In fact, when I was rebuilding the car, I even bought a complete brand new distributor assembly.  Original Honda Part.  Brand new everything inside; coils, ignitors, rotors, caps, housing, blah blah blah.  It worked flawlessly, as a well engineered new part would.

When Hondata came out with the Coil Pack Retrofit (CPR), I was actually in two minds to install it.  After all, I should have a pretty robust ignition system now that I got a new Distributor.  But its just this niggling thought at the back of my mind, and an itchy backside that just made me want to go ahead with it.  After all, I have tons of coils from the K20 engines after having worked on so many of them.  Time to upgrade from archaic technology, and fast forward to 2002 coil on plugs!

Easy to install wiring harness supplied

Here are some pictures of the install

Custom patch harness I built on 1 lazy sunday afternoon so that I do not have to splice or cut any wires from my new wiring harness.

New distributor removed and relegated to storage duty

CPR connected and going to be mounted near S300 ECU

Short video of engine running without any of the high failure rate components

Hondata CPR

Surprisingly, when I did the sums.  All the parts and labor came up to below the cost for what the new distributor was purchased for.  I highly recommend this if you are in a situation where your distributor is old and dying, and you are running a Hondata S300 system.

Now on a normal day, that would not have been a problem. However, as we all know world class transport do have their bad hair days too.

“I was driving an Audi TT for the equivalent of $10,000 SGD in Abu Dhabi!” What do you expect me to drive here? However, with family commitments, peak hours and bad hair days for our transport system, he decided to take the plunge and “invest” in a automobile.

Conditions for the car.

1. It has to be an AUTOMATIC, so that his wife would be able to drive the kids to school. (Bo…ring)
2. It has to have 4 doors. (Kids, no explanation needed. Boo….ring)
3. It has to be fuel efficient. (Ron 98 above $2! Guess how much it is in the Middle East. Booo…ring)
4. Hopefully it can be a little exciting? (After all, I used to drive an Audi TT.)
5. It has to be cheap.

Armed with such a potent list, he went on a mission to find a car to suit his needs.

After a week of searching, he decided to buy a car.

“Hey Joel, I bought a car that fulfil most of my conditions.” *Note the bored voice*

“I bought a boring Honda Civic FD2 Automatic. All of its 155hp to boot.”

Alright, relatively ok for all of the above, except….maybe the exciting part.

A quick chat led to some simple bolt ons and a quick run on Uber’s Mainline Dyno to see what WHP it was putting to the ground.

A Mugen Rear Muffler, a K&N Drop-in Filter and Flashpro yielded an exciting…..123 WHP.

Barely tickling his senses, we went back to the drawing board. I had a K24 Accord TSX engine lying around and decided that we can reap some parts of it to boost up the BHP.

In went the RBB intake and the 60mm Throttle body from the TSX. We then sourced a cheap set of Exhaust from a Honda Civic FD2R. So really all Honda Original parts.

When tuning, we could go for more RPMs as the combined breathing on both the enlarged intake and exhaust worked very well. I could bring the car for an extra 500 rpm of continuous power and it holds steady.
However, we lost power in the mid-range from 2800-4200 rpm.

Owner wasn’t too happy with the loss of mid range, but he sure wasn’t complaining about the high end gains.

But after all, this is an automatic transmission, and most of the time he would be driving at about 2000-3000rpm.

Look at the dyno chart, we made an increase to 134.3whp. Again, please try to ignore the red line still.

“Good, but not enough!!!!”

We sat there for awhile staring at what other parts we are able to benefit from the TSX engine, there wasn’t really anything that the K20A3 could use….all that’s left was just the…..engine. *Dramatic music in the background*

Lets look at the TSX engine.

