With triple digit temps daily and sometimes, even throughout the night, summertime in Vegas is the absolute hardest time to get/stay motivated to work on cars. Unfortunately, this usually means a lull in content because there isn’t much “working on cars” going on. As many of you know, after resurrecting his S2000 from the jalopy that it was when he purchased it, Ever money shifted on a downshift into a corner at our last track day. This meant that his number one piston kissed hard on his valves, effectively ruining the engine.
Fortunately, Ever already had a JDM K24 swap he had picked up from HMO that he was originally planning on putting into his MRS. Well, that dream died after he pick up an S2000 and fell out of love with the MRS. Luckily for him, he sold the MRS but kept the swap and all the parts that went along with it.
Take a look at the link below to read all about part one, where we begin prepping the swap for the S2000. We install Drag cartel cams, Type s oil pump, Type S oil pan, and Clockwise motion oil pan baffle.
While summers in Vegas are like residing on the surface of the sun, there are a few neat things that go along with them. One of those neat things is, Monsoon Season! Monsoon Season is great because out of nowhere, suddenly you can find yourself in life threating danger from flash floods or the potential of getting struck by lightning.
Honestly though, I love the Monsoon season and usually you’ll find me chasing the storms just to get a piece of the action they bring. It’s a refreshing break from the monotony of literally walking on the surface of the sun. Plus, since we are in the desert rain is very few a far between.
Monsoons also drastically bring down the temperatures (obviously) and make life slightly more bearable. When life starts to become more bearable, then motivation is usually easier to find.
It’s been a few miserable months out here, but we finally got a good solid week of Monsoon’s coming through Vegas. This meant it was time to work on Ever S2000. Two Thursdays ago, we had record breaking temps nearing 120 degrees and now, this past Thursday due to the Monsoons, we got some decent 90-degree temps.
With the heat in remission, this was an opportune time to kick this project into gear and begin. We are planning on doing an event at Buttonwillow this October, so this whole project needs to be completed and ready before then.
A few weeks back we took my EG over to Pat’s house where it could stay while we brought Ever’s car to my house to work on. There is nothing small about this project and Ever’s car was going to need to take up temporary residence at my house while we did the swap and for that reason my car needed to be relocated to another garage.
We begin part 2 by backing all the cars and motorcycles out of my garage and diagonally positioning the S2000. This will allow us adequate space for all the activities. The S2000 is unique because there really isn’t an “easy way” to pull the engine and trans out together. You either need to remove the trans and then you can pull the engine up and out of the bay. Or you can leave the engine and trans connected and just drop the whole subframe (which, as you’ll see below, is what we chose to do)
The K24 is still on the stand as we are waiting on more parts to arrive. For the RWD K24 to work you’ll need some very specific parts. Among many trivial things, the two major ones are. USDM K24 water pump assembly, and the forward-facing intake manifold. As I draft this article, we now have about everything, except for the intake manifold. As we get deeper into the series, we will cover all these parts specifically.
To make things easy start off by removing the hood. It’s easy enough to remove (just X4 10mm bolts) and the OEM hood is aluminum so it’s exceptionally light.
We also removed the front bumper, so we didn’t have to stretch so far to access the engine bay. This will also prevent any damage from happening to the bumper when you start pulling the engine.
Next, remove the front wheels and begin disassembling some parts on the front suspension. Since we are dropping the whole front subframe you we will need to disconnect the:
- Struts where they connect to the chassis.
- Front sway bar will need to be disconnected and removed.
- Brake calipers will need to be unbolted and hung out of the way.
- Upper control arms need to be unbolted from the chassis.
- ABS sensors and lines will need to be removed from the spindle all along the upper A arm and just hung out of the way.
You can leave all the steering bits connected, just simply unbolt the steering column where the splined slip joint is. The rack, and tie rods will come down with the subframe.
See below how we just disconnected the sway bar from the end link.
In the engine bay you’ll want to disconnect:
- Disconnect the battery
- Drain, remove radiator.
- Remove the intake.
- Disconnect the X2 heater core lines
- Unbolt drive shaft and remove it completely.
- Unbolt the exhaust at the header. You can leave the header connected.
- Unplug the engine wiring harness from the ECU and then the plugs can be pulled through the firewall into the engine bay. The harness comes out with the motor.
- Clutch slave will need to be unbolted and can just hand out of the way.
- Fuel line gets unbolted from fuel rail and can remain hanging. Also fuel return line needs to be disconnected.
- Throttle cable needs to be removed from throttle body but can stay attached to the gas pedal. Just simply move it out of the way.
- Remove the starter power wire from the fuse box on the passenger side engine bay. (Or remove the starter, I feel our way was easier)
- There are two other Engine grounds that need to be removed from the chassis.
- and a few random wire harness clips on the driver’s side of the engine bay.
- Don’t forget to unplug the electric power steering “power wire” from the rack.
Keep in mind there is a difference between the chassis harness and the engine harness. You do not need to disconnect any parts of the chassis harness; it will stay in the engine bay while the engine is removed.
Our plan is to use the furniture dolly and place under the front subframe. Then use the Quick Jacks like a Lift and lower the car on to the furniture dolly, unbolt the subframe and then raise the car up and the whole subframe will just stay on the furniture dolly.
Before you go getting ready to drop the subframe, make sure you have removed the shifter.
The interior simply unclips. disconnect the wires plugged into the trim piece.
Unbolt and then the whole shifter will just pop out. This will make it easier as you are trying to roll the whole swap from under the car. This way the shifter won’t hang up on anything.
