Here she is!

I thought I'd update everyone on my project. It's a st165 getting an st205 swap. Picked her up for $400 with a blown motor and the st205 for $1600. What a steal! I'm in the process of re-wiring her, but only one problem...I have no idea where or how to start. From what I've read in the forums, the harness needs to be adapted to the fuse box and the plugs that are from the loom that don't go to the ecu needs to be adapted to the plugs inside the car? I also noticed the speed sensor is different so I guess that just needs to be swapped? Can anyone who has done this swap give me some pointers? Pictures would be great! I'm totally lost when it comes to the wiring part of the swap. I would like to be able to do the swap myself, but if I can't get it wired, I guess I'll send it to a shop.

I don't have the patience to do the wiring myself so when I did a Beams 3S-GE swap, I had the harness done by Dr. Tweak. He has all the Toyota wiring diagrams to make harnesses for just about any swap. I sent him the two original harnesses and got the swap harness back about a month later. Total cost: $700 (this included return shipping and a Dakota Digital tachometer adapter that retails for $80)

http://www.tweakdperformance.com/index2.html

That looks like quite the nice project! I'd love to pick up a 165 shell one day.

Speedos just swap.

If you want to tackle the electronics, there are a few decent writeups on Celicatech, etc. Well, for techniques, at least. You will need the diagrams for both cars and you can go from there.

You essentially:
- Take everything 1st ten 3s-gte out of your harness, leaving the 'chassis' stuff behind
- Take everything ST205 chassis specific out of the 3rd gen 3s-gte harness
- Put the two together and shorten/extend wires as necessary to follow the LHD harness routing in your ST165.
- All the fuses, etc. match up in name and value and a lot of the power/ground wires match colors.

OOORRRRR... you can try to re-pin your ST165 ECU side and change the plugs on the engine side to match the new ST205 motor.

I would personally go the direction I described first (this is what I did on my 3s-fe to 3s-gte swap on my Camry). Go one plug/wire at a time and be careful.

-Charlie

Let me know if you are interested in selling the ST165 motor. I am running a stock setup in my 88 and I am always looking for a backup. Thanks.

Thanks Charlie! I'll go with the first step also. It seems to make more sense. I guess I better get started since it sounds like it'll be a long and slow process.

I am planning to hold on to the motor for awhile. Hopefully I can rebuild her, but if I do decide to sell it, I'll probably post it on here.