It HAS BEGUN!

[Raptor13x]

As a continuation of this thread, I'm going to post updates on my project, as they come.

I'll label these by day... which amounts to a day I actually worked on it. Day 1 was picking the car up, and there are pictures in the other thread.

Day 2:

Having received my engine (finally), and finding a set of tires to mount on my rims, I've decided it's time to get started. Today, I just grabbed the car from its storage area and brought it back to the house.

The engine:




I installed a 9lb flywheel (still waiting on the clutch):




The old flywheel- light by typical flywheel standards, but much heavier than my 9lb one:




The transmission that came with the engine. Supposedly the shift linkage is different, so I may use my extra mki trans and sell this one.




Here's my Kosei K1 wheels. The previous owner scratched and chipped the hell out of them (and failed to mention that on the auction listing), so I spent some time refinishing them, and then decided to paint them black. I like black rims- deal with it.




A previous owner bent the **** out of the front end, by prying the hood open with some sort of giant crow bar, rather than... you know... using common sense. I spent some time today un-bending it, but it spent so much time bent that it appears to have permanently deformed the front bumper plastic. Still, it looks much better than it did before.




Since I was fiddling around with that area anyways, I removed the A/C condenser. The weight shedding begins! Muahahaha




The car, as it stands now:







The stuff under the wing and on the bumper is just random crap from sitting under a tree, not rust:




I'm planning on starting the engine swap either this Friday, or on Sunday. I'll try to take lots of pics.

[David]

Why are the pics soo big!?!?!?! The wheels look great.

[Raptor13x]

The pics are big because this is 2008, not 1996, and you should be using a monitor with enough resolution to view 1280x960. They're enlarged to show texture.

[David]

Well I'm at my dad's car lot were our motto is "keep it cheap" in quality. At home I have a widescreen monitor in my room.
I wish I could have a project like this.

[Raptor13x]

I just rinsed most of the tree crap off the car, so it's a lot cleaner now.

[David]

Are you planing on making it a track car?

[Raptor13x]

Nope, I'm planning on getting rid of my damned Civic. This will be my daily driver, and hopefully I'll be able to do a few autocrosses and track days just for fun.

[David]

I have an idea of what to do with the civic...

;

[tjmr2]

I just finished a BT conversion in an 89. Looking back I think some of the hardest parts were the mental issues, there are 101 little things to change to make it right. Ones I'd suggest.

1. Lower your air inlet in your air box by 1.25", otherwise it will hit the trunk - hood latch.
Will probably still have to indent the air box to get it to fit, back under the hood latch to allow you to remove it without dropping the engine.

2. You will probably have to dent in the airbox on the bottom so the alternator has room to fit and be adjusted without shorting to the airbox. (I used the 16v alternator)

3. You can retain the radiator overflow bottle if you dent in the back corner of the airbox to give you clearance.

I don't think any of this reshaping greatly affects the breathing of the engine but gives needed clearance.

I changed the transaxle from rear to front shift rod mounting. the engine transmission combinition works well in the MR2. If you have an original C-52 transmission and can move the starter to the rear of the engine that is ideal (without having to modify a transmission housing, gets it away from the header heat) and gets more room to install the clutch slave cylinder, which I've never had fun wrestling around the starter.

Oh yeah, don't put the passenger side drive axle in the transmission until you have the engine and transmission mated. I had to pul that axle back out to get the two to slide together, then reinstall the axle.

Hope this helps, any questions send a note.

Good luck!

[Raptor13x]

^ Thanks for the hints!

[mr2tim]

Hey there Raptor,

Nice car, you seem to be getting where you want to be with it.

When you want to fix the front bumper please contact me for any of the parts you might need.(I sell whole and pieces)

I suspect the styro/foam under the bumper skin has been 'distorted" by the rude hood opening. The skin appears undamaged and I doubt the steel reinforcement was impacted.

How's the interior?

Tim Nusbaum
(mr2tim)
mr2timTim'sParts
Boca Raton, Fl 33428

[Raptor13x]

^ Nice work squeezing a sales pitch in there.

I probably wont mess with the front bumper any further. I live in Michigan, where rust is the bane of our existence, and if I remove the front bumper entirely, I'll have so many bolts snap off that I won't be able to reattach it properly.

As far as the interior goes, it's in pretty good shape. I'm going to throw my other steering wheel and shift knob on it to get rid of the horrible 80's wheel and the penis knob, but other than that, the only real problem is a rip in the vinyl on the door skin.

