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By gobbledygook
#2165515
I thought it was about time I posted up some pics of my Civic, since I have had it for a few years and have never posted any of the pics I have been collecting of the mods I have been making. Everything in the pics below happened over a few years, I have just never found the time to put a post together. This will be part 1 of a multi part post, as I have more pics to sort and more work still to do on the car. It starts fairly slowly, but the final setup... well lets just say I need stronger driveshafts!

Please be aware that this car is a compromise, so while you might think I shoulda done this, that or the other, my aim was for a car that was happy on the road, fun on the track and half decent on the drag strip, but kept luxuries like air con and could fit a weekends camping gear or a full tesco trolley of shopping in the boot. I also wanted to do as much work as possible myself, so hopefuly this will be an intresting thread.

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This is one of the few pics I have of the car standard, but there’s shed loads of them out there so I’m sure you know what they look like.


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My first mod, a crappy plastic battery cover. I don’t remember why I fitted it, but I still have it on today!


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The next mod was a Mugen airbox imported from Japan. They are fairly common these days, but when I first fitted this it was quite rare. Stangely enough these were considered second only to the GruppM when I bought it, but opinion seems to have changed over the last year or so.


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The airbox went on at the same time as a Mugen grill. The slot above the badge in the grill is a cold air intake that feeds directly into the airbox. It certainly frees up a few horses, but on a wet day at Oulton Park you struggle to get the power down!


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I then fitted a Mugen exhaust and Magnex decat pipe. I imported the exhaust from Japan too, and got stung by the UK delivery company. Everything I have bought after that has come from the UK or US.
I fitted an O2 simulator to the post cat O2 sensor to fool the cars ECU into thinking the cat was still fitted. Otherwise you drive around with the engine warning light on the whole time, so if a real engine fault occurred you would never know.


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For my next mods I had to get the help of the professionals. I got TDI-North to fit a Hondata K-Pro ECU together with a Wizards of Nos 50bhp dry nitrous shot. The K-Pro I got was fitted to an American Acura RSX ECU. The Acura RSX runs the same engine as the UK CTR, but has extra inputs and outputs so it can be used to control nitrous or methanol injection. I needed to fit a Honda wideband lambda sensor to be compatible with the ECU, and needed a few minor wiring mods. Wideband lambda makes tuning a lot easier, and it was my aim to do as much work on the car myself as I could. Every time I now made a serious mod to the engine, I could plug in the laptop and tune the engine to the new mod.
For the nitrous I needed bigger injectors, so I had a set of RC 440cc injectors fitted when the K-Pro and nitrous was tuned. When the nitrous is activated by the ECU, the ignition is automatically retarded, and extra fuel added by the ECU through the standard injectors. The nitrous is added into the air intake by a solenoid activated by the ECU.


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After playing with the nitrous for a while I decided to fit a purge system, so I now have two solenoids under the bonnet. I have two 5lb bottles which don’t last long and it is best to purge the line after changing a bottle so that fresh liquid nitrous oxide works its way up to the solenoid. That way there is no lag when the nitrous is activated.


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The bottle is fitted in the boot. It’s handy having a small bottle because I can still get a whole Tesco trolley worth of shopping in the boot.
The bottle has a CPL Racing bottle heater fitted. Nitrous pressure increases with temperature, so in order to get a predictable amount of nitrous in the engine every time you need it, the bottle needs to be at the same temperature. Under the gaffer tape at the bottom of the bottle is a thermostat that stops the bottle overheating. On top of the bottle is an NX bottle opener that I have modified to fit a WON bottle. It means I can open the bottle from a switch up front.


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Nitrous arm, bottle heater and bottle opener switches. The purge button is on the other side of the steering wheel.


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Good for scaring old ladies! This photo was taken after a day at Crail, hence all the dead flies on the bumper.


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Since I was now giving the engine some stick, I thought it best to keep an eye on things so I fitted an oil pressure and oil temperature gauge along with a nitrous pressure gauge. I fitted a sandwich plate between the engine and oil filter with the gauge sensors fitted.

I was happy with this setup for about 6 months, but when I came to renew my insurance they took offence to the decat. Apparently if the car is not road legal they won’t insure it!


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The solution I came up with was a Jackson Racing manifold and sports cat.
I also fitted some engine mount inserts at the same time to prevent the engine moving around as much, protecting the manifold and helping to prevent wheel hop. To completely kill off wheel hop I fitted an engine torque damper too.


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After a while I found the engine bay getting extremely hot, so I cured it by heat wrapping the manifold.


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One day, while searching eBay for one of these…..


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……I stumbled across one of these for sale rather cheaply! I was after a Hondata heat shield gasket to prevent engine heat from soaking into the intake manifold. I ended up buying a Jackson Racing Supercharger (with a heat shield manifold and 650cc injectors).


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It turned out to be quite an easy job to fit, and with the maps that come free with the Hondata ECU, quite easy to tweak an existing map to suit my car. I ran at 4psi and about 260bhp (300 with nitrous) for a while before thinking that more power could be had.

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The car went back to TDI-North for the second time to have a smaller pulley fitted to the charger, for 9psi of boost. I could have done it myself, but I knew that I would be close to the power limit of the engine so wanted to be sure it was done right first time. It came out with nearly 340bhp when on nitrous, which I was rather pleased with.

