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Project Car - 2001 Toyota Corrola S




Guest Alexo210

2001 corolla , my dad gave me his car and it just always sits unles I use it for emergency . Motor has 79.000 miles . Ever since I was little I wish it could turn into a race car lol, if anyone is kind enough to help me out with finding parts for this vehicle that will be thankfull .

Depends on your definition of "race" car and how much you want to spend on the car. Also if it has sat for an extended amount of time - there might be other issues you may have to address as well.

Pretty hard question to answer without addition information. Modifications can very from very minimal to extreme - both in cost and time/fabrication. Handling improvements will yield the best bang for the buck on this car - since it came with a very soft suspension from the factory. Sometimes sharpening the handling can make up for lower power. Power adders - here is where a significant amount of money can be invested. The 1ZZ-FE engine was designed for long life and fuel efficiency - to make it a power house will involve a small fortune. Even then, for all the money that was invested, you could go out and buy another car with much higher performance and/or better suited for performance modifications.

Biggest hurdle is finding performance aftermarket parts for the car. Given that it is a Toyota product and three generations back - very little can be done on the engine management side without involving atleast a piggyback ECM or install a standalone EMS system. Cannot "chip" these cars or reflash the ECM like other manufacturers. Bolt-on engine parts - won't add much to performance other than making the car sound louder. To get tangible performance gains - you'll have to look at big power adders - superchargers, turbocharging, nitrous, etc. With added power - you'll have to balance out the chassis, cooling system, braking, and drivetrain to keep up/survive - that will not be inexpensive, assuming you can find suitable parts.

Doesn't mean that it can't be done - just depends on what you want. Want the Corolla to keep up with a Corvette - probably easily dump $50K-$60K in modifications. Or like my son, who several years back though that - big wing + loud exhaust + crazy paint job/graphics = race car. He has since then grew out of that phase and can now see how expensive/complicated it will be to build up a serious machine, especially starting with the 8th gen Corolla chassis. Doesn't mean that I won't help him - I plan to go over an engine swap and similar level of work prior to him getting a driver's license - good learning experience.



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