Thank you for taking time to list that out. Yes, i took away the takeaway by about the time i got to item 5 of the first list. Lots of 4, 5, and $700 "nickels and dimes".
But, The Frog is immortal, so that's how it shall be. Looks like a 2ZZ is probably much cheaper as a replacement, but I like the dyno on the 2AR. 2GR is more beastly, but I hesitate to cut frame rails or make the necessary hole in the firewall for access. Not so much about the hole itself, just dont want to have to work on it from there.
A25A looks like a bit much, technically and otherwise. But by the time ye olde 1ZZ is fading, maybe the 2AR goodies will be down a bit.
A single weekend, huh? So i should budget about a month, then.
I forgot to answer the bit about the A25A. That motor is a wonderful motor and I'd love to swap one in a spyder but the availability isn't there yet.
of course they’re retail prices, and they total over $10,000!
Awesome, I know there's a ton of K20/K24 love around the spyder community so i wasn't comfortable putting a price together for it, getting it wrong and attracting hate.
I'm sure some have done it cheaper but adding all the parts relevant to the swap except for the A/C stuff since the above stuff did not have A/C considerations it adds up to $7515. Of course, that includes paying $3000 for the engine and trans. when doing it at a shop like that you'll pay top dollar and there's likely some money to be saved there but i don't know how much. Looking around it looks like the pick & pull yards have a few RSX cars that claim to have a 6 speed manual transmission in them so best case you can probably get the combo for $500 plus another $40 for the ECU from the same car. That brings the bottom dollar of the swap in a comparable format to the others above to $5050.
I can't find a dyno from MWR that shows what they get from the combo. the closest i can find is the k24 from the tsx. it makes much less power than the RSX in factory form but i don't know if that power difference carries once swapped with all the same external goodies. I suspect they are similar.
That shows 8whp more than the 2AR and 10lb*ft less torque peak. That difference is pretty small and which one someone will prefer really comes down to personal preference. The Honda needs more revs to get there but i bet it sounds great while doing it.
All the K series swap stuff seems mighty fabled. Even the documentation seems to be a joke, I've seen a couple completed to an extent.
Your price estimation for the 2zzge swap seems very liberal. I'm sure ten years ago you could find a decent 2zz+c60 for less than $2k. Even Ebay lists a couple as I type this. With all the horror stories I've read over the years about reliability of JDM engines and seeing personally how people treat their cars in USA, I'd say a rebuild plus new cylinder head is minimum requirement. I heard multiple times that folks in Japan won't change their oil because they have to swap a new engine after 60k miles anyway. Whatever keeps the grease in the stance kid's hair, I always say.
All the K series swap stuff seems mighty fabled. Even the documentation seems to be a joke, I've seen a couple completed to an extent.
Your price estimation for the 2zzge swap seems very liberal. I'm sure ten years ago you could find a decent 2zz+c60 for less than $2k. Even Ebay lists a couple as I type this. With all the horror stories I've read over the years about reliability of JDM engines and seeing personally how people treat their cars in USA, I'd say a rebuild plus new cylinder head is minimum requirement. I heard multiple times that folks in Japan won't change their oil because they have to swap a new engine after 60k miles anyway. Whatever keeps the grease in the stance kid's hair, I always say.
I did not include the C60 in my pricing, is it required for the 2ZZ swap? I just priced the 2ZZ by looking at the pick & pull inventory, car-parts.com inventory (full service junkyards) and ebay. Generally, motors that are approaching 20yrs old likely need a rebuild but other than that i don't know what the general state of affairs is with these. If what you're saying is correct then the 2AR swap is pretty much comparable in price to the 2ZZ swap and possibly even a better deal.
As for the 2AR-FE documentation, that's one of the constant complaints i got about the 2GR stuff so it was one of the big requirements if i was going to invest in the 2AR developments. I'm quite happy with the stuff that is out there but there's even better documentation on the way in the future also. I am also really thinking about circling back and adding 2GR documentation in the same format.
David’s thread has the dyno from Monkeywrench k20 swap. -- attachment is not available --
Awesome, thanks for finding that. I'm surprised at how little power it gains in the swap. I'm used to most motors really being choked from the factory so when you swap them they really open up but i guess this was already making 105hp/L in the factory application so going up to 110hp/L is still a big jump.
Just to complete the picture - here’s a 2GR swap dyno sheet, with stock manifolds and three cats. (This was before lifting redline to 7200 rpm with Gouky’s cracked ECU) . Torque - it does a body good! This plot also shows why I was “disappointed” test driving the K20 swap.
I might be reading it rong, but the 2AR generates more torque at 3,000 RPM than the K20 makes at its peak. Just gets better until about the redline. (I cannot see the graphs too well, maybe one is metric...)
Torque is good, right? 😁
If so, the 2AR is ideal for this car, by many metrics, until price is completely removed from the equation, in which case you should just buy an Evora.
"Torque" is honestly meaningless mathematically but the way car guys usually talk about it they mean torque at low RPM which results in a flatter horsepower curve. What actually matters is how much horsepower you can put to the ground and that is a combination of transmission gearing and the motor's horsepower curve. when you combine the two you can get a graph that shows you the maximum power based in the ideal gear for any given speed.
I went ahead and spent way too much time calculating that exact graph for the K20 with the RBC3 transmission which i think is what monkeywrench racing used against the 2ar with the EB60. and here it is: [img] [/img]
The "torque" you speak of is what results in a 40hp advantage to the 2AR all the way to 29mph then the difference shrinks until 31mph where the K20 accelerates faster until 36mph. They cross again but not meaningfully at 55mph and then the 2AR maintains a 10-20hp lead depending on the exact speed. That extra 40hp feels enormous from a dead stop. Also i find it funny that both transmissions top out 2nd gear at 57mph so a 0-60 takes 2 shifts instead of one. That has to do with the Spyder's rear tires being so small (i used 880rev/mile for my calculations).
