Hi folks! My bud and I ended up with a $200 VW Golf with a bad transmission. We toyed with the idea of throwing a junkyard automatic in it, or 5 speed swapping it. Honestly though we don't really need another car and we do have a garage so we thought we'd do something a bit more off kilter. We've picked up a k24a4 from a 2004 Accord with a 5 speed. The plan is to get it mounted in the car and running sans AC and power steering (power steering is a stretch goal though). We would love to be able to get it to pass Texas emissions though which requires the setup to have an OBD 2 port and functioning emissions systems but that is kind of a stretch goal as well.
We are still missing some parts here and there (bits of the wiring harness, the chassis side wiring harness, a downpipe, what else who knows). We do have the following:
An unknown condition k24a4
An unknown condition 5 speed with cables and one of the plastic shifters
Like 99% of the engine side wiring harness
The ECU harness
The ECU (37820-RAA-A06)
Everything that is normally attached to the engine to the best of our understanding
Ebay civic swap mounts
A blue oil cap
I've found the best way to get the right answer is to post the wrong answer first so we'll be documenting the build as we go along here. Feel free to join in and give good or bad advice!
We have a rather steep driveway so we mounted a harbor freight 9000 lbs winch to the concrete and used it to pull in the car.
The garage is a mess and honestly will continue to be one.
Here's our baby boy
Pulling out the old 2.0 which according to the previous owner ran great...
Sealing up lines for cleaning
Cleaned out to the best of our ability. This thing had 20 years of grime in it as I'm sure you've all experienced. It's just gross now, not absolutely unmanageable as it was.
Got the k in the garage. The seat belt trick I learned on some youtube video was a pro tip. If you all don't know the seat belt bolt will fit perfectly a bolt hole from the passenger side mount. Then just wrap the other side around the transmission.
A little end of day test fitting. Honestly this thing is going to be a tight fit. A few notes:
The rear mount you would use in a Civic may be hard because the sway bar sits in front of the VW subframe and the steering rack sits on top of it. I was thinking of maybe using a mount on the front of the motor and building a cross bar between the frame rails. Not really sure yet.
We may have some issue with the stock brake booster and master cylinder. I think the location of these also would probably limit us from using a sidewinder style manifold if we decide to get boosty. In the BMW world I've seen some crazy modifications to that system and I'm really hoping we don't have to do anything of the sort.
The stock exhaust manifold doesn't appear to line up with the VW exhaust tunnel. Luckily we don't really care what we have to do to get the k in there so expect some mild modifications to the firewall and anything else in the way.
If anyone has any suggestions for wiring the motor to the chassis harness I'm all ears. I would go with the hybrid racing universal chassis side harness but they explicitly say it isn't for k24s which is a huge bummer.
Thanks for tuning in and we're hoping to cut together some video as well interest or not!
Day two started out on a slightly sour note when we realized that the mounts we ordered were for a Civic SI transmission and not the Accord transmission we have. Hasport makes an Accord transmission mount but we realized that it wouldn't fit our application anyways and we're going to fab something up. Other than that the day involved a bit of cleaning of this super disgusting motor. I started by removing the accessories which I'm not sure if they'll ever work again.
ew
Maybe I should invest in a parts washer.
This is what we started with
And here's clean enough. Lets stop for a moment and talk about Gunk's engine cleaner sprays. The foaming one, useless. The spray one, useless. The heavy duty one... you can watch the grease melt off. I should have just bought three cans of that.
After all this was done we stuck the motor in the car to check overall clearances.
So far so good. At the height I have it here it sits below the lip of the passenger frame rail and would give us a 9-10" ground clearance at the current ride height. Of course when we hook the motor to the car the front end will settle pretty extensively. Also if we're gonna slam this thing... as you do... I think we're going to have to get a few more inches of clearance or maybe there is a shallow oil pan to get?
The master cylinder clears quiet well! We may have to relocate the bracket for the wiring harness junction but we'll see once she's mounted.
Drivers side clearance is pretty good except for the the transmission possibly resting on the sway bar. I can't get back there well enough to check. Once we have the side mounts in I'll have to lift the car and adjust ACCORDingly (hah).
Passenger side clearance is also very good. The axels don't seem to line up for shit but I'm curious how well the VW's did. We're shooting for close enough here so as long as they don't rub too bad I think we'll be in the clear.
When all is said and done, getting to that oil filter is going to be a huge pain the butt. I guess I should look into an oil filter relocation setup.
Next steps are to wait on a CRV style passenger side mount so we can mount our ebay mount to the engine. After that we'll mock up the chassis side of the passenger side mount. Once we have that, depending on the height the engine sits in the bay, the transmission side will probably be super easy with a plate that has a few washer under it to take up the difference between the two holes in the Accord 5 speed, one of the rubber bushings we got and the chassis side mount extending out to meet it. Last but not least will be the rear mount (... or front mount?) which may be possible off of the existing subframe. Only time will tell!
