Recently, I had the honour of being invited to Perth to get a bunch of cars tuned.  There were some modified Civic FN2s, and also an Integra DC2.  All modified and needing a tune to maximize the potential of these venerable Honda engines. It was also a good time for me to take a break from work after many a frantic month since the start of the year.

Instead of boring you with the intricacies of the tuning details, engine modifications, blah blah.  Just share a little of what went on during my short trip.

I rented a car at the Perth Airport from the good guys at Hertz Rent-a-Car.  I was determined to be an environmentalist this trip and preserve Australia’s nature as much as i could.  After all, I am quite the advocate when it comes to driving souped up cars around without a catalytic converter.  For now, let me try to build up on a little bit of good karma…. By going GREEN!!

I rented a Hybrid vehicle albeit it being a little pricier than the regular sedan, but what the heck, it was only for a few days.  I will just try to drive more sedately during this period to save some on gas to make up for the higher initial outlay.

This was my first time in a Hybrid.  Pretty cool stuff I must say.

Always my favourite icons.

BAD BAD BAD

The acceleration on this Camry is really zippy!  From a standstill, I estimate that it would out sprint most regular 3L sedan.  I think, it would even give a built K20 motor a good run for its money; till about 80km/h that is.  Which actually is all the speed that you need on our restrictive local roads.

Where I was put up.

And what a beautiful view.

Pictures of some delightful dishes I had for this short holiday.

Menu from a regular restaurant

versus an amusing menu that I took when I was in Zhuhai, China for tuning on another trip.

For once, an entry that I hope is more palatable with my readers who are not so technically inclined.  I thank you for your time here with my humble blog and hope you will be back for more soon.

Now, finally, here is the article as posted by my customer in an International type R forum.  I trust they should be pretty pleased with the outcome of the tune.  You can read more about it here.

CT Engineering has been selling supercharger kits for Acuras/Hondas for a long time.  However, they did not have a complete kit for the JDM FD2 Type R.

We got them to send us all the parts that they had to fit on to all the different models of the Acura/Honda K series engines.  Items like pulleys, tensioners, belts, for K20, for K24, etc.  So we had all the parts, be it from the RSX, TSX, Civic Si, etc to ensure that we will at least have as many parts as we might need to complete the installation in the JDM FD2 Type R.  There is no kit offered for the JDM FD2, so we just wanted to make sure we had everything.

Here is a breakdown of the parts that came, it is really complete; Belts, OE Gaskets, hoses, charger, bolts, pulleys, etc.  CT Engineering even included a set of brand new IK24 plugs from Denso.

Instructions from CT Engineering recommended that we crush the fuel pressure regulator in the fuel tank so that we can have more pressure/fuel.  However, as I wanted this whole setup to be completely reversible, we went with a slightly bigger set of RC engineering injectors and left the fuel pressure regulator alone.  After the tune, we realized that there was sufficient fuel supplied from the factory fuel pump.  Exactly what we wanted.

As this supercharger kit does not come with any aftercooler, we decided that this engine needed the neat setup from AEM water/meth injection kit would aid in the cooling of the charged air.  This has been tested and proven on many other cars that we did.  In addition, the stock engine on the FD2 has a factory static compression of 11.7:1.  That is really high for forced induction, and we needed to have the coolest intake temperatures to keep any detonation at bay and also make better power!  We normally used an output on the KPro to run the water injection system.  That way, we are able to trigger it base on RPM, throttle position and also boost levels.  However, as the flashpro does not have any external outputs yet, we were left to run it off the stock AEM controller simply based on boost.  It works fine, just that I would have preferred the pump to come on based on the RPM vs Boost setting for a finer control.  I am sure in future, Hondata would be able to incorporate a feature like that in the Flashpro as they already have a PWM control now for boost control.

This car has Hondata Flashpro in it, and it worked like a charm controlling the larger RC Engineering injectors.  they idled perfectly and were easy to tune.  We managed to get 262whp on the heart-breaking mainline dyno… a regular FD2 type R normally musters about 180whp on this same dyno with an intake mod.

