E53 to AWD Transmission Conversion

The Rav 3s engine with it's E250F gearbox (AWD) is excellent for a 4cyl 2L engine, but my concern with this conversion was that the V6 would be doing those same revs at road speed, and when starting off in the Rav's dreadful low 1st gear would become annoying pretty quick.  Below the gear ratio's for the Rav E250F & Camry E53;

Rav4 E250F
  • 1st - 3.833
  • 2nd - 1.913
  • 3rd - 1.258
  • 4th - 0.918
  • 5th - 0.775
  • Final - 4.933
  • Example Speed 110km/h at 3100rpm in 5th gear
Camry E53
  • 1st - 3.538
  • 2nd - 2.045
  • 3rd - 1.333
  • 4th - 1.028
  • 5th - 0.820
  • Final - 3.625
  • Example Speed 110km/h at 2400rpm in 5th gear
After a LOT of reasearch, I found that there were a lot of similarities between all of the toyota E & S manual transaxle families.  Both of mine were E series so I was even more confident that there may be the possiblity to swap parts between them.  Ultimately I wanted to have the AWD diff out of the Rav 4 put into the camry gearbox, which is exactly what I've ended up doing!

Research


Although I couldn't find a diagrammatic version of the rav AWD Manual transaxle & transfer case, I could find an E153 from the AWD 3s-gte celica.
Camry 3vz E53 Transaxle
3s-gte E153 Transaxle & Transfer Case


















You can see that the E153 AWD trans - like the E250F - has a front differential, & centre differential inside the differential case, then it has 3 shafts inside eachother going through to the transfer case.  the centre shaft goes through to the right hand side to the front right wheel.  The shaft around that goes to a ring gear which drives a pinion driving to the rear diff at the bottom of the image.  The final outside shaft is connected to the outside of the front/centre diff case & has a locking hub which locks the 2nd & 3rd shaft together which is the centre diff lock.  You'll see all of this in images in later posts.  The E53 transmission only has a single differential, however the differential case is the same as the E250F (and E153 presumably).

Transaxles; From the information I've found from various places regarding Camry, Rav, MR2 & Celica Manual transaxles I've deduced the following;

  • S51 from Camry 2.2L & E250F Rav - Weakest gearboxes.
  • S53/E53 - I think they are pretty much the same gearbox with different ratios
    • The E53 has a longer centre section & heavier gears than the S51/E250F.
  • E153 - Even heavier version of the E53 used in the GT4 Celica AWD.

What I've ended up doing is swapping the ring gear off of the front/centre E250F differential & putting the camry ring gear onto it.  then installing the E250F diff into the camry transaxle.  I like the fact that the gearing will be the same as driving the camry & also the gears are a lot heavier than the standard rav trans.

Posted by ST: 9th May 2013