolts back into their original places when he removed the body panels. So the only bolts I had to search out were for the seats, which I found buried at the bottom of the trunk. The front end went together rather nicely.

I didn't install the headlights because they were buried in the car and I will have to take the whole front end apart anyways to reinstall the wiring harnesses.

This is installing the seats. I had to unpack the parts from the car, install the seats and then repack everything back into the car. So i have a good Idea now of what parts we already have.

Meanwhile Dr. Tweak was hard at work welding new motor mounts for an MR2.



Then I reinstalled all of the headlights. I was missing two bolts and found that they were in the bump stops for hood! So the chassis harness and headlights are done.



Now it was time to remove the C.V. axles and the 5S and inspect it before we get ready to reinstall it.



When I had the motor almost out of the engine bay, Dr. Tweak informed me that we were not going to reinstall the motor. I was still jacking the motor up as he was pointing at the block stammering. I said "yes we are, why wouldn't we? This is why we wouldn't :)

We pulled the plugs to verify the condition of the 3S. It had been outside for some time apparently and has some rust issues we are going to need to deal with. Luckily the motor isn't locked up.

Here is the #3 plug when we pulled it.

At the end of the day we decided that the 3S needs some work before being installed.

A discussion of this swap can be found here