A few months on this power started to kill the clutch. After a trip to Crail I could feel the clutch slipping and see in my datalogs that engine revs were picking up when vehicle speed wasn’t. Time for a big project:


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Car on axel stands, subframe out, gearbox out, clutch out, flywheel out.


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New Clutchmasters clutch and lightened flywheel.

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While I was at it I thought I should fit a limited slip differential, so I split the gearbox…

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…and a Quafe LSD went in.


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This turned out to be more hassle than I thought, and the car was off road for a couple of weeks while I got the right thickness shims in from Honda. Anyone who has fitted a diff will know what I am talking about.


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340bhp on standard brakes was getting to be a bit much, so the next job was the brakes.


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Stoptech 4 pots and Ferodo pads for the front…

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…and Rotora disks and Ferodo pads at the rear. I kept the standard rear disk size to I could fit the spare wheel. The car gets used regularly, so I had to compromise.


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In the dark you can only drive as fast as you can see, so I fitted facelift CTR projector headlights and HIDs.


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I also fitted a Mugen splitter, because it has two vent holes that I intend to use for a future mod.


And that’s as far as I got to up until a few months ago, when my new project arrived:


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I quickly dropped the idea of installing it in the back of the 205 (the rope would never hold it!), so I decided to do a few tweaks over the winter, but more on that later when I have sorted out the pictures…….
Last edited by gobbledygook on Mon May 29, 2017 4:17 pm, edited 5 times in total.
User avatar
By bluntcap
#2165529
Well I have to say I am impressed mate :salut: . Fair play for doing alot of the work, an excellent write up and well explained. Looking forward to seeing what this other project is looks :twisted: .

Bet the CTR pulles like a beast with that Scharger and a shot of Nos :thumbup:
User avatar
By 54typeRchris
#2165534
Mate you have been well busy. Hats off to you doing it mostly yourself. I think you should make your civic twin engined four wheel drive. :thumbup: :lol:
User avatar
By raffopj
#2165554
54typeRchris wrote:Mate you have been well busy. Hats off to you doing it mostly yourself. I think you should make your civic twin engined four wheel drive. :thumbup: :lol:


X2 lol
love the write up! :thumbup:
User avatar
By Dougie
#2165577
Glad to see you've finally got your car on here Ben, If ppl are impressed now they will be blown away by your final project :salut:

I wont spoil it for you though mate :thumbup:

Dougie
User avatar
By Carlos420uk
#2165692
Excellent write up mate. The work you have done to he car is amazing and considering that you have done most of it yourself is impressive.

Can't wait to see the next update....

Carlos :thumbup:
User avatar
By Martin_Hx
#2165706
I think the word is fun :thumbup:

PS Yeah thats a lot of dead flies !
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By culasse
#2165807
You`re the kind of people I like. Hardcore tuning, all go, no show. Keep it up mate, that`s what these cars are made for.
User avatar
By Superbully
#2165831
nice post/thread! respect on the work. Are you a mechanic :shock: If not you should be :lol:

keep us updated :cooldude:
User avatar
By HowiesR
#2165860
Nice work mate. - that picture taken at croft (2nd last) - do you know the driver of the saxo behind?? - spookily thats my mates! - or was - he owns his own garage, him and his brother had pretty identical track saxo's to promote his garage - he got rid of it latter end of 2008 end though i think to start again with a 182 cup.
User avatar
By gobbledygook
#2166102
54typeRchris wrote:Mate you have been well busy. Hats off to you doing it mostly yourself. I think you should make your civic twin engined four wheel drive. :thumbup: :lol:
lol, now there's an idea for my next project....

superbully wrote:nice post/thread! respect on the work. Are you a mechanic :shock: If not you should be :lol:

keep us updated :cooldude:
I'm not a mechanic, but a handful of unreliable cars and motorbikes over the years means I have picked up a lot of knowledge. After a lot of reading up on the net, reading a few books and geting a copy of the Honda maintenence manual off ebay I was happy to try anything.

HowiesR wrote:Nice work mate. - that picture taken at croft (2nd last) - do you know the driver of the saxo behind?? - spookily thats my mates! - or was - he owns his own garage, him and his brother had pretty identical track saxo's to promote his garage - he got rid of it latter end of 2008 end though i think to start again with a 182 cup.
lol, that saxo was awesome. I didn't meet the driver but I think it was that one I followed for a bit on the track. I was thinking 'it's only a saxo, it should be easy to overtake', then I nearly lost it trying to match it's speed around a corner. He did have slicks, stripped out and decent suspension though, I have standard suspension, road tyres but big brakes and lots of power.

aston_87 wrote:Good write up.

Impressed with the spec.

What times did you run on the strip?!
Best time was 13.6 @ 110mph on road tyres.
User avatar
By gobbledygook
#2166104
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I was sorting out some pics and found a track shot that shows how much stick the Stoptech brakes can take. They are always hot after a spirited drive, but I wasn't expecting them to glow as much as that!

I'll hopefully get some pics up this weekend of what I did with the new engine.
Last edited by gobbledygook on Mon May 29, 2017 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
By nige t
#2166118
Carlos420uk wrote:Excellent write up mate. The work you have done to he car is amazing and considering that you have done most of it yourself is impressive.

Can't wait to see the next update....

Carlos :thumbup:



+1 Keep up the good work :thumbup:
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