v6 Swapping my 2007 prius?

I wonder how companies like U-haul work in that case - most of their moving trucks are going to be registered out of state (for obvious reasons). The Montana "loophole" uses a Montana LLC to which you register the car, so it would be a similar situation.

 

My son would love to see this thread.

He's done two conversions to V6 in Civic's. Drag cars of course, but still street legal. The last one he kept & it's pushing 679hp at the wheels according to the Dyno. Burns 100% ethanol & turbo'd of course.

He had me drive it a few times while he was "tuning" on the laptop in the passenger seat. My 1st attempt was a failure - it scared me to death. By my 3rd try, I'd learned how to hang onto the steering wheel in order to keep it on the road. I had to hit the "rev limiter" in order for him to adjust some boost. Good Lord these little cars aren't meant to have that much power. But WOW!

{edit} Made an error. He’s only done 1 V6 conversion. The last Civic which he kept is the 4cyl pulling the 679hp.

 

I don't keep track of FWD drag cars but the last time I looked up records, the fastest vehicles were turbo K-series swapped Gen 1 Insights which were in the 7s.

I have so many questions:

What V6 got swapped in? I can guess the 4cyl is a K24 or a K20/24 hybrid with a big turbo. What kind of engine management do you guys use? I'm guessing you guys are using like huge 1600cc injectors with that E85?

I think the big concern with swapping a V6 into the Prius, assuming the HSD is going to be preserved, is engine and transmission management.

 

I knew a guy who rented a wrecked car out of a shipping port.

By wrecked car I mean a nice one that the manufacturer had just sent to the USA for crash-testing in the course of certifying it for US market release. Something new, a sportscar, experimental.

By rented I mean he paid the dock workers to not notice that it disappeared one night and reappeared the next. And especially not to notice that the drivetrain wasn't present upon return.

You could say that a Legend was born.

I had no part in creating it but got to take an exciting ride in the car one day.

 

So many questions on this one: as far as I know, government crash testing is done on fully-built cars, so a car missing a drivetrain wouldn't be eligable for NHTSA testing, so it would require either the car have the drivetrain replaced or another car used.

 

To clarify... it was post test, on its way home for analysis.

 

Your asking questions that I can't begin to answer. I'm purely a bystander in his car projects, but I can tell you that the V6 came out of an Acura, and yes the turbo on the 4cyl is massive. yup, that's about all I know on the technicalities.

Zenghnd by dubit posted Feb 17, 2019 at 5:22 AM

Here is an early picture of the one with the V6 in it. It's the only one I can find though, and it's an early picture when he had first fitted it into the car and had only a few runs on it. All of which he later removed, made changes, fitted a hood, etc., etc.

 

I don't think the transaxle could handle any major increase in power, and the hybrid system wouldn't know what to do with it anyway. I think you'd have to replace the whole drivetrain if you really wanted to go fast.

 

I can't really tell from the picture either. I can say that one of the most fun cars I've ever driven was a swapped EK hatch with a K-series in it.

You and your son might be amused if you look up information about the "Civette".

The 300PS-limited GT300 Prius that APR ran in Super GT used an HSD with a Prius v battery. Never could find information about what modifications (if any) were done to the transmission.

The new one looks like an FMR platform with a V8
This is the New Mid-Engined V8 Toyota Prius Race Car You Want

Toyota’s Mid-Engined Prius GT To Retire After Super GT Finale At Motegi – dailysportscar.com

Next-generation Super GT Prius unveiled - Toyota

 

that's about as much a prius as a nascar Taurus is a real Taurus. it is very cool, but its a race car with a prius styled skin. if the OP is a multi-millionaire, he could have something like that built, and title it at his Montana ski lodge...

 

The Toyota Prius (Gen 2) uses the Toyota 1NZ-FXE engine. This is a 1.5 litre engine, with a 13:1 compression ratio, but 'detuned' for a lower effective compression ratio, and better economy. It makes 76 horsepower. (I know that everyone knows this). The engine was custom designed for the Prius.

The Prius land speed test : Under the skin of the Toyota Land Speed Prius - Toyota was interesting; I have read that they used the 1NZ-FE engine although this article doesn't mention that. The 1NZ-FE was released after the Prius, and is a more 'normal' engine. It makes 109hp. It basically has a different cylinder head to a Prius (a normal one). The 1NZ-FE would boost your car by 31HP (not much!), but open up a lot of options.
- Note - the Prius land speed test - they basically used a bucket of ice on the passenger seat, with pipes to and from the HSD, to keep it cool enough / prevent overheating. This may have been partly related to increasing the inverter voltage, but also they were doing top speed runs / properly using the engine for extended periods.

Even with the 1NZ-FE, you would likely use the ECU from the new engine. The problem would then be that the ECU wouldn't be expecting the hybrid ECU to talk to it and would get confused. You would need to reprogram the ECU, but nobody has done this besides Toyota (yet). It may be possible to figure out a way, perhaps with an automatic code-clearer when the engine complains about stalling etc.

With all that done, there are people running 500HP 1NZ-FEs. A sleeper Prius based on a turbocharged 1NZ-FE would be good, but you would need to pay close attention to the temperatures of the hybrid system, and be careful around the amount of torque that it generates, otherwise strange / bad things could happen. There is some room in the HSD for more power as the land speed Prius showed, but probably not much.

Alternatively, remove the rear wheels. Remove the spare tyre. Put a rear axle and a big electric motor in place (lots of welding and so on would be needed). This could fit mostly in the spare wheel well. Have a lithium-ion battery pack that charges up from the high-voltage system. You could then put a lot of power through the rear wheels, and have an 'on-demand' acceleration from a high-powered electric motor!

 

A couple additional pics to add to my earlier post. This used to be a Hybrid Civic. lol

20190223_155610184_iOS by dubit posted Mar 16, 2019 at 5:09 AM

20190223_155601653_iOS by dubit posted Mar 16, 2019 at 5:10 AM

 

Neat! Is the transmission going to be in the next lane over? Maybe that's what the black car is for?

 

As I stated before: the GT300 Prius race car retains the (probably not stock) HSD unit, even when mated to the 300PS-detuned RV8K V8.This suggests that the HSD is able to handle quite a bit more power, likely at the cost of longevity (I don't know how often GT300/SuperGT teams were allowed to rebuild/replace transmissions).

Meet the World's fastest Toyota Prius - Toyota

 

I was thinking more about the ability of the motors to supply enough torque to oppose the engine to let it put enough power down; there will be a limit somewhere - if the HSD transmission was made 'unbreakable', and I put increasingly more powerful engines on it, there would be a point at which the engine is so powerful that it can't be properly 'controlled' by the HSD; I am unsure where that point is, however!

 

HSD transaxles come in sizes. The P310 is built for the Highlander and will be able to manage more power.

A New Generation Hybrid Transaxle for Toyota's Power Hybrids | AltEnergyMag

The Q211 rear transaxle would also help manage 'excess' power.

(I am assuming we have given up on MPG, and are just wanting to built a 'sleeper' hybrid)