How to CRAM a Honda drivetrain in an AE86..

What is up everybody? Okay, so big project right now is the K-Swapped 86 hatch, which we have a new name for it, thanks to someone in the comments. What is it? AK86. Do you know who commented that? I do not. Okay. I didn't sleep, that's a sick name. AK86, fire name. So, last time you guys saw us, we fit the K-Series in the car, we found out how it fits, it fits pretty damn good. We had to lower the subframe quite a bit, not only to clear the hood, but to allow us to have some more trans-sunnel room. So, today, the big thing is, we are going to fit the trans to the engine, and we're gonna start making room for it in the car. Clutch kit was supposed to show up today, so we could finally fully marry this to the engine, but it's not going to, but it's okay. We have a lot of work ahead of us just to get this thing to fit, so today, that is the goal. If you guys didn't catch it last time, we are using an S2000 AP1 transmission, right? Honda trans, Honda engine, it just seems right. It's an extremely common option for this swap. If I was going to boost it, I'd probably find something a little bit stronger, since these things aren't known to be the strongest, but since we're NA, we're not producing a lot of torque, this thing should be fine and should feel really nice in the car. So, I recently found out that we're gonna have to do some massaging to our trans-sunnel to get this thing to fit. Yeah, I see spoons smirking over there. This has probably the smallest rear-wheel drive trans-sunnel I've ever seen. It honestly looks like a front-wheel drive exhaust tunnel. Doesn't it, see? Yeah, you're shaking your head over there. Look at this thing, right? We lowered the engine down an inch just to give us even more room for the trans, and we still don't got ---- for room. I'm not hyped about it, but it's part of the process, and it's gonna all be worth it. So, we're gonna get this trans mounted up and start figuring out where we need the hammer, because we got a lot to hammer. Get this thing out of here. I've been saying it for three years now, we should get one of those pneumatic ones. I feel like that can get dangerous quick. I don't know, every time we use this, we put it away, and I'm like, we're not gonna use that for a long time, and all of a sudden, it's back in two weeks. It's this. Since putting the engine with the trans on over and over again is gonna be quite a process, I made a quick little template on the firewall to tell me where the trans is gonna sit, so we can kind of make some overall, we'll call it adjustments, to the trans center before it's all one piece. So, let's give it a quick test fit. All right, this is our game plan right now, at least to get a rough idea. So, one thing we already noticed, and we kind of already knew about, was the shifter hole, right? If you look at the mount OEM, the shifter hole is basically lined up with the mount. This one is definitely not. So, we're probably gonna have to make a new shifter hole like four inches back, which is not a big deal. Not uncommon for transmission swaps, and what's nice is the Corolla shifter's already super far forward, especially in my seating position, so it's not the end of the world. And on top of that, it's pretty easy to tell that the bulk of the hammering is going to be because of this right here, right? It's pretty tall right here. We have this internal shift rod thing. I don't know what you did there, Honda, but whatever. The big thing is you can tell this hump is huge, right? So, I already know this is gonna be max persuasion on the firewall. Big hammer. Big T-bone. All right, you sit under and guide the ship, okay? Yep, I'm gonna hit my head on something. Good thing this is the slowest lift in the whole freaking world. The camera's about to get squished. All right, right. Yep, keep going. All right, we're about to hit. All right, we're hitting the shifter. I'm very happy we did it like this instead of putting it on the engine first because we're able to square it up perfectly. So, we have the trans dead center in front, and in the rear, the trans mount holes are all four lines up. So, that means we know it's in the right location. We lowered the car until something hit, and well, we found our first limiting factor. And that is our shifter plate right there. So, this thing actually goes kind of all the way back here. And it's gonna have to sit inside the car just a little bit. You can tell that we have quite a bit of room for it to raise once this is cut out. But it's not too bad, right? We knew this was gonna happen. I had Ant do a couple pilot holes. So, we