Timmy's K24a2 swap

yeah I think the completed swap pics are in his profile thread.

I'll give my own list of thank you's and acknowledgements.

Thanks goes out to Dominic for giving me a place to sleep and breakfast every morning (and driving an hour trying to find a harmonic balancer tool). Thanks goes out to Jen (Dom's wife) for being patient with us and dealing with all kinds of interesting smelly situations. A VERY big thanks goes out to Cham, whom I met for the first time during this swap. I was honored to work with him and actually share the same working space. There are very few people that have as much K series knowledge as he does. Thanks to Keith for being the one person at times to see me frantically waiving my hand from under a wheel well when I needed something but Dom and Timmy were too busy talking to hear me Wink

. Thanks to Steve for helping to break that stupid crank bolt loose. Finally, thanks to Timmy for shipping $1000 worth of my tools from Florida to Mass in order to complete the swap. Thanks also for actually doing what I say and buying the parts I recommend so I didn't have to jerry rig crap up and deal with stuff that I'm not comfortable working with. Finally, thanks goes to Timmy and Dom for making it warm in the garage for me while I worked. It was pleasantly warm enough for me to conduct my business without much extra clothing, and I wasn't slowed down at all by having to warm up in the house.

The end of the story went a bit like this:

After the motor was fully installed we went to start it. It amazingly started on the first turn of the key and we quickly filled the garage with gray smoke and carbon monoxide. After clearing the garage, we decided to pull the car out and start it again. We did so and the car ran ridiculously rich. I made the mistake of connecting the TPS connector to the MAP sensor, and vice versa. After a couple of starts, the car failed to turn over. We had destroyed the element inside the MAP sensor by forcing voltage through it, when it was supposed to be supplying voltage in the first place. Cham came over later that day and after 2 hours of driving back and forth, we tried to upload the tune from his laptop. After that failed, we checked for fuel, air, and spark. Coming up good on all three fronts, we were annoyed and tired. Finally, Cham noticed that the MAP sensor was reading 0.0, not atmospheric as it should. He asked me to disconnect the sensor tube and blow into it. I did so, and when the sensor did not respond, we knew where the problem came from. We swapped over to the sensor still on the TSX manifold and the car started right up for us.

Tim stayed up and installed some suspension components while Cham left and I went to sleep. The next morning, I woke up to Timmy saying that there was a puddle of tranny fluid under the car. I got up, showered, and went downstairs to the wonderful smell of new HG tranny fluid. After confirming that the driver's axle was not fully seated in the transmission, I took the assembly apart and had Tim and Dom re-seat the axle while I watched the clearance. After putting the rest of the side back together, we installed the wheels and took the car outside for its first actual idle time. After topping off the radiator and watching the AFR and water temps, we packed up our clothes and other stuff and started the street evaluation.

I started driving the car on the street and noticed a definite increase in power. The AFR stayed consistent, so I took the liberty of beating on it a little. In our rush to get things done, we had incorrectly calibrated the TPS, so when Kpro saw a TPS reading of 113%, it threw a CEL and disabled VTEC. After recalibrating the TPS and messing around with some things, Timmy got to drive. He was the first to hit VTEC now that the TPS issue was cleared. Oh what a glorious sound....We changed the tune when we went to advance auto parts to pick up two smaller belts, and the car pulled that much harder.

We then went to Dom's to pick up my keys (which I had left on the workbench), and then we made the trip to NJ. Timmy drove for the first two hours, and after dinner, I drove the final two.

Most of you know that my short term memory is shot...well..here's a funny story. So I was driving the car home..and going on my knowledge, Timmy and I were both running TSX transmissions, so I assumed that the speed correction was the same on his as it was for me...Basically when the speedo says 85 on my car, I know I'm doing somewhere around 75. So on the way home, I was doing my usual thing and driving what I thought was 10 over. A while of this (approximately an hour's worth) later, Tim asked me why I was speeding, so I replied, "well, the speedo says I'm doing 90, we're in a 65 zone, and that puts me at about 10 over". Then he said "No dude, you're doing 90". So I said..."You have a modifry and you didn't tell me?!?!?!" "I've been doing 90mph since Connecticut!?!?!" to which he replied "yeah dude...I TOLD you that I installed one directly into the Kpro harness". We laughed and kept on driving.

I arrived home just shy of 9pm and had Timmy come in for some food. After some BSing, he decided he needed to leave, and I forgot my sunglasses in his car...I forget things all the time...

So that's it in a nutshell...a successful swap. Who's next?