I often see car enthusiasts openly discuss great motors like the lsx series of engines, ford’s 5.0/302, the kseries, 4g63’s and 2jzgte’s as examples.
I rarely see any open discussion of 3sgte engines, theyre older motors i gather that toyota developed in the 80s for WRC and eventually jgtc.
In terms of specs, its similar to a 4g63, turbocharged, iron block, aluminum head, dohc, 4valves per cylinder, oem 540cc injectors, etc.
In car communities i never see folk so little as mention those motors in discussions, almost like they never existed in the consciousness of car enthusiasts at all.
Was it a bad motor is why it got ignored or what’s going on here?
I know as a personal friend, one of the foremost 3s/5sgte tuners in the country, Bryan “No Shoes” Moore.
He got one of the gen 3 3sgte to make 474whp on a stock bottom end with davidv’s gen 3 3sgte.
Iirc, they had some headlift issues, he stated could be remedied with arp 625 headstuds.
He later went on to say that there was more left in it, but was unknown. A good tuner knows how to avoid knock events.
Another friend of mine, on fb anyways, is Jose Rosario…on a stock longblock/stock ecu/stock injectors in around 2005? 11.4 @120mph. Not bad for a bolt on cylinder. I call him the bolton king.
He said he added cams, got into the 10s. I have to talk to him again i guess. And in one of our conversations, 15 years later and that stock bottomend gen2 3sgte is still going strong in his friends car.
Between both bryan and jose’s results with 3sgte motors, id pretty happy with either of the results they seem to get out of these motors, that’s my stance.