The 2006-2008 K24A2 in the U.S. market Acura TSX has the following improvements

* Power: 205 hp @ 7000 rpm
* Torque: 164 lbft @ 4500 rpm
* Increased intake flow:
o Intake valve + 1 mm oversize
o Intake cam High lift lobe with 0.9 mm more lift and 12 degrees more duration
o Throttle body increased from 60-64 mm
o Radius on some intake pipes increased from 70-80 mm
* Increased exhaust flow
o Exhaust Head pipe increased frm 60-65 mm
o Higher flow catalytic converter
o Main (single) exhaust pipe increased from 54-57 mm
o Rear (twin) pipes increased in diameter from 42.5 to 45 mm
* Block improvements:
o Additional air passages in crankcase for reduced pumping losses
* Other
o Stronger connecting rods
o New crankshaft with more counterbalance weight
o Revised pistons with more valve-piston clearance

in addition to this already nice engine, i also:
- modified the cam gear in there for extra motion and tunability
- changed the standard air box to some other factory honda air box with larger entry diameter and stock look
- put in a hondata intake manifold gasket
- and a couple other niceties i wanted the customer to have without him having to ask/pay for them.

The red line you see in all the dyno chart above, is exactly this setup. The car made approximately 195whp at around 7700rpm.
Considering it is an AT transmission with more losses than a manual transmission, i would conservatively say that this engine is probably making 260-270hp at the crank!

The owner was jubilant when he first got his car back from tuning. Overtaking other cars was a breeze. The humble looking Civic just wheeze past most daily drives effortlessly and occasionally giving other performance models a nasty surprise.

And what exactly have we created?
1. stock honda engine, standard internals, and the durability that Honda has been known for. (More than that, similar stock looking engine bay and undercarriage . No one would be able to tell the difference.)

2. High-Lift VTEC engagement at 4700rpm. (Not to be mistaken with iVtec)

3. Wheelspins from standstills

4. Fuel economy of 9km/l

5. Comfortable city driving with AT trans
In fact his wife doesn’t know the difference as she do not drive into the Vtec Zone.

6. Wife doesn’t complain any more about exhaust tone from mugen with muted type R exhuast

7. and spent less than S$9k only

Owning and driving a Family car in our local conditions does not necessarily mean that it has to be boring. Armed with the right knowledge and right mods, driving your kids to school and going to work can still bring a smile to your face.

At the end of this journey, the customer summed it up all in one phase.
“What more can we ask for?”

Here is a dyno chart of all 3 setups on a common graph.

Custom Jenvey ITB with large bore single bodies and custom dimensions Carbon Fiber air horns!

This was custom made for the Honda Civic Type R FD2.  Designed to fit under the hood and have the large bore diameter single bodies.  This will be what you need to make more over 300whp on the mainline dyno with our local Singapore pump gas.

Jenvey has been at the forefront of the game for a long time.  Suppliers to most BTCC cars and having access to a myraid of sizes and dyno information, they are the best ITBs out there.  I have not come across any others that has been easier to set up for idle, smooth and non sticking throttle traits, good throttle modulation throughout, etc…

There has been a kit designed for the FD2 all along, but that only came with a 48mm butterfly size in a tapered body.  Opening at 51mm, and exiting at 45mm.  Perfect for a 2 litre motor, but perhaps somewhat lacking for a 2.6L fire breathing monster that requires all the induction it can ingest.   This custom made example has the butterfly sized at 56mm and tapers from 60mm to 52mm for higher velocity.  Port matched from factory so you will not have to do any extra work.  The best part?  Custom made bling bling carbon fibre air horns.

Here are some more pictures

AEM Oil cap as measurement tool 56mm diameter

Drops right into the large bodies!

Would not even fit into the usual FD2 kit bodies!

Useful Lid for a Teapot?

If your old ITBs are not up to spec, you know who to call. (:

Please forgive me as my schedule is sometimes too much for me to handle…  The blog has definitely suffered as a result.

SO, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN to read more of the articles.. I am going to be posting fast and furious this week to catch up on lost time.

Here is an article about the Ariel Atom I tuned.  It probably is the only one in Singapore as I have not seen/heard of any others around.

Rainy morning.  I peeked out to catch a glimpse of the skies outside and wonder if it will be a good excuse to stay in bed today.

 I crawled out of bed and dragged my feet into my personal reading room. That’s how I usually start off a day’s business (pun intended).

