[ps2fixer]

I have a 97 corolla with the 7A-FE engine, and from my research the Toyota Carina (not sold in the US) had a lean burn version of the 7A-FE engine. Does anyone know a bit more about this being a possible "upgrade" for my engine in terms of FE.

From my little bit of research, I will need to buy parts overseas, which might kill the effect of trying to save money, or atleast having a fun project.

From my understanding the only differences in the engines are...

ECU
Head/intake/fuel rail
wide band O2 sensor
Pistons *might* be different, havn't confirmed yet


The only down side to this is that the better FE seems to be quite limited. I can get ~40mpg driving the car "normal", and according the Wiki, the Carina gets around 41mpg, but compaired to the us model, it rates at 31mpg (32 with manual trans). If it is a true 25% increase in mpg, I would be at 50mpg+ with a nearly unmodded car. Throw in a manual trans, areo mods etc and should be able to pull 70mpg I would think, if taken to the max.


My motive behind this is the fact my engine is getting high miles on it (242k) and from my research, typically they don't hit 300k before they use a ton of oil and starve the engine out of oil. So I will need to either replace or rebuild the engine, and this upgrade would be the prime time to do it.

Another thing I should note, I have no emision tests in my state, and my consern is more with MPG anyway.