1995 Honda Civic Del Sol
This is the del sol that I purchased from my boss Jake in the spring of 2003. I never really wanted to buy a Honda but Jake was desperate to get rid of it and I was looking at buying something reliable and good on gas. It's not that I had anything against Honda's I just think fwd isn't as much fun. The first day I owned it I took it to the auto-x and realized fwd really isn't as fun. Instead of hanging it out around every corner like in my Toyota's the del sol would just snap around and spin. I would get mad about the torque steer and understeering and just plain suck-ass of racing a fwd drive car around turns. Some guy in a del sol that was there tried to talk Honda's with me but I was aggravated and embarrassed that I was even driving this car, so I blew him off. It was a really ugly green color with some nasty konig 17's (those didn't last long) that weighed a ton. He had modified the suspension with adjustable struts and Eibach springs. Under the hood there was a cold air intake, skunk2 stage 1 cams and gears and an AEM fuel rail. There were also a bunch of other little things done to the car that he had spent too much money on. He wanted $5000 and for the b16 model with all he had done to it, it didn't seem too steep. With the aftermarket cams in the car it would actually bog when the vtec hit at 5500rpm's and then start to pull hard around 7000rpm's. The car redlines at 8000rpm's so the cams seemed pretty pointless to me. I sold them for $500 and also sold the fuel rail and a few other things that were a waste of money. This way I recouped some of the money I had spent on the car and I didn't feel so bad about paying so much for a Honda. Some of my friends thought me buying a honda was ridiculous, it was like I was joining the dark side.
At first I didn't really know what to do with it. The car pulled pretty good once the v-tec kicked in, but otherwise it was pretty gutless. I ran Jake's new 2.8L BMW Z3 at the track and the Honda pulled a 15.8@85(Jake never made it out of the 16's). Not bad for a basically stock car, but Jake ran a 15.4 in the Beemer and was pretty pleased to not only to finally beat me but to get in on some of the Del Sol ass kicking that we had been giving to him for the last few years. I needed to make this car faster, but nothing too drastic. I began looking into doing a b20/tech. Basically a b20 (honda crv) block with my b16 head on it. From what I was reading getting 180-190whp was pretty easy in a street car but the money it would cost for the build-up made me shy away from this a little. I didn't even consider doing a turbo at first. Everything I had read on all the Toyota web sites I frequented basically said what crap Honda engines are and that once turbo'd you would be lucky to get around the block without it blowing up. Of course now I realize those people are full of shit and are only bench racers who are too afraid to make a car fast in real life and would rather just sit on their computer and believe everything they read and hand out biased advice on something they know nothing about. In researching doing possible engine swaps I began reading a lot about people with turbo b16's that were running good with no problems. I decided to go ahead and try the turbo and if I did blow it up I could just buy a b18/b20 block and go "all motor". It turns out that with a v-afc and some larger injectors you can trick the Honda ecu into reading boost and make it run like a factory turbo car. I picked up a v-afc cheap and some mustang 376cc injectors for $50. I installed those and leaned it out -25% with the v-afc and the car ran totally fine. I began buying turbo parts off ebay and installing them in my spare time. I put in a turbo timer, intercooler, HKS bov, Walbro fuel pump, and boost gauge before the car even actually had a turbo.
