Swap Talk part 4.2 The Final Edition

Friday I was working on the car some more until I had enough of sweating, but all and all it was going smooth. That day I managed to hoist the engine and transmission up and get everything lined up, during this process, I made sure I had all the correct length hardware for the mounts to avoid another situation. So the next day I woke up and was ready to get back to work, I went outside and it seemed as if I had a break in the weather, so I decided there was no time to waste. I went to NAPA and picked up some coolant and Castrol Syntec, my choice of oils, ran home and started. The engine and transmission was already mounted, all that lacked was all the under car stuff so since that is worst part of the day having to lay under the car. Then I finished the accessories, intake manifold, and the finishing touches. Then it was the moment of truth to start it up, at this point I was nervous thinking of what was in store for me, maybe some wires got snagged, fuel was going to leak, oil might leak, coolant leak, or worst of all maybe the engine might bad. I primed the engine twice, no fuel leaked and then bumped the engine to try and get some oil flowing, finally went for the initial start and it cranked, cranked, cranked then started and it was the most beautiful sound, as I watched the air/fuel looked spot on and the engine sounded great very quiet and tight. Then I checked for some leaks, none! Quickly took it off jack stands, put the bumper on, pulled it out of the garage and bled the cooling system. It was time to take it for a drive, again I was worried, who knew what was going to happen. It went perfect, engine felt real strong, then I drove some more and it was time to take it to 9200 rpm's and just like it was advertised it ran so perfect! I will not lie I was very proud that swap didn't take longer than it did and I didn't run into issues after the fact. I want to thank everyone who made this possible now.  My wife Misty, Serda, Grady, Ryan, Billman and everyone else. It was nice to finally drive the car again on our "date night". If you hadn't seen the video, it's in the previous post on here. I'm a little behind on posting some more stuff on here, but I'll be catching up the next few days.

Swap Talk part 4.1

Finished the swap finally and everything works very well!!! Ill finish up the swap talk topic tonight as well as share some more stuff from this weekend. But heres a video to enjoy until later on tonight!

Swap Talk part 3

So today was good and bad, not much to say. I'm still behind where I wanted to be. I want to say thanks again to Grady for help and thanks to Billman from S2KI! The engine should be bolted to the car tomorrow, we got the transmission all lined up, bolted to the engine and slid it underneath the car in the most sketchy manner. On a positive note, I got another chance to try and clean the engine and transmission so that's good. Im really hoping we haven't fucked anything up I can't see yet. I called Billman because I noticed that the flywheel had some end play that was also noticed on the crank pulley. He said it was normal and I heard over the phone, him replicate the issue on a engine he recently built. This is caused from the engine sitting so long and not having any oil in it at the time. He was also kind enough to spot off the tolerances of this..... I want to get this done, it has consumed too much time now. Last but not least for the day, I got all of my Honda parts in from Honda Parts Unlimited, and I still need to buy some oil. I got another day at work, that will drag on and on and I'll be done for the weekend! I'm tired of sweating, bottom line messing with this thing.

The Box

Well packaged

Swap Talk part 2

So today went well for the first half, then it went down in flames. Justin came over and we had the engine out in a very short time. We rigged another sketchy bridle for the engine that worked pretty damn good. Once the engine was out, we took our time and swapped all the little bits over to the new one and I made some kind of attempt I guess you could say, to clean it up some. Then we decided to start installing the new engine. It started off fairly well, but quickly took a turn for the worse, reason being is the bastard child transmission put a .357 to my head and the .357 was the throw out bearing and clutch release fork.  I hate the transmission, its such a pain in the ass and I'll be damned if  I didn't run into the same problem as when I put the AP2 transmission in, the release bearing falling down and the clutch release fork getting stuck towards the aft of the transmission. So tomorrow is another day and the problem will be solved, it just sucks working in the heat with all the humidity here in the south, and I just want to finish something when I start it. On a side note, I figure we're past the halfway point, and the thermostat and radiator cap came in today. I also found some Urea grease when I grabbed a couple tubes of Honda Bond. Tomorrow I hope to have it just about near completion or completed. I still have some obstacles to tackle such as re tuning it and I'm sure all the shit that will have to be tinkered with before it's perfect. Im really tired tonight and have some refresher class at work tomorrow that will be painful.