have a hole here on each corner so we know exactly where it's gonna come through so we can cut a nice, even, small hole. And then when that's done, we can just make a plate that kind of covers all of it using the factory holes. So, it actually doesn't look as bad as I thought it would. It's not super intrusive, and we got really lucky because if it went any farther back, well, we'd be hitting the structural part of it. So, we got pretty lucky. So, let's raise the car, cut out that little section, get the trans up even farther, and see what our next limiting factor is. You gotta do what you gotta do, T-Bone. You know? Sometimes. It's for the better good of... Things. This chassis. It'll be fine. Everything's great. There we go. That's it. That's what we needed to cut. So, we made our rough cut, and I cut it very conservatively because I'd rather cut too little than too much. So, it should be a nice snug fit. Real so. Yeah, I gotta trim it a little bit more. Ooh! I think it's just gonna pop through. Give it a shot. There we go. Oh! No! Oh! The tray is about to fall. Keep going. All right. I gotta trim it just a wee bit more. Arjay? Hello. No, keep doing what you're doing. I can wait. We'll blend it and make it look really pretty after. I'm just trying to make the thing fit right now with minimal cuts. We'll get them to grow up. What do you mean, bro? This is step one, bro. He just likes talking ----. He's cutting the trans tunnel? You're cutting the trans tunnel right now? Yeah. Nice. Just to make what the ----? Crudely cut. Crudely? Yeah, I'm trying to cut. What you do is you cut minimal as possibly, you shove it in, and then you make it look nice and pretty afterwards. You try and make it look all pretty all at once, you end up cutting too much, or it's just not. Is that right? I'm not against the process. You're just using the wrong tools. Snap-on would have been the better choice, huh? Yeah. Milwaukee gets it in, though. Milwaukee gets it in. Bring it down. Yes. Tight fit. Look at it, it's a perfect fit. Okay, hold up. Go slow, go slow, go slow, because we're about to find the next limiting factor. It's going to be right here, that's for sure. I heard a little crunch. A little more? That's it. Is that it? That's all it's got? I think it's on the mount. How's it looking in the engine bay? What? It's not even touching. Bullshit. I swear to God. Maybe. I think we have to go up quite a bit. Okay, so what we're going to do. So. But this hump isn't even the issue. That's not the issue? No, look at that. Bend that, bend that head all the way down there. Oh wow, so where we have to hammer, you won't even see. Or spoon. Spoon would do the same thing. I think. Could be worse. Could be a lot worse. Could be a C double nine in there. Yeah, a CD would never fit in there. Let me see that. One more time. See, this is not too bad, right? We could use the original shifter holes and just kind of make a plate that goes a little bit farther back, but I don't, I was a little worried at first. I mean, I hate when you have to modify the chassis for an engine swap. I just feel, it feels wrong. But not too bad. Not too bad at all. Since the trans mount lines up right now, we know that the back and forward position of the trans is in the perfect location. The only thing we don't know is the front height, right? Exactly. So what we're going to do is we're actually going to put the engine in place and see where it wants to sit. Since we don't have the adapter plate on, we should have like a quarter of an inch of room between the engine and the trans. So we should have room just to slip it straight in and out. Jim's got a pump going. Yeah, let's talk about the pump. Okay, we're good. This might seem a little weird, but it's better than having the trans attached to the engine and trying to slip it in and out a million times. Left hand control right now, this is- A little- This is- This is different? It's different with the left hand. The trans is like in position. I thought the trans would have to come up in the front. Look at it, Steve. Do you see it? It's good. It's almost lined up perfect. So we're not going to have to hammer as much as we thought. The way it was described made it sound like we were going to have to put some work into this thing, which is a little nerve wracking, you know? No one wants to hammer up their chassis, but a couple of taps on the top, typical. Sender. It's typical. So the shifter tube is touching right here, right? So I need to know how much farther up it's still touching. So I made this little feeler gauge thing. Go up in here and we're going to pull it snug. So right