Hello golfpro, this is a fantastic introduction here into the K20a.org Forum and very welcome! Thanks for the very nice write up ?! I really love this idea of swapping an K-engine instead of the ton of cheap and easy to mount I5 or VR6 engines out of the VAG box. This is really an innovative project!
To that low speed torque and low emission monster Honda K-series engine . Did you already do a compression or leakdown test of it?
But hey, even if it is in a disgusting status, even if compression is only at 130 psi, even it is only an emission-driven low compression ratio VTEC-engine, the Golf chassis will increase in it's value uncountable times. None of the NA derivatives of the EA111, EA113, EA827 and EA888 engine platforms (even not the heated low efficient and huge displacement VR6's AAA or ABV) came ever near to the performance of this or the former B-series Honda engine platform in terms of power density, emission level, efficiency, endurability and huuuuuge load capacity. BTW, even the German daughter of GM (Opel) had with the C20XE a better 2.0-Liter I4 16 valve engine as VAG had it that time with the ABF GTI engine.
I am looking forward to see more of this build. I hope the engine block looks better as the disgusting maintenance status did look like. Please have an eye on the timing chain and timing marks of the cam gear and crank wheel as well as the TPS, as those are NORMAL the weak links at K-series engines of that milage level.
Hello golfpro, this is a fantastic introduction here into the K20a.org Forum and very welcome! Thanks for the very nice write up ?! I really love this idea of swapping an K-engine instead of the ton of cheap and easy to mount I5 or VR6 engines out of the VAG box. This is really an innovative project!
To that low speed torque and low emission monster Honda K-series engine . Did you already do a compression or leakdown test of it?
But hey, even if it is in a disgusting status, even if compression is only at 130 psi, even it is only an emission-driven low compression ratio VTEC-engine, the Golf chassis will increase in it's value uncountable times. None of the NA derivatives of the EA111, EA113, EA827 and EA888 engine platforms (even not the heated low efficient and huge displacement VR6's AAA or ABV) came ever near to the performance of this or the former B-series Honda engine platform in terms of power density, emission level, efficiency, endurability and huuuuuge load capacity. BTW, even the German daughter of GM (Opel) had with the C20XE a better 2.0-Liter I4 16 valve engine as VAG had it that time with the ABF GTI engine.
I am looking forward to see more of this build. I hope the engine block looks better as the disgusting maintenance status did look like. Please have an eye on the timing chain and timing marks of the cam gear and crank wheel as well as the TPS, as those are NORMAL the weak links at K-series engines of that milage level.
Thanks for the welcome @LotusElise. I've yet to do any kind of compression test on it as we really had to pull it in a hurry due to conflicting schedules. Hopefully the aftermarket for this engine can carry it further than the 2.0 ever could have gone! That being said at one point the VR6 did hold a spot in my heart. I'll probably do maintenance items on it such as the chain and guides, oil change, seals, etc as we get closer to getting it to run. Worst case it's a total brick and we just pull the engine next time around. Luckily they are plentiful in the yards around here!
We are talking about one of the biggest and well sorted aftermarkets in the I4 world. The K-series aftermarket have it all, from cams to ready to go high end race cylinder heads as the K-series is one of the best NA-quarter mile engines, which runs massively the aftermarket in the US.
Understood, I hope you don't regret not to have measured the compression. Anyway, K-Series engines have a very robust mechanic. My last K20A2 engine suffered a torn apart cooler, the last ECT the NPT sensor have seen was 128 °C. The engine made 9.5 bar (Motormeter) or 12.5 bar (ebay compression tester) at compression test with an deviation of 0.5 bar at max.. That shown me how well designed these engines are.
I am looking forward to see the compression test results.
Hi folks, long time no talk. Honestly we haven't been making a lot of progress due to work and having to wait on a CRV style mount but I'll share with you all what we've got.
So aligning the engine is one of those things we're just doing by the seat of our pants. We stuck it in there and did our best to eyeball the axles to line them up to the hubs the best we could. Being as we don't have the engine entirely mounted yet there may be some adjustments down the road as we start working on axles.
Got this CRV style mount in the mail from ebay. Its a nice little piece of machined aluminum. I like it quite a lot. When I was reading someone's swap thread I remember them saying not to hundred dollar yourself to death but it would seem that isn't always possible.
Here she is mounted up. I wish it could mount in multiple ways but this actually works out pretty well as you'll see later.
Our ebay mount on top. This may end up being the only mount out of the kit that we use.
Here's how we're positioning the motor. Using a harbor freight load leveler to get it side to side level and a ratchet strap pulling from the intake to the load leveler to get the ebay motor mount level to the chassis.
I didn't get any pictures before I cut this apart but here is the top bit of a civic swap mount that I lopped off with the grinder. We're going to use this to make a mount that will mount to the factory passenger side engine mount (say mount one more time)... mounting points.
Get you a piece of plate and drill some holes in it to fit the 2 screw locations on the passenger side mounting location.
