K swap FRS : Freddy McShreddy part deux

Interesting on the E85.  Wouldn't think it'd be worth the effort on a NA motor.  I run an E mix on my R but it's boosted and allows the tuner to push the timing, makes a big difference in power vs the 91 octane tune.

docwyte said:

Interesting on the E85.  Wouldn't think it'd be worth the effort on a NA motor.  I run an E mix on my R but it's boosted and allows the tuner to push the timing, makes a big difference in power vs the 91 octane tune.

I think application makes a big difference. Just with the stock Fa20 you can see 20hp gains if I remember correctly.

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to captainawesome :

First thought is grounds. Double check all of them. Good luck! I hate the cost of these kits when a lot could be done cheaper DIY, but WOW. That was a fast swap. Makes me rethink things a bit. Maybe I should save up some $$ for my miata...

I added grounds in key areas I thought would be effected by it with zero change. I think we got it figured out now, will make post explaining.

So much room for forced induction activities!!!! 

Yesterday my youngest was home sick and I was selected to keep her company for the day. That meant lots of garage time.

Lets start with suspension. I bought a used set of CSG Tein Flex As the other day to swap out the Konis. With my 18x9.5" wheels I am having clearance issues and I really like these wheels. So the only way to keep them without issue is to get coilovers. Since the CSP spec Teins were on my wish list and there's no set date for the next batch to release, a used set was gonna have to do. I checked weight between stock with Swift springs, Koni with TRD/Eibach springs, and the Teins. Stock, Konis with TRD/Eibach springs, and the Teins were all within the same weight range. So at best I have lost maybe 1 pound per corner but I think it's closer to maybe 2 pounds overall. I also had some leftover Whiteline sway bar links to swap out since the stock ones are just too long with the Teins. Ride height on these were just a hair over 13" from wheel center to fender lip. A bit too low but I didn't feel like fiddling with ride height at all. Right now I am set up on 8 clicks from hard up front and 11 out back. This is the street setting I believe so we will see how it works out.

If anyone is looking for RCE, Swift (Brz spec), or TRD/Eibach springs and maybe some used Konis hit me up. I could use some funds and space back....

With the suspension back together I spent time fastening all of the undertrays and front bumper. It's nice to look at it again and resemble a functional car.

Onward we go. I really needed to go over the brakes. This car doesn't like to roll even without the engine in the bay. Like it's silly tough to push around for a light car so I wanted to see if it's brake related. When I swapped out the ABS unit with the manual version I never bled the system so I figured that was a good start. With my little helper feeling okay I had her do the pedal work and I turned some wrenches. We got the air out and now pedal feel exists again. Then I cleaned and re-greased all of the caliper slider pins to rule that out. After putting the car back on the ground it seemed to roll considerably better so not sure what to make of all this. There was a massive amount of rust from sitting so long which may explain some of it?

Another thing that never really got a proper bleeding was the smaller 3/4 clutch slave cylinder. To do so I needed to unclip the engine harness and move some hoses around. Kind of a pain to get to but once everything was moved to the side it wasn't as bad as expected. MUCH better pedal feel now.

And what we've all been waiting for......

The night before I had been going over the input and output report that Haltech keeps record of for each base map. This chart shows you what sensor is assigned to what pin on the two plugs that click into the Haltech. Plug A with 34 pins and plug B with 26 pins. When looking at the coolant temp sensor there was a voltage amount showing while running. I assumed that meant there was a wire pinned to that connection, but when I looked at pin B4 it was empty. No wire was pinned to that position yet that's the pin it should have coolant temp going to. Aha! I think we have our problem. So I took some pics of what I have and sent them on to Kpower. And I waited most of the day tapping my foot hoping they would get back to me fast. I tried calling but the tech guy John was unavailable to talk. So I worked on other stuff previously mentioned. Around 6 pm or so I got email confirmation that pin B6 wire was supposed to be where B4 is like I suspected. I switched the pins on both ends of the pigtail harness and checked coolant temp readings before even firing up the car. WE NOW HAVE COOLANT TEMP!!!!!

We also have oil temp now. Weird. Either I wasn't checking when warm enough or when I unclipped some harnesses something seated finally? I also didn't start looking at this reading until I realized coolant temp was staying -40 so hard to say.

Map sensor is reading in the negatives still. Maybe the wrong sensor calibration or just a bad sensor. Either way the car seems to run fine-ish as is so will dig into that further.

