1981 Toyota 3TC 1.8L Engine - Engine Builder Magazine

1981 Toyota 3TC 1.8L Engine

Not one to limit his engine prowess, James Hamilton Jr. of Hamilton Performance Engines doesn't only work on marine, drag race, or street engines. He stays profitable by knowing how to work on all engines. In that effort, he got straight to work on this 1.8L Toyota 3TC engine.

Like many engine builders in business today, James Hamilton Jr. doesn’t only build boat engines or drag race engines or street engines. He builds them all. In his shop right now is an LS1 engine for a 1969 Chevy pickup, a couple of Flathead Fords and a Toyota 3TC, among others.

“I’ve got a variety of stuff sitting around here all the time,” says Hamilton, owner of Hamilton Performance Engines in Lake Station, IN. “One day I’m working on a 355 for a dirt modified, the next I’m working on a 430 for whatever, and the next day it could be a Toyota. There’s always a bunch of engines going on at the same time. If I wasn’t versatile I’d probably go broke.”

These days you’ve got to know it all, or at least not be afraid to try. Hamilton knows this fact well since at just 10 years old in 1969 he went to work at his father’s local gas station. His father was a mechanic, as was his grandfather. All Hamilton has ever known is engines. At just 13 years old he could rebuild carburetors, and by the time he was 15, he was rebuilding transmissions.

“I’ve never done anything else,” Hamilton says. “Back then when I was 15 or 16 years old, we had a valve grinder in a back room of the service station and we did our own valve jobs there. We couldn’t put guides in or resurface the heads, but we did grind valves and seats for a real basic, simple valve job.”

In 1987, James’ dad wanted to start buying equipment to do machine work beyond the valve grinding. As it turned out, James ended up buying the equipment and setting out on his own in September that year to open Hamilton Performance Engines.

“I’ve been in business ever since,” he says. “This past September we celebrated 30 years of business.”

Hamilton Performance Engines is a full machine shop capable of doing most things in-house with the exception of crank grinding and align honing. The shop consists of James and his wife Jeannette, and their son, who comes in three days a week. James enjoys doing the work himself.

“I don’t have to worry about looking over somebody else’s shoulder,” he says. “I don’t have to walk around at 8 pm putting post-it notes on something to say, ‘Look at this. Check this. Do this.’ Whatever gets done I do it.”

One of those recent engine projects is a 1981 Toyota 3TC 1.8L engine. The customer found Hamilton Performance Engines on social media thanks to strong marketing efforts from Jeannette.

“For every engine we build we create what I would call a baby book,” Hamilton says. “Jeannette takes pictures of each engine when they come in, and then she goes through and takes pictures as the engine is coming apart. She’ll take close ups of things I find wrong. She’ll photograph the machine work and assembly. These pictures go all the way through the finished product. That way, when the client gets the engine, he gets to see each and every step. He’s got photo documentation versus an invoice that says you got this, this and this.”

The Toyota 3TC 1.8L got the photo treatment as well when the customer brought in the engine for machine work.

“He came in wanting to do work on the engine and told me what he wants and expects and what he’d like to see happen,” Hamilton says. “I worked through the design with him and budget concerns to get started. We always try to work with the customer.”

Initially, the job came in for basic machine work on the block, the crank, a set of rods and cylinder head work. The customer wanted Hamilton Performance Engines to do the necessary degreasing and bore the block and so on and so on. The customer then asked if Hamilton would consider putting the engine together.

“It ended up turning into an assembly,” he says. “Judging by the way the engine looked, it didn’t look like it had a lot of problems, but he wanted to make upgrades.

We put in Isky cams, Arias pistons, a little more compression ratio, did work on the cylinder head in terms of the runners and the bowl area, to allow for some mild performance upgrades. We did some basic enhancements, and the customer wants to add fuel injection on it versus the carburetor that came on it.”