At this point, things are going much better than anticipated. We’ve only been at it for about 2 hours and that includes the shuffling around of cars and getting the garage set up.
Once he gets that damn shifter out, we are ready to drop the engine.
Here is what it should look like with all the necessary parts disconnected. Keep in mind the struts are unbolted on the chassis, there is just tension holding them in place, so they don’t look unbolted… but they are.
Below you can also see how we hung the brake caliper out of the way and ensured the brake line isn’t going to get hung up on any of the suspension as the whole thing drops.
Ever is just finalizing everything on the driver’s side.
You can either remove the brake calipers all together or just do like we did and hang them up out of the way. We chose to leave them connected to the brake lines so we didn’t have a mess of brake fluid constantly leaking and so we didn’t have to worry about the brake master running completely dry. If you do leave the calipers connected to lines (like us) once you unbolted the calipers, you’ll need to fish them though a few suspension bits to ensure the brake lines are hanging up on something as the subframe is dropped.
Below Ever is fishing them through and hanging them up out of the way.
Next, we lower the Quick jacks all the way and now all the weight of the car is resting on the two rear wheels and the furniture dolly up front.
There are six bolts that hold the front subframe on. Before lowering the car, we removed the middle one from each side and broke loose the other four, so it was easier to loosen them when the car was all the way down. Below you can see Ever and Rigby removing the two subframe bolts from the passenger side. Not pictured is them removing the X2 subframe bolts from the driver’s side.
We then took a cherry picker (Engine Hoist), connected it to the front bumper bar and raised it up super high. Once high enough the whole subframe just rolls out from under the car.
Somehow the hood managed to not slide off the roof. We only realized that it was on there after we lowered the car back down and thought… WOW, good thing the hood didn’t slide off! Make sure you take your hood and put it somewhere safe.
This looks super hectic, but honestly it was very easy and this method simplified a lot of the removal process.
The car now can get lowered and placed on jack stands. We will need the cherry picker to separate the engine from the subframe.
Below you can see the slave cylinder and fuel line hanging.
Now you can see why we needed ALL the room
This is how the engine bay will look. Do not leave you slave cylinder hanging, tuck it up somewhere so there is no unnecessary strain on the lines.
Now we hook up a chain to the engine and begin to raise the engine away from the subframe.
With the engine now separated from the subframe we placed it back on the furniture dolly so we could roll it into my backyard. As of now we are unsure of its fate. Remember, this is a complete RDOT motor. The trans gets separated and we use it on the K24 swap utilizing a bellhousing adapter.
Another look of the car without the subframe/suspension/motor/trans
Here is the subframe without the engine. We will be reinstalling this so the car can stay mobile and not take up my whole garage. That FK8 never sleeps outside! You’ll also notice that we literally ripped the engine from the rubber mounts instead of unbolting them. This is because the passenger mount was completely torn in half already so we just figured we would just tear the other one in half as we raised the engine off the subframe. There is no need to keep the OEM mounts anyway.
The subframe is now bolted back in the car. Brakes and struts are loosely reinstalled.
For some reason Ever took the pads out of the calipers when he reinstalled the brakes. I told him that it would be best to reinstall the pads. That way if we accidently push the brakes while moving the car around the caliper pistons wont pop all the way out.
Here it is all back together and ready for the front wheels.
Front view of the subframe back on and all suspension/brakes reinstalled. Everything can just be loosely installed because you’ll need to remove it all again to reinstall the engine/trans. I just really needed the car to be movable while we wait for the rest of the swap parts to arrive.
Wheels can go back on.
And now the car can sit like this until we are ready to swap the K24 in.
This whole process went much smoother than either of us had expected. Usually whenever we are working on the his car we start at 8am and finish around 9pm. This time around though, we had everything pulled and the car back on the ground by 1pm which gave us time to get some shake shack and then enjoy the rest of our afternoon.
When we removed the engine/trans we stumbled across some issues that may have led to his money shift while on track. As mentioned above, we did find that one of the engine mounts was totally ripped in half. We also found that the trans mount bussing was toast too. This meant that the engine was possibly moving around so much while on track that it played a roll in the money shift.
Ever’s car has been broken since April and honestly it took a lot of wind out of our sails when it broke. We had just poured the last 4 months into refreshing it and making it track ready, only to have him blow it up on his second session of the day. We had no motivation to move forward and we put this removal off for so long because of that.
Now that we have successfully removed everything, I feel like we are reenergized and ready to finish off this project with quickness. The fact that everything was so easy and went smoothly really helped to wash that bitter taste from our mouths. Let’s be honest too, this car is going to RIP when it’s done. K24 torque, Drag cartel drop in cams, AEM infinity… this thing is going to be so much fun.
As always, thank you all for your continued support and enjoying the tales of our pointless journeys. This post was not so much a how too, but more just a rough guide for anyone that wants to know how you remove a engine/trans from an S2000 the easy way. It is also a great way for us to document this whole process. Because with rising costs of F20/22C motors and more people blowing them up, this is going to become a very common swap (it already kind of is) amongst S2000 enthusiast. As with almost everything that gets posted on here, there will be many parts and each write up will be painfully detailed in the hopes that we can help anyone who wishes to embark on this journey.
If you have any question, comments, complaints, or just want to say hi. Please feel free to reach out to me via email, Billy@Functiontheory.com, Hit me up on Instagram @Functiontheory, or simply comment on the post below and I will get back to you.