Thursday – D16A Maintenance and external assembly

So far out of the 4 days, today was the funnest till the end but I’ll get into that later. Putting something together is always more fun because you start seeing a little glimps of your final product and you get more existed. Today I started by taking the JDM exhaust manifold off as it is different from mine so I can’t use it. Then I mounted the flywheel and new clutch, and finally bolted up the transmission. I did some maintenance on the engine too and replaced the thermostat, PCV Valve and new oil filter. After that I mounted my old wire harness including fuel injectors with the fuel rail, alternator and starter. Most of the plugs were easy but one thing I noticed was that I did not have a Purge Valve on this engine so I will have to reuse my old one from my D15B7 and just add it to my vacuum lines. I cleaned off the old throttle body gasket from the intake and then bolted on the throttle body and and connected all the appropriate hoses. Toward the end of the day I started screwing back all the engine mount bolts to there appropriate places, but I while doing this I noticed that my left hand(drivers side) engine mount was different and would not bolt up to the bracket mounted on this new D16A Engine. So I tried to swap my old bracket from my D15B7 but no chance they did not align to the wholes on the block. So tomorrow I will have to go the the auto wrecker and see if I can pickup the proper engine mount.

Machined and mounted flywheel

Clutch and pressure plate aligned and bolted on

Ready for bolting on tranny to engine

New gasket on intake manifold and picture of throttle body

Back side of throttle body and a picture of the Purge Solenoid that wasn’t on the D16A engine

In both pictures on the left is the old D15D7 bracket and on the right is the D16A bracket.

For The Next Step Click Here > D16A Engine Swap – Day 5

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Wednesday – Old engine extraction and engine bay cleanup

Today started early at 9am, I picked up my flywheel from the Lordco machine shop and pressure plate bolts and throttle body gaskets from Honda. The bonus for today was I had a friend help me out to extract the engine out with was a great benefit while using the host cuz 2 people are always better then one. Unbolting the mounts was pretty easy but finding a place to hook up the chain was a bit tricky but by lunch time the motor was out. Soon after I sprayed the Engine compartment down with Simple Green a biodegradeable degresser and then hosed it down a couple of times. I made sure my fuel lines with wrapped up and after I used compressed air to blow out any of the electrical plugs and around any place water shouldn’t be.

Engine being lifted out by hoist

Almost high enough to be pulled out

On the left is engine bay before cleaning and right is after cleaning

Full shot of clean engine bay, and on the right is another shot of old greasy D15B7

For The Next Step Click Here > D16A Engine Swap – Day 4

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Tuesday – Ready old engine for extraction

First thing in the morning I dropped off the Flywheel for machining and headed to Princess Auto for some oil drain pans and some other items. To start the engine removal process I jacked up the car and put it on stands ready for drive shaft removal. Taking both the axle nuts off was actually pretty easy but when I got to the lower ball joints is when the trouble started. I worked on those for a couple of hours but had no success so I decided to do something different. I took the top of the suspension off including the struts and managed to get both the axles off. The drivers side CV boot was already cracked so grease was everywhere but I am glad it broke on my stock wheels and not my new mags. After that I drained the coolant from the engine and took the radiator out and started to work on the electrical plugs and hoses. I found out that to separate the main plugs on both the left and right side I had to take them off the mounting brackets. Toward the end of the night I managed to take of the gear shift linkage and unbolt the exhaust from the catalytic converter. As you can see from the pictures below the old engine was leaking major oil from everywhere so it was really greasy all over. Tommorrow the plan is to pull the engine out, clean the engine compartment, and mount the new clutch and tranny on the D16 engine.

Axle nut pulled off Drive shaft pulled out

Driver’s CV Shaft Boot was cracked Lower ball joint

Exhaust Bolts unbolted Underneath the Car

Bottom view of the transmission Radiator and Slave cylinder removed

For The Previous Step Click Here > D16A Engine Swap – Day 1

For The Next Step Click Here > D16A Engine Swap – Day 3

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Monday – Get parts and prep the new engine

I started the day by calling around for parts, organizing my tools and figuring what I had to do first. Then I went to MOPAC and picked up a Centerforce Dual Friction Clutch and Coquitlam AutoParts for the water pump, timing belt and pilot bearing. By the time I got started it was already 3pm so there was no time to waste. While changing the water pump and timing belt I ran into a problem taking off the main crankshaft bolt even with my heavy duty impact wrench. So I sprayed the bolt with lube and went onto unbolting the transmission. Pulling the tranny was pretty easy with the engine out, so in no time at all I had the whole clutch assembly apart. I went back to the front of the engine and this time I heated up the crankshaft pulley bolt and managed to get it off. The rest of the water pump and timing belt was a snap just bolt everything back on. After that I noticed that the throttle plate was really dirty so I pulled the whole throttle body of the intake and cleaned it up with brake cleaner. After that I pulled the clutch release fork of the tranny and cleaned it all up and put it back on with new grease and the new throw out bearing. I cleaned the engine up a bit and that was it for today. Tommorrow I will start on the old engine removal. Below are some pictures.

Front of D16A engine and tranny and Valve Cover and timing cover off

New water Pump installed and Tranny housing cleaned and greased

Old throw out bearing and New throw out bearing

Clutch release fork and new bearing and Clutch fork and bearing installed

New and old pressure plate and Top side of new and old clutch plates

Bottom side of Dual Friction clutch and Top side of Dual Friction clutch

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It’s a great start to 2008 as I have acquired a JDM D16A VTEC Engine with only 80,000KM’s. It came with an Si tranny, Distributor and the P28 ECU. The plan is to change the timming belt, water pump and to replace the stock clutch with a Center Force 2 Clutch, Bearing and Pressure plate to get a better grip on the newly added horsepower. With this new engine, Short Ram Intake and my 2.5″ exhaust I should be putting out 135-140HP now so laying rubber should be easy to do, and maybe get 2nd gear chirps. I took a picture of the engine with my cell phone but the lighting wasn’t the best so the picture is a bit grainy but here it is the D16A VTEC.

As you’ll notice the valve cover is silver but down the road I will pull it off and get it powder coated cherry apple red to match the car.

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Working on the weekend I found a great surprize, a Garret turbo charger used but looks like it’s in great shape. I checked all fins and they are fine, spun the turbine and it was smooth, and very little free play. So the next step that we took to see if it was good is we took a gas powered leaf blower and used that to power the exhaust side and man did that little turbo spin up fast. I even pulled the turbo away from the outlet of the leaf blower and it was still spinning really nice. Will see what I can do with it but here are some pictures of what it looks like.

I looked it up online but i’m trying to figure out what it came off.

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Rust is cancer to cars specially for Honda’s, they are very prone to rusting around the wheel wells and aquarter panel area so if you have any rust you should get it fixed as soon as possible. I found this easy and informative link on how to repair a rusting quarter panel. Body Panel Repair

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Found this great website on how to turbo your own car, it covers everthing from picking the right turbo to Intercooler piping to Fuel Management. G2IC Turbo Guide

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