Just to complete the picture - here’s a 2GR swap dyno sheet, with stock manifolds and three cats. (This was before lifting redline to 7200 rpm with Gouky’s cracked ECU) . Torque - it does a body good! This plot also shows why I was “disappointed” test driving the K20 swap.
Yeah, the 2GR really is a wall o' torque. I've driven a 2GR Spyder and yeah it certainly is a blast and if it fit in there better i would have made the kit around that but there's no way i could have kept the costs in check by the time we start talking about a custom crossmember. You can see just that with DDPR's kit, it's a nice kit and I'm sure it works well but that's a large complicated weldment and understandably comes with a large complicated price.
Also, have you tried my new tune with the custom MAF pipe? it hits even harder in the mid range. ?format=1500w
"Torque" is honestly meaningless mathematically but the way car guys usually talk about it they mean torque at low RPM which results in a flatter horsepower curve. What actually matters is how much horsepower you can put to the ground and that is a combination of transmission gearing and the motor's horsepower curve. when you combine the two you can get a graph that shows you the maximum power based in the ideal gear for any given speed.
...
The "torque" you speak of is what results in a 40hp advantage to the 2AR all the way to 29mph then the difference shrinks until 31mph where the K20 accelerates faster until 36mph. They cross again but not meaningfully at 55mph and then the 2AR maintains a 10-20hp lead depending on the exact speed. That extra 40hp feels enormous from a dead stop. Also i find it funny that both transmissions top out 2nd gear at 57mph so a 0-60 takes 2 shifts instead of one. That has to do with the Spyder's rear tires being so small (i used 880rev/mile for my calculations).
Well you can't measure HP directly, it is a calculated metric value based on the rate of performing work, but you can measure Torque/Force directly which are directly related to work - Force x Distance or Torque x Rotational angle.
A flat torque curve creates a nice, very linear positively sloped, increasing HP output across the increasing RPM range which is ideal in most situations.
HP, Watts, Joules/second are all the energy transfer metrics that tie the branches of engineering together, so that is why they are important.
I knew better to enter the torque vs horsepower argument on a car forum yet i still did it. I apologize for that, it's never worth the argument.
Anyways, while I had the calculator made and up I threw in the 2GR with both transmission options on there for comparison.
There's obviously no comparison between the 2GR and all the other swaps available the 2GR is way up there and everything else is down in the same area as the 2AR or slightly higher and a bunch way lower.
Marc - are you trying to tempt me?! “...have you tried my new tune with the custom MAF pipe? it hits even harder in the mid range.”
Would I see advertised results with my stock 2GR manifolds and cats? Can you feel an extra 25 ft lbs in your butt, or is that not enough to notice? More torque is always intriguing!
I make Amateur Armrests - see the Commercial Forum. I also have SMT repair seals available.
Marc - are you trying to tempt me?! “...have you tried my new tune with the custom MAF pipe? it hits even harder in the mid range.”
Would I see advertised results with my stock 2GR manifolds and cats? Can you feel an extra 25 ft lbs in your butt, or is that not enough to notice? More torque is always intriguing!
The difference between my old tune and the new tune is way more noticeable than the numbers would suggest. because of the MAF pipe that i can count on the fuel control is really tightened up and the tip-in fuel is appropriate and crisp for snappy response.
I've said it many times before, the stock manifolds are really just barely a flow impediment at all. the headers i make for the 2GR were designed to make the whole thing fit in the MKII application because the stock manifolds do not fit. the big flow restriction is in the y-pipe. I do think you'll come up shy of the 290 a bit but not by much as long as your y-pipe is clean.
That tune came out because of the 2AR-FE. i wanted to make that a complete swap so i made a MAF pipe that i could calibrate properly and it made such a difference there that i implemented it back on the 2GR-FE and it made an even bigger difference there (expected due to the larger displacement)
OK, so what about piece-mealing this over time? For example, say I do a MAF mod (your MAF pipe, better injectors, stronger fuel pump) in the 1ZZ I have now. It has 80K miles on the engine and trans, and for now, I think a ~25% HP bump would tide me over for a while. Purely guessing here: a Cap2.0/Marc hybrid MAF mod would give me about 30 to 40 HP to keep me happier for several thousand miles until I can start cobbling together parts for the next stage. I realize that at a certain point you have to bite the bullet, buy the swap engine and do the other 20 things to get it rolling. I suspect there are not that many practical stages in between.
Is the MAF pre-upgrade something that would carry over? Then, from there, is there another stage between the MAF tweak and the full engine swap? Is the EB60 trans swap worthwhile to make while still using the 1ZZ? It is at least twice the work, I get that, and maybe that alone is not worth the trouble (right, never mind, LOL, but I will leave it here anyway for completeness). However, if the trans swap is only one weekend, I could live with that kind of duplicated effort and a few wasted parts in exchange for being able to ease into the swap over time. It would still be an upgrade to the stock 5-speed MT, but not if it also involved several hundred dollars in parts to adapt it specifically to the 1ZZ and which cannot be used at the 2AR stage.
So I know there would be some duplication of effort to upgrade in stages. A few hours here and there, over the course of a year or two is not a big deal to me since some of the project is about the fun of learning without the pressure of a full swap all at once. If the MAF mod is practicable and mostly portable to the final stage, I think that would be a good place to start. But the transmission question -- and I don't know the answer because of inexperience -- highlights the extra work and wasted parts considerations. The gist is: could a person upgrade to 2AR from 1ZZ in stages, how many stages could one do without spending enormous amounts (subjective) of duplicated effort or excessively wasting parts and resources, and what would a "good" plan look like, just briefly?
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