Tranny Swap 3S-GE / S-53

Originally posted by 89gts from 4gcelica.net

Sorry 'bout the long post here. Just my inexperienced experience with my tranny swap about a month ago.

My ’89 GTS had 185,000km on it and the syncros were completely worn out in second gear making driving a big pain. I had to wait for the revs to drop to about 2000 before I could slowly shift into second to avoid a loud crunch. I was also told that the synchos were meshed into the tranny gears causing the strange whirring noise I have lived with since I bought the car with 115,000km 5 years ago. So, I decided it was time to fix this issue.

I sourced out a few quotes to get my transmission rebuilt by a shop in Calgary and found that I could purchase my car all over again for what they would charge. Man was I surprised! So that was not an option; buying a used or rebuilt tranny would have to be the way to go. It was cost effective, however risky (since you never know what you will end up with), to pull a transmission out of a GTS from a local junkyard. I was lucky to find numerous 3S-GE engines with related S-53 transmissions in one yard and played with all the shifters to see which one had the tightest feel. Interestingly, the one I choose as the best was out of an ’86 GTS with 480,000km on the odometer! But I figured if my tranny died at 185,000km this one would most likely have had to be rebuilt or replaced at some point and I was hoping it was done just before the car was junked!

So, the next step was removing the donor transmission from the junked Celica and hauling it back to my garage for cleanup and to start the replacement process.

Since we had to remove two transmissions, I will explain that part only once and hopefully show some of our mistakes with the first removal.

With the car at the wreckers, we were able to cut corners (literally) which sped up the process and made it less of a worrisome task since the only thing we were worried about not ruining was the transmission itself. I will however, explain the proper removal of the transmission assuming you were taking it out of a car that was supposed to run again!

The first step was to raise the car on jackstands so that there was ample clearance under the car to lay under it and work comfortably. Then we drained the transmission fluid by removing the drain plug that is located at the lowest point of the transmission housing. Once the fluid was drained, we put the plug back in and started to remove the smaller components over top of the transmission so that we would have room.

The entire battery housing/bracket, cruise control and air intake (including air box and bracket) was removed and set to the side. We then had room to unclip the back-up light switch and unscrew the speedometer cable (be sure to not lose the little brass speedo pin when you remove the cable – I had to keep the pin from my original tranny since the pin is longer on the older trannies and wouldn’t match the speedo cable on my car.) The last thing to remove are the two shifter cables. We had no idea you could just pull up on a retaining clip from the cable mounts on the tranny so we took an hour to hack through the cables themselves … seriously easier to remove the clips and if you plan on using the cables again it would be recommended to keep them in good shape!

Once all the transmission mounted connections were removed, we removed the drive axle from the drivers side. You need a 30mm DEEP socket to get the hub bolt off. We unbolted the nuts and bolt securing the ball joint to the control arm and used a pry bar to separate the control arm from the ball joint and allow the brake/shock assembly to be rotated out of the way of the drive axle. The drive axle was easiest to remove by prying it out of the side gear on the tranny with a screwdriver. There’s a ring on the end of the drive axle that goes into the transmission and it sorta locks the axle in place so you have to “popâ€