[TheAssassin]

So after an incredibly long time I've finally turbocharged my 1997 Civic. After dabbling in the nitrous world over the summer, I decided to turbocharge my car with almost 160k miles on it. I planned my list of parts I would need and started purchasing them in the order that I'd be able to use them. I first got my hondata s300 and vac/boost, oil pressure, and wideband gauges so that I could at least use them before putting the whole turbo setup on. I ordered the street kit from Go-Autoworks with the Garrett T3 60 .48 a/r, along with the walbro 255 pump and 450cc injectors (which were out of stock, so Greg gave me 650cc's instead, no additional charge, just shows how dedicated Greg is to satisfying customers!) I received the kit November 18th. The next morning, driving in to work at 3:30 am I crashed my car. I ran over a tree. Yes, there was a tree across the road, a good foot and half in diameter. It looked like a relatively small branch from far away, but it wasn't. I totally destroyed the front end of my car and set off both airbags. I had it towed home (1 mile away, $125) and drove my wife's nissan to work. I bought a junky 1997 white civic to use for parts. Over the next 2 and a half months I replaced (used parts came from the white civic):

rad support (new)
oil pan (new)
pass. side lower control arm (used)
pass. side strut (new)
pass. side cv axle (new)
both knuckles (used)
entire subframe (crossmember? I've heard it called both) (used)
both fenders (used)
bumper (used)
bumper support (used)
airbags and srs unit (used)
both headlights (used cheap hid ones from the white civic)
rims and tires (used, tree bent one of my other rims)
Anyway, this is what my car looks like now, I wish I took a picture of it when it was crashed. It's on the dyno (duh)

Right now it's on the stock suspension, with the front passenger side having the brand new strut, which makes the car sit about 2 inches higher on that corner. I'm going full coilovers soon so I didn't want to buy four struts if I didn't have to do so.

While doing all these replacements, I was also installing my turbo system:

I ended up not needing the boost control solenoid, that's why it's not hooked up. And my apologies for the incredibly dirty engine bay.
Onward, I finally had my car tuned yesterday. I would say the shops name but I don't know if I should because they wouldn't like me saying how my car fell off the dyno, or more like it rolled off the dyno. My car was so awesome that it magically melted one of the straps and popped off the rollers and almost hit the guy painting the wall next to us. Looking back, it's kind of cool having a car fall off a dyno at 70mph and not destroy anything, the guys were good sports about it and I'm very happy no one was hurt. But that's the reason I wont disclose the shops name, they might not like the bad publicity but I will say that they are very good at what they do.

Here's a video of the last run on the dyno. My car made 211 whp and 167 wtq on 7lbs of boost, 2.5" exhaust, no catalytic converter.

Dyno Tuning - YouTube

I hope my first post works!

 

[TheAssassin]

Lemme know what you guys think!

 

[TheAssassin]

Future mods:
Progress technology cs2 coilovers
Competition stage 4 clutch
ARP headstuds
Eagle rods, Vitara pistons

I welcome any comments or suggestions!

 

[sheasekhatch]

Im diggin the power man...if u got a vid of car rolling off dyno post asap

 

[TheAssassin]

Thanks! Me and the tuner were surprised especially by the torque, it hit 150 ft lbs on just 5 psi and 167ft lbs on 7 psi
I really wish I caught that on video! It was rolling at 70mph and the strap that was wrapped around the lca melted and the car jumped sideways. There was a race spec carbon fibered s2000 10 feet in front, I bet they're glad they strapped the back down good haha. The tuner said that was the first time he had a car jump off

 

[TheAssassin]

so not that I actually did some more of "my build" but over the past two days I've heard 4 metallic pings at random times. it turns out it was the four nuts holding the turbo to the manifold, they had worked themselves loose. I either didn't tighten them or didn't use lock washers, I'm not sure. but luckily the last one fell off a mile away from my dads lab and I was able to drive it mostly downhill to see if I could get the four nuts from him. he had them and I was able to get the turbo hooked back up lol

 

[d~nice]

Dam that would have been sketchy. Where you getting boost at with the t3 any pics of the dyno numbers.

