Greetings

I thought I'd make a thread for some of the stuff I've done. Nothing that hasn't been done before but maybe it will help someone.

As it says, this is my dd and I use it to commute and haul people/parts/tools/limbs/whatever. So most of the mods I'll be doing are with a focus on making it more capable for the work I do without sacrificing comfort.

So, with that said, away we go.

The 1.6 16v isn't a bad engine, just a little weak for a hilly area, especially when it's backed with an auto. So I researched my options and came up with four realistic choices:
1. Turbo - I ruled this out because I don't want to run premium gas. The car has to run on trash 87 to be a good dd.
2. J20 swap - I ruled this out because I thought a J23 swap would be about the same amount of effort and have more torque at a lower rpm.
3. J24 swap - this one was ruled out due to lack of junkyard options and lack of online resources. I didn't want to risk getting all the parts and then realizing I bit off more than I could chew.
4. J23 swap - the winner based on cost, power, and accessibility.

I decided to give it a shot. For the record, you can pull out a tracker engine/trans/tcase through the top but, if I had to do it again, I wouldn't.

The first J23 I pulled ended up having a blown head gasket and I was ready to throw everything away and go buy a truck. I went to look at small trucks(Frontier & Tacoma) but nothing excited me and I felt like a quitter. I checked row52 again and saw an Aerio with potential; 2006 and, best of all, visibly crunched in the front which means it was probably running up to the time of the crash. I went out and grabbed it but, with no tracker to haul the engine home, I tried toting it in the trunk of the compact. It went poorly but I got it home.

Fast forward a bit. Shout out to Trail Tough and their swap mounts. They fit great.

Fast forward to now. I've got about 50 miles on the swap and it's running well so far. I thought I read that the J23s run hot but mine seems to run pretty normal so far. The electric fan has only come on once or twice even when I leave it idling for a while... but it's also winter so we'll see come warmer weather.

2.3 Aerio swap with Aerio intake/tb
Hurricane J20 header ceramic coated
Magnaflow cat PN 22626
Geo metro fan switch
SPAL 16 inch fan
Still has AC(well, it has all the parts, haven't charged the system since the swap)

Dig it!

-Eric

I was a little light on the swap details and I forgot some stuff, so I'll go back and edit for clarity. I'm doing all this from my phone so bear with me.

Swap Details - Mechanical - Transmission

My 1g had the same 4 speed trans as 2gs but the torque converter had 3 bolts vs the 6 on the 2g converter. Could you run a 2g torque converter in a 1g 4 speed? I'm not sure, I didn't try it and I couldn't find input shaft spline numbers to compare. There may also have been a couple of sensors difference between the two. Off the top of my head I want to say the 1g was missing the input shaft speed sensor(?) on the driver's side of the trans up near the bellhousing.

If you break the 2g dipstick tube like I did, the 1g tube can be reused but the 2g dipstick connects to the pan at a slightly different angle so you'll have to gently bend it and hope it doesn't crack where the tube is welded to the pan.

As a heads up, and I've mentioned this before, the Aerio flywheel/torque converter uses smaller bolts than a 2g. Save yourself some headache and drill them out before you drop in the engine. Fortunately I had a right angle drill that I could squeeze between the firewall and the back of the engine after I lifted it up and slightly forward.

I decided to add a transmission cooler with the idea that eventually I'll have a small utility trailer for larger items. I went with a Derale 16 row stacked plate cooler PN 13402. It was the biggest cooler I could fit while retaining the stock AC condenser fan and I still ended up chopping out part of the front support to fit it in there. Recently, I found that the whole front header panel bolts together but the 2 inch depth of the cooler still would have been an issue. Running a plate and fin style would have made life easier at the expense of cooling. If you're bypassing the radiator cooler(whyyyyy?), go stacked plate(bigger than mine) and cross your fingers. I run through the radiator to this because, as I understand it, you can't overcool trans fluid.

I'm running my stock tcase which bolts right up and retains mechanical speedo functionality. I tried putting the 1g sensor in the 2g tcase because I wanted shift-on-the-fly 4wd but it didn't seem like it was going to work.

Ok either I can't edit or I'm an idiot(why not both?) so here are the parts I used to complete the engine portion of the swap, maybe I save someone extra junkyard trips:

Swap Details - Mechanical - Engine/Exhaust/Accessories

J23 from Aerio
Aerio ISC pigtail - if running the larger Aerio intake/tb you'll need to splice this into the 2g harness
2g oil pan/pickup
2g water pipe/outlet
2g auto trans
2g ecu
2g full ecu harness - including the critical e59/c52 connector located somewhere around a foot from the ecu plugs
2g cam sensor - Aerio uses a 4 prong cam sensor and won't plug into the 2g harness
2g fuel injectors/rail
2g maf
2g gas pedal
2g throttle/tv cable bracket - with the longer Aerio intake, the bracket mounting point is further from the tb and the tv cable won't reach the tb so get creative. Side note: if it jumps against the brakes when shifting out of park into R or D, you need more slack in the tv cable.
1g auto tb tv bracket - if you're running the Aerio tb, you need this. If you're running the 2g tb, it has one built in.
2g power steering pump/pressure/return lines - honestly the whole Sidekick Sport PS setup looks like a better move than running the 2g stuff but I had the 2g stuff done by the time I ran across one in the yard
Hurricane header - this was just a nice-to-have, otherwise I had a 2g tubular manifold ready to go
Magnaflow cat - because the header is made for the wider 2g frame, the 1g cat hits the frame before you can align the exhaust. The magnaflow cat is smaller so it gave me the clearance I needed to move everything over, it's stainless steel(only 409 but still better than mild), and it bolts right up to the factory exhaust.

I think that's everything less the cooling and wiring.

I run through the radiator to this because, as I understand it, you can't overcool trans fluid.

There are many different opinions on this, mine, for what it's worth, is that you can.

The transmission "cooler" in the radiator is actually a "heat exchanger" - it warms the transmission fluid when it's below the coolant temperature, and also cools it, when it's above the coolant temp.

Think about it - why didn't the factory use a "fluid-to-air" cooler like the one you fitted?

The transmission is more efficient when it's up to operating temperature, so the engineers use a number of tricks to bring it up to operating temp as rapidly as they can, one is to use the "waste heat" from the engine, a second is to disable torque converter lock up when it's cold - the constant "churn" of the unlocked converter helps warm the fluid (at the expense of fuel economy).  By the way, care to guess how they determine that the transmission is up to operating temperature?  They measure the engine coolant temps - some transmissions have a temperature sensor, but most don't, the ones I've seen that do, are there to sense overheating.

One more thing - if you're going to run both coolers, as you are, run the radiator cooler last - that way you dump the excess transmission heat into the atmosphere rather than the vehicle cooling system, and if you do "over cool", it's warm it back up to the engine operating temperature..