krs

All,

I thought I would share my experience doing an engine swap as the effort progresses.

As a bit of background, the car had around 165,000, and threw a rod through the block. I have only done one other engine swap (Ford Ranger), so I am no expert mechanic! I do have the Civic service manual, and am pretty much following that.

On the engine removal, everything went reasonably well and easily. One challenge was regarding the ball joints. I have a standard ball joint tool, but that will not work given the half-axles being in the way. OReilly had the same sort of tool...

Instead, I opted to remove the bolts connecting the wheel and pivoted the wheel out, and was able to remove the half-axles.

By removing the rear motor mount assembly from the engine a long with the side motor mounts and battery plate, we removed the motor and transmission from the top rather than the bottom.

I had a friend helping, and would estimate it took us 9 hours to get the engine out...

I have located a couple engine possibilities per some help on this forum on engine types. Found a 2004 non-vtec engine with 77,000 and a 90 day warranty for $750 that we are thinking on getting. Another option is another 2004 with 102,000 for $500.


Regards

krs

A few quick pics...

ezone

Ouch.

We might refer to that as a "porous casting", "positive crankcase ventilation" or maybe "hatched" if the rod came out.

krs

A continuation on my engine swap story....

We picked up a "new" engine last week - a 2004 engine with 77,000 for $750.00

On Sunday afternoon, we spent a few hours on the project, moving the wiring harness from the broken engine to the new one. We also removed the crankshaft pulleys from both along with the timing belt, water pump and tensioner pulley. On the old engine, we had just replaced these items a couple months ago, and figure they had not been replaced on the replacement engine, so we will move these components from the old engine to the replacement engine.

We had some challenges separating the engine from the transmission. One the bolts were removed, we had to pry, pull, and thump for a while to get them to separate!

sdaidoji

iTrader: (1)

if the rod "hatched" do you think if will grow into a bigger rod?

krs, g'lucky on your swap

ezone

Maybe, if it gets the same SPAM emails I get.

krs

hatching a couple new engines would be good.

krs

Mid-Week Update

Given the water pump and timing belt were off both engines, I put the almost new water pump taken off the old engine on the replacement engine with a new gasket. Also put on the timing belt tensioner, timing belt, engine support and upper and lower timing covers. It was a bit of work, but I managed to get the upper one on without taking off the valve cover.

We also took the clutch and flywheel off the old engine, took the flywheel to a machine shop to be resurfaced ($50), and picked up a new clutch kit. The clutch looked fine, but at 165,000 and for $120, we decided to replace it.

sdaidoji

iTrader: (1)

going to try head gasket while it's easier?

ezone

^^^That.

krs

Not planning to do the head gasket given the replacement engine only has 77,000 on it...

Sadly, we had just done the head gasket on the "old" engine 5 months ago!

krs

Friday Update:

I took a half day vacation to work on the car...

Today we put the resurfaced flywheel on the replacement engine along with the new clutch - was a very easy job with the engine out of the car.

We then put the engine and the transmission back together - again pretty easy out of the car.

Next we put the engine back in the car. This took quite a while dropping it in from the top. It did not help that we did not mark the bolts clearly for the different motor mounts (stupid on our part!!).

Time spent - about 5 hours today.

krs

Saturday Update:
Given the engine was in the car - only thing connected was the motor mounts, we started hooking it all up. Took some effort to get the half-axles hooked up. On the driver side I did have to pop out the lower ball joint (probably need to replace the ball joint in the near future). Pretty much followed the manual connecting things up.

Once we thought we were done (not too many extra parts!??), we went through the assembly procedure again, checking everything. Given we moved the wiring harness to the replacement engine when out of the car, that part was much easier. We then added fluids (engine oil, transmission oil, and antifreeze).

Being very confident in our abilities (haha), we pushed it out of the garage and verified that the clutch operated properly, tested that the gas pedal operated the throttle and then went to test the fuel pump, looking for fuel leaks and discovered the battery was dead. We went ahead and used jumper cables to move forward.

All still looked good, so with fire extinguisher in hand tried to start it. We tried turning it over several times, and it did not even sound interested in starting. It then started sounding promising, and then started. The engine sounded good, no leaks and no parts falling off, so we took it for a short test drive.

Time spent on Saturday - about 7 hours.

We put a charger on the battery overnight.

Since then we have taken it for several test drives with no problems. We have gotten no codes, and only leak is from one of the half-axles - will post on that separately. All considering everything looks good!

ezone

Could have nipped the seal during removal or installation, it does happen. Replace offending seal and see what happens after that?