I was prowling thru the paper’s election news when my phone started ringing.

“Joel, what are you doing?” an old friend boomed over my phone.

“Errr, taking care of some…..business. Yes?

“I have a Ariel Atom with K20 that I would like to do some tuning on.  Will you be able to help me tune?”

 “Ok *doomp*. Oops.  I will need to take a CLOSER look first?”

 A time and place was set, and I set off to the car’s storage location to check it out.  I also brought along with me a custom made engine harness too with an OBD plug as these cars do not come with anything like that.  Without an OBD plug, would also mean that we cannot use the most cost effective solution of the Hondata FlashPro to do the tune.

I custom made this!  At least in future, the owner could use it to do any flashing to the ECU.  Datalogging he might want to from the FlashPro.  Or read out some error codes.  Or whatever…blah blah blah…

After testing and everything was certified to be working 100%, we made a trip to Uber’s Mainline Dyno to wait for the arrival of the beast.

I will leave it to my friend Dorian to fill in the rest of the “story” here, he went totally ballistic when I told him I was going to be tuning the Ariel Atom.  All the rest of the narration you read below is written entirely by Dorian, so you need to swap the perspective a little… one that is coming form another Author.

At Uber’s Dyno

The customer rolled up with a grin in a Volvo XC90.

Dorian:  Eh, what car is this?  K20?  Volvo lei..

Joel: Look behind lei, on the trailer…

As I walked to the back, I felt its aura even before I spied it’s insane spoiler.

There it stood in all its glory. Beaming on the tow bed tied to the rear of the XC90.

An exo skeleton shell, no more comforts than a F1 car, everything is kept to the most bare.  Except the engine… Nothing is bare about the engine.  A Honda K20 Supercharged to 300 BHP on a chassis that is barely 500 KG.

It is a hybrid, somewhere between a F1 car, a motorcycle, a car, the Ariel Atom stood before me.  I remember the minister’s speech about being greener and moving towards hybrid cars.  I hope he has some Ariel advisors beside him.

All the blood in my body rushed to my head. I have seen my fair share of Honda Engines but this is the first time I am given a chance to lay my hands on an Atom! (I didn’t take Chemistry in Secondary School. Corny….hahah)

Everyone at Uber also scrambled out to caress this infamous beauty.  Without any hesitation, the Atom was strapped up on the Uber’s Mainline Roller Dyno and everyone was eager to see it do its runs.

After Joel worked his magic, the car made over 15WHP gains on the Mainline Dyno.

Here are some pictures

And an article in the international Atom Club which the owner posted on.

Whew, a good day’s work done. It isn’t everyday that you see an Atom in your stable.

And why is that so? I thought awhile ago, the Atom seemed almost realised on Singapore streets. A quick check reviewed that while on one hand the Atom failed certain legal requirements, another was that there was a barrage of comments and complaints from the public when the article on the Atom appeared on our main paper.

Complaints such as, it was too fast, it is an outright sports car, were quick to drown out any hopes of the seeing an Atom beside you at a traffic light.

So lets see how true it is. Compared to any other car, the comments seems pretty valid.

But how about comparing it……. to a bike?

Lets take a stock Hayabusa for comparison

Atom

Power 300 HP

Weight 500KG

0 – 100km/h 2.9 sec

Top speed 240km/h (depending on gear ratios)

Suzuki Hayabusa 1340

Power 196.87 -> 200 bhp (round off)

Curb Weight 260 KG

0 – 100km/h 2.8 sec

Top Speed 299km/h

So what do we have here, we have a 800bhp per tonne bike that performs even more insanely than the Atom and it is travelling on just two wheels! Did someone do their maths wrongly and thought that the Ariel might be too dangerous for the roads? Surely the “slower” Atom planted on 4 wheels is a safer option than that!

So why can’t we have the Atom on our roads? I do not mind wearing a helmet and storing a raincoat in the boot; let me rephrase that… perhaps a Poncho in my pocket…

Here are just some dyno charts of some cars that I did.

