...and it runs. The first start-up video.

It's hard for me to believe that the last post was in February, talking about mounting up the shifter, when just last Friday, I drove the car to a car show.

There's a lot I need to revisit later, such as:
-Fuel system
-Cooling system
-Wiring
-Exhaust
-Intake
-Steering
-Gauges

because some of those can be a pain in the butt, and it's easy to overlook "small" things.

But let's skip right to the fun part.  The first start.

Full disclosure, it wasn't the first time I turned the key, but this video, shot by my girlfriend Alexandra, documents the first time I got the car to sputter to life.

Again, I made it to the car show mentioned in the video.  It was a busy couple of evenings.

CLICK HERE ---> LINK <--- to watch my youtube video.

Thanks for your readership, the volume of which pleasantly surprises me.

Now that my car runs, this is only the beginning.

Eye Candy:

Shifting, Part 2. Mounting the K-Tuned shift kit

Cut a hole in the chassis, like the instructions say.  Before you mount cables, we gotta make sure the hole is the right size.  Spoiler alert, it won't be.

Looking at the next two pictures, you can see where I had to enlarge the hole.  Use the aforementioned Makita electric die-grinder with sanding wheel and you will get nice smooth results.

Now bolt the shift box to the brackets and add the shift cables.  Cut off the factory RSX/Japan Integra frame grommet.

Before you attach the bracket/box to the tunnel, you need to route the cables (they're not flexible enough to route after you mount the box).  Initially, I lowered the swaybar and routed the cables between the subframe and firewall.  The cables were about 4" too long this way, so I routed under the swaybar, under the subframe, in front of the steering rack, and then up to the transmission selector mechanism.

This is the most-wrong way to route.  Right off the transmission, the cables need to take too sharp a bend downward, and under the car, there's still a lot of slack.  Operating the shifter, you can feel the extra resistance of the sharp bends.

So go back between the subframe and firewall.

From the engine room, it's clean if you route the cables in the rear engine mount area.

Operate the shifter, grabbing all 6 forward gears and reverse.  Better yet, change gears while making vtec sounds.  The movement is nice.  Now the test fit is complete.

Take it all back out again.

Mask and paint the tunnel in the areas you exposed bare metal.  Whether or not you plan to drive in the snow and salt, this is good practice.

It's too cold for me to finish painting and installing, but I just need one day of 40-degree temperatures and it'll be done.

Pull out the credit card and order more parts.

-kwan

Shifting, Part 1. K-Tuned brackets and your chassis

When it comes to shifting, you have a couple options: (1) keep the Honda shift box, or (2) get an aftermarket one.  I think Honda engineers are decent people, so I don't want to hurt their feelings by getting rid of the shift box they designed.  Given this, you can either get a K-Tuned or Karcepts shift adapter.  It seemed to me that the K-Tuned and Karcepts are functionally identical, but the K-Tuned website is very professional-looking and the kit looked like it included some quality hardware, so I chose that.

Open the box, and things are packaged nicely, so you get a warm-fuzzy about your purchase.  The instructions tell you how to go about fitting your brackets, so you start there.  So far so good.

So you go to fit the rear bracket in the chassis, and what the crap, the fitment is horrid.

That's how much freaking gap there is.

The gap has two root causes.  First, the mating surface is not flat (poor forming process order), and second, the bracket is too wide for the tunnel (design and forming problem)

Chuck it in a vice and prepare to modify the brackets you spent, what, like a hundred and fifty bucks on?

First step, flatten out the mating area.  I used a Makita electric die grinder with a sanding wheel and it works just fine on the soft aluminum.

The first side will look like this:

The second step is to narrow the edges so it fits in the tunnel.  This was actually a very iterative process, but about 45 minutes later I got it to fit.  When it's all said and done, the rear bracket will look like this:

After the rear bracket drama, if you think the main bracket is just going to fit, you're out of your mind.

Going ahead and test-fitting the main bracket, I couldn't even push the bracket up to meet the front of the tunnel (read the instructions, you'll know what I mean).

This is kind of what it looks like:

I found a neat trick where you put the shop light above the tunnel (in the original shifter hole) and you can see where gaps are and where you need to add clearance.

When you're done, you should have small gaps all around the bracket, so you can guarantee that the bolt loads are taken up only by the mating surfaces, and not the edges.

The remaining four pictures show where I had to clearance the bracket.  It's not a hard process, but it's time consuming due to the iterative nature of it.

Now, you can continue the shifter install process.

K20 In.

The time has arrived.  I took saturday to myself and did some final prep.  Took the airflow tube, rad hoses, and other crap off the engine.  Checked to make sure I had all the bolts I needed (turns out I was missing a few in the Hasport baggie, but found a couple around the garage).  Lifted the engine off the pallet (technically dragged it off… obviously the crane legs don't fit under the pallet).  Bolted the remaining brand-new, OEM stays to the firewall.  Then went to a halloween party.

Come sunday, some friends were coming over to help.  It's not really a high-manpower job, but the moral support was greatly appreciated.  My girlfriend brought over some pizzas and wings to go with the buckets-o-beer that I had waiting, so we made a little party of it.

At this point, we realized the driver's side bracket needs to come off before the engine goes in.

Now re-attach the Hasport driver's side bracket to the frame rail.  This includes the shim (not sure if I mentioned in a previous post) you need to use to take up ~2.5mm gap between bracket lower tab and frame rail lower surface.

Please enjoy the pics of me grinning like an idiot with my newly-installed engine.

Even though I had been complaining about the Hasport brackets (missing bolts, weld bead on mating surface, shim required but not included, etc), I must say I am extremely impressed with how everything went together.  Lined up the passenger's side mount, raised the engine and installed the driver's side bracket, got underneath and bolted up the rear bracket.  No wrestling anything into place.  It all just fit.

Bottom line is, the easy part's done.  As expensive as this car has been so far, I still have a ways to go before she hits the road under her own power.

Time to sleep off all the beer I drank this weekend before going back to the office.