Honda K24 Swapped 2015 BRZ Ship of Thesus (NASA TT5)

[RedReplicant]

Pulled the transmission in less than two hours, I've lost count of how many times I've had a transmission off a BRZ between this and my old Hyperblue - wtf indeed.

Clutch disk looks great and honestly I'd still run it




Pressure plate rivet broke





Threw some shrapnel through the bellhousing



Pressure plate deformed, moved a bit, and bent one of the dowels on the flywheel




Today I ordered:
* Supertech dual valve springs, retainers, and keepers
* OEM K24 rod bolts (ARP doesn't make K24 rod bolts)
* OEM K24 rear main seal
* OEM K20 flywheel bolts
* OEM K24Z side timing chain guides (already have the top one)
* OEM BRZ driveshaft and pressure plate bolts
* KTuned single piece thermostat to intake silicone hose

I hadn't intended to need to buy a flywheel, and I'm still not sure if I need to yet or not. Depends on if KPower will send me a replacement dowel or if I can get one machined.

After weighing it a bit today, there is roughly an hour of work to pull the motor at this point and they're only $1-1.2k. Price of dropping a valve or a rod bolt letting go is a motor, an $800 oil pan with unknown lead time, $400 in K20 oil pump / baffle, possible fire or other accessory damage, oiling down a track, and being out the cost of the event(s) plus travel costs.

The plan is to buy another K24A this weekend and swap every single accessory/cover/cams/chain/oil pump/etc from my motor over to it. Supertech valve train goes in it too since 'technically' the DC DICs are pretty tough on stock stuff, as well as opens me up to run something like a DC Endurance cam.

Really didn't need to do this but my initial plan was to slap the new rod bolts and Supertech into the current motor but then I was like the thing has to come out to do that anyway.

I'll re-ring the current block and put new OEM rod bolts into it then it is a good spare... or put rods / 12.5:1 pistons into it and send the head to 4Piston to be CNC'd.

[redlined600]

Sucks about the motor!
If you end up selling the DICs I might know someone that would be interested.

[RedReplicant]

Originally Posted by redlined600

Sucks about the motor!
If you end up selling the DICs I might know someone that would be interested.

I'll let you know if I end up going down that path

[RedReplicant]

Alrighty, so I ended up picking up a motor last weekend and pulling the one in the car out. I was fortunate enough to find out that I have a JDM motor importer about ten minutes from me so it was a 45 minute trip to pick up another K24A.

It looks a lot cleaner than the one in the car and all of the sensors minus MAP were intact, which is nice for my overflowing spares collection.



Water pump housing studs, oil pan studs, and coolant outlet studs all came right out of the block with zero trouble. I was not as lucky about with the motor in the car, but whatever.



Yoinked the old motor out




Found a spot where the oil pan had been rubbing the subframe, kind of annoying.




Old motor seemed alright, but the valve springs looked really weird to me so I am kind of glad I pulled it. I intend on measuring the rod bolts after I get the garage cleaned up again.

Drilled out the jiggle pin in the thermostat to help bleeding this time around



I did the Supertech valve springs, valve spring seats, and valve stem seals. On the very last intake valve I forgot to check that the cylinder was at TDC and ended up knocking the valve into the cylinder while trying to seat the retainers. Pretty much assumed I was fucked but I ended up being able to fish the valve stem to the valve guide and feed it back up into the head by carefully turning the motor.

Can't believe it actually worked, if it was exhaust side I don't think it'd have worked out for me and I'd be pulling the head.






Cams go in....



Opted to go K24Z timing chain guides since the exhaust side one has a larger guide section.



Motor is back together now, sealed everything so it can dry overnight.




Anyway, the plan is to toss it back into the car and hopefully have it driving tomorrow. The Subaru dealership still owes me 4 driveshaft bolts and nuts with no sign of shipping, so that is kind of annoying as I'd like to replace them.

We shall see how it goes.