2003 VQ35DE with HKS Supercharger kit.  Boosting at 0.45 bar with HKS supplied pulley, extractors and free flowing exhaust.

Blue line – Previously tuned UpRev map when engine was still NA.

Red line – UpRev tuned with the new supercharger setup with bigger NISMO injectors.  Car drives super smooth.  Plenty of power on tap!!  Kick out the clutch and drift it whenever you want!

2007 350Z Spyder Automatic with catalytic converter removed, free flowing exhaust and K&N Drop in filters.  Reflashed with UpRev.

Blue line – Stock ECU which we did 3 runs till the power stablized before flashing it.

Red line – UpRev tuned.  I was rather surprised at the gains that we had improved over stock!

Note:  All dyno results done on the Mainline dyno will probably read about 20whp higher on a DynoJet and perhaps even more on some other less heartbreaking dyno.

From where we left off from the last post, non important things tend to crowd themselves into our lives.  Modding car after car, tuning projects after projects, the exhaust gases do get to my brain sometimes.  Most owners are very concerned about the horsepower they achieve, no one really bothers about the Carbon Monoxide, Hydrocarbons and Nitrous Oxides I might be ingesting.  I NEED A BREAKKKKKKKKK…..

So while looking at the Lambo ATV (Read previous article if you have no idea what this is!!), it gave me an idea!

A quick search with my Malaysian contacts revealed such a service available not only at the country side but up the mountain side!  The location was situated in KL, a mere 3 hours drive from home.  That lure proved too great to resist and I just needed to take a shot at it. 

I quickly rounded up my mates and seems like everyone was going thru “some” crisis and a short trip seemed a perfect refresher for us!

Plans were quickly made and soon we were on our way to ATV Adventure Park in KL!

It was situated pretty deep in the mountains and we really had to drive through some narrow Kampung roads for some 20 minutes before arriving at our destination.

Upon arrival, we wasted no time and visually glanced and made a mental note on our selected ATVs.

 As with all dangerous sports, as usual, we have to sign our lives away.

And also choose the route that we want to take.

Thereafter, we quickly donned our helmets and off we go to the ATV and into the hills!

Things were going well, we were zipping around in our new modes of transport.  Basically doing every conceivable (stupid) actions you can imagine 18 years old would be doing.  We were trying to ride up steep 50 degree angles unsuccessfully and rolling back into another one of our mates.  Using the crashbars on the ATVs, banging the rider in front if he was going too slowly.  Suddenly stabbing the throttle and accelerating very quickly so that we can kick up dirt (and grime and shit) into the rear rider’s face.  Attacking corners with so much gusto that we were on 3 wheels.  Trying to drift the ATVs through whichever turns we possibly could; albeit unsuccessfully.  Basically just having a real good time and doing things that 18 years old do when they get together.  I mean, we have to act our age sometimes, right?

So, we have “Run-off” areas in Sepang if we should make a mistake on track.  It’s the same here too!  Only difference is that these areas are known as “Run-into” areas.

However, we did have very good guides with us.  Judging at the speed at which our rescuers pulled us out, I must say this isn’t an uncommon thing here.

After some more time zooming around, we were brought to one of the highest spot in the mountains.  It was a sight to behold, the skyline of KL city, right before our eyes.

After which, we headed for a lake, which was about 30 mins ride away.  It was a totally tranquiling experience and we spent some time there soaking up the peace.  Something you don’t get very much at home.

Having the smell of the trees, the light gentle breeze in my hair, the chirping of the birds and the soft rumble of our ATVs.  My soul feels refreshed and I dare say the same for you if you take a little trip up in the hills.

All good things must come to an end.  As we made our way back to Singapore, I know this will be a restoration trip that we will make once in awhile to restore our souls.

With new strength and soul, what cars to tune next?!

Your thoughts retreating back to the bills that you have to pay.

How can we then fulfill our childhood dreams?  To be able to zoom down the country side.  With maybe a R1 or a Hayabusa.  Or with the fabulous babe, in a lambo spyder, topless. (The car, what are you thinking of!)

