turbo time

Sludge be damned! I don't want to smell the stench of my car when I'm sitting still. Running a breather filter off the valve cover should be criminal. After a week of headaches from the awful noxious fumes, it was time for a solution. The fix? A plastic T from baxters, a 5/8" npt fitting and some hose.

Problem solved, now the only smell I get is the un-catalyzed fuel smell from the back of the car. That one I'm used to and rarely enters the cabin anyways. At some point I do need to put a true catch can back into the car, the sludge build up isn't good for the turbo.

I also upgraded to new NGK BKR9EIX spark plugs. It was time to replace them, and the 9's are 2 steps colder than stock... seems to allow me to run a smidge more timing than I did before. Still have to keep them gapped at .020" to keep the misfires away at high boost / rpm.

Mmmm, sludge. This is what happens when you don't have a catch can.

Upgraded to a 3" intake, relocated the IAT sensor to the charge pipe right before the TB, wrapped all my IC piping in armaflex...yay!

My 12 second passes

VitViper's kills

Late Friday night. Took the time to head out and take some videos of the car as it sounded with the stock exhaust.

Came back to my house, gave it some time to cool, then installed the new exhaust. Everything fit beautifully, no issues with the install.

Went back out, did a minor re-tune on the fuel. It needed about 6% more fuel under boost, could that mean more power...????

Did a solid 3rd gear pull for VitViper's eDyno... hit 377hp / 323tq.... (I remember telling myself when I first bought the turbo kit that I'd be happy with the car when it hit 300hp), hmm, maybe I'm done now.

Took videos of the aftermath... I'm working something up and will post something when I'm done. Unfortunately while being an excellent camera for photos, the D90 is a TERRIBLE camera for video. It only saves the audio in 11khz mono so it really doesn't do the car justice.

Received my Full Race 3" exhaust today, 4 days early. Can't complain about that. It's freaking huge.

Tidied a few things up on the car tonight.

Installed the grommet from the SO2 onto the wire leading into the cabin for the EGT gauge. At 6am when we finished the install of the DP, I just didn't have the consciousness to even think about it. Now that is sealed off properly and should keep water out.

A few of the couplers on the charge pipes weren't sitting the way I liked. So I loosened, adjusted and re-tightened them to make sure they would seal well. While I was in there, I decided to wrap the charge pipe leading to the throttle body with the same heat resistant wrap we used on the teg. As I have time, I'll probably go through and wrap several more of the pipes.

Ugh, going to bed at 6am FTL. Getting my new 3" dp and wideband/EGT gauges installed FTW.

It was a long arduous process which had a few moments of near defeat. We prevailed though, saved by the honda parts drawer once again... we also had to make a couple of our own bolts by cutting the long bolts from the Greddy downpipe.

It's laughable how tiny the stock exhaust is in comparison to the downpipe. Fail.

Matching boost and wideband gauges are sechsy. The EGT is sitting in the center console until we devise a mounting solution for it.

Got my new down pipe for the Civic today. Also in the package, a Greddy EGT gauge. Hoping to install it tomorrow.

It arrived in great shape, beautiful welds, excellent quality. That said, I love shiny exhaust parts, so I spent some time tonight polishing it up...

Fed up with not being able to tune the fuel on the teg, we got a wideband for it. Wired it directly into the S300 so we can datalog it.

Got the boost gauge installed on the Civic as well. I re-routed all of the vacuum connections while I was in there. Everything feeds off the brake booster line now.