After checking over all of the readings on the laptop I decided it was time to take a quick spin around the block. I didn't go far and tried to be good. I did rev it up to about 7k and it feels good. I think. Hard to tell with my paranoia. I could feel Vtech switching over. Power seemed less dramatic than expected but I wasn't romping on it, just easing into throttle.

Vibrations from the trans tunnel were present. I think I still am too close to that area I had problems with before. I also could hear the header touching the firewall area I hammered from instructions. My plan is to move the engine over closer to the driver side a little and see if that makes any major difference. There looks to be plenty of room so hopefully that works.

There has also been some mentions that folks have valve covers touching the hood when closed. I have yet to check this. Until yesterday. First I put some play-doh on the suspected spot and confirmed I have contact. Dangit.

It looks like the hood webbing structure has unbonded which has allowed it to get a 1/4" or closer to the valve cover. After my test drive it was obvious this will need sorted sooner than later. Either I try to dent or grind away the structure, buy a shaved valve cover from Kpower, or try re-bonding the structure and hope that's enough.

Almost forgot. Thermostat isn't opening. I was getting it to open when the car was jacked up with a burping funnel but now it won't. I think the thermostat may be in upside down or need a larger bleed hole?

So overall I've got some things to suss out. From what I can tell all of these should be simple fixes. I'm happy to have finally DRIVEN the car. Now I just need to finish it.

Also I forgot to post up I got new seats. Sorta new at least. The ones in the car, driver side specifically was gross. I found a series 1.0 set of seats and bought just the fronts. I didn't like how the rears looked for the series 1.0, so I kept the stock black ones. The new seats feel so much better. The fabric is grippier which will be nice for autocross and track work but also I think they look better. Like a lot better.

I would probably just take a ball peen hammer to the hood reinforcement structure. Glad it went around the block!

bgkast said:

I would probably just take a ball peen hammer to the hood reinforcement structure. Glad it went around the block!

I'm hoping that's possible without denting or deforming around it. It's all aluminum so worried I'll gack it all up. I think if the dent is good enough I can try to re-bond the structure to the skin and gain more clearance as well.

I once used a dremel to carefully cut some of the structure completely off, near where it was making contact with my engine. This was on a carbon hood, but the process and effects should be similar. It shouldn't have much of an effect on rigidity, depending on how much you remove. It will be easier in your situation given the fact that the structure is already separated from the skin itself. 

Just my two cents. 

Looks like the hood structure being bonded back to the skin will give me room but I may just go ahead and make some room with either a hammer or grinder.

I tested the MAP sensor voltage against a vacuum gauge while running last night. Also compared readings to Haltech kpa data. Still seemed off but the car runs great enough I'm wondering how that's possible. I tested a spare sensor that had broken the rubber seal when removing and it ran the same data. Hmmmmm. Sent Kpower some pics of my harness pins and confirmed everything else is kosher. They also confirmed my readings are normal so the whole MAP sensor debacle was a wild goose chase. Not going to complain though, as I have learned a bunch about various sensors. So that is neat.

Before I started the car again I opened the rad cap, topped off fluid with a couple ounces, and put the cap back on. Great news! The coolant system is fully functional! I ran the car for about 40 minutes testing the MAP stuff which gave the system plenty of time to get warm and cycle the fan a bunch. Lower hose is getting hot coolant which means the thermostat is working like it should.

Only items left to address is header clearance and trans clearance. Going to try and possibly tackle some of that this evening and maybe drive to work tomorrow for tires to be put on. YEEHAWWW!!!!

Wow I slept on this thread for awhile and now you've got a running car, nice job! The install looks great.

Weird chain of events last night. I moved the trans and engine towards the driver side hoping this would cure the vibration I'm hearing. Come to find out it's my damn coil pack beauty cover vibrating like a banshee. Easy fix, I just yanked it off the car for now.

So I took it on a long test ride and when I tried to give it the full beans up the interstate ramp the car went into limp mode. Barely got to the top of the hill and checked laptop codes.

I don't know what any of that means yet but snapped a pic, shut the car off, and started it right back up. Throttle was working again so off we go.

I sped up and about the time I got to 70 or so I could hear this god awful scraping noise under the trans. I feared the worst and pulled off into the shoulder. It was pretty dark, so couldn't see anything from the passenger side underneath and since traffic wasn't getting over on the driver side I couldn't get a good look. I pulled back out again and limped it around 60 or so to the closest exit and into a gas station for better lighting.

Whelp I'm an idiot. I decided to not put the undertray stuff back on before leaving just in case I needed to move stuff around again, but forgot the front lip of what tray was left isn't fastened down anymore. So at higher speed it would fold under and scrape the asphalt. Super happy to see this being the issue and nothing serious.