Top Gear has fabulously suggested getting the latest Ariel Atom.  Open top, bare boned chassis weighing 500KG while generating 330 BHP.  That’s bound to cause some receding hairline.

But in our sunny island, no matter how much cash you have, that Ariel Atom is not going to find its way onto our public roads, so that’s out of the question.

So what can we lay our hands on to satisfy this void in our life?

Maybe……..

Drums roll*  Presenting the latest creation, the LAMBOR-mini

A super miniature scaled down version with uncanny resemblance to a Lamborghini Murcielago.  It even comes complete with 18″ Alloy wheels as seen on the real car.

and here, some pictures of the Lambor-mini vs the real thing

This model started off as a 50cc All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) and has been modified with a custom FRP kit to create this caricature ”Choro-Q” effect. 

This has been touted as being good for a top speed of 45km/h.  But looking at the ginormous wheels and fanciful bodykit, it would already be a bargain if we can top 35km/h.

Of course, such a beauty is not designed for speed but as a classic showpiece in some millionaire’s living area.

And this raw example was specially imported by a friend of ours, definitely another drivencrazy car enthusiast.  Being flushed with money and wanting to spend it on something totally distinct/exclusive and lavish, he puchased this new toy to customize it to his liking.

This was manufactured by LB Performance from Japan that does aftermarket upgrades for Lamborghinis in particular.  Being Japanese made, and what more from a company that specializes in parts for cars as exotic as the Lamborghini, I didnt really want to even ask what the price for it was.  But of course curiousity got the better of me and I just had to look it up online and it seems like it costs close to S$30,000 before shipping!  That would make most people go delirious if they were to hear the price, for me, it totally made me shit my pants.

Here is a candid shot of Master Craftsman Lye of Lye Designs doing a parody on Japanese-Style Motoring videos with his trademark laugh and finger pointing.

More shots of it in its raw shape before the major transformation

But wait!!!! This isn’t legal on public roads, just like the Ariel Atom. So how can we possibly think of driving this down a country side?

Await the new installment! ^_^

This particular piece that I held in my hands came off a R33 GTS and was only going for a song.

It was a 3.2 version model, which is considerably still fashionable, and it came complete with the HKS wiring harness. Like music to my ears, the owner of the junkyard was telling me that he has a lot of these there as no one can use them. I believe what he meant to say was that no one would be able to tune them (and thus no one buys them). It is almost like finding a piece of limited edition Zara piece amongst the discount basket which everyone else had missed!!

Perfect condition!

Anyway, I pretended a bit and then managed to haggle down the price on the unit and harness for the change in my wallet. I believed if i had worked harder on it, the owner might even have paid me to help remove his “scrap metal”. For myself, I just wanted to take a closer look at it as this was one of the most elusive standalone ECU there is. I have heard so many different versions of how good, or how bad this is. All the forum wars, with the many supporters and dejectors. How only 1 person could tune it. How it is so easy to tune, etc etc. Oh well, what is a better way than to learn it yourself first hand especially when sometimes end users do not even know what they are talking about. Many a time, the keyboard warriors in the forums that chime in the most, are by and large the empty vessels.

It was also lucky that I had a customer’s Supra that I needed to do. I offered him the F-Con and told him that I will need to make out a new harness for his car as the harness I had was for the Rb25 and will not fit his supra with the 2JZ.

After spending a good many hours on my soldering station, I managed to wire it up to have it how I would like it. I made it nice and short so that there will not be a unnecessary snaking bunch of wires that are always the case with the original HKS harnesses. It is like they are expecting you to install the ecu in the trunk. Or maybe the designers were trying to model it against a bowl or ramen. “Shall we design this neat and tidy? No, then owners will not feel exclusive. All good designs must be complicated. Oh great, how about we make it look like my bowl of ramen then. Sounds good!”

