The Toyota 2UR-GSE was a completely new engine to everyone at DSPORT. We knew that we needed to make it more powerful, but we needed to first get familiar with it. After teardown and analysis was complete, we learned a great deal about this engine. For starters, we like it. We like it a lot! The block itself is designed to be incredibly strong. No less than 6 bolts secure each of the main caps on the engine. Main webs are extremely strong too. The cylinder bore spacing was 105.5mm, which provided for potential. The more we looked at the block, the more we kept thinking about building 1,500 and 2,000 horsepower variants. When we focused back at the task at hand, we found a forged crankshaft, well-designed cylinder heads, high-lift camshafts and titanium valves. Of course, we also found two things that we didn’t like. The OEM connecting rods didn’t appear to be engineered to handle much more additional power and the factory exhaust manifolds looked to have “fit” much higher on the design list than function. It’s our guess that 20-30 horsepower would be available with a set of better designed headers. Unfortunately, we don’t know if it would be possible to make a better set that would fit in the chassis too. Also, the factory camshafts featured some rather complex manufacturing that would require some serious time and money to develop upgraded replacements.

So how would we be able to generate more power? We decided to keep it simple and increase the engine’s displacement. Based on the bore spacing and other critical dimensions within the engine, we decided that an increase in bore size from 94mm to 99.5mm would do the trick. We sent the block to LA Sleeve for further inspection and to allow them to take the measurements needed to produce a set of amphibious sleeves for the 2UR-GSE.

Magnus Ohlaker of Club DSPORT machined the block to accept the new amphibious sleeves. These sleeves locate on a shelf machined into the original cylinders which secure to the block by means of a slight interference fit. The process was captured on video and it’s worth watching. The new sleeves were bored to size before being fitted with custom CP Pistons and Carrillo connecting rods. The CP Pistons were designed to deliver the OE compression ratio while the Carrillo rods were designed to handle over 200 horsepower per cylinder. While it’s definitely overkill for now, the engine is capable of handling 1,600 horsepower or more. The completed assembly also required O-ringing of the cylinders to work with the modified factory head gasket which was never intended to seal a 99.5mm bore. While the original displacement checked in at 4,969.5cc, the new engine’s displacement is 5,568.1cc. This raises output of the engine to 525 horsepower and 440 lb-ft of torque. Since the fuel demands are just 12-percent more than the original, we may be lucky enough to have the factory ECU get the job done without recalibration (something we don’t personally have direct access to doing on this platform). In endurance racing configuration with a race exhaust in place, we see no reason why 600 horsepower couldn’t be approached and possibly exceeded.