As mentioned, with the high compression NA engine.  Utmost care was taken while tuning this monster.  Timing the water injection right, choosing the most suitable water jets, VTEC engagement points, variable cam angles, appropriate fueling for the right air fuel ratio, spot on ignition timing were all contributing factors to a perfect tune on this engine.  The tune was just like having all the perfect ingredients put together by a Michelin-starred Chef.  Simply delightful to drive and never fails to put a smile on my face, not just when giving it my all, but even for the daily drive around town with its immensely higher amount of torque from the get go.

Dyno chart comparing between the Supercharged product vs a stock FD2 with an aftermarket intake and exhaust.

It can be seen from the dyno chart, there is a 82whp difference at the peak power!  Power was also higher everywhere else in the rev range.

Having driven and been modifying many cars previously, I have to say that this is one of the most value for bang mod I ever did.  The gains and drivability obtained from this exercise is definitely worth the price tag that accompanied it!

I have to say the mechanics did pretty well as we got all the supercharger bits installed on the car in just 1 day, and just another day to get the water injection fitted and Hondata tuned.

This article was contributed by CL7 customer, Dorian.  We were both aghast when I removed the panels to uncover a bunch of unsightly wires leading to the ECU.

In the olden days when each kampong had only one Television, experience and information shared was very limited. Almost everyone in the kampong knew each other and most certainly anything that happens, everyone will know within hours. That was information passing in those days.

Fast forward to today, we have the Internet. The place to go to find answers to whatever questions that you have. Now, but do we know how reliable the source of the answers are?

The other person commenting in your car forum might be a 14 year old secondary school kid who has just highly modded his RX-7 in Initial D Stage 5 - The Arcade Version.

Nevertheless, it is still a pretty rich source of comments and opinions, and i guess we have the ownership to verify and determine if what ever advice we get online are actually sound advice.

If I were to start a online thread about ECU management for Honda cars, most certainly the name “Hondata” will be mentioned. No doubt there are many other substitutes, but Hondata has made a name for themselves by using back the Honda’s OEM ECU and modding it till it has full standalone powers. This translates to a plug and play solution that have tonnes of ready maps to give you stock like characteristics, while you tinker and change the values to suit your mods.

Now, isnt that sweet? You plug out your stock one, plug in the new one, load a base map, tinker a little, crank, and the engine starts! Now compare this to other solutions where by you have to splice and crimp wires together to attach on a powerful piggy back, or those super powerful universal standalone ECUS.

So what bewilders me is, with the internet available, with Driven being the local distributor for Hondata ECUs, why would anyone agree to still attach a Hondata to a CL7R by splicing and joining wires? A further research would have shown a Driven ready made harness that plugs and play the DC5R Hondata K-Pro directly to a CL7R wire harness! Or even if one is too lazy to research, a quick ring to Driven will have provided the solution!

Its amazing what salesmen can do nowadays, how they are able to wrap our minds to think the unthinkable.

My car came with a spliced up wire harness, used to connect a K-Pro. Ex owner must have met a superb salesman. I wonder if he had actually saved any money at all by splicing the wires instead of buying a conversion harness.

As we go about modding our cars, let’s make sure that we mod our cars once and we mod it right.

Wiseco recently released a shelf piston in 12.4:1 Compression Ratio for the K20A motors.  This was previously sorely lacking in their 2008 and 2009 catalogs.  A high compression piston for K20A motor was almost solely dominated by CP Pistons as they were very early adopters in this category.

I have always been a fan of Wiseco Pistons as I find them to be consistently superior in quality and value.  Most of their offerings come in lightweight guises and also has the skirt coated.  Many other companies tend to charge extra for that.

What we have here are all shelf pistons from the various companies.  They are in the same bore size (86mm) and for stock K20A motors.

Left: CP Piston X-forging.  Weighs 295 gram.  Advertised 12.5:1 Compression Ratio.  Skirt uncoated.

Middle: Wiseco Piston.  Weighs 320 gram.  Advertised 12.4:1 Compression Ratio.  Skirt coated.

Right: Stock PRC Piston.  Weighs 336 gram.  Factory 11.5:1 Compression Ratio.  Skirt coated.

All opinions are just based on visual inspection on these.

Firstly, lets take a look the obvious difference in the pistons.

• Wiseco looks to have the highest dome.

