Honda K20A engine fitment

[jitsukadave]

Hi,

I don't want to clog or hijack the thread on the Lotus General forum with questions about engine choice, so I thought I'd have a proper thread here.

I'm looking at buying a new or nearly new 111R/Exige towards the winter this year as my everyday car (by everyday, I really mean everyday, not just the ones without snow, hail, rain, etc, etc)...

After some questioning I have heard that the Honda K20A engine fits in fine and dandy.

However, I really do know very little about the engine, apart from it's a 2 litre block with more trickery in the variable valve timing arena.

Doing a quick search around, I thought about getting a fixed cat D series 2 stock Elise with a sound chassis, one of the above engines nad then paying somebody to transplant and make work. I could get a Cat D S2 for about 14k, and an engine & box for around 3-4k. I expect it'll cost about 2-3k to put it all together and re-do the geometry & suspension to re-balance the car.

That's 20k ish for an Elise that has low-end torque like the 135, top end power better than the 111R and a good 6 speed gearbox.

Am I mad in thinking this would be ok?

What things need to be done to the gearbox to make that work the other way around?

Am I missing something important with this outlook?

I know it would be pretty much impossible to sell, but I'm willing to live with that if the car would be as good as I think.

[jig]

Commercially you can get the whole lot done (inc engine supply) for around £10k. See www.blinkmotorsport.com/ or www.brooke-kensington.co.uk/

Interesting point you make though, I've been thinking about it lately (and I don't want to upset anybody or suggest anybody's being ripped off): if you can get the engine/box for around £2k, add on a couple of grand's worth of parts and it takes a week (even at £100/hour, that's £4k) that only comes to £8k...

So... is the 10k price a value price or are there some tooling costs included in there? I like the idea of a Honda Elise, but can't really justify to myself the price...

[randy]

I have a Honda Exige done by Maidstone Sports Cars and its mega, best thing I ever did to the car. Its not cheap but its worth doing properly and MSC and Brooke Kensington will give you a years warrenty. A serious amount of development has gone into getting this kit right and thats why its not cheap. If you do a DIY job, however, Im sure it will cost more in the long run and also bugger the resale value.

[bogie]

this has been done to death before

suggest a search on SELOC www.seloc.org for Honda conversions

www.maidstonesportscars.co.uk in Kent are probably the best place in the South - they must have done 40 or so K20A conversions now, inc supercharged (like mine)

Its £9250 fitted for 220bhp version or £13250 ish for the supercharged version with 300bhp. Thats with a 1 year warranty on the whole conversion/engine

...and if you think you can do it cheaper then its not just 'couple of grands worth' of bits to fit it im afraid...theres lots of expensive bits required that all add up.

You could get a cheap written off S2 for sb £10K, spend £15K on the engine conversion, suspension, wheels, tyres, brakes, bodywork etc and have a car thats much quicker than anything Lotus offer.

Try giving them a call an arranging a demo - they have S1 and S2 demos available -normally aspirated or supercharged

cheers
bogie

[jitsukadave]

The numbers above are just from a very quick scan on the net. the 13.5k Cat D in the classifieds on here was the basis for the car price. An eBay search for a K20A engine & box with all the trimmings pulled up a cashed 'teg DC5 unit with ~25,000km on the clock for 2.5k

That's 16k. Taking an engine out isn't that hard, but the gearbox could be a pain - in anycase this time for labour would be free thanks to the use of a good garge/workshop. Re-fitting would be a pain in the bum, and all the bits and bobs would annoy me, but I thought it would be reasonable to assume I could pay a local garage about 1,000 in labour to fit it and get it to start - even if it wasn't very nice. Another grand to get the extra gubbins fitted to make it drivable - though possibly not leagal. With a couple of grand in there for some bits n bobs. then a couple of hundred to get the car sorted out and balanced uo again.

Then again, now I think about it properly, I guess special diff shafts, some jigger-pokery with the gearbox, radiator plumbing adaptors etc, etc would have to be custom made and would soon rack up the pennies...

10k to get the whole thing done by a decent team, with a warrenty doesn't seem all that bad!

Just had a look at the place in maidstone, not sure about this bit:
"ECU Re-mapped and immobiliser deletion."
fair enough on the re-mapping, but deleting the immobilser? Why not just alter your key-fob?

>> Edited by jitsukadave on Tuesday 14th June 13:58

[bogie]

Glad to see youve got some common sense

YES you could save some money with a local garage...but they would be starting from scratch on the development/troubleshooting/design issues...give them 6 months and your car may be ready...with a few teething probs maybe

The other guys have been working on refining the conversion for 2 years now, so that its a turnkey, productionised conversion that can be a drive in, drive out service, all using low mileage (5k miles etc) engines

Have a look here for Johnboys story of his DIY Honda conversion:

www.elise-r.co.uk/

[bogie]

You have the immobiliser in the Honda ECU...you have a cobra alarm key fob in your Lotus.....unless of course you can get the original keys/transponder to the car the engine came from !

edit to add: if you do a search on www.seloc.org for Honda conversion etc then you will have enough reading material/information to keep you busy for a few days

>> Edited by bogie on Tuesday 14th June 14:11

[Arno]

jitsukadave said:

Then again, now I think about it properly, I guess special diff shafts, some jigger-pokery with the gearbox, radiator plumbing adaptors etc, etc would have to be custom made and would soon rack up the pennies...

Yup..

Lots of little and large things that need changing or custom design.

- Driveshafts
- Engine mounts
- Wiring loom to interface Honda engine wiring to Elise car loom (including sensor outputs to STACK unit, etc.)
- K20A cooling system connection to Elise plumbing
- Exhaust manifold
- Removing immobiliser from engine ECU (Elise external alarm/immob takes care of that) as you can't use the transponder key
- Shift linkage to connect gearbox to Elise
- Modified/new rear lower wishbone (Honda gearbox a little longer, hits wishbone cross-beam)

And a load of other smaller and bigger bits..

Also.. You'd need to get:

- Engine
- Gearbox
- ECU
- Engine wiring loom

All in top-notch condition..

A lot of the engines sold cheaply are 'just' the engine or only engine and gearbox, which is not enough.

The cost of these conversions seems quite steep, but once you start to do a realistic count of the parts and labour cost to develop/build a lot of this stuff it's actually quite reasonable.

Personally I hope to have my S2 Honda-converted early next year or so. Will be getting it with a baffled sump (K20A can suffer from oil starvation) and a lightened flywheel (Elise much lighter than Civic, so should give good effect with little drivability issues)

Bye, Arno.

[jitsukadave]

Arno said:

- Removing immobiliser from engine ECU (Elise external alarm/immob takes care of that) as you can't use the transponder key ... - Modified/new rear lower wishbone (Honda gearbox a little longer, hits wishbone cross-beam)

Those two on their own are enough to stop me in my tracks - I wouldn't want to mess with the suspension on such a car, and sorting ECUs is a hobby I left behind at Uni when I realised I'd never be able to do them properly.

Good luck with your conversion!

After scouring the web and the SELOC forums, I've now decided to get a stock Elise and look at the stock K20A conversion when I feel I can handle the car and want more power, or the engine gets old / HGF

Brookes-Kensigton aren't that far from me, so I think I'll go with them when the time comes.

Edit - unless somebody knows where there are a few for sale?

>> Edited by jitsukadave on Wednesday 15th June 08:45