Hang your engine and line it up to the best of your ability. (Hope this placement doesn't bite me down the road.
Tack her in!
Next to do will be the transmission side mounts. We are thinking of using the stock mounting holes on the transmission and the stock transmission mount from the VW 2.0 01m transmission that the car came with. A small bit of fab may be required.
As for next steps we hit the yard today and grabbed the following:
A ktuner compatible ECU from an 05 Accord
The missing bit of chassis wiring harness we needed
A golf clutch pedal and master cylinder since our car was brought into this world as an auto
Some coil packs and a spare valve cover (JDM paint job incoming)
A rear bumper support for an e46 (not related to this project)
The biggest challenge going forward is going to be wiring. I've made the following pinout list of the 31P E connector on the Accord ECU that goes to the chassis of the Accord.
I have a feeling I will need to hunt down quite a few of these wires on the VW chassis in order to get this car to run. If anyone out there is a VW expert and knows where I could find a pinout for a Bosh Motronic ME7.5 06A 906 032 FP ECM I'll love you forever.
We are talking about one of the biggest and well sorted aftermarkets in the I4 world. The K-series aftermarket have it all, from cams to ready to go high end race cylinder heads as the K-series is one of the best NA-quarter mile engines, which runs massively the aftermarket in the US.
That's interesting. Illume me. What does specifically brought it into that status?
Understood, I hope you don't regret not to have measured the compression. Anyway, K-Series engines have a very robust mechanic. My last K20A2 engine suffered a torn apart cooler, the last ECT the NPT sensor have seen was 128 °C. The engine made 9.5 bar (Motormeter) or 12.5 bar (ebay compression tester) at compression test with an deviation of 0.5 bar at max.. That shown me how well designed these engines are.
I am looking forward to see the compression test results.
The VR6 is an amazing sounding engine. Also its 15 degree V6 layout is absolutely astounding. That being said we didn't go with the VR6 because they are still hard to get ahold of.
So we decided to tackle the drivers side/transmission mount this week and have had wonderful success. I'll go over the mount design and you all can pick it apart and tell me how wrong I did it.
Starting out I noticed that the stock Accord transmission side mount and the stock Golf chassis side mount are almost touching. Just enough space for a plate of steel. Using this we made a CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) template to transfer to steel stock.
Using the template we located where we would need threads in the mount and drilled a hole.
We rounded all the corners off a nut, probably the first time we've done this on purpose and recessed it into the hole.
Yeah it looks great!
After transferring our CAD design to steel, we welded it to the cast iron Accord transmission mount.
Using the first hole we located the second hole, drilled it and welded a nut to the back of the plate.
They say anyone can design a bridge that will hold weight, but an engineer is one who designs one that will barely stand up. That being said we are firmly in the first group.
Here are both mounts with a bit of primer on them!
And there we have it! The motor is hanging under her own weight now!
With just enough space.
Up next is the last motor mount which I'm thinking will be the hardest. We are going to try and come off the stock mounting spot on the Golf's subframe to whatever we can grab on to on the motor and try to wedge something soft in between them. Maybe one of the mounts from our ebay kit, maybe the stock dog bone mount, maybe a hockey puck... Tune in next time to find out!
3rd mount is in! It uses the stock mk4 dogbone mount and honestly I'm curious to see if it bends like a blade of grass in the wind.
So my bud busted this out while I was at work and its rather hilariously simple. Dogbone mounts to subframe, L bracket connects dogbone to transmission. Definitely the KISS approach. Will it flex? I'll let you know if it does!
3rd mount is in! It uses the stock mk4 dogbone mount and honestly I'm curious to see if it bends like a blade of grass in the wind.
So my bud busted this out while I was at work and its rather hilariously simple. Dogbone mounts to subframe, L bracket connects dogbone to transmission. Definitely the KISS approach. Will it flex? I'll let you know if it does!
It seems you can use your honda axles in VW/Audi Knuckles by replacing the Hub and Hub Bearing with the honda ones. But some machining needs to be done since the honda ones are wider. Hope this helps.
It seems you can use your honda axles in VW/Audi Knuckles by replacing the Hub and Hub Bearing with the honda ones. But some machining needs to be done since the honda ones are wider. Hope this helps.
I think we're going to cut and sleeve the axles for the time being. I don't have access to a machine shop and I think the best thing to do would be to use the vw inner and the accord outer, make our axle the correct length then take the shaft in and get a custom one made with the right splines. I don't think the accord ones are the right length of our application either. I've got the passenger side axle on order since we weren't able to pull it at the yard so we'll see.
As for updates I've been futzing with the wiring and its been a hell of a process. I'll update when I have more information on that. Finding information about the starter wiring has been fun but this is what I'm going off of at the moment
A forum community dedicated to Honda and Acura K Series engine platform owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about performance, modifications, troubleshooting, power-adders, racing, maintenance, and more!
. Did you already do a compression or leakdown test of it?