Now, time to stop procrastinating and get out there to do the swap!

[Raptor13x]

I dropped the old engine today. Took about 5 hours, by myself, not including the trip to the store to pick up a socket for the axle nuts. As usual, the 80-20 rule applied- 80% of the time and effort is spent on 20% of the job, heh. Overall it went pretty smoothly, and I think the mki is a bit easier to work on than the mkii, especially the turbo, despite having a smaller engine bay.


Out with the old...






Victory!




Booo, ugly!






Zomg no engine!!! Gotta clean it all really nice tomorrow






The obligatory standing in the engine bay pic (though being alone, I couldn't get the picture as far back as I would have liked).




Tomorrow I'm going to clean everything up real nice, swap some necessary parts over to the new engine, rip out some more of the useless stuff (I've got a growing pile of "extra parts" that aren't going back on), and paint the engine bay black. I'm going to paint the car black, and I hate when you open up the hood on a car that's one color only to find mis-matching paint underneath.

I've also gotta do some more studying on megasquirt tuning. I've decided to go that route- it should be challenging and fun. BTW, any idea if I can easily use the stock 4age sensors with megasquirt? Or do I have to swap in all GM sensors that the megasquirt was designed for?

[kbrew8991]

forgive my ignorance of Mk1 stuff - but what engine are you installing?

[lsgheero]

20 valve 4age - black top

Stonger 5 valve version of the black top with vvt-i makes i think about 180 stock... i think...

[Raptor13x]

^ I wish... they make about 165 stock, and supposedly that's a bit optimistic. On the plus side, they'll rev to the exciting side of 8k.

As always with me, I'm reducing weight wherever possible, and the car should end up being deceptively quick.

[Raptor13x]

Today involved lots of cleaning. I'm tired of scrubbing ****.

I sprayed the old engine and the engine bay of the car down with engine degreaser, let it soak in, then cleaned it all out. Then I removed some of the now-useless stuff from the engine bay and the trunk, and sprayed down everything with water to get it clean. Then, I attacked the grease and grime in the engine bay until it was sparking clean (brake clean is the worlds best degreaser). Then, since the car is being painted black, I painted the engine bay black. I've got a couple little spots of touch-up to go, but all is looking well. I also sprayed the heat shield on the new engine with black high-temp engine paint. It looks much better now.


Wheeled it out into the driveway-




Degreasing...




Still not clean after degreasing-




Cleaning of the trunk too while I was at it-




Fully cleaned and painted-





A little touch-up is required yet-




Tomorrow, the new engine goes in! Wish me luck!

[F0Bman]

Awesome MAN! Where did you get all that stuff?

[Raptor13x]

^ Ebay, mostly.

[Raptor13x]

Well, today I installed the new engine.

Nothing was going well for me today, I hit every little snag you could think of. I have an extra C52 trans which I used so I wouldn't have to do any drilling and could still mount my starter on the intake side (and the 20v starter weighs about half as much as the 16v starter!). That's the good part. The bad part is it decided to be a huge pain in the ass to mate with the engine. Then, when I tried to transfer my speed sensor from the old trans to the new(er) one, it refused to come out. When I tried to coax it, it snapped.

Then when it came to actually getting the new motor up into place, it didn't want to fit- After battling it for a while, I had to remove the rest of the engine mount pieces that didn't need to be removed to get the 16v out. Then, it was a pain in the sack to get the engine mounts lined up right. But alas, perseverance payed off and I finally got it into place.

On the up side, the coolant lines were super easy to attach- most just mounted right in place from the 16v- only modification I had to make was cutting an inch of hose off to make a line fit better - I like kink in my women, not my hoses. I haven't worked out the fuel lines yet, and the wiring is a project for another day. As it was getting dark, I was working on getting the axles in place- then I realized they don't fit, because some no-talent assclown changed the size and shape of the brace at the bottom of the engine that supports the transmission with the blacktop- so it interferes with the axles. I'll have to swap over the brace from the old engine tomorrow.

Anyways, on with the pics:

The engine, trans finally mounted:






The failed attempt at transfering the speed sensor from the old trans to the newer one: (I put the bolt back in after it broke.. so no, I wasn't fighting to get it out of there with a bolt holding it in place, lol)




The engine makes it's way forth!




And it's in the car! (My camera hates the night)



Believe it or not, I have it on night mode with the extra-high flash setting. And I'm in the garage with all the lights on.