here. You put that. You like that? So boom, just where I taped it, right? So this is where it's touching, this section right here. So it doesn't need a lot of room. It just needs a little bit of room. So we're going to do a little bit of persuasion on this one and we're going to arch up this center right here. It doesn't need to be much because it's not touching that much. And then that's it. So I'm going to heat it up a little bit so the paint will get a little bit softer in the inside so we don't kind of ruin that. Yeah. Hopefully that makes like a nice uniform arch, not just a bunch of hammer hits. Cleaning it up. Oh yeah, it's working really well. Yeah, it kind of is. You like that? It's just like a nice, nice, casual arch. See? You're onto something. Be smooth with it. Patient. Finesse. Be smooth with it. Be spoon with it. Bah! We did some hammering and we'll probably have to do some more, but I want to do as little as possible. So we're going to test fit again. See if she fits. Again? Again. One more again. You want that pipe spoon? You know how many purists are crying in the comments right now? Oh my God, at 86, you're beating it up. This thing's been beaten up. This thing's from the streets. This thing. Do you know how much bondo's on that rear quarter? Not much. This thing was a race car before we got it. Holy ****! Steve, stop! Put it up. That is good. Pretty good. I don't know what the hell that was. I don't know either. We were all just talking to each other but Steve just keeps going with it. You want me to go down some more? Damn, I like that. You like that? See, it's a little arch. It's fire. I was scared that this would look like super destroyed on the inside. Not bad. We're going to put the K back in one more time so we can quadruple verify that everything's good. We don't got to do any more hammering. It's a jam. Pump it up. If I have to beat, I'll jump in. We good? Yep. And the mouse? Yep. Trans does have to come up so we might actually have to hammer more. Let's get the jack. We're going to jack up the trans in place which should be right about there. So hopefully we have like another like quarter inch of play. Ready? Check it out. And it's, wow. Okay, yeah, we have plenty of room. You see that? It's very hard to see, but. Is it hard to see? So the trans moved up like another half inch which is perfect. That means we have at least a quarter inch worth of room all the way around the tunnel which is fantastic because you need a little bit of room for wiggle. Things do wiggle. So, cool. The clutch and flyweight aren't showing up until tomorrow because FedEx be sleeping. But all we have to do now is take the adaptive plate right here. JSP. Put it on the engine and then the trans today and boom, we can bolt it in the car officially which is pretty damn cool. All right. What does JSP stand for, Jim? Jim Speck Performance. Ah, man. Then next week, basically everything for this thing shows up because I should have ordered it two weeks ago but we didn't know we were gonna hop into it. Whatever. This thing should go super fast. I mean, realistically, there's not much to this whole swap. It's very simple. This has to be one of the most simple swaps ever. I'm very hyped for it. It should go pretty damn quick. All the time is gonna be in the chassis because, you know, it's an 86 which is awesome but it's still an 80s car. So everything needs to be changed for it to be a decent car. It's kind of like S-chassis. Kind of, yeah. Yeah, you gotta kind of replace everything to make them great. PCs. This looks crazy. All that. This looks nuts, man. While I have you guys, I wanna make a announcement that I'm very excited for. I will be doing Drift Week 6 in the 350Z. Big deal, Steve. It's a big deal. And we're doing it in this? You didn't even tell me this. I didn't. Well, I'm gonna let us know about this. Oh, salute. We just found out. So, doing Drift Week has been an awesome dream of mine for the longest time. Not for content, but for me, right? If you guys don't know what Drift Week is, it's basically two weeks of nonstop drifting. It's like usually five to eight different tracks. You drive at one, one or two days, you drive to the next and repeat. Just two weeks of seat time, just everything. When I bought this car, Drift Week was in mind because Zs and Corvettes kind of are the Drift Week car because they're just so reliable as drift cars. VQs and LSs. And they're tanks. So I'm excited because this year, or just the last couple years, I just haven't gotten the seat time that I wanted. I drove a lot more this year, but it's been more just like bigger events than just a lot of