First time the engine hasn't been attached since it was built. 

Check out the ramps we used

Thanks again to Innovative mounts for this sweet oil leak out of the engine mount bolt

The goods

Giving the new engine a half ass bath

No Heart :( 

New Engine going in! we used the Fram filter for cleaning and then tore it up on the subframe

How it sits over night

Dirty old engine palletized waiting to go to a new home 123000 good miles and memories

Overnight parts from Japan?

Not really, but from Texas! My engine shipped out yesterday and got here this morning, of course it was shipped terminal to terminal, but still I cant believe how quick it got here. It was packaged and palletized very professionally and then we got ahold of it. I called Grady and let him know it was here, so he brought the engine lift over to my house and was driving the white trash mobile. I think some more pictures need to be posted of this thing to gather the whole spectrum of it. It would randomly stop running, shook like the earthquake today above 70mph, it also had a hole in the 4x4 shift boot area that allowed heat to roll in the cab, the best part minus the nerf bar was how your arm would get dirty resting it on the window seals. So anyway, we roll down to UPS terminal which is in the hood, pull up to the gate and the truck dies, then we make our way in and go in the wrong door, just to be redirected to go outside and go to the other side of the room basically, then stand there behind the window and wait while people stared at us from the other side. Finally, we got someone to help us, they called a forklift driver to go pick the pallet up. I was concerned at first because they knew my name when I said I was here to pick something up. Usually thats a bad sign, but it was all good. The pallet was loaded in the back of the white trash mobile and our journey back home started, after we got the white trash mobile to start again when we had to stop at the guard shack again. Once on the expressway, some guy kept trying to talk to us at 70 mph that we didn't know, a real southern gentleman. The next problem was getting it out of the truck, the engine was bolted to the pallet and we had the engine lift ready. We jerry rigged two straps under the pallet that were too short, so then we proceeded to use a chain to hook the straps to and then hooked the lift to it and it managed to work. Unboxed it and called it a day. Hopefully I'll find time to work on the car tomorrow. Im really excited. 

Mounts Version 2

I was bored the other day and remembered back in 2002 that I wanted an Ultimate Racing turbo kit for my S. I don't see much of their stuff anymore so I went to their website and scored this find - Engine mount rings. Then a few nights ago, I came across the Spoon engine rings and were interested in them. I'm done trying the ETD engine torque dampeners and Innovative Mounts and their techs and this woman that answers the phone fails at life, but I think the white car needs a little improvement, because mounts do make a difference, as far as handling and feel. So the Spoon's are about $185 or so and these are $125, so not a huge difference but definitely worth giving a shot. Other than that, I know nothing about these or know anyone that runs or has talked about these. If you do give me some input!

Heres the link to Ultimate Racing where I came across these http://www.ultimate-racing.com/Products2/S2K/S2K_EngineMountRing.shtml

And of course the Spoon engine mount rings http://www.spoon.jp/eng/details.php?id=669&md=s2000&cid=1

Suprise!

So once again I get more surprises, I get home to get more info on this block I had bought. Started under the impression it was all good, but then again this fiasco started under the impression this engine I bought was stock too. I pulled the pan off to inspect the rods.Then I noticed one rod has quite a bit of "thrust" thats when I pulled the cap, lets list out our aluminum block of surprises,
Loose intake cam bolts
Cometic head hasket
ARP head studs
ARP Rod Bolts
Wiseco low compression pistons
ERL sleeved block
*X Beam Rods
*Missing rod bearing on #2 and due to a spun bearing

Now heres the beef, someone went to the trouble to find the "knock" pull the rod cap, clean the pan, and put Honda-Bond back on the pan. So it has come time to just sell it and try again.

On a side note, was I got the ASM lip out of the body shop, and installed it in the car, drove the car down the street (Yes it still runs somehow) and took a few shots Ill share later more on the lip etc, until then....