I posted a photo of my awd ep3 Civic SI on Facebook before last weekend's rallyx and was told to start a build thread soooooooooooo here we go.
As stock a photo as I have, one of our fellow (former) PF competitors dared me to do something cool with it and well I think I did.
The TL and $2019 Challenge CRX make appearances later on in this thread.
The hindquarters of an Element that make this all possible.
It's surprisingly simple you just cut away everything that isn't the Global Rallycross car you can't afford. Weld new stuff in its place.
K24A4, Baby (Precision 5831) turbo, $54 Chinese cast iron manifold, 1000cc injectors, decent tuning was pretty speedy but the manifold didn't survive a season of Rallyx, and routing with a log manifold is surprisingly difficult. This car routinely gives me DSM flashbacks (100lb of E36 M3 in a 5lb bag underhood space)
You know you're building a cool Honda if the PTO and wastegate appear in the same picture.
My "what the hell have we done to my car" face
Modeled my rear diff mount off of those also on the market, quickly learned it was not up to the job.
The morning of the first event of 2020 2:30-3am here it was going surprisingly well given the circumstances.
Dc region has the most talented/skilled photographers
So there's like a year and a half of stuff here that I have few photos of, I'll add more as I find more and as we do more with the car.
In reply to Byrneon27 :
This is berkeleying awesome - thank you for posting!!!
At the end of last season we had a pretty clear picture of what needed to be changed/improved.
More power, functional/real Vtec, ditch the Element gear stack (way too much shifting for rallyx) LSDs, shocks, and improved packaging. Of course we waited until a month before the start of the season to do anything.
Due to the state of the world parts to build our turbo friendly awd gearbox and our shocks are delayed. I'm a fun combination of a dumb hillbilly and a drag racer so I just went ahead with the more power...
Enter harleqengine
What is the Harleqengine? Mechanically it's very simple 06 TSX k24a2 bought by the Yukon xl full at a crackhead operated north Jersey salvage yard/engine importer, three on pallets five loose if you want to know how many Ks an old GMC will hold
PHG (pretty Honda girl) a key player in this story (if you're curious how a turbo dodge loving BMW mechanic develops a fleet of Hondas it's mostly her fault) and former north Jersey resident pointed this place out during a dessert pizza run, they're easily distracted by quantity to the point of selling a2s for sub $500. This particular 189,000mi example (time filed the rings for me) was written up at $300 I imagine it'll be in a challenge car one day.
500+hp junkyard K24 recipe...
06-08 TSX long block.
Any K20 oil pump
Long runner manifold (chinese will do the job but you need a good wastegate)
Gt3582esque turbo. In this case we're trying out the Cadillac of Chinese turbos a GTX3076R gen II clone and honestly it's ridiculously close. Power under the curve is super important to the guy with the 500hp Rallycross car...
Intake manifold doesn't really matter I'm partial to the Skunk2 pro and it's clones. Avoid the adapters to put k20 intakes on K24s always a leaky annoying mess.
Lotsa fuel I'm using an Aem 450, -8 feed line, to 1000cc injectors we're about half way up the boost curve and rapidly running out of injector. Go bigger than you think you need.
Beg/borrow/steal a Kpro the other factory ecu tuning options are just gunna irritate you.
There's a moment when you're installing a necessary twin disc clutch into your racecar that competes in a domain of motorsport where the rulebook states "speeds should not exceed 40mph" where you decide you're taking the rules as a personal challenge
Let's drive down memory lane....
This thing is actually finally super close to coming back out... Gave up on the badly machined turbo d16. NA (for now) K20A on E85
Wewe
We accidentally made a Subaru...
A lot of challenge budgets in one photo.
I spent five years working on this thing in a parking lot in Gainesville one weekend. My first impression on a GRM staff member resulted in her shouting "oh my God are you okay?" At me moments later I learned I was bleeding pretty significantly having just bashed my face into the intercooler.
I spent five years working on this thing in a parking lot in Gainesville one weekend.
Ha! I remember you guys hacking away at that thing and then admiring the charge piping at the concours. Are any of these builds coming to the challenge?
The E30 may be back if I can keep an S2000 trans together. The black crx is definitely coming back.