Although these have the highest dome, but only an advertised compression ratio of only 12.4:1.  It could be that the dome volume is being negated by bigger valve pockets and thus sacrificing a little compression ratio.

• Wiseco and stock pistons has the skirt coated.

This would aid in reducing friction and making for a more efficient engine.  This can even lead to improved fuel economy.

• Wiseco pistons offers anti-detonation grooves on top ring lands.

The stock piston also has the same anti-detonation grooves, but they are very shallow and finely cut and does not show up very well in the pictures.  CP pistons however do not have any of the anti-detonation grooves present in their design.

• CP pistons weighs the least.

The mass on the CP piston is very evident.  Just by holding different pistons in both hands, you can already tell that the CP piston is the lightest of the lot.

• Wiseco has the deepest valve reliefs.

Upon measuring with my trusty vernier caliper, I can safely deduce that the Wiseco piston will accept higher lift camshafts with significantly less problems compared to the stock piston.  In comparison to the CP piston, it is marginally deeper, but at this stage where we are getting aftermarket camshafts bordering 14 mm of lift, every little bit of additional clearance adds up.

• CP piston has 2 sharp edges along top ring land

Both the CP and Wiseco piston are machined to accept the largest possible intake valve, and as such part of the top ring land is being machined into.  Running my fingers along the edge, I realize that the machining process CP piston did for their edges does not have “finishing” work done to deburr it.  I would sand it down a little bit more if I were to put it into any engines.

• CP piston under piston area more weight savings

There are more hollows in the forging that the CP piston uses; thus saving weight.  It looks like CP piston used a special custom forging for this piston in order to achieve its superior weight.

• Wiseco has thicker top ring lands

The Wiseco piston measures a thicker ring land of 7.4mm vs the CP piston’s 5.2 mm.  This thicker ring land should give little more insurance in abusive racing environments.  The stock piston ring land measures 6.5 mm.

PS: In all pictures, Left-most piston is CP, Center is Wiseco and the Right-most is Stock PRC.

Now, lets compare between wrist pins, Left is CP and Right is Wiseco.

Both of the wrist pins weigh the same; 72 grams.  The stock one is 90 grams.  I do however realize that the Wiseco wrist pin has a taper on both outsides in its bid to keep the weight to the minimum.

Hope the data discussed here is of some use to anyone who are wanting to choose between these pistons.

My job was to get my ass there and tune as many cars as possible in 1 Saturday.Prior to that, we had already organized all the cars, and made sure that the cars were all in tip top condition and ready for a tune.  It would be pointless to have to go there only to do troubleshooting which is time consuming and counter-productive.

I got there on a Friday night, and was promptly picked up by my host and brought to a hotel.  Come Saturday morning,  it was off to the workshop with the dyno to get some cars tuned.

Upon arrival, I was greeted by some cars that were really out of tune.  Some cars had a stumbling idle, struggling rev counters, and hesitation all through the rev range were just some of the scenarios we encountered.

I briefly  had a chat with 1 of the owners, and he was mentioning that he had the turbo kit on the car for about 8 months, but has not boosted it yet as he knew it was not tuned.  My goodness, that was really some discipline… I know for sure, if it were me, I would probably have put pedal to the metal and also perhaps been greeted by some unwelcomed engine noise accompanied from the untuned engine.

Here are some pictures of the cars that we did… I guess we did pretty well, started at 11AM and managed to do 6 cars that were all tuned from scratched.

Boss’ Car

The one that made 500hp on this “Happy Dyno”

NA Power!

Turbo Power!  With very patient and disciplined Owner!

D series engines still churning out respectable power!  Complete with a large snail.

The one that sneaked out from the Military Base! They sure use fast armored cars in Brunei!

By the end of the tuning session, and we had 6 very happy owners who will vouch for my tunes.

A big THANK YOU to Augustus for all your top notch coordination and organizing this whole event!!

It has been very busy for the past few months.  Been testing many new products and R&D-ing some of my own.  Also been visiting some other countries to get customer’s cars setup and tuned.

Here’s an article from a Hong Kong car tuning magazine that covered my whole tuning event with the great guys at GP Motors.

