Ed.

This forum is so dead and people usually don't post with helpful info so I hardly ever log in anymore. But that guy's thread is still very much relevant for you - he didn't swap to a 1mz at all. He rebuilt his 3vz. If you're taking off the heads, that is a very good time to go ARP studs - buy the mitsubishi 3000gt main studs (part 207-5801) and shave off a few mm for the studs going under the exhaust cam gear to get them to fit. That camry resto guy used arp studs in his engine because they are superior in almost every way to the factory torque-to-yield bolts. These engines are apparently known for blowing head gaskets at around 300,000 km, and it's probably because the tty bolts just get too stretched over time. When you say 3 inch Y-pipe back, are you referring to the merge from the two cylinder banks to the cat? I think that should be ok for an NA build. Might actually be a bit too big but only real way to know is to dyno different exhaust pipe diameters. The mr2 wiki seems to recommend 2 inch y-pipe, and 2.25 or 2.5 inch post-cat. Either way, factory y-pipe is horrible for flow, it's more like a T-junction rather than a y-pipe. Get rid of that **** and tell an exhaust shop to do 2 inches from each bank equal-length (uneven length might be cheaper and not make a difference but again...dyno for sure), to a 2.5 inch at the merge. That alone on my old auto camry noticeably increased mid-range power. Not enough to knock your socks off, but certainly noticeable when you've been driving it for a bit with factory exhaust. Doing 2.5 inch post-cat might improve flow as well. Personally, I like sleeper builds but that's just me; it's your car so you do what you want to it. Once ****** off a flashy new jeep by launching ahead of him at a red light lol. The 3vz has so much low end torque which makes it perfect for daily driving. The jeep was ****** enough that he blew through the next red light and almost hit the rear bumper of a land cruiser already turning in the intersection. That was in an auto too lol. Can't imagine how much faster the manual would be.

Put the front end on jack stands, ensure wheels are off the ground. Turn wheels left and right. If the spring rotates with the strut, you have fixed seats. If they don't, you have rotating spring seats. KYBs are pretty good, well suited for everyday driving and even a bit of thrashing if you like to have a bit of fun. I know you're not looking for performance, but if you or anyone else still has a camry and want a bit of performance struts...look for tokico blues. HB3179 and HB3180 for right and left front struts respectively. Had them installed on my old camry and man that thing stayed planted around corners. Tokico no longer make shocks though so your only option is hunting on ebay or something. If you have a spring compressor and a powerful cordless impact to remove the struts from the vehicle, you can save yourself a fair bit of money doing everything yourself. Just don't use the impact with the spring compressor. The job isn't terribly difficult, it just takes a lot of time, longest part would be compressing and decompressing the springs.