[autoracer86]

This thread is gold for people looking to do a kswap. Awesome job! Hope things workout well for you with the new motor

[redlined600]

Originally Posted by RedReplicant

Drilled out the jiggle pin in the thermostat to help bleeding this time around

I've seen this a bit, what's the reasoning?

[RedReplicant]

Originally Posted by redlined600

I've seen this a bit, what's the reasoning?

The idea is to allow some coolant to pass though and prevent trapping an air bubble there during bleed. It was something Emile / WinningFormula told me helps during initial bleed so I figured I'd try it out.

[DocWalt]

I had to do similar on my old GTI, the thermostat was down low but not the lowest point in the system and it was a PITA to bleed if you trapped air near it on the initial fill.


It was a HUGE help, I wish more cars just had the bleed hole.

[RedReplicant]

Hopefully it works. I got the thing done to the point of starting today and it all went a bit pear shaped when I went to fill the coolant. The fitting into the side of the waterneck was leaking, so I had to pull that (which is not an easy or fun thing on this swap since it is against the firewall).

I shoulda paid more attention, the old fitting appeared to seep a bit based on the discoloration when I removed it to replace it with an aluminum one. I think the threads were machined wrong into the KPower waterneck, which they appear to have revised with a plug welded in insert in newer ones.

Options are buy a new waterneck for $210 or have an aluminum fitting machined down and tigged in.

Starting to run into a time crunch here.

[RedReplicant]

It lives.

On Tuesday I overnighted a new KPower waterneck, when it showed up I found that it had the wrong thread in one of the bolt holes and the temperature sensor hole recess was cut to deep to seal against. I called them and to their credit they went back, checked stock realized there'd been a machining error on the batch, and told me they'd overnight me another one.

I ended up making the "incorrect" one work since I really needed to get the car done, it wasn't too bad. A revised neck did show up today too, so I think I'm going to send it back.

I noticed they extended the water outlet, which is a nice touch since the amount of hose on it prior was pretty small.



Oh, also, love my clutch centering tool. Works way better than the plastic ones



I called the dyno shop to schedule a classing dyno this afternoon and he told me to just come in... I hadn't even gotten the car bled yet but I made it work.



Car made less power than last time (205-208whp), but ambient was like 60f higher today. I'll probably leave the car alone, no real reason to mess with anything. I do think it would give me enough room to run an A052, RE71RS, or CR-S as it sits for fun but we will see as I haven't bothered doing the math yet.

Oh, as a bonus - the new motor doesn't smoke at load lol.



All I have left to do before Arizona Motorsports Park next weekend is to figure out how to fix a bunch of the m6 undertray bolt holes and to figure out something with the shifter since I realized today it'd developed a bunch of play, which is probably what lead to the misshift.

[Pat]

So nice of you to continue your research and development for k power.

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

[RedReplicant]

Originally Posted by Pat

So nice of you to continue your research and development for k power.

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

It sure does feel that way pretty frequently

[redlined600]

I'm not sure if they are happy or upset when you call, but they must know you on a first name basis by now though.

[RedReplicant]

Originally Posted by redlined600

I'm not sure if they are happy or upset when you call, but they must know you on a first name basis by now though.

Haha, more like "that asshole" or something

Also...

I noticed this while I was on the way back from the dyno.

Tearing stuff apart I found out that the two steel pins that go through the shift selector rod wallowed out the aluminum selector rod.

Probably should have noticed this earlier but I hadn't really had any shifting issues with the car until the event I misshifted it at.

I M O - KPower tried to emulate the BMW DSSR / dual sheer selector rod (https://www.uucmotorwerks.com/DSSR/) but they didn't understand what made it actually work. The point is that the side to side motion of the shifter is transmitted from the shifter to the sides of the selector rod and from the selector rod to the transmission shift input... instead the load goes through the steel pin to the aluminum selector shaft.

BMW piece:


KPower piece:



They left a gap because the stock plastic bushings have an outer lip. That was a mistake.

So yeah, here I go again overnighting another part from them. Shoulda just bought a Lotus instead of trying to save a bit of money