Depending on schedule we should be at the challenge this year might be a Hyundai Accent speedster might be my civic truck who knows. We'll get all tanked up a the shop one day and engineer something.
PHG is pretty handy with a camera. This is Hans 07 335i 6mt loaded except for nav. My first new car prep as a BMW tech was very possibly this car. Eight years later I needed a grown up car and spotted this in the wholesale row at my local BMW dealer.
Pretty simple setup stock turbos, downpipes, charge pipes, Wagner IC, big fuel pump, makes 430hp on pump gas and 507 on E50. Good enough for low 11s and 1000mi road trips. It's a street car so just Hawk blues, Feal 442 shocks, and 285 wide Re71Rs
Talking about PHG and lucky finds... A not entirely surprising clutch failure in the TL (it has 400,000mi on damn near original everything) left us in a bit of a pickle. Coming into the holiday season I thought she deserves something special. Her first nice car was a clover green Integra gsr ten years later she's driving another one.
Found this on FB during a rallyx weekend drove from summit point to somewhere in VA and grabbed it best $3000 I ever spent. The ride home reminded me how absolutely sublime factory fast Hondas are.
So recently I was on the John and as dudes do I was looking at what abominations were for sale locally... I stumbled upon the most beautiful vehicle ever built... 94 EG sedan beautifully crafted into a truck. Why did I run out of my house at midnight to buy it? Who knows but it still seemed like a good idea the next morning and it's rare that my life works like that.
I love a dirty Honda. Carry on.
Getting ready for the weekend at Summit Point. I'm terrible with taking photos as I work but we got quite a few issues sorted out.
Easy one first... Vehicle speed sensor on 05+ transmissions is a hall effect sensor on third gear. 02-04 cars is a normal gear driven speed sensor. The early style goes direct to the cluster and direct to the ecu. The countershaft driven sensor goes to the ecu which then outputs a signal to the cluster. Of course the connectors are different. Doing a little electrical detective work here to get my wires going the right way. Having vss inputs to the ecu serves two purposes now with a third on the horizon. I do occasionally street drive this thing and speedometers are cool. It helps find usable data in the logs, in fact I can now set the internal logger to trigger at a set speed. More complex/speed differential based boost/traction control is a future project.
Power steering... In my haste to get the car ready last week I apparently didn't fully seat the torque sensor connector. If you know anything about Honda electric power steering connecting the battery with any eps component unplugged spins the whole system into a level of pissed off only recognizable by former Kmart employees. Hopefully this post will appear for the next person who finds themselves in my position. The relearn procedure is the same as it is in an S2000, Insight, Civic Hybrid, or any other eps equipped Honda except you ground a pin (8 brown wire) on the control module connector. DO NOT connect 4 and 9 in the obd connector. ProDemand publishes what appears to be Honda repair information and in this case it is incorrect.
Shocks... This car has had cut crv springs jammed onto stock shocks for way too long. We have proper rally stuff on the way but quite frankly my back hurt after last weekend. I grabbed up a set of scratch and dent Tein street whatever coilovers from one of my suppliers for the princely sum of $163 set as high as they go with a set of HRG crv lift spacers the car is about an inch taller than stock. Interestingly enough for cheapie coilover kits these actually have about half an inch more travel than factory struts. I don't expect them to live long.
Added some clips to the exhaust hangers I still need to rework the exhaust but 3.5" oval stuff is spendy and a pain to work with.
Wheel bearing... This thing has smoked every pass side rear wheel bearing I've put in it since the awd conversion in minutes. My solution to this point has been to tell the tech guy to not look closely at the passenger rear wheel. Last weekend he uh didn't listen... Time to find actual solutions... Turns out it was super simple. The axle we found in the Element wasn't an element/crv axle, the spline aspect of the stub was about 1/4" too long preventing the hub but from drawing up correctly. Ordered a replacement from NAPA along with a new bearing and it's great now.
Loaded up and in bed with 10 minutes to spare before raceday #preparedness
Ready for a test drive. Note the other nice BMW 6mt 335is that we use as well a car.
335is people are a weird bunch and they get super pissy over this photo.
I want everyone to know that the AWD EP3 sounds like Chewbacca is trapped under the hood during corner exit throttle application.