dunno if you still have the cressida or not, but if the head isn't cracked, take it to an engine or performance shop. don't take it to a regular machine shop; they will want to mill the head which will remove too much material and is irreversible. Engine/race shops will ground/lap the head, which only cleans the surface and leaves a much better finish. These engines blow gaskets left and right due to undertorqued factory bolts. People say to get a metal head gasket and yes that'll fix the problem, but it is VERY overkill for a naturally aspirated engine. The oem graphite/composite gasket is perfectly fine. Metal head gaskets require a near mirror-like finish on both the head and the block...this will be very expensive if you can't take it out yourself. Comp gasket is perfectly fine, only requires cleaning the head and you can prep and clean the block while it's in the car. I bought an ishino stone gasket VRS kit on ebay from some british dude, part number is 04111-42033. Ishino sells it under the name Stone, they are the OEM supplier for toyota gaskets. The main thing is to ensure that the gasket mating surfaces are clean, flat and straight. They do NOT need to look super shiny, the gasket doesn't care what the surface looks like, only that it is clean, flat and straight. When you take the head to the shop, ask them to check for straightness, and confirm that they will ground/lap the head and not mill it. They should straighten the head before doing any grinding or cutting, because a warped head will straighten itself out when hot. If a warped head was milled flat and then put on an engine, the heat during operation would unstraighten it. If you are going to clean the block while it's in the car, use a razor blade held as flat as possible, and with light finger pressure, scrape off any old gasket debris and dirt. Then use a flat sanding block with 200 grit sandpaper then increase to 400, 600 etc. Again, the surface doesn't need to be as shiny as Karl Pilkington's head, just needs to be clean, flat and straight. I didn't even bother using sandpaper on mine because the areas where the sealing rings for the pistons, coolant and oil passages sit were all clean, flat and straight. This is also a good time to helicoil the exhaust manifold holes; the studs tend to back out with the nuts and when you try to torque them up, the head has annealed enough that the studs can't hold the torque and end up stripping the threads. Even if some studs are still on the head, get the shop to helicoil all of them, prevention is better than the cure. If you feel like it, the following are things you can do for a bit of extra power, and improving the reliability of the engine, these are just "while you're there" sorts of things: - drill out a coolant port in the rear of the head. The block has a coolant port there but for whatever reason, toyota didn't make one in the head. Cylinder 6 tends to go first and this may potentially prevent that. There is even a hole in the actual head gasket itself for that coolant port, and if you look at the head, you might actually see dirt/residue from the coolant that pooled there, which can make a nice guide if you drill out the hole yourself (drill 10mm deep). You can ask the shop to match up the hole in the gasket if you don't feel confident doing this yourself. Some people just drill a few small holes in that area, other people make it the size of the full gasket hole. Main goal is to just get more coolant flowing through there. - 3 angle valve job on all intake and exhaust ports, assuming it didn't come like that from the factory. This will help improve air flow into the combustion chamber, combined with a 30 degree back cut on the intake valves only, it'll mean a bit more power to keep up with daily traffic. These engines are otherwise great, but they're more than 30 years old at this point. 3 angle valve job and backcut on the intake valves allow the air to flow much more smoothly (and thus quickly) into the chamber, resulting in a slight power gain. End of engine mods. When putting the head back on, you can use the factory bolts (the repair manual does NOT state them to be single-use items) or get ARP head studs to bulletproof the engine even further. It might actually be overkill to be honest. But whichever route you go, torque the head bolts up to at least 100 N m/75 ft-lb. The factory value of 78 N m/58 ft-lb is not tight enough, and will result in another blown head gasket soon. ARP studs state to torque to 108 N m/80 ft-lb using their specific assembly lube. After about 1000 km or so, replace the oil and flush the coolant as the oil and coolant would definitely have all the crap floating around from scraping the head gasket. Take off the valve covers and retorque the head bolts/nuts. Back it off a quarter of a turn, then retorque to whatever number you torqued them to prior. You may also want to talk to people who have MkIII supras with the 7M engine, they had to go through a lot of the stuff you're going through now. I'm going through it too as I type this lol. my cylinder head is currently at a shop with all the stuff I mentioned above.

Check the VIN plate of the car, although apparently MR2 guys have used either E53s, E153s or combining gears from both to make a hybrid E53/E153 setup. You may need a custom half-shaft to use the E153 but the guy that said this wasn't too sure himself. The E153 apparently shares the same parts as the E53, but they just have different gear and final drive ratios. Conveniently, the spot for the clutch master cylinder is already cut out on the firewall insulation, I can see it on my own auto camry near the brake master cylinder. In the US market, E53s appear to have been used from 92-93 year camrys that had the 3vz, 94-96 they appear to have used the E153 mated to the 1mz. Mind you, this was for the US market - we seem to be different and there's little, if any, documentation specific to aussie camrys. As an example, replacing the struts a few days ago, our 92-96 front struts appear to be of the fixed lower seat type where the bearing is located in the top mount, whereas in the US, 92-93 used a bearing in the lower strut seat. Hell, even our outer tie rods are completely different from the rest of the world, I wish I knew that before buying the OEM ones straight from Japan... Anyway, one thing I do know is that the mount that the right driveshaft goes through is slightly different between MT and AT vehicles, the offset of the hole is only about 2-3mm but it was enough for toyota to make two completely different part numbers. It's likely to cause significant wear issues if you didn't use the right one. The ECU is definitely different between AT and MT vehicles. This guy did a complete restoration of his 3rd gen camry, tearing it down to the raw shell and rebuilding the engine and tranny, doing a manual swap in the process. OP made a convenient list of parts needed just for the manual trans body and internals on page 12 of that thread, post #234. Note however, this guy is in the US so you may need to double check if the part numbers are specific to LHD vehicles. Also, to hell with people who destroy stuff at wreckers just to get to what they want. I remember seeing a glovebox light cable being snipped for one of these camrys, when all that had to be done was to push the tab down and pull apart the connector.

23293-74010 - superseded by 23293-42010

If you feel like forking out $16.50 for a one day subscription, go here: https://toyotamanuals.com.au/document/landing_page/camry-service-repair-manual-aug-02-jun-06 That's for the ACV36R and MCV36R models, and I believe once you're subscribed you can just download it for offline use i.e. you can keep it forever if you want. Toyota only gets their jimmies rustled if you distribute it on the high seas.

Was that spoiler a factory option? I've never seen a 4th gen wagon that had a spoiler up until now.

https://toyotamanuals.com.au/document/landing_page/camry-70-series-service-repair-manual-sep-17-current I dunno if things have changed or are different for the aussie market but US users have said that they just purchase a 1 day subscription, then download anything and everything they need for offline use. Not bad if you feel like forking out the $16.50.

