Type R Club of America

2001 GS-R: Engine rebuild, other refreshments

Intro
Me and my buddy took out the engine yesterday, and mounted it on a stand. I've been wanting to do this for a while, finally getting to it. It's my first time building an engine, so I may have had resistance because I will be learning a lot with this project. I'm really excited and I love learning more about cars. Car has about 120,000 miles. Thanks to aklackner for the engine crane.

Why
The reason for this rebuild is that the engine consumes over a quart of oil every 500 miles. This is probably a result of one time the engine overheated during my ownership due to a coolant leak from the radiator. But also I just wanted a good reason to rebuild a b18.

Goals
The goal is to make it street reliable but also sporty. I am 100% committed to getting new Honda oem parts whenever available. I want to make this engine as nice as possible, and really smooth. I am yet to decide on many things such as pistons, rods, cams, springs, etc. Like I said I want it to be street reliable, and I also want it to be able to pass CA smog. So I could keep it mostly stock gs-r in that regard. But I might consider putting in higher compression ITR pistons, and possibly mild Toda A2 cams (or similar). If I did some different things like that, I guess I would have to get it tuned, which may affect the ability to pass CA smog.

Plan
I plan to fully disassemble the engine. I want to get the block honed/bored and anything else that can make it in better shape. Also want to do work on the cylinder head such as valve job. Keep in mind this is my first time, so I don't know all of my options, or necessarily do I know exactly what I'm talking about sometimes. I want to get the block cleaned, I think the machine shops have those baths where they drop in the block and it cleans it really well. I want do the cool stuff like that.

The car currently has an Exedy stage 1 clutch, with 10lb Jun flywheel and ARP bolts, all with 500 miles on it. Gonna keep those, it is really a great combination and has excellent drivability. Definitely going to get ARP head studs for the head.

Questions
Things I also am wondering about: should I get the crank polished/balanced or leave as is? Should I get rods and pistons blueprinted/balanced? Anything else to get balanced?

I'm open to suggestions on anything during the project, including anything related to what I said above. I hope that I will get feedback, and answers to questions in this thread. The main reason why I'm making this thread is to get advice and knowledge from people here that have a lot more expertise, knowledge, and experience than I do.

Misc.
I'm also planning to get bumpers, mirrors, and trunk resprayed. I may get undercarriage and engine bay cleaned with dry ice while engine is out.

The main goal is for me to learn how to build an engine. If it goes well, then after this I am going to build a Toda race engine with all Toda parts including ITB's.

Photos
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Will be watching to see your updates especially on your piston choices and if you go higher compression and if you can pass smog with a stock OBD2b GSR ECU.

(I have a spare 2000 GSR ECU as a spare if I ever have to get mine inspected/smogged...)

aw614 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 10:37 pm Will be watching to see your updates especially on your piston choices and if you go higher compression and if you can pass smog with a stock OBD2b GSR ECU.

(I have a spare 2000 GSR ECU as a spare if I ever have to get mine inspected/smogged...)

Ok awesome! Yep let's see what I decide.

Excited to see updates on this!

AndyD wrote: ↑Tue Mar 07, 2023 10:36 am Excited to see updates on this!

Yes sir!

before you decide to rebuild the complete engine it might be a good idea to assess a few things. i have seen these short blocks last upwards of 300000 miles without issues.

if the cylinder walls are in excellent condition with all crosshatching still visible then the short block will still last a very long time most likely.

even if you decide you want to rebuild the bottom end then most likely you can get away with a simple ring change and thats it. no machine work, no replacing bearings, much less downtime. this is how the HONDA dealership local to me does rerings. they just pull the pistons while everything is still in the car and install new rings and throw it back together. the quality of oem honda machine work is so high that its hard to match so you can potentially take away a lot of the reliability factor by having stuff remachined to a lesser quality unknowingly.



can you post some good close up well lit pics of each individual port from the cylinder head? and pics of the combustion chambers if you have already removed the cylinder head?

if you change pistons, rods, rod bearings then it would be a good idea to have the rotating assembly rebalanced because its currently balanced for use with all the original parts. the new parts will not have the exact same weights as the current parts so the balance will be slightly off for sure.

if you decide to completely rebuild and overbore then please i cannot stress enough to you how imperative it is to use a high quality machine shop. this will be the most important decision in the rebuilding process...

i have rarely had to have honda cranks micropolished

doing your first oem rebuild then going to a race engine where you will need to check p2v, v2v, p2h clearances very precisely and degree cams and such can get very expensive very fast if you make a single mistake....

DC231 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 08, 2023 3:02 pm before you decide to rebuild the complete engine it might be a good idea to assess a few things. i have seen these short blocks last upwards of 300000 miles without issues......

Thank you very much for your response.

Great points about the block and bottom end. I might very well just replace the rings, let's see what the best options are as I get more into the bottom end. I might want to replace the bearings just for the experience tbh. I'll be posting some pics right after this post that I took today. Rebalancing the rotating assembly sounds kind of cool to me. Yes I agree about finding the right machine shop. I will definitely find the right one before getting any machine work done.

Yea I may or may not be ready to do the Toda engine right after this, but at least I am saying that that is a goal of mine.

I removed the cylinder head today! This project is very exciting to me because it's the first time I am actually doing this type of engine out work, I've only just seen pictures online and in books for years of other people doing it.

If anyone has any comments on what these pics show of the condition of the engine please share. My first glance (untrained eye) is that it seems pretty decent. Like said above, maybe the oil consumption issue is simply because of the valve seals leaking like someone said in this thread or somewhere else (I can't find the post, maybe I dreamed it). I love driving this car, and like to take it into VTEC a lot. Maybe the previous owner didn't do that.

I can take more specific pictures next time if someone would like to see something that better indicates what we want to know.

Congrats on the first rebuild-it looks like you're really enjoying the process.

-Don't be surprised if the machine shop you choose is far away and you need to ship the block/head. Many machine shops have been closing in the past decade. It's better to find a goo shop than a close shop at this point.

-I believe if you want to pass CA smog legally everything affecting the emissions will need to be CARB compliant. That means the cams, the ECU, intake, etc. You may decide to simply refresh his engine, add a few carb legal parts (cams, intake, etc) and perhaps modify the gearing as well.

-It's unlikely the crankshaft will require any work and I agree that a re-ring may be all that's necessary. If you want to replace the bearings with OE honda make sure to research how they are matched to the block with the letter code. See here: https://my.prostreetonline.com/2014/12/ ... -bearings/

Enjoy!

SWFL_NSX wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 4:32 pm
-Don't be surprised if the machine shop you choose is far away and you need to ship the block/head. Many machine shops have been closing in the past decade. It's better to find a goo shop than a close shop at this point.

Enjoy!

I am totally fine with shipping out block/head to the right shop. Wherever I can find that does the best work is what I want.

Makes sense about the carb legal parts. I didn't realize there are carb legal cams? Might have to look more into that.

Thank you for the link about the rod bearings, I saved it to my files. Yes I am generally aware of that.