I was sweating all this pretty hard though. Basically within a few miles I thought the car was on the verge of imploding. And yet the throttle wasn't acting up and now knowing what the noise was I took the slow windy road back home trying to take it easy.

I love this car, and I'm loving this engine. It wants to rev. Tires are fighting for traction in first and second. They are crappy tires, but it made the drive a lot of fun. It almost feels like my old FRS with a supercharger.

HOWEVER when I stomped the throttle again it went into limp mode. I think what's happening is it's getting pushed past the drive by wire calibration threshold and freaking the Haltech out. Obviously when calibrating the pedal you can't really slam the throttle so I got home and pushed it as hard as possible to recalibrate. Don't know if that will fix it but I stomped on it a bunch to check values in the software and I think that may have done the trick.

Also for some reason both fans were on when I pulled in. I expected for the lower hose to be warm only to find it cold again. I need to figure out the best way to set up the fans because I think they are overcooling enough that thermostat won't open and then it's stuck warm on one side just enough to engage fans.

Once these little details get sorted it's going to be awesome. I'm really excited to get some miles in and see what it can do without any real drama.

I changed the unit conversion in the Haltech software finally. It made a huge difference in my MAP readings being easier to follow. Also with coolant and oil.

I managed to figure out the throttle issue. I forgot that I spaced the throttle pedal out but didn’t add to the stopper. This was allowing it to go past the threshold and causing limp mode. Easy fix.

Getting some tires installed now and will put some miles in today.

Clearance the webbing with a drill-mounted 1" hole saw.  Would make clean work of it without damaging the hood or making the rest of the webbing look beat to hell.  Maybe even keep going along the webbing to lighten up the hood, now that the engine swap has raised the CoG.

I have done the holesaw thing, works great.

I wouldn't go too crazy though.  The webbing weighs very little, a floppy hood is really annoying. Especially if it has a prop.

Update time!

I moved the engine and trans back towards passenger side just a smidge and reinstalled the undertrays. The source of the vibration noise ended up being my aftermarket fancy coil cover buzzing like a banshee, so it seemed like a good idea to move things back where they belong.

Saturday morning I ran by the tire shop and had some almost new Pilot Sport 4 S tires mounted. Afterward I dropped by a buddy's house hoping to borrow a reverse lockout bracket. I ordered one but it's taking forever to ship to the dealer down the block. Well he managed to lose his, and since he was the one who disassembled my shifter stuff to mount to the Kpower bracket, I'm beginning to wonder if he lost mine as well..... Arggggh.

Not having this bracket stinks. It's really easy to put the car in reverse when looking for 1st and a quick downshift into 2nd is a tough ask as it wants to go further left than it needs to.

Anyway, I'll survive for now. What I didn't want to do was run around destroying the new tires on a bad alignment so I pulled out the string rig. Got toe set to zero front/rear and front camber currently at -3 degress camber with just a lower crash bolt and stock lower bolt moved to the top position. The camber plates are set at zero, so I managed to get good camber all at the lower pivot which is ideal. Rear camber with stock arms are at -2.5 and -2.7 with no form of adjustment but right where I want them anyway.

Then I pulled out the scales. I've been waiting to see what the weight difference is pre and post swap. At first I was kinda shocked, and not in a good way. Previous weight as a heavier automatic was 2753 and the new weight is.......... 2702. Then I remembered gas levels make a huge difference. The earlier weight amount was just a hair over 1/4 tank and the new one is over 3/4. So I did some napkin math and if I subtract 6.5 gallons of gas PLUS the 10 pounds I added back with the stock muffler we end up with a weight of 2652. I know there is some variance here, but essentially we are looking at about 100 pound loss over the automatic stock car. I would compare cross weights, but again the gas weight isn't helping and it would be difficult to do accurately. MAYBE when I get back to the same fuel level I'll remember to pull out the scales again and see, but I doubt it.

I wish I was able to keep the same tires, suspension, trunk with spoiler setup long enough to get a legit apples to apples, but I think this is pretty close. Unfortunately I could be off on how many gallons either direction of the math but it is what it is.

And with me plus helmet and gloves

This is awesome. I now want a blown motor BRZ / FRS / 86

100lb weight loss while gaining a bunch of power seems like a win to me!

Been putting some miles in commuting to work this week and so far happy with the swap. With the laptop learning and adjusting base map I can't really tell any difference but it's mainly highway so I doubt it's tweaking much overall.

