Saturday, February 17, 2018

She's Alive!

The top priority for this week was to get Bumblestook running on the stock ECU. The whole purpose of this build is to make her street legal again and everything done so far is pointless if she can't run on the stock stuff to pass inspection. Sure enough here she is today idling on the stock ECU with no check engine lights.

Running on stock ECU with no CEL - SJF Performance - 2/17/2018
I don't think I've ever been happier seeing a "stock"-ish S2000 running but this was not an easy task for SJF. For her previous ITB setup, a lot had to be modified to make it work and lots of wires were either cut or soldered to make things work reliably. This meant that once SJF had removed the ITBs, there was still a lot of electrical work needed to bring her back to life. Thankfully I anticipated this and had bought a spare engine harness so he took the needed plugs from there and soldered and heat shrink wrapped everything. I was missing an OEM knock sensor that I had to get overnighted from California and Bumblestook's original 40K miles OEM injectors were re-installed. We also went back to the stock fuel setup to avoid any complications later.

Back to stock manifold and throttle body - 2/17/2018
She fired up right away this morning when we tried for the first time but we did have to sort out some emissions stuff in order to get her fully running without throwing any codes. She's finally alive and this is an important milestone in this project because she's now truly free from her storage prison.

AP2 bumper installed with plates on - 2/17/2018
During the week I had her insured as a street car and got her registered with the DMV. The plates are temporary as her custom plates are coming soon but she's now legal for street driving. We installed the AP2 rear bumper to replace the cut up AP1 bumper she used to have. I think the AP2 bumper looks the best for a dual exit exhaust.

LHT Performance brake master cylinder brace - 2/17/2018
Other things we took care of today was installing the brake master cylinder brace for more consistent brake performance at the track under heavy load. Her 5 year old wiper blades had to go but I wanted to find something OEM Honda to replace it. Rather than getting the 16" and 18" OEM wiper blades, I opted for a pair of 19" wiper blades from a 2011 Honda Accord Coupe which actually look pretty nice for OEM wipers. For reference the part number is 76630-TE0-A01.

2011 Honda Accord Wipers - 2/17/2018
2011 Honda Accord Wipers - 2/17/2018
She retains her AP2 engine but as a bit of a nod to her AP1 roots, I went back to an AP1 black spark plug cover. Her Shine Auto replica ASM rear overfenders were replaced with a set of authentic ASM rear overfenders. The holes didn't exactly line up with the replica so some adjustments were needed but that should work out quite well once painted.

AP1 spark plug cover - 2/17/2018

ASM rear overfenders - 2/17/2018
ASM rear overfenders - 2/17/2018
Lastly Jenna worked on adding a few more strips of sound deadening in the trunk and removed the remaining sticker residue from all her old decals. I installed LED bulbs from js2k for the reverse light and turn signals.

A bit more sound deadening in the trunk - 2/17/2018
We're still not quite at the finish line though. The AC still needs to be completed, we have to figure out how to route the brake ducts and there's some additional work on the interior that needs to get done. Here's a little teaser of what I'm excited about next though. I got an extra set of OEM seat rails and if this works, then I'll finally have seat rails for my Recaro Pole Positions I can truly be happy with. I really wanted Mugen seat rails but sadly they only work with the narrower Recaro SPG seats.

OEM seat rails getting hacked up - 2/17/2018
We got done just as the winter storm rolled in. She might be a bit of an eye sore right now with all the multicolored panels but it's really great seeing her come together like this.

Done for the day - SJF Performance - 2/17/2018