An example of a HKS snaking harness

The shortened one that I custom made with some spare Honda OBD1 couplings

Beaming like a cat that just caught a mouse, I plugged it into the car and loaded a map in. The next part is always the most stomach tingling part for all tuners. The crank. Followed by the firing up of the engine! Here i would like to give credit to the ECU. It was a nice change from most other standalone systems which normally requires you to set it up to get it to crank and fire up. A process that can easily take up a large chunk of your time that would be better off spent tuning the car to perfection. Especially if you are not blessed with an engine with a common trigger pattern for which there are decent startup maps.

Having said that, I haven’t had much trouble with the F-con even with an engine that did not have a start up map provided from HKS.  I am refering to the Toyota/Lexus 1UZ which I have also been playing about with of late (I’m becoming some sort of a Toyota fan I must say).  A custom harness, and some simple tweaks in the software brought the giant 4000cc V8 motor rumbling to life.  Music to my ears when it started up as I was rather apprehensive on tackling this project.  As for the tune, it is a piece of cake once the setup is done.

As for the mythical software, the HKS Power Writer, I was lucky to know some right people, who knows some other people, who knows other people, who knows some other people, who knows…. Its kinda hard to explain. Its like a Facebook sort of thing. Your friend my friend his friend, mutual friends and you end up with 5000 friends in your list. Half of which consist of hot sexy girls whom you added in a moment of desire, who you know you have absolutely no chance because they are actually residing in the mountains of China. You would be happy if they do not turn out to be a nun.

Overall, I am happy with what it has to offer. The happiness is multiplied by the fact on the price I landed it for. I would definitely recommend it to someone who is looking for an standalone system if the F-Con supports it.

The only down side to it is for those who always like to DIY themselves (pun intended). You will not be able to make any tweaks to it yourself, which might be a good thing to have to prevent all the itchy fingers “Freelance tunas” from blowing up engines with their home made experimental tuning.

We have been sending these worldwide over the past couple of years to many satisfied customers.  Email us if you need more information.

Gorgeous headers

As always, some disclaimers… blah blah..

Swift Sports Billet Steel Rods

Now, also available in stock are custom steel billet rods for the Suzuki Swift Sport M16A.  These come with the Crower’s H-11 Tool Steel rod bolts for additional insurance.

You will need these if you are turbo charged and keep bending rods, or throwing engine internals out the side of the block!

My turbo is due for a replacement and I am broke. It is spitting oil from every possible orifice. What do I do? These were my options:

Made in China GT28

Made in USA GT28

They both looked the same and rated at 400bhp.  The only difference?  The Garrett Turbo cost 4 times lesser, USD$300 vs USD$1200.

No brainer right?  China made cannot go that wrong.  Anyway, most things are made in China nowadays, how bad can it be?  And so, I parted with USD$300 and my china turbo arrived promptly in 5 days.

Side by Side Comparison between old GT25 vs new ChinaCharger GT28

Happy with my new purchase, I sent it to get it installed and upon collection of my car, damn….it is super laggy.  “You car drives like shit, the boost comes in really late”, that’s what Joel told me when he collected my car for me.  “It is because it is a bigger turbo than what I had, afterall it looks a lot bigger.  My S15 drove like that when I had the bigger turbo too!”

Oh well, since it is a new turbo, we have to get it tuned and off we go to the dyno….and the nightmare began……….

The Blue line was my old turbo, a proper GT25 ballbearing and the Red line is my new Chinacharger.  You must be thinking, with the same boost, it is making the same power as before, can’t be that bad right?

NO! Look at RPM3580 and RPM4780, I lost almost 40bhp!  And that is where I will be driving 60% of the time and for goodness sake, the VIOS and FIT will be faster than me on the street!  Guess I have to say goodbye to drivability….

Oh well, at US$300 a pop, maybe I am setting my expectations too high, it may not be that bad afterall.  I dont know, to each his own.
My old turbo is currently being sent for rebuilt….please come home soon…I miss you.

Ed:  I tried to increase the boost to 1.2 bar and hopefully work it in its more efficient range.  However, with the old engine design of the B6 motor, stock internals and fuel the car had.  We were greeted with some detonation and had to back down on a lot of ignition timing.  The power we managed to achieve was also not much higher than what we had at a boost level of 0.9 bar.