In addition to Isky cams and Arias pistons, the Toyota engine has Schnieder valve springs, Dura-Bond cam bearings, Clevite bearings, Engine Pro timing components, and a Melling oil pump.

The compression ratio, which was at 8:1, got increased to 9:1 thanks to the piston change and cutting the head a little bit.

“It was a real mild increase and perfectly safe for pump gas,” he says. “We tried to create a little more low-end torque with the engine, which is good for what he’s doing. He isn’t drag racing or going to Bonneville, he just wanted something that will run well.”

This engine straight from Toyota in 1981 offered around 75-80 horsepower. After Hamilton Performance Engines got done with it, James estimates the engine should put out roughly 100 horses – plenty of giddy-up for a little engine.

The Engine of the Week eNewsletter is sponsored by Cometic Gasket.

If you have an engine you would like to highlight in this series, please email Engine Builder magazine’s managing editor, Greg Jones at [email protected].

You May Also Like

Supercharged 388 cid LS Engine

Hoping to reach new heights in the mile, this Cadillac customer brought his car and engine in for the School of Automotive Machinists & Technology to work their magic on. See what went into the supercharged LS engine platform.

Cadillac Supercharged LS engine

During our week in Houston last fall, we got the chance to visit several engine shops in the area, and we also wanted to spend some time seeing where many up-and-coming engine builders get their start and hone their skills, so we stopped by the School of Automotive Machinists & Technology, also known as SAM Tech.

Supercharged 521 cid Brad Anderson Hemi Engine

Amanda Hoover and Eddie Rogers have been campaigning their Chevelle from Hell for nearly a decade. Helping give the car its name is a screw-blown 521 cubic inch Hemi engine. Check out the details of this build done by Chris Duncan Race Cars!

408 cid Nitrous LS Engine

During a tour of SAM Tech, we also got a chance to speak to a few students. One in particular, Jaylon Victorian, was nearing completion of a 408 cid nitrous LS engine. He applied his new engine building knowledge and skill set to the build, and it shines through in our latest Engine of the Week.

408 cid nitrous LS engine
760 cid Billet Big Block Chevy Nitrous Engine

Despite what you may think about nitrous engines, and those that are stock big block Chevy bore spacing, these 4.840″ bore space big block Chevy engines have some significant R&D in them. Just check out this 760 cubic inch billet version done at TRE Racing Engines.

Naturally Aspirated 440 cid LT1 Engine

The folks at Late Model Engines in Houston, TX run a top-notch engine and machine shop. You don’t have to look much further than this naturally aspirated 440 cid LT1 engine build to see what we mean. It’s our Engine of the Week!

Other Posts

The Winners of 25th Annual TX2K

After a week of racing, the 25th TX2K is in the books, and champions have been crowned in the 13 drag racing classes, as well as four roll racing classes. The event, which started in 2000, has become an annual proving ground to see where the mark stands in a multitude of classes, as well

Steve Morris Engines’ Twin-Supercharged 454 Big Block Chevy Engine

It had been 26 years since the last time Val Morris, Steve Morris’ wife, was behind the wheel of a drag car. The shop had been working on this project car named Sugar Momma, and got it done in time for Sick Week 2024. When it came time to figure out who’d drive it, Steve

Stuffing a Supercharged 572 cid SMX Engine in a Porsche 928

For Danny Humphreys, drag racing is a progressive disease. Ever since he watched Tom Cruise outrun a pimp in a 928 Porsche, he’s wanted the car for himself. As soon as he got one, he pulled the engine and the horsepower has gone up from there. Today, Danny has a supercharged 572 cid SMX engine

Indy Cylinder Head’s Supercharged 588 cid Hemi Engine

We’ve been following Indy Cylinder Head and the engine work Ken Lazzeri for quite some time. We got a chance to speak with Ken on the final day of the PRI show when he was kind enough to walk us through the details of several of the engines they had on display, including this bracket

Ken Lazzeri Hemi Engine