For a while now I have been wanting to build a new muffler section for my car, mostly to replace the 27lb Berk Technology muffler with something a bit lighter weight.  From there the project evolved into a low profile, center exit design to better accommodate a rear diffuser that I would like to build some day.  Having something unique is of course a plus as well.

While building a set of my custom coilover housings recently, I thought that maybe people would like to see what the process of taking these from a pile of parts to a finished set of housings looks like.  So here we go!

Toyota rates the 2GR at 269hp (at the flywheel), give or take a bit depending on the application.  My swapped MR2 dyno'd 280hp (at the wheels).  Assuming 17% drive train loss, that's 337hp at the flywheel, or a gain of 68hp vs stock and a specific output of 96hp per liter.   Not bad for a stock motor with intake / headers / exhaust, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement!

For quite a few years now I have been tempted by the idea of ditching my 3S-GTE turbo 4-cylinder and swapping in one of Toyota's newer v6 motors, namely the 3.5L 2GR-FE.  But my 3S was still running great, and I had too much time, money, and effort invested in it over the years to drop it without a good reason.  That is, until a little over a year ago when the head gasket failed on the way home from the track, as described here: Tres Duro 2016 - My Lucky Streak is Broken.  That motor had also been burning a fair amount of oil, and since I had to tear it apart anyway to fix the head gasket I was tempted to rebuild the whole thing to fix the oil burning. I almost went down that road of rebuilding it.  Again.  Fortunately I remembered that I had been telling myself for years that I would go v6 before doing that, so here we go.