Hope you understood what was written in there, I for one cannot read Chinese to save my life.  After going through the article for 10 minutes, it is still a no comprende for me.

With the recent uproar in the local media about how Chinese was taught in schools for the past 20 years, I definitely agree with the plans to revamp teaching methods.  If Chinese was taught less mundanely, many of my peers would assumably have a much better grasp of the language.

谢谢您 for reading.

Thanks to www.k20a.org member pb16b for taking time and money to do the testing.  Actually saving us a lot of “grief” from having to find out the results ourselves.

Full story available here.

Having dealt in the Hondata KPros for a long time and being very experienced in its workings.  It is also common for us to have enquiries from customers in different countries.

We have made KPro a Plug and Play solutions for these cars.

- 2002-2007 Honda Accord Euro R JDM

- 2002-2004 Acura RSX / Honda Integra Automatic

- 2005-2006 Acura RSX / Honda Integra Automatic

- 2007-2009 Honda Civic with DBW to Cable Throttle conversions

- Other kit cars that has the Honda K-series motors in them

I have to say that the KPro is one of the best ECUs available when it comes to controlling the K or F series engines from Hondas.  Why so?  Simply because it rides on the factory Honda’s ECU which would definitely had numerous hours of R&D put into it to have it cater to all the hundreds of thousands Honda vehicles running these engines plying our streets.

Here is an example of a customer giving us props for our good work…

You can view a larger and clearer picture here.

You can also view the thread in clubrsx.com here.

Now with the additional support that we are providing to the US customers, I hope we can keep up with our good work we have been doing all this while to our other customers.

This article is contributed by FD2 Type R customer, Ken. 

Having driven the old Honda B series engine before, K series was just the natural way for me to go when it came to choosing my new ride. Thus I settle for the Civic Type R FD2R.

Of course, like any other motorhead, stock simply wasn’t just good enough for me. Yet I am not an avid racer neither do I need insane 350 BHP NA cars to pacify me before I sleep at night. All I want is a smooth and comfortable drive, a little faster than stock, and most of all, I do not want my fuel consumption to be affected too much.

When this car was first launched, there were no ECU management solutions at all! It was so frustrating! Solutions then were restricted to units that have to splice our wire harness ( definitely a NO NO since I have been accustomed to Hondata’s Plug and Play S300 for my old Honda civic.) Or replacing the entire ECU with a Super Expensive Standalone with a big modification to the wire harness and/or to the e-throttle to convert it into a cable throttle.

Sighs, all options were exhausted and I reduced myself to just being contented with some simple bolt on mods like intake, headers, and exhaust.

However, the people at Hondata had heard the prayers of the FD2 Type R & FN2 Type R community. They have came up with the FlashPro!

I was prepared to pay the price I did for my old Hondata S300 but the chaps at Hondata surprised me even further! Since it’s a reflashing solution, its price is greatly reduced to an economical $1200* installed with tuning!

* Edit: This is only available as a special promo price and only for the few early bird customers.

I jumped at the idea immediately and did a pre-order with Joel from Driven.

Now I would like to write a field report for the dyno tuning session we did at Uber Mainline Roller Dyno machine.

It was Sunday and the quiet neighbourhood at Red hill is about to be awaken by the roar of the K20A Vtec on the dyno!

All shapes and sizes and colours of CTRs turned up promptly. Everyone was very patient while Joel treated us to drinks and pizza.

After a short wait, my car eagerly hopped up onto the roller dyno and awaited Joel’s magic touch to its ECU via the FlashPro.

Joel took care and time to slowly tune my car, ensuring that power is achieved while ensuring that the driver get as “stock” a feel as possible., treating every of his customers’ cars as his own. Its an amazing feat considering he spent almost his whole day swimming in exhaust gases.

Below are the figures that I have attained with my mods.

I drove my car right after the dyno session, and it was an immediate feel of nirvana. I had struggled with the stock maps for my bolt on mods for so long and finally, everything seemed to have fallen into place.

Absolutely no regrets. It was good money spent. Now I can enjoy my ride till I get ideas for my next project.

Definitely I will aim for something more adventurous since we now have the FlashPro.

