Thanks so much Mike for sharing your knowledge on the 4A-GE! I'd love to know more about building a 20v silvertop or blacktop too! (And 7A-GE etc!) A lot of this knowledge is lost with the forums going down. Thanks for preserving it for the next generation who loves these cars/motors.
The forums are still up though, incl the aussie ae86dc one. The problem is lazy people turning to fb groups (which are more for sharing final results) and asking questions there, with no way to store or archive most of the knowledge. When I point them to forums they go "huh", they literally don't know what a forum is or what it's for, one guy even asked me if forums was a, and I quote "Rome thing" 🤣
@@ToreDL87 rome thing 😂 Was referring to club4ag original forums being lost and not all the site was backed up sadly. Lots of sites are down when hunting for PDFs too nowdays 😢
Always nice to see videos on the good old 4A! I'm currently building 4A-GZE for my AW11 MR2, parts are harder to come by especially in Europe, but MRP has great stuff indeed and I've already bought couple of things from them.
I absolutely love your naturally aspirated engine builds! Thank you for your help last year with advice for a clutch and flywheel for my AP1 S2000. I have really enjoyed the ACT clutch and flywheel. So nice having an ultra lightweight billet flywheel.
Man I loved this video! I owned an AE86 for 4 years (and I want back in one soon) and I love hearing the modern take on 4AGEs! Most of the info online are from 2006 which is probably outdated by now so I really appreciate this advice! If you have a chance I'd love to hear about 7AGE builds too!
ive got a AE92 coupe which i manual swapped and put a blue top 4AGE from an 86 MR2. i rebuilt the 4AGE before hand, new pistons, bored 82mm, decked with the TRD 0.8mm head gasket, HKS 272 intake and exhaust on adjustable cam pulleys, stand alone ignition (no distributor) and two weber DCOE 40s and straight piped with stainless headers plus a few sort of reliability mods like the MRP timing belt stabilizer and all ARP bolts on the bottom end and the stronger 20v oil pump. it really takes off, i put 91-93 octane (north america) and have the ignition timing up just before knock. great acceleration with no delay!
Nice video, lots of great info here. I would like to add that the issue with oil pumps themselves are in the early gen pumps with square edged gears, later pumps (silvertop 20v is considered the better option) are great off the shelf for majority of builds. The problem with breaking gears on the bigports pertains to oil Cavitation. The head only has an oil return in the centre of the head on the exhaust side. Under high rpm and cornering forces, oil tends to get trapped in the head for a little too long which effects the pickup volume at the sump. The smallport engine has addressed this with an additional oil drain from the rear of the head down to the block amongst other efficiency upgrades. The bigport has the provisions for these drain ports to be machined for fittings by a skilled tech.
Thankyou for the information...Im a 4AGE enthusiast from Sabah Malaysia...and this video is a refresh ...I have been playing this engine from the early model till the 20v blacktop
Great video. Hard to believe they’re a 40 year old design now! They sound so great, and were and still are a staple at every motorsport event in about any configuration you can imagine, as a 2A-GE for example. I have a soft spot for these (having owing 3 AE82 FX-GT and an AE85 with a 20v back in the day). They’re fragile alright, I’ve run bearings a few times in the bigport motors without the external head drain like the smallport has. Great to see NZ companies and guys like Garage 4age keeping them alive too.
My first car was a Toyota Corolla Twin Cam (series 1) 86kw . Eventually got a bearing knock and I fitted a 100kw import series 3 engine, huge difference and I couldn’t break it 😂. Dave Repsold here in South Africa is a legend with these. Awesome videos man
This is great. Oem stuff was good for back in the day builds (club4ag era). These days we have more and better tested stuff to use where old oem parts can take the backseat.
I've seen 4A-GEs' of many flavours pushed to the outer limits in the NZ, Australian and South African tuning scene. Those guys swear by the 4A-GE motors. Great to see such a detailed analysis of this motor.
I love this engine I remember when I was a kid at the Long Beach Grand Prix seeing this beauty in a Atlantic car with side draft carbs sounded so sweet
Crower engine parts are insane. My dad built a 65 stang with crower rods and high nickel boss block that revs to 8k rpm. Hope to build my own engine some day like he did. I’m 30 and making enough money to support myself but not much extra. Hope to someday have a fun car of my own.
awesome video. i love the way a 4age sounds when its wound out and the formula atlantic 4age's are just unreal. would be cool to see you go through a toyota 2rz or 3rz build. i have seen a few with 4 digit power numbers with a stock block and crank. looks to be a solid platform.
Lots of people claim they are weak, but the number of people who've thrown turbos on gzes and made 250-300kw with some injectors and ECU... I don't get the claim of weak.
Folks clicking on the video are typically fans of the engine. And know better than to think its week. Group A and formula Atlantic motors etc Toyota used the engine in a lot of motor sport. They wouldn't have if the engine was week
Love Na builds since people rarely do them anymore more. did an all-motor 6g72 with 13:1 compression and 272 cams with an LS intake adapted to the 6g72. With very similar built bottom end and built top end. Just a weird all-motor v6 build. lol
That’s awesome, people tend to overlook the 6g7x series of motor but they put down some impressive numbers I’m in the process of building a 6g75 all motor for my ce lancer
@@svent9238 my 6g72 is using some 6g75 parts and Gm LS parts. Mainly the 6g75 intake plenum adapter that lets you put on a holley efi intake hat from an Ls 😂
did you know these motors used to dominate Formula Atlantic in SCCA? i built quite a few cyl. heads back in the day.....shim over converted to shim under cam....always good vids !!!!!!!
