5thgen

About a year ago I was contacted about looking over a local S2000. The owner had initially taken it to a shop to fix some issues, both mechanical and tuning. I don't know if the shop overlooked some issues, or just didn't care, because there were a few obvious issues with the car.

Maybe the most noticeable problem was vibration. At a certain rpm you could hear and feel it through the car. The downpipe was too close to the frame and was rubbing at times. While digging into that issue I find that the turbo itself is loose. Only one of the 4 bolts was somewhat snug. All other bolts were visibly loose. The downpipe and the intercooler pipe were the only things keeping the turbo from shaking all the time. So no big issues...Just need to repair/remake a downpipe, and replace some hardware.


The car is dropped off at my house a couple weeks later. The car was bought with this turbo setup already on it. It is a poorly done v-mount setup using a horribly made log manifold. Here is the car when it was dropped off.




[img]http://hybridfunction.net/pics/s2ki/2005NFR/(100006).jpg




Overall it was a little messy. The area around the turbo looked a little thrown together. The fusebox was loose, the water lines weren't moved out of the way properly. The top mount intercooler, and the radiator/condenser were held in with metal straps. Also there was no ducting or block of plates around any of the heat exchangers. We decide to go with a conventional intercooler setup, and return the radiator to its original location.

[img]http://hybridfunction.net/pics/s2ki/2005NFR/(100007).jpg

[img]http://hybridfunction.net/pics/s2ki/2005NFR/(100008).jpg

[img]http://hybridfunction.net/pics/s2ki/2005NFR/(100009).jpg



After removing the intercooler, we found a piece of wood...I can't remember if there was a reason it was there, or if was just some random engine bay wood.

[img]http://hybridfunction.net/pics/s2ki/2005NFR/(100010).jpg

[img]http://hybridfunction.net/pics/s2ki/2005NFR/(100011).jpg



And here are a couple views of the slanted oem radiator and condenser. And yeah, someone cut the brace that connected the upper and lower core supports.

[img]http://hybridfunction.net/pics/s2ki/2005NFR/(100012).jpg

[img]http://hybridfunction.net/pics/s2ki/2005NFR/(100013).jpg

5thgen

Starting to clean things up.

To give a little idea of the previous shop's quality, here is the boost control solenoid installed. It may not be the worst I've seen, but I know I would never pay for it. Just a single screw ran into the passenger firewall.







A couple pics with the turbo and manifold removed.







Moved the lines and hoses to be parallel to the firewall. The hoses are positioned to rest in this position, to avoid any kinks or strain. Also made a bracket to mount the heater valve to the firewall. This mount will also secure the top section of a heat shield.









This EPS module / fusebox bracket moves the EPS aft to fit the fusebox in front of it.







Here is the mockup of the heat shield. The base is a little bulky at the moment, As I'm not sure if I want to attach anything else to it yet.

Also the eps module and the fusebox are bolted in place.

Memo6453

Im glad you are able to clean this bad boy up...in for final product.

KaNgArOo

nice work! cant wait to see the finished product

herecomesboost

Awesome start!

5thgen

My brother had an old precision 600 intercooler sitting around, so we went ahead and used it. It was made when precision was using Garrett parts, so it has a Garrett core. The front of the frame rails were cut for clearance, and the mounts ended up being really simple.












The size is just about perfect on an AP2 bumper.

baZurk

Great work on the eps mount and heat shield!

5thgen

Some pics of the charge piping.

Chance S2K

Making some really good progress, looks like it's getting cleaned up nicely.

Will be very neat to see this completed.

5thgen

Here is the downpipe remade. The old one changed size a few times....I don't know why just the middle section is 3 inch. I just remade it all 3", but tapered it to the stock cat flange.

This setup was temporary until time/funds allow for an upgrade later.




This is the engine bay after the refresh.






That pretty much summed up the car at the time. During tuning the stock clutch started slipping bad at 12psi in 3rd gear. I imagine it was around 320-350 whp. Vtec engagement had to be kept around 5500-6000, anything lower would cause the car to stumble bad. In general tubular log manifolds are the worst....I'd consider this the log manifold of log manifolds. All the runners were blocking flow from out of the head, probably 2 tenths of an inch in some places. No inside shielding and incredibly poor fitment.

But all that will be fixed down the road, which has been the past month or so.