The Honda S2000 needs no introduction. Flagged as one of the most perfect and balanced cars ever produced, Honda has spent much R&D into producing this wonderful machine that enthusiasts all over the world either love it, or love to hate it. To some, it seemed totally unfair to race with such a perfect weapon, forged in the deepest Honda mountain in Japan.

However, the S2000 is very much still a mass produced car. While bystanders marvel at its amazing built, let us gain more insight into the cars capabilities from a owner’s point of view.

We have an example of a S2000, with the owner pursuing a route, often less travelled. First of all, we all agreed that the F22C is already very well built from factory, thus we would like to see what kind of power we can extract from this engine just with the basic mods: Intakes, exhaust and ECU.

When this car went onto the dyno initially, it had these mods strapped on.

- Gruppe M intake
- J’s racing LTA* approved header
- J’s racing LTA* approved 70mm titanium twin exhaust
- Hondata Intake Manifold Gasket for F22C
- Hondata Dual ECU setup for DBW AP2s

LTA is Singapore’s authority on vehicular modifications.  Similar to CARB and TUV to a certain extent.

Here is the dyno chart.

Not very successful with the high end power. Honda has simply done too good a job for us to improve on it so easily. However, we did noticed that just by shifting Vtec engagement point lower, we are able to gain a huge juicy chunk of mid range torque and power. The mods and the tuning did bring more grunt to everyday driving. Slurpps!

However, nirvana was not to be attained so easily. After driving the grunted S2000 for awhile, the owner, having a taste of the automotive poison known as power, wanted more of it. This request was not one that was made without a bench mark too. He had taken his S2000 for a few good track sessions at Sepang International Circuit and decided that he would like more power.

Just like at the end of every rainbow, there is a pot of gold, ask any NA purist and they will tell you that at the end of the Naturally Aspirated rainbow, there is always a set of Jenvey Individual Throttle Bodies. From my experience with Honda engines, I know that this pot of “gold” will bring about a metamorphic change in the characteristics of the engine.
But firstly, some pictures

Throttle Bodies

Manifold to suit F22C’s head

Complete components

The assembly was put together before we installed everything on the engine. Throttle Bodies mated to the Manifold. Air Horns then bolted on to the Throttle Bodies. As the Air Horns selected for this set up is rather large and tapered. The edges of the bodies actually had to be machined down so that we do not have overlapping Air Horns and uneven air flow. While we are at it, we also gave the manifold a good polishing job; to smoothening out any imperfections in the casting to rid it of power-robbing unevenness.

The assembly was rather straight-forward as we simply remove the standard DBW hardware and attached the supplied Jenvey Throttle cable to the pedal. Instantly, we got the car to be driven by cable and the DBW lag is non-existent anymore.

As this was a street car, we also machined out an vacuum tank so that we are able to run an idle valve and give the MAP sensor a more balanced and stable reading. The idle valve definitely did heaps to the idle quality of the car with the A/C switched on or off. We could basically almost have the idle at a fixed RPM and the Hondata KPro did all the work to cope with the for A/C cutting in and out.

With this setup, the S2000 runs like a stock car!! This is very much to the contrary belief that quad throttles are very difficult to tune and have problems idling.

Vacuum Tank

Hondata Intake Manifold Gasket

Standard unported cylinder head

Finished product

Dyno Chart

The dyno graph shows a big jump in power anywhere after 4,000rpm. The lower power is NOT a power curve of the stock car. In fact, it is a graph with the bolt on mods as mentioned in the first dyno chart but running on the standard ECU.

The higher HP graph had only 1 variable compared to the other. It had the Jenvey ITBs in place of the GruppeM intake (and with the right tuning to suit). If we can gain 40hp here over an already fantastic intake kit (GruppeM)… And since most intake kit makes about 10hp over the stock air filter… Can we say that we are getting 50hp over the stock setup??? Can that even be true? Just an induction setup change (along with the exhaust and ECU of course) and we are getting 50hp!?!

I feel dizzy just thinking about it. Or is the dizziness a result of the heavenly orchestra of the Quad Throttles.

Now that I have seen these results and the cost involved in producing them, I begin to wonder why Honda did not make these a standard issue for all the S2000s. Hmmmm….Maybe the Perfect just got more Perfected.