Why Anyone Does This

The Toyota four-cylinder is a famously durable engine attached to a transmission range that is expensive, hard to find in high-strength versions, and awkward to build. A GM Turbo 350, Turbo 400, 700R4 or Powerglide is the opposite — available anywhere, cheap to rebuild, and supported by an enormous parts industry.

An adapter plate lets you keep the engine and change the problem. That is the whole idea, and it is why these are race and sand parts rather than daily driver parts.

Read This First — Three Things That Stop Most Builds

We would rather you knew these before ordering than after.

1. Automatic transmissions only. Every plate on this page mates to a GM automatic bellhousing. None of them work with a manual transmission.

2. You will need a custom torque converter. There is no off-the-shelf converter for this combination. You will either have a converter built to bolt to the stock Toyota flexplate, or fit one of our flexplates and have the converter drilled to match it. Either way it is a conversation with a converter shop, and it is a cost to budget from the beginning.

3. This is a fabrication job, not a swap kit. These are intended for builds where fabrication is already happening. Some modification to engine and transmission is required, and mounts, crossmember, driveshaft and cooling lines are all yours to sort out.

Pick Your Plate by Engine

All plates are machined to approximately 3/8" thick for rigidity under racing loads, and include the hardware to fasten the plate to the block and the bellhousing to the plate.

20R / 22R / 22RE / 22RET

The 20R/22R/RE to Chevy adapter plate kit covers 1975-1980 20R, 1981-1995 22R and 1983-1995 22RE. It is designed to hold the engine and transmission vertical rather than at an angle.

Pair it with the 20R/22R/RE flexplate, CNC-made and drilled for the 22R/RE crankshaft pattern. Note the offset of this flexplate is not the factory offset — the converter has to be built to match it, so give your converter shop the flexplate before they start.

2RZ / 3RZ — and this is the one people get wrong

There are two 2RZ/3RZ plates and they are not interchangeable. Choosing by price alone will cost you a fitment problem.

  • Vertical plate — sets engine and transmission perfectly upright. The right choice for a purpose-built chassis where you control the drivetrain geometry.
  • 5° engine offset plate — preserves the factory 5-degree tilt the Tacoma engine sits at from new. The right choice when the engine has to stay in its original orientation for clearance.

The rule of thumb: if you are keeping a Tacoma chassis and the engine is staying roughly where Toyota put it, you want the 5° plate. If you are building a tube chassis or a sand car and setting the driveline yourself, the vertical plate is simpler.

1GR-FE

The 1GR to Chevy adapter plate mates the 4.0L Tacoma V6 to any Turbo-Hydramatic or Powerglide bellhousing. Vertical orientation, and it requires a custom flexplate and a custom torque converter adapter ring.

5VZ-FE

The 5VZ flexplate is CNC-machined and drilled for the 3.4L V6 crankshaft pattern, to be used with a custom bellhousing adapter. It must be drilled for your torque converter pattern — have a machine shop do it.

Getting the Converter Right

This is where these builds are won or lost, so it is worth spelling out.

When you run an automatic behind one of our adapter plates, the torque converter must be properly supported into the rear of the crankshaft. A converter that is not correctly piloted will destroy a crank thrust bearing, and it will do it quickly. Set the converter-to-flexplate spacing per the instructions supplied with the plate, and do not guess at it.

Printable installation instructions are linked from each product page.

Hardware You Will Also Need

Small parts, and each one is a reason to have the engine back out if you skip it.

Flexplate bolts are not reusable. They are torque-to-yield and black oxide coated against corrosion. We stock OEM Toyota replacements: 2RZ/3RZ/2TR, set of ten (part 90105-10276, 54 ft-lb), also sold individually, and 3VZ, set of eight (part 90105-10048, 61 ft-lb).

The bellhousing-to-block alignment dowel pin (90250-10113) is a three-dollar part that decides whether the transmission sits square to the crank. A missing or damaged dowel produces a subtle misalignment that chews input shaft splines, clutches and rear main seals over thousands of miles rather than failing outright. Check both are present and undamaged while the engine is apart.

If you are converting the vehicle at the same time, the mechanical to electrical speedometer adapter solves the gauge side of a GM transmission swap.

Not What You Were Looking For?

If you came here wanting to bolt a gear-driven transfer case to a V6 transmission rather than a GM gearbox to a Toyota engine, that is a different part — see the 3.0L V6 adapter plate on our transfer cases page.

Building something we have not listed? These plates are machined in-house, so tell us the engine and the transmission and we will tell you honestly whether it is something we can do.

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