need help finding prefomace parts for a 94 toyota tercel.

It has a 3AC, an engine with absolutely no aftermarket support at all and no performance potential at all. Attempting to modify this car would simply devalue it and make it so it would be impossible to get rid of used. To modify it would mean all fabricated, custom, one off parts which means expensive. Even then you would have an expensive Tercel which is twice as fast as a stock Tercel but half the speed of a old STOCK Civic Si or Sentra SE-R that is worth nothing to no one, that everyone would clown.  Sort of like having a fixed up Yugo.

The best most logical bet is to sell it as a thrifty economical commenter to a starving student, then buy a better car. If you are a starving student, hold off on being into cars until you graduate collage and get a decent job. Education is critical for your life. Being into cars can wait until you have time and disposable income. Go to school!

You could sell your Tercel for around $1000-2000 bucks, search around and find a nice Sentra SE-R, A B13 or B14 for $1500-6000 used, having a much better car with tons of available parts for less total expenditure than trying to make an exhaust and intake for your Tercel.  Honda's tend to cost more in the used market so the SE-R is a better performance bargain if money is an issue.

 well you asumed right. I'm a sophomore in college trying to learn the basics (at least) of how a car runs, so when i get a better car i plan on at least know what and how to put parts together.

Posted By gloreboy on 09-02-2009 05:11 AM

 well you asumed right. I'm a sophomore in college trying to learn the basics (at least) of how a car runs, so when i get a better car i plan on at least know what and how to put parts together.

On the most basic level, the way a car works is: suck, squish, bang, blow.

Buy used car theory books on Amazon, reading is just about free compared to blowing up a motor. Mod your mind.

Just about anything on Fuel Injection Theory is a good read (mabe boring, but vital to know).

Anything Auto Math or Automotive Math is a good read.

"Honda/Acura Engine Performance" is a good read too.

The tid bit of info that got me thinking about what really made a motor tick was something along these lines in some car magazine I read when I was 12 or so: At 6000 rpms a motor is rotating at 100 per second. That's 200 strokes per second because for 360* crank rotation the piston will change direction twice. That means the piston is abruptly changing direction 200 times a second at 6000 rpms. At 6000 rpms you have 100 valve actions, or 50 valve actioins per second per each set of valves, the cam always spins at 1/2 crank speed. That's what's going on per individual cylinder.

Then I thouguht about sports bikes turing 14,000 rpms and it really tweaked my melon.

I'd start there, if you can wrap your your head around some of those concepts you'll be on your way towards the right side of the "tuner crowd" bell curve.

thank you for the help and opening my mind to find tercel enthusiasts. I never thought someone would actually have turbos and not to mention body kits for a car only ment to cheaply take one person from here to there. I did find a tercel preformence/fan site at  www.tercelonline.com and from what i breifly looked at it seems like my best bet is still the 5E-FE. And what luck I found a JDM 5E-FE motor online at ebay for 650.00. cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Toyota-Pase...ccessories

Posted By gloreboy89 on 03-11-2010 12:02 PM
O yeah to answer the What kind of engine it is? It is a 3E-4 engine but when I posted this message I knew (well i had a friend check it out) that one of the values had a leak from somewhere, the timing belt is off, and a bunch of other small stuff is going wrong so I believe it would be best to swap it out.

Sometimes you have to jump through the hoops yourself to realize all the effort isn't worth it.  I think we can all understand that. 

As the others have said you're better off dumping the Tercel for something more fun unless you'd simply like to learn how to fix all that stuff.  I think the point we are trying to make is when you do fix these things you'll still have a car that's about as bland as a stale cracker which is no big deal if you just need transportation.  BTW my Golf TDI is a stale cracker too.

One drive in an old B13 or B14 SE-R (or similar cheap car) will change your mind.  Almost 20 years ago these cars were the answer for cheap speed and they are even cheaper today.
 

One last thing the Sentra flew under the radar with my parents way more than the Camaro, Mustang, MR2 or Supra that I really wanted.  Nobody expects a Sentra to be fast which is one of the best things about the car.

Posted By Mike Kojima on 09-01-2009 12:20 PM

It has a 3AC, an engine with absolutely no aftermarket support at all and no performance potential at all. Attempting to modify this car would simply devalue it and make it so it would be impossible to get rid of used. To modify it would mean all fabricated, custom, one off parts which means expensive. Even then you would have an expensive Tercel which is twice as fast as a stock Tercel but half the speed of a old STOCK Civic Si or Sentra SE-R that is worth nothing to no one, that everyone would clown.  Sort of like having a fixed up Yugo.

The best most logical bet is to sell it as a thrifty economical commenter to a starving student, then buy a better car. If you are a starving student, hold off on being into cars until you graduate collage and get a decent job. Education is critical for your life. Being into cars can wait until you have time and disposable income. Go to school!

You could sell your Tercel for around $1000-2000 bucks, search around and find a nice Sentra SE-R, A B13 or B14 for $1500-6000 used, having a much better car with tons of available parts for less total expenditure than trying to make an exhaust and intake for your Tercel.  Honda's tend to cost more in the used market so the SE-R is a better performance bargain if money is an issue.

Hi Mike,

It's a 1994; they had the E serie by then...

I'll have to disagree concerning the aftermarket support; those cars were raced in Europe and Japan and there's quite a few companies still doing performance parts for them (Cruise, Jam, TRD, Tom's, Whitheline...).

For a performance comparison, I owned a 1993 NX2000 and my 1990 Starlet GT is faster in every aspect and have more potential for about the same price.

I was an engineer for TRD and they didnt have ANY Tercel parts, Starlet yes, lots of support and racing for it, Tercel no Zero.