 

[TheAssassin]

I have pics of the dyno on my camera, my daughter is sleeping on me at the moment but I'll post asap!
I get full boost at about 3000rpm but it starts spooling immediately, as soon as I floor it.

 

[TheAssassin]

Here's the dyno graph, I hope its clear enough but it made 211 whp and about 167 tq

 

[Whoshot]

Nice numbers, right where I wanna be with my first y8 turbo build.

 

[TheAssassin]

I'm very happy with the numbers, if you don't have a plan yet i would definitely recommend Go-Autoworks' street kit, some of the best stuff you can buy for the money. My car pulls very hard, much harder than a 75 shot of nitrous ever did last summer.

 

[d~nice]

Dam im jelous of that. You cant even tell really when it spools and you get to keep your a/c. You might wanna look into the go-autowork rods if your trying to do it on a budget they should be alittle cheaper then the eagles. Lots of people on here running them. I think the rods are alittle longer then the eagles 2 to help with the compression.

 

[TheAssassin]

the spool time is definitely nice, and yes having ac is a must when driving the wife and baby daughter around in the summer, the downpipe clears the compressor by about a half inch- 3/4 of an inch
I wasn't aware that Go-Autoworks made their own rods though, I know fjt and rc autoworks do but hey I'm game if they do!

 

[d~nice]

maybe it was fjt I always get them backwards. But im pretty sure there longer so they will help boost compression with the viataras. Did you use any wrap or anything around the downpipe to help protect the AC lines so they dont break or anything.

 

[TheAssassin]

yes fjt supplies rods that will up the compression when using vitaras, I would probably get them once I start my vitara build, whenever that is lol
I didn't use any heat wrap on anything, there's that foam around the ac lines and none of it is melted at all so I'm assuming the lines are far enough away from the downpipe and such

 

[scottdh20]

fjt is out of business....iirc rcautoworks is carring the custom length rods

 

[TheAssassin]

oh wow that's news to me, what happened to them? yeah i know rc carries them as well

 

[TheAssassin]

http://www.d-series.org/forums/engi...-horse-great-torque-vs-horsepower-debate.html

So this thread by ddd4114 made me want to calculate the average horsepower that my car makes since average horsepower means more than peak horsepower.
Calculating average horsepower would have been easy if I had the formula for the line on the dyno plot because then I'd just take the integral of that line to find the area under the curve and divide that value by the rpm range (in my case 7200-2000=5200). Except I didn't have the formula for this line and didn't know of any programs that could generate it. Since I was just wanting a rough estimate of the average horsepower I decided to just transcribe the dyno plot onto a sheet of graph paper and enter in the horsepower values into Excel with their respective rpms. I used the trapezoid rule as opposed to the rectangle rule, just so I wouldn't be too far off.
So the trapezoid rule:

∫f(x)dx≈(b-a)*[(f(a)+f(b))/2]
or
(2200-2000)*[(32+37)/2]=6900

I went up by increments of 200 starting at 2000 (where the dyno run started) up to 7200 (where it ended).
Using Excel's handy autosum feature I was able to quickly calculate the sum of all these values: 691600
This obviously isn't my average horsepower lol I needed to divide this number by the rpms, in this case it was 5200
691600/5200=133 average whp from 2000rpm to 7200 rpm
If there's an easier way to do this, cool, but this is how I did it and it makes sense. I think it would be interesting if people would list their average horsepower along with their peak horsepower. In addition, you could find your average horsepower for any rpm range, such as the rpm range that you're in while drag racing e.g. 4800-7200.

 

[bradg]

Looks like a nice build! Keep us updated!

 

[TheAssassin]

thanks!
i'm getting a set of progress csII's did you ever get yours?