seat time in general. So it will be really good for me. A lot of awesome people on the trip. A lot of my good friends are already going and it's gonna be sick. And look at you. You're feeling the energy already. Yeah, I feel it. It smells really good in here. This is a nice car. It is a really nice car. So, a couple of the events will actually be open to the public. So if you wanna come hang, just maybe catch a ride along if we're allowed to and just hang out with the guys. I'll post them on my Instagram, so stay tuned for that. But I'm super pumped for it. This has been like a dream come true forever. It's gonna be hard to film for content for that week, but I'm gonna make it work. It's just something, it's been such a dream. So I think it's like every drifter's dream to go on Drift Week. I don't know. You're not a drifter, but it sounds cool, right? It's been my dream since a young kid in drifting. Yeah, so whatever. Putting it out there, but I'm very excited for it. So basically all of November, I'll be gone. You gonna miss me? When? You gonna miss me? Where you going? You're leaving me again? Drift Week. What are you going? November, I think 7th to the 20-something. In Scotland? No. Texas? That's it. For how long? Two days? Two weeks. Two weeks? Yeah. No, you're not. Yeah. What? Excited. That is dope. It'll be a good time. Yeah. We still have to book our SEMA trip, too. It's like. Yeah, I know. And. ****. All right, so there's been something in the comments that I keep forgetting to talk about. And today we're gonna talk about it before I forget again. And that is Spoon's CRX. All right, Spoon. Show us your 1989 CRX. It's an 89 CRX HF. Basic K-series. Daily driver. Hatchback. Can you consider a CRX hatchback? I don't know. Is it? No, a CRX is like. It's a hatchback. It's a CRX. A category of CRX. All right, so you guys have seen this in the background a lot. We never really talked about it. And I like never even thought about it. So this is Spoon's, like you said, 1989 Honda CRX. It is absolutely beautiful. I'd say you restored the car. Saying restored is, come on, yeah. I got a quick paint job and I did sound dead in the whole car. So I guess when you say restore, people think like to OEM. OEM or better, yeah. OEM better, but I would say this is better, right? So is this car originally red? It is originally red, but what people don't know, before 90, it was a different red. It was more like orangey red. Really? I forgot the name of it. Interesting. After 90 or 91, it was Milano red. Okay. So I ended up going Milano red. Love that. It's the best. It's such a good red. Yeah. All right, so a fresh paint job on the outside. It's all OEM era, right? Nothing aftermarket on the era. Okay. Front lip. Okay, hold on. What's the wheels? What's the deal with that? The blue and the red. Just. It's risky. It's risky, but it works. My buddy had them laying around, and he's like, yo, just rock them. So I have 949 ULEs that I have to get powder coated for it, but for now, I'm just rocking these. Bring them down. We'll get them powdered. It's the Boricua flavored one right there. That's the red with the blue. At first, I thought it was too much, but it works. I don't know. It works. So hold on, guys. Check this thing out. This car is absolutely beautiful. It's hard to just share everything about it. There we go. Some chains on the floor. Oh. The Starlight with the, oh, that's a good one. That's awesome. I can't take full credit for it. It was inspired by Donnie after he did the minivan. No way, really? Yup. Was it a pain in the ass? No. It's tedious. It was tedious. I mean, a little. I'm gonna get medicated and run a few hours. It's what DJ did, too. Steve, you wanna do this to the Cedric bad, don't you? Yeah, I'm trying to do that. Spoon is on it. We already located the kit that we wanna do. I think we're gonna do like a twinkling vibe, though, This interior, dude, is super, super clean. I got really lucky. The car I got was, it was originally K-swapped, so I got the shell K-ready with mounts and most of the parts to K-swap it. The car was previously pretty much a race car. Like, they literally had a built 2420 in it. This exact shell? Yeah, and they would take it out, beat on it, and park it. Love that. But they never touched anything from the door's back. So I was the first one to take these door panels off. Still had the plastic underneath it. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, so I still had all the interior. I was missing a few little pieces here and there, but I had to rewire the car and redo the whole K-swap. I mean, it looks beautiful. I mean, it looks like you even have the rear parcel tray, which I can imagine is kind of rare. Okay, I see we got a Sparco steering wheel. What is this crazy shift box? It feels crazy. That's it? K-tuned with the street cables. The race cables suck. So the trick with the billet boxes is either you use OEM cables or K-tuned street cables. It feels way better. Is that what's in here right now? Yeah, those are the K-tuned street cables. How's it feel, John? Dude, if... What are you... It feels amazing. They got the Honda stuff figured out, bro. Like, crazy. Aside from the shifter, the double din I did was all custom, and it's got an Integra cluster. Everything else is stock. Wow, that looks pretty proper in there. It looks right at home. It does. This car is... Everything works on the cluster. I heard you added like 40 pounds of sound deadening to this thing. 40 pounds? I know. It was worth it. Like, if you have a 90s car, I'll let you take the car for a day and you'll come back ready to sound dead an entire car. Yeah, it just makes it that much nicer. It makes it so much nicer. This car is mainly a cruiser. Like, I love driving it. I drive it every day. I've been driving it since last March. You daily drove this in the winter, didn't you? Yeah. Psychopath. No wipers. Raynex, right? Raynex, all right. So let's see... Let's see the magic under the hood. Pop it open, pop it! Here we go. K-Swap. I mean, if you're a true OG, you would have noticed the last time this car was on the channel, it had a rod knock. It did. When you dropped the 86 off. Yeah. To get the bay done. Yeah, yeah. So before, it had a K24 in it. It was just a A2, right? Nope, K28-2. Oh, it did. Well, originally put a 24 in it. Took it out when I redid the bay because with a 24, it can't fit a hood. No. Not at all. No. Even with the 20 giant hood spacers, I had to make a giant dent in the hood for the intake manifold. So the K24 is just way too tall for the CX. They either run no hood or they cut the hood for the valve cover and you have the valve cover sticking out the hood. I don't want that. So this is a K20 Z3, which is the best, I'd say, K20 out of the box, right? Yes. It's got better cams. Can't rev them as high because of the oil pump, but it runs smooth. But you could put a Type S oil pump in it Yeah, you can do the oil pump conversion, but... But it's smooth. Yeah, it's really smooth. Like this car is smooth. Smooth. Before you guys ask, it's a Skunk 2 Ultra Street manifold with just the badge shaved off. Everybody asks me what manifold that is. Like it's something crazy. It's literally a Skunk 2. I just shaved the badge off. Oh, fair enough. Yeah. They got to pay to have the badge on Spoon's car. No, this thing is perfect. It's just a simple case swap. It works. They don't need much more. So what trans do you use then? It is a A2 with a Z3 diff. Perfect. I wish I had a Z3 trans because it's got a 4.7 final. So it's a lot funner to drive. Okay. But, Megas can't be choosers. It's a simple, not simple car. So everything's nice. Casual swap. Everything's painted fresh. It's just a good car. I know you got backed into not very long ago, which... Yeah, I was at the barber shop and somebody backed into me. I didn't let it get to me. It is what it is. I daily drive the car. You know a guy. I know a guy. The guy is me. But it is a beautiful car. We got to tune this soon. I think we're going to put out a link and tune it because right now it's on a Hondata that's not really tuned up for it. It's tuned for the A2. Like I said, the Z3, the cams are different, so... Yeah, Spoon just put the Z3 in it. No, I did the typical daily driver. Swap the motor and not retune it. It runs good enough. Just keep driving. So we're going to put on a link and tune it soon. So, what's up? Is that this natural or is that the one they... That's natural T-bar. I just shaved off the original hood latch. Oh, okay. Oh, you shaved the hood latch. That's pretty cool. Yeah, exactly. So, I don't really know what else to say about it. It's just a nice ass car. It's a good car. So if you guys want to know anything about it, let me know. We'll probably actually do a video tuning this soon because I really want to do some all motor Honda tuning. And... Let's get on a link. And link now has a key series plug and play. It's too easy. Unlike... Too easy. Unlike the K-Pro, it's a full standalone. It's actually a standalone. Yeah, K-Pros are good, but you're still piggybacking off the OEM ECU. Oh, they have their Gremlins. Yeah, I've had Gremlins. I've had injector drivers fail. Spoon with the link at it. I like it. So, there she is. His 1989 Sierra X. What a car. We got to ask