Just a curious question about head swapping.

Now, I don't intend on doing this in the near future, but it may happen. Ok, let's say I have a 2.0 Liter block with the original head and 200,000-300,000 miles later, the engine might get tired and I may just want to rebuild the head and swap in a 2.2 liter block. The reason I would want to keep my head is so I can use my original intake and exhaust manifold and wouldn't have to go through any rewiring bullshit with the ECU and what-have-ya. The only difference would be a higher displacement block.

Now that you know where I'm getting at, what headgasket would I have to get? Would I get the headgasket that goes to the 2.2 liter block? Or would I get the headgasket that goes to the head that originally goes on the 2.0 block? The coolant passages would line up, but would be different shapes.

It depends.

what motor?

I was talking about any engine. But I was leaning towards the 2.0 Liter 3Y-EC and the 2.2 Liter 4Y-EC Toyota engines. I know someone who swapped an engine in with a 3Y block with a 4Y head. If that's possible, then a 4Y block and a 3Y head would probably work too.

My engine, a 3Y-EC, has already been rebuilt. So I have over 200,000-300,000 miles to worry about such a swap.

My guess is that the headgasket would have to be specific to the block because of the larger diameter of the cylinders, correct? And basically, the only thing that matters on the head side is that all the valves and sparkplugs are inside their own cylinders and that the coolant passages line up and that the pushrods can still line up and do their job.

I just been basically scratching my head at this. I kinda like to think ahead at times.

About the only way it would work is if the head gasket applications were the same. The head and block have to work together. There is no magic head adapter gasket.

You have to use heads and blocks from the same engine family for lack of a better word. I'm not familiar with those engines so I can't speak intelligently, but you can't just swap heads without a lot of research. What will the compression ratio be? Will you have enough flow to support the new displacement? Are they even the same bore spacing?

If its a possible swap, then its almost positive that head gaskets, manifolds, etc, will all be a bolt up anyway if the head is from the same family. If things are that different, the head won't bolt up anyway.

Also, which heads you use has nothing to do with whether or not your computer will operate the engine.

Try re-thinking this. I think someone gave you some really bad information and you've drawn some conclusions that aren't entirely correct.