Rick Bosak's Journal

The engine in my Sprite started life in Toyota Corollas as a rear wheel drive engine. In the late 80s Toyota got into front wheel drive cars but kept the block of their tried and true 1600 4 cylinder and just rotated it to an East West FWD application. They just changed the coolant hook-ups. My 94 engine was this East West configuration. This meant that when I rotated it back to a North South RWD orientation that my coolant lines ended up at the fire wall. I hated running my coolant lines all the way from the firewall then over the header to get to the radiator. Enter the Tuners and Drifters who loved this 20 valve 4 cylinder engine like me they saw no sense in running coolant lines over the header. So a kit was created to move the lines back to the original RWD location on the block right by the water pump up front by the radiator. I finally bought the kit from SQ Engineering and installed it. This opened up my header and got the coolant pipes away from the heat. I decided to install the kit without pulling the engine. This was tough as there is no room for hands and wrenches in my engine bay. I also needed to create custom coolant hoses with the right bends and lengths by using parts from ten hoses I pulled from the local salvage yard. After five days and a lot of swear words it is done. One benefit was that now I have enough room by the fire wall to install a shut-off valve for my heater core. That will help in the summer. I also discovered that my original thermostat was stuck partially open which explained why it always took longer than it should to get down off of fast idle in the mornings. I'm glad its done now on to further refinements. There is a kit now to install an Accord starter onto the T50 transmision....