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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:
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:
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!
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

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!