though. Any plans for it? No. You wouldn't want to... Can you turbo it with this in there? Is there enough room to turbo it? Yeah. I would do like a nice water to air setup if I did. Sunlight. Supercharge? The car's fun. Supercharge? We can. Who got a supercharger for me? Who got a supercharger for Spoon? Oh, I wanted a supercharger just for the noise. I've never done a supercharger. Someone bang our line. Someone's got a boy. Somebody's got a boy. One's got to fall off a truck somewhere. Yeah. You might also notice that we have the black S15 apart. So, it's really crazy. This fitting right here that presses into the block for coolant, it popped out, which is not good. And it is almost impossible to get to with the intake on. And we took the intake off to fix it. And I realized I want to change a bunch of stuff up on here. So, yeah, let's use it how it goes, right? Yeah. The black S15 is just such a good car. So good. And I haven't had it because of, I haven't been driving it because of literally that issue. We just haven't had time for it. And I let DJ hold the wheels down for a while, but we got the wheels back. And now hopefully we can get this thing back on the road because it's a good car. I want to turn the boost up on this thing. We got to make, I want to put it on ethanol before the season's over. Yeah, let's put this thing on ethanol. What's the number, boys? 500? Should we put 500 through it? Five. Yeah, should we put 500? It's got like four right now? It's got like four. We could put it to five. We could, I don't want to put it on kill. You nervous? I'm not nervous. It ain't my engine. No. 600. 600, yeah. Some bitch ain't my engine. That'll be good. We'll be working on this. Ship this thing back down to Florida. Florida car. Drive it all the way to Florida. You want to? I will. It's a great car. It is a great car. A lot of rock chips on the way from Florida for this. A little basket. My goal is also to get rid of the purple. I see. I see the vision. I hate it. If I saw another person's build, I'd be like, yeah, it's nice. It looks cool. But as my car, I hate. I don't know what it is. I hate purple accents. I get it. Right? It's just not me. It's not me. I just want to give a quick cage update before we leave for today, just because Spoon's been chugging along on this thing and working his ass off. And everything is fully welded in besides the door bars. The passenger door bar. The passenger. The JDM driver's side. The USDM. You guys know what I'm saying. This side. These door bars are welded in. They look awesome. Big, beautiful welds. They're beautiful. And it just, it feels good, dude. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Oh yes. It's gleaming. It looks absolutely beautiful. I love the door bars that Spoon made up for this cage. It's a really, really nice touch. It feels like, now seeing everything welded in, it just feels real now, if that makes sense. It's in. It is. It is so good. The chassis is just, it's getting gangster. I can't, dude, I can't imagine this in fresh paint. Fresh paint with the painted roll cage. Can you imagine that? Yeah, I can see it. You can see it? No, I've been pushing for it. Dude, this car has been unpainted, you know, like unpainted for ever. I don't know if I can mentally handle the day we pull this thing out of the booth. Everyone's gonna lose their mind because we're gonna drift it, but I'm okay with it. I mean, it's not like you just leave it like this just to drift it. We're doing a quick paint job for that, I'm gonna shut up, but, we'll take a bunch of pictures out the booth, put them on ice, and then drive and destroy the car, repeat, you guys know the deal. I'm gonna try not to destroy it, but it's drifting. Shit happens. Shit happens when you party. That's it. We were gonna **** around, and we are definitely gonna find out, but I'm ready for it, so, cool. Next video, we'll have more 86 parts, and we'll keep chugging along. I apologize that I wasn't able to get more quicker, because I like making, you guys know me, I like to get at least a decent amount of progress done per video, but I finally saw Spoon CRX. If you wanna hear more about Spoon, we actually did a podcast, two podcasts ago, that Spoon basically told us a quick story of himself and kinda his history of cars and where he came from, and it's actually pretty cool, and I really love it. So, if you guys wanna check it out, go to the Patreon, but for now, I'm gonna go bug Donnie, clean up, go home and edit, you guys know the deal. So, like, comment, subscribe. Stay tuned for more content, and DJ, end it, end it. Oh, it's so nice. See you in the next one.