^ best compliment ever! 10% off all things Turbosmart for the weekend. Get yourself and your loved ones 45mm Hypergates and they too can be loud and proud.
We're here. We're actually prepared. There's a desirable Subaru LSD rear in the back of the bus free to anyone who shows up with beer.
Speaking of the bus does anyone care about tow vehicle builds?
Well let's focus on the good from today...
This thing absolutely hauls ass even with very conservative timing and boost tables and virtually unchanged vtc tables it spools a very large turbo before 4,000rpm.
Short of the battery it has become super reliable.
The shocks were junk even this very much not ideal set we have was an enormous improvement.
Fuel system is on point no leaks no drips even under the most trying of circumstances.
Things to improve... That's a tomorrow problem. Now is a time for beer and all of the Mediterranean food in WV being brought to my hotel room.
Meet the Bat-Integra... Maybe I didn't mention this but the ep3 had a bunch of batman E36 M3 on it when we got it we refered to it as the Batcivic.
So we have three weeks before the next event and a very stock Integra RS... Where's this gunna go?
Those of you skilled In reading between the lines/who were there may have already sorted out that my weekend did not go exactly to plan. I have plenty to say about the middle of the story (all positive but some needs to be carefully worded) and I'm frantically buying parts.
PHG and family spent the day poolside but apparently she took the time to undo some body work she surprised me with on Christmas. There was a couple week period where this thing was super straight and nice (if I become murdered it's because she read this, avenge my passing by turbocharging things)
GI and BI (Good Integra and Bad Integra?)
The bus... 01 Yukon XL 2500 6.0, 4l80e, surprisingly decent miles for one of these was like 220 when I bought it about a year ago turned 245 on the way home. Best COVID find ever... There is some odd truck junkyard/dealership a couple hours north of me. They listed this for $7995 the day before PA dealerships were shut down, few weeks later it's back up for $7495... On principal way too much but there's a finite number of these that haven't returned to the earth and for some people they're the answer. I've been after one for a long time 01-02 6.0s are particularly sought after I made my peace with paying real money and hopped in my nice BMW for a trip to the mountains.
Upon my arrival the rain began. They handed me four keys and said "it's out there somewhere" basically like a non-phony Carmax. First one I found was an 8.1... no thanks. Second one still had what I hope to God was mud on the carpet, the smell suggested otherwise. Then approximately 300 yards further into the mud than a RWD e90 will go it was! Straight and clean with a shoebox full of service history on the passenger seat annnnnnnd no battery. Walk half a mile back to the office... I'm now installing a battery in someone else's truck in the rain for free. Kit the key and it springs to life... It's also a V7... Use it to pull my car out of the mud and return to the office...
"Well what'll ya give for her" ps. If a Pennsylvanian ever says that to you you're about to get something for damn near free it's like our desperation war cry.
$2000 and whatever Autozone gets for a coil later I'm driving home.
The exhaust was a mess. I had the bright idea to spring for a Diamond Eye 4" Duramax truck system because it was cheaper than a stock replacement
The first school bus muffler negated any cost savings. The second one well the second one is just an insult to my wallet. Anyway it's only entirely too loud now we'll call it a win.
Mevotech TTX ball joints and tie rods, KYB monomax shocks, new calipers, Raybestos R9 (squiggly slots) rotors, Hawk super duty pads, good fluids/filters and a Misjimoto Duramax truck radiator with giant integral trans cooler. Beyond that it's just a mild tune and a lot of fuel towards towing happiness. One day it'll sprout a 7875 largely to shut it up.
Bat-Integra sit-rep... There was a tornado. Literally we picked it up as our phones blasted warnings. It was raining like crazy and it more or less drove like a beat integra does. $2000... Everything I love is now worth money.
Dave drove it from the shop home tonight where he promptly discovered why there was a case of empty antifreeze jugs in the hatch.
Lkq is dropping off a B20z tomorrow... Can't get my gravel shocks for five weeks... Lessons should have been learned... Open GRM invitation/save me from myself... Come to the shop there's beer, friendly dogs, and racecars, if you find a B exhaust manifold or head flange it's free save me from myself.
Cage kit on the way I couldn't buy the amount of DOM that goes into a kit for the price of an RCC kit and I've installed several fitment is on point.