Only problem I'm still having is oil temp readings. Starts out at -40f and randomly will start to rise but no more than 140f. Then it will randomly go back to -40f or something silly like 20f and hang there a while again. Ambient has been 50-70s and coolant is having zero issues getting up to 190-200 range so I know oil can't be reading that low on temp.

My thoughts are damaged sensor when installing? Maybe over-tightening or sealant got on the tip? Currently pressure readings are immediate and appear to be accurate from what a k24 should be so that makes it harder to troubleshoot. I'll probably pull the sensor this evening and take a look at it closer, maybe do some testing on voltage readouts as well.

In reply to captainawesome :

RE: oil temperaure. You have the combined pressure/temperature sensor, right? -40C/F is the output when voltage is ~5V. As temperature increases, so does resistance, causing voltage to drop. Since the reading is bouncing all over the place that makes me think the sensor is bad. I've had air temperature sensors do the same thing. Do you have any DTCs enabled for oil temperature? That would be another way to check if input voltage is operating outside the expected 0-5V range. Also, if you do have DTCs for oil temperature enabled I'd check to see if it's triggering any kind of engine protection.

In reply to infernosg :

Just got the temp sensor fixed. Turns out the calibration for the sensor was incorrect in Kpower's base map. A fellow twin K swapper was having similar issues and sent me his file to try out. Works as intended now so one less thing to worry about.

Rolling up to almost 400 road miles since swapping. There's apparently a bug with the gas tank level sensor and the stock ECU not talking correctly through the Haltech. Luckily I didn't run out of gas myself, but someone else did and sure enough I was getting close to the same fate. Kpower is going to see what Haltech can do to adjust some calibrations to make it all work like stock, so for now I'll be keeping an eye on the miles per tank.

About to start chasing down rattles. Pretty sure the ones I'm hearing most are the Haltech buzzing against the dash framework it's zip tied to. I'll find some material to buffer contact and save my brain from further buzzing. There's a little bit coming from the trans tunnel area around 2500 rpm, but being a solid mounted shifter there may not be much I can do. I'll double check that the trans itself isn't contacting the tunnel ever so slightly though to be sure.

I think the driveshaft has a vibration within a certain load/rpm range so I may look into getting my stock 2 piece shaft shortened. I've read about this being a problem before with folks swapping to an aluminum one piece. It's more obvious in higher gears since it stretches the RPM range that's effected. It's not stopping me from wanting to drive the car but if I can get rid of that by using a 2 piece then I'm okay with that. Was hoping it wouldn't happen but everything I'm reading points to that. Something about critical speed being a factor?

Another thing is super light throttle is kinda jerky/twitchy. I think that's something I can adjust in the Haltech but haven't looked into it yet.

All in all I'm really happy with how everything has come together. To expect ZERO issues or items to address after a swap like this would be madness. Time to get the kinks worked out one by one until it's close to feeling like a factory car. That's the goal.

Thank you for weighing it, 100lbs is a nice round number to think about for the rest of us!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

Thank you for weighing it, 100lbs is a nice round number to think about for the rest of us!

I wish I knew what it would have been with a manual first. I imagine you are going to see about 20 pounds less of a drop that way so maybe 80ish pounds? I was really hoping the fuel gauge was more accurate so I could re-weigh the car when it got back to just above 1/4 tank. Until they fix the bug I'm only able to guess if it's close enough to what I weighed before.

You really are the captain of awesome, making this swap look so easy. You received boxes like what...less than a month ago? And you've already put hundreds of miles on the swap. Even after my bad experience with a Fiata 124, I would love to find one with a blown engine and K-swap it. 

maschinenbau said:

You really are the captain of awesome, making this swap look so easy. You received boxes like what...less than a month ago? And you've already put hundreds of miles on the swap. Even after my bad experience with a Fiata 124, I would love to find one with a blown engine and K-swap it. 

Thanks for the kind words, but it's just been bolting stuff together on this one compared to a lot of the projects on this forum. I bought the easy way out and I'm really glad because it's paid off quickly. Can't say the LONG months of waiting for the kit to ship didn't make me second guess the whole plan though.

As for the Fiata I think that Kpower is currently planning an ND K swap kit. I'm not 100 percent on what major differences there would be but sounds like a future for something bolt in and simple?

captainawesome said:

As for the Fiata I think that Kpower is currently planning an ND K swap kit. I'm not 100 percent on what major differences there would be but sounds like a future for something bolt in and simple?

Man, that's a dream future project.