Great discussion...
This is what I find surprising given how big of a following these engines have. They are still quite popular today, closing in on 30 years since the last one was produced. Judging by the offerings on LCE's website it appears people circle-track race with these engines. I bet those guys know quite a bit about them, maybe I need to find a Toyota circle-track site, if such a thing exists.
I agree and that is why I started my own quest for facts. I have never spoken to anyone, known anyone, or read anything about the Toyota race engines used in “circle track racing”… my lack of knowledge, although I love just about any aspect of auto racing.
It seems to me Toyota enthusiasts are a bunch of DIYers for the most part. You read about all kinds of fabrication and cool stuff on this and other sites like Pirate and Yotatech so it's confusing to me why engine tech specs are hard to sleuth out and why people wouldn't be building engines when they're building transmissions and swapping/rebuilding differentials and transfer cases and suspensions and such.
Well, there are many who are rebuilding their engines, but welding on a skid plate, or bolting on a bumper is WAY different than building an engine that DOES require knowing some tricks…. and if that is NOT true, then someone please explain to me why 90% of posts on these Toy forum discussions is the same thing … “I just rebuilt my 22 and now it won’t run”.
… If the info is in the FSM, why would it not be readily available. As mentioned in a previous post, the only reason I don't have an FSM is because I haven't been able to find one for '84 for a reasonable price. I'm not paying $150 for one, I can do a lot of poking around and asking questions for that kind of money, and the last one I saw on Ebay was priced there. The later FSMs seem to be far more abundant for some reason.
Yes, “buying” information can get expensive! As I mentioned, the FSMs just did not provide enough specific and detailed information for the performance gain search I was on.
LOL what is this, a test for the noob?
No… no pop-quizzes…. I was just making fun of my own experiences while making a point that if you are lucky to find three sources that state the “facts”, you may find that the “facts” are not exactly the same!
In my experience, with just about any subject, and seems especially true with our Toyota discussions and in the automotive world in general, there are 3 basic categories of people… Those who don’t know $hait. Those who think they $hait. And those who really know their $hait. In any given day, I find myself in one or more of those categories!
Well, before I even looked for it I knew a few details about the 20R/22R/22RE heads. I know that the RE heads are all basically the same from '85 'til end of production. I'd be surprised if there weren't some revisions and differences over those years but my understanding is they're all interchangeable. The RE uses a much smaller, shallower chamber that's more of a "kidney" shape and a flat-top piston. This configuration is much more efficient than the 20/22R big hemispherical chamber with a dome piston. I don't know what you're asking for when you ask for chamber "type." Lots of words get used to describe combustion chambers. Compared to the 20/22R chambers, in the world I come from they'd be described as a "closed" chamber vs. an "open" or "hemi" chamber on the earlier heads.
Very good. Yes, lots of words are used to describe the same thing in automotive terms. Funny… there is no description in my Engine Analyzer for the shape of the 22RE head chamber…. I’ve read it called “bathtub”.
A quick Googling just to prove I'm not lazy beyond redemption turned up LCE's tech page which states RE chambers are 58cc but there's a weird reference to the RET though it doesn't state any differences between them. I don't know much about the RETs so wondering if maybe they used the same head but a dished piston as the one thing I do know about them (other than that they had turbos) was that they had a lower compression ratio, which is typical of turbo motors. I saw some references to the RE heads on a couple other forums as well.
Yes, confusing data and published statements are plentiful. The 22R turbo head chamber is somewhere between 58 and 60cc, depending your source. The 1986 22RE head chamber will cc between 52 and 56, again depending on your source.
Thing is, I'm not working on RE engines and while they have a superior combustion chamber design they're going to respond the same way to performance modifications as any other 22R/RE, differences in carb/FI notwithstanding. Therefore I'm not terribly motivated to do a bunch of research to turn up a number that doesn't mean a whole lot to me. However, if I could verify that info I'd catalog it and pass it along to anyone who asked.
If you're saying the performance modifications to a 22RE respond the same as a 22R, my experience is different. The ECU in the RE EFI will not allow significant changes without “side effects”. My carb’d 22 showed very noticeable changes, small and large, when modifying it.
Which brings up the last thing I want to type before I head out to the garage to continue to be frustrated by aftermarket parts - I'm all about the free exchange of info. I'm happy to share anything I may have learned. If I know something for a fact, I'll say so. If I'm not sure, I'll try to make that clear. If someone asks a question and I know the answer I'm happy to share. I can't count the number of times I've posted this image on the Pontiac websites when someone asks how to identify a cylinder head: https://flic.kr/p/UPbMKq Ask me anything you want about Pontiac V8 engines, those are something I know something about.
Well… that is what will generate you lots of deposits in your Karma bank.
My all-time second most favorite muscle car is the 1964 Pontiac GTO, tri-power, 4 speed, hardtop.
