I understand the FX200 kit is a stage 2 and I should have clarified that in my notes earlier, I apologize. I would recommend that kit specifically even though it is a stage II because of the kevlar/organic backing material.
Timmy and I are at odds with the ACT clutch kits. We both have the same kit (AR1-HDSS), but we have opposite opinions of the kit. My kit has operated flawlessly throughout its life, while Timmy has had numerous clutch master cylinder failures. As a general rule, clutch master cylinders will make noise after a while (especially if you live in temperature-extreme regions of the country), but they will very rarely fail. You will want to stick with a full-faced organic sprung clutch. Anything over stage 1 should be out of the question unless you are planning a build in the near future. My personal recommendation would be a clutchmasters FX200 since it features a full faced carbon/kevlar backing material (better heat resistance / longer life), it's sprung (easy on the tranny), and it's got a near-stock pedal feel. I have not used the clutch myself, but would consider running one if I had the choice. I've previously recommended the use of the FX300 for Timmy's build, but he did not wish to change clutches when I put his motor in.
Tim is correct. Having a light flywheel is great, but having one that is too light causes as much grief as having one that is too heavy..it impacts daily driving. Having a lighter flywheel will make your clutch more touchy when it comes to 1st gear starts..you're going to get tired of babying the clutch as much as you will need to. The RSX-S OE flywheel is 14.5lbs which will be significantly lighter than your 20.5lb stock flywheel. This flywheel (being an OE replacement) will offer you the best compromise in stock reliability and performance. It's also easier on the wallet. As you drop the pounds, you're going to rapidly increase in price since the materials change and the manufacturing process gets more in-depth. I personally recommend the Type-S flywheel since I use it (and because I work for an Acura dealer). When it comes to reliability, 9-times out of 10, OE trumps aftermarket.
Yeah I tend to be like that, but I believe information needs to be put across in that manner since there's a lot of misinformation out there. It's a lot to read, yes..but it's all the information you need to make an informed choice and come out knowledgeable on the topic.
I've spent a lot of time learning about various modifications and I'll take the time to visit the subject of nitrous for all those interested people.
Any modification requires the proper engine management. As long as the tuning is good, you're free to do whatever you wish. You could have an utterly crap setup, but as long as it was tuned properly, the whole mess would run beautifully until something in your utterly crappy setup broke. The only reason why I (as well as my squad of devotees / groupies) recommend the use of the best parts is so that your equipment lasts as long as your tuning does.
Your chemistry lessons for the day revolve around oxygen.
General chemistry will teach you that air is 21% oxygen by volume, with the remaning 79% accountable to nitrogen and trace gases. Modern air/fuel calculations are based on this fact and are designed to give the required 14.7 parts of air to one part fuel.
Nitrous oxide works on the premise of liquid / gas dynamics. Again, from general chemistry, we all know that molecules are closer together when in the liquid phase and as a gas is compressed into a smaller volume by pressure, it will condense into a liquid. When the pressure is decreased and the liquid is allowed to expand, it will become a vapor again.
Here is where applied physical chemistry comes into play and you all go to sleep. Nitrous oxide is a gas stored inside a cylinder as a liquid. The pressure and volume constraints placed on it ensure that it is liquid in the cylinder. When the liquid is subjected to atmospheric pressure, it vaporizes.
As we all know, engine building relies on the three essentials of motor operation; air, fuel, and spark. Increase all three per stroke, and you get more horsepower from bigger explosions.
Nitrous oxide works by introducing massive amounts of oxygen into the cylinders with a comparable amount of enrichment fuel. When the ideal nitrous system is activated, a solenoid opens, introducing liquid nitrous oxide into the intake system. Upon moving from a highly compressed environment to a relatively uncompressed one, the nitrous oxide molecule splits into two nitrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. It doesn't sound like a lot, but a TON of free oxygen is liberated from this vaporization. Enrichment fuel mixes with the liberated oxygen and supplements the air and fuel already