After about 2 weeks of putting in turbo stuff I finally installed the t-3 turbo(.42/.48) with a Drag manifold. I started it up and drove around the block and it fried my turbo. I figured I got a bogus turbo and went back to the junk yard I had bought it from and they gave me another one. I took it back and fried it too. I went back and got yet another turbo(thanks Beep Beep auto salvage for the free turbo's). This time we hooked it up and pulled off the oil feed line while it was running to discover the car had no oil pressure. I pulled the pan and found out the pan I had put the oil drain into was about 1/8" shorter than my b16 oil pan. The person who gave me the new oil pan assured me it was the same as a b16 pan but it was blocking off my oil pick-up. I had damaged all my main and rod bearings pretty bad, not to mention whatever other damage had occurred. I ordered new bearings and installed them with the engine still in the car. Replacing main bearings is a pain with the crank in the block but it can be done with a paper clip and some patience. Once finally running again with the correct oil pan I took the car out. I had the boost set to 5psi with a factory Saab internal wastegate. It felt marginally faster but definitely needed some tuning. I went down to the dyno to check my a/f ratio on the dyno before going out and ragging on it. On the dyno it made a whopping 170whp, up from 141whp a few weeks before n/a. 170whp was really bad but with a stock exhaust, untuned and running 5psi on a 109 degree day I wasn't too worried. The next day I changed the turbo compressor to a .60 from a .42. and set the boost to 7psi. The car felt a lot better but it still needed some tuning. Driving around a turbocharged Honda is strange because so many people will either want to talk turbo's and Honda stuff with you all the time; or people will talk shit to you out the window and tell you how gay Honda's are. Most people are the latter and think Honda's are stupid and modifying them is lame and if you have a Honda your just a ricer who know's nothing about cars. I think this is why the Del Sol appeals to me. A lot of people think when you buy a Honda your just selling out but you actually take a lot of abuse driving around in a lowered loud ass Honda. The Honda actually doesn't even feel too out of place now with my old Toyota's because people still give me dirty looks and laugh at me at lights. It must suck pretty bad to get beat by a girl car, almost as bad as losing to an 84 Corolla. About a 2 weeks after getting it going again I drove the Del Sol through a flash flooded area during a monsoon and hydrolocked the motor. After getting all the water out of my engine it actually started but I could tell something was wrong. The car was loping and my vacuum under idle had gone from 18 to 13. I was thinking I had either bent valves or a cracked piston. I limped it around for a week like this (man I am dumb sometimes) and finally my #4 rod exploded and shot a hole through the block, bending 2 valves and obliterating the piston. After all this talk about me blowing up my Honda by boosting it I had actually nearly done in the motor by running it without oil and then breaking it by driving through too much water. I was pissed to have it go out this way, pretty lame. Usually when I blow up a motor I'm running like 18psi and some pistons explode or something but with the Del Sol I never had the chance.
I found a used b17 block on ebay for $202. It's just like a b16 block but stroked 4mm to give it a perfect 81mmx81mm bore/stroke and an extra 75cc's. The compression is also a little lower either 9.7-10.0 depending on what you read. It had about 120k miles on it just like my old b16 so I figured I would pretty much be running just like it was. The cool thing about the b17 is it's only found in the US 92-93 integra gs-r. It's very rare but nothing special. If I had the money I would have picked up a b18c. I had the 2 valves replaced (they did a shitty job and to this day I have 45psi lower compression in #4) and installed the b16 head on the b17 block. It was fun taking apart the Honda engine after having worked on 4ag's for so long. In my opinion it looks like Honda copied the 4ag small port but just made it full race. The design of everything from the throttle body, intake manifold valves, ports, everything just looked like it was designed to make lots of hp at very high rpm's. Once together it looked stock and ran just like it had with the b16. I went back to the dyno and put down 207whp. It had a nice curve until just over 6500rpms where the torque would fall on it's face. The car was still tuned pretty badly and still needed a few more upgrades to let the turbo breathe freely. I went to the track knowing it was still running bad at high rpm's but I wanted a general idea of how fast it was. The car ran a 14.3@101 burning out all the way through first into second. The time was about what I expected but 101mph was pretty good for not even being able to go to redline because the car was missing so bad. At this time I weighed the car at 2356lbs, now it's down to 2308lbs. Over the next few months I would tweak the fuel settings and timing slightly until I had the tuning where I wanted it. I also did a few things like open up the exhaust and installed gs-r cams. On the dyno with the new set-up the car made 245whp. . I suspect the 376cc injectors are maxed out at this point even with my fuel pressure turned up. I'm probably going to get some 440's pretty soon. I'm hoping with the lighter weight and extra power plus the lsd I installed the car should be much improved in the quarter mile. The vafc hack has worked good for me. The car still makes good power and after 31,600 miles (at the time I'm writing this) since installing the b17 I have had no problems with the engine and it gets excellent gas mileage. I drive it every day stop and go at work nearly 100miles and it's been the most reliable car I've ever owned. It also runs smoother now than even my factory turbo mr2. The t-3 turbo is somewhat limiting in power but the spool-up is good and after going through a phase of trying 4 different turbo's on my car I just don't like the slow spool followed by extreme power and torque steer of the larger turbo's. I like this car pretty much the way it is. I don't really have any plans for future modifications. Better engine management and larger injectors should get me to 10-12psi safely, this should put me near 300whp. I think at this point it's a good idea to upgrade the engine internals so I might do that when it's time for a re-build and the way this engine keeps running that might be a long time.
