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)
![Land vehicle Vehicle Car Bumper Hood]()
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:
![Engine Vehicle Auto part Car Fuel line]()
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!