Who knows maybe in the future you'll see videos titled "202X camry v6 swap" or something

Goddamn, the way scotty drops the car onto that jack stand and drops it on the ground... In that video he uses the floor jack with the pinch welds, while you can do this, doing it regularly will bend those welds unless you have the rubber adapter that allows for the pinch weld to sit in a slot, or an old hockey puck sliced out for that pinch weld. Better to jack it up using the front and rear crossmembers, assuming they're not rusted through. Center of each crossmember may have a visible bump/lump as seen in the video - this is a great jacking point. Then place jack stands somewhere under the frame rails. Front crossmember is in front of the front wheels and has a small bump in the middle.

I've actually bought quite a few things from them. Pretty sure their parts catalogues are the same as https://toyota-general.epc-data.com (or rather, that EPC site goes to Amayama when you want to buy parts) so they don't have catalogues that show models specific to Australia. Foreign parts do fit but when you need things like a blinker stalk it gets complicated as foreign models may have a fog lamp switch etc. Some of the parts are actually cheaper than what even Toyota gets them for. Just means I'll have to keep checking part numbers with dealerships online if I want to confirm a part then.

Anyone know of any parts catalogues that give aussie part numbers? Not even google seems to be able to find any. I even tried putting in VCV10R-DEPDKQ and only the ACV36 (Aurion) models come up...it's like the aussie 3rd gens are a black hole.

Since the how to guide section on this site seems to have been broken for at least a few months now and the site admins don't seem to be around anymore, I'll post this here. Gen 3 camrys basically being camry-badged lexus ES300s, share a lot of components together. One of these is the AC unit - in foreign 92/93 year models, if you pull back the carpet inside the driver's footwell, there is a cover that when taken off, reveals a slot sitting there, waiting for a cabin filter to be inserted. I don't know if this is the case with aussie built camrys from 92-93 however, but if someone can confirm that'd be great. There's a DIY over at TN which shows how to do this, OP had a LHD camry but you can just mirror this for RHD vehicles. It might actually be a little easier for us since the accelerator pedal isn't obstructing the slot. However, 1994 onwards they used a different AC unit which would continue to be used into the 4th gen camry, this time the filter slot has been blanked out, but the tabs to hold the cover in place are still there, so this mod still applies to 4th gen camrys too. The unit lacks the cover for the filter slot however: You'll need to find a wrecked ES300 and scab a cabin filter slot cover from that. I don't know if any lexus dealerships still stock these covers but there's no harm in going to one, showing them the part and asking for a new one although I imagine that unless you know someone or work for Lexus or Toyota, it won't be cheap. Peel back the carpet to the left inside the driver's side footwell, note that there are velcro tabs on the back of the carpet, pull it by those otherwise you risk damaging the insulating liner. Use a drill or dremel to drill some holes through the pushed in section of that slot so you can get a box cutter to slice out the plastic. I also used some fat nosed pliers to pull off any excess plastic. It's hard, but wiggling the box cutters back and forth as well as rocking it like a see-saw as you cut helps a lot. Once you cut out the slot, clear out 20+ years of accumulated dirt, leaves and other debris with a vacuum cleaner or something and you'll find that the tracks to guide the filter in are still there despite the fact that the slot was blanked out to begin with. This part is rather unnecessary however it's one of those things that for me at least, is a "once you know it you just have to have it" kind of thing. lul Part numbers: 88880-33020 - cabin filter - toyota still stocks this it seems 88880-33040 - cabin filter, activated charcoal (although it seems like Toyota no longer stock this - you'll just have to buy this through amazon or some other aftermarket retailer)

From this parts catalogue assuming you have the MCV36 model, the integration relay is on the back side of the fuse block. Look at Scheme 3 - it shows the fuse block is up and to the right of the driver side footwell. I've never dealt with this particular model Camry but it looks more painful to get to than the 3rd and 4th gen camrys where their integration relay, at least for foreign models or the 3rd gens without a security system, was fairly easy to reach. 94-96 3rd gens with a security system had a locally made integration relay placed to the left of the glovebox, 82641-YC021 but yours will be different. It seems that nobody has factory service manuals or even wiring diagrams for aussie models. Gotta love government laws requiring locally built stuff.

There's plenty of links to downloads of overseas service manuals for the XV10 Camry and ES300, but are there any FSMs that pertain to aussie RHD camrys? Been looking for a wiring diagram of the integration relay since our one appears to be much different to the US market. And while we're at it, does anyone know of any parts catalogues for AU vehicles? I've been using this one then selecting RHD models but even then some parts (particularly around switches and relays) are completely different to what we have.