Toyota is well known for making some great engines, but the one that stands out the most is the legendary 2jz.The 2jz is so well put together that it can deliver a huge amount of power with a few modifications.
History
It all started in the 70s when the Japanease automaker Toyota was trying to build a car that would rival Nissan’s Z. Toyota took the existing Celica, stretched it a little bit and placed an inline-six under its hood and called it Celica Supra.Although the car was successful but it was not anywhere near the Z in terms of sale.Then only three years later, the Celica lineup got a complete makeover. The exterior got a complete make over and it got a turbocharged version of the inline-six cylinder from 1982.Then the Supra became a separate model from the Celica lineup in 1986. Among the various options, the supra was available with the 7M-GE, and the turbocharged7M-GTE, which grew in displacement to 3.0 litres.
Performance and Internals
The supra officially began production in 1993. The car came with two engine options the first is the naturally aspirated 2JZ-GTE with a power output of 220hp and 210Ib-ft of torque and the second one was the 2JZ-GTE capable of churning out 276hp and 318Ib-ft of torque. The engine block is made of cast iron which is extermly durable and to this day it is one of the heavily reinforced block ever made. Toyota engineers designed a beefy gridle that they fitted between the block and the oil pan,further reinforcing the block. The internals are exteremly strong such as the fully counterweighted forged steel crankshaft features thick reinforced main bearing, forged steel connecting rod and forged steel con rod. But on the naturally aspirated VVT-I versions of the engine the rods were slightly weaker. The 2JZ's pistons are not forged however, they are high pressure cast hypereutectic pistons made by toyota and they proved to be extremly durable. The aluminium cylinder head has dual overhead cam which uses 4 valve per cylinder for a total of 24 valve. The cylinderhead design is simple but reliable with no hydraulic valve lifters, no rocker arms, just some buckets and shims for valve actuation. The 2JZ- GTE comes with two sequential turbos one kicks in at low rpm's and the other joins at higher rpm's. Usually this system uses a combination of smaller and bigger turbo,yet the 2JZ-GTE comes with identical ones, resulting in smooth linear power and torque delivery.
Popularity
The Toyota's 2JZ became popular during the 2000s when petrolheads started to tune their 2JZ powered Supras to gain more power. By doing so, they discovered that doubling or tripling the power of this engine was surprisingly easy. The process is pretty simple: just swap the small twin turbos with a bigger one or add one to the naturally aspirated version, then add a set of aftermarket fuel injectors and a high-flow fuel pump, a larger intercooler and an aftermarket ECU. Which results in well over 700 hp. If you want to get even more power, swap the stock cams with stronger aftermarket ones and get stiffer valve springs. The mods that involve an even bigger turbo and swapping out the internals such as the pistons with forged ones, you can go well over 1500 hp with a 2JZ. Because of this true petrolheads were dissapointed to see a BMW derived engine on the 5th iteration of the supra and not a modern version of this marvelous powerplant.
These mind blowing numbers prove that this engine is a miracle of engineering, why it’s so popular and why its considered the best engines Toyota has ever built.
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