Hey everyone.
I recently acquired a KE20 Corolla that's been sitting for some time. It's going to be a long project; however, I will want to engine swap it. I would love to do a 4A-GE swap, but in the US, these seem to be relatively hard to source. I do however, know of an inline 4 that I have been pondering. GM's GenII and Gen III ecotec engines are in abundance because they seem to throw them in everything that they can. Cobalts, HHRs, Saabs, Colorados, etc etc. The problem (or so I thought) was a RWD transmission. I recently found that RWD is actually possible relatively easily as the Gen II Ecotec has the same bellhousing pattern as some rwd colorados, solstice, sky transmissions (AR-5). AND the Gen III LTG engine was developed as a crate engine that was in the Cadillac ATS, ALSO with RWD.
So my search for an attainable 4 cylinder, RWD, manual that I could potentially swap into the KE20 has grown. I've seen that some have done a 6 cylinder Ecotec swap in this forum, so I'm sure someone out here might have some semblance of an idea of what it would take to pull this off. This will be my first project car, so I know there will be a steep learning curve, especially if I go this route with all the extra fabrication that's probably going to be required. I'd just like to ask if anyone has looked into this engine as a possibility and what things should I look out for to try my best to source parts that have already been produced - as opposed to starting this journey and basically having to custom fabricate something that I haven't even thought about yet.
This is just at the research and ideas phase, I have not purchased anything yet - I just want some ideas from people who have done these projects before.
Thanks in advance for any insights.