We used to call them flying hand grenades. If anything went wrong there was nothing left. There were a couple of other engines that slowly crept in and eventually took over obviously with SCCA releasing the rules a bit then. Then went back to the one engine rules. This is just what I saw at regional/National level in the southwest division…. And it was quite a few years ago… I tend to get rusty on my thoughts. Like always… enjoy your vids
They were really a shit engine, I felt the BDA was actually better. Then you put that flimsy block as a stressed member in an FA chassis, boom! You had to take them down, change the rod bearings and inspect everything after every weekend, change the crank every 3 weekends, usually by then the main caps were getting beat out of the registers. The Mazda that replaced it was a way better engine, too bad the formula died right after, I loved those cars.
Yes the BDA was a much better piece… I got a couple drives in the Alantic’s back in the 80/90’s. They were explosive!!!. I knew they were a little temperamental on longevity. I don’t remember any production motor being that strong. ( with comparable mods) that was a rich man’s class. I am definitely not arguing that vintage builds compared to today, there is no comparison…. Our sleeves and lighter weight pistons and better quality rods are quantum leaps over that stuff. I still think for what it was it was still impressive.. I know you feel like they were junk. It was a good level at its time. Nothing like today. Have a great evening!
Maybe we just got lucky but we ran 270kw in a turbo setup with a KE20 rolla with standard crank and block. The rest was all forged (ceramic coated & shot peened pistons) and head was well worked. Crank never died, tho we never stressed it too hard cept when at the runs which we pulled almost a 10sec pass without slicks (think was a mid 10) .....we got kicked off the track cos we didnt have a tailshaft loop or rollcage. (it was an ae92 red top motor so i guess was 3rd gen ? )
if its a 7A block its likely a 7AGE hybrid engine or possibly a 9AGE hybrid. those engines use 4AGE heads and bottom end (9AGE uses 2ZZ bottom end) and 7AFE block.
@@Videoswithsoarin That's what I was referring too, IIRC Tsuchiya runs a 7A block with a 4AGE 20V BT head. Think he mentioned it was better for torque and strength.
Wow... I have a lot of years spent enjoying my AW11 with its 4AGE... Though, it certainly was not powerful, it was rev happy and was pure bliss at 6600rpm... It felt like my AW11 was floating on a road of silk. Any chance you could do a similar video for the 3SGE? :)
When I built my 7A I lucked out and got a Atlantic crankshaft and short course cams that and cp rods and pistons. We made a billet pan with the dry sump and mains all together. We made 228hp sadly it only lived 3 races
@@motoiq tire blew out on the car passing and took out the front end of Carlos's car and the engine snapped at the mid plate and it pinned the throttle open which killed #5 main and rod 4 before shutdown. Owner gave up
Brother, I am from South Africa and have a few 4A-GE engines, I have one putting out 515HP on a stock crank and stock Series 2 rods and a stock head with no rev kit and is not flowed, only thing we did is stronger pistons that is it, never had any oil pump, crank, bearing and block issues what so ever. I am more that willing to share the build photos and dyno videos, at the moment our best time is 10.83sec on the 1/4mile
You should check out The driveway engineer on RU-vid ;) He has so much real life budget type instructions and what to pick from junkyards that's worth your time
I wouldn't say the 116 hp was special my friend. Some Honda ZC engines did that in 87', and almost that even earlier on carbs. That's decent specific power, yes. Then there was the original VTEC 1.6. It could do 8 grand and 160hp in 89'. Honda had them beat. However, the 11k ability and sound of the 5 valve 4AG is something amazing that must be respected and recognized.
FYI the 42mm cranks in these engines are good for stupid horsepower, PSI Racing has seen no problems with them going to 600whp. You only need to think about a stronger crank if you want to sustain 10k rpm for long periods or are throwing huge horsepower through the little 1.6. 42mm cranks were taken to 8400 rpm stock (rpm chosen by Toyota with general builds) once balanced they can keep higher. Typically the limiter of the engine is rods, rod bolts, or the sump turning so fast it cavitates or froths the oil. good video with pretty good summarization. A bit on the safe side but good info nonetheless.
You are right, forced induction and lower revs are actually easier on the crank and block until power levels get stupid. I should have said that this video is more NA focused.
@@motoiq Ah, I took the information to generally. As an NA platform it definitely needs the extra strength. The 40mm cranks are definitely not up to the task, they or the rods tend to give out in even mild builds on early bigport engines when aroung that 160whp mark or earlier.
Great informative video! My Redtop 86 has been sitting for 12 years with blown rings who knows what else. And family took precedence over trying to build my 20V Silvertop 13 years ago... I guess I should really get on it, HAHA.
The MRP guys from New Zealand are doing just this and building 2-liter versions. I kinda want to build one! I would also swap a Honda K motor for an AE86 hahahaha.
@MotoIQ I can't imagine a 7AFE shortblock is worth more than $250 dollars. This is kind of like a B20 head swap or the VE head swap on an SR. It would be interesting to see a 2.0 A block build with a 20V head. That would be really interesting to see.
I had 93 4agze with a turbo in an old corolla that was 172kw at the wheels and had the rev limit set to 8200rpm which was so reliable i put 80,000ks on it in the end the end the ring landings cracked due to a bad tune
@@motoiq not sure, but there's plenty parts available for the valvetrain from férrea, catcams, bc racing, supertech, monkeywrenchracing and people has already achieved 220whp on a stock longblock with full bolt ons on fwd setups
Perfect video to see during my 5age build lol hks stroker for .1 more litre 😂 my 7a on the other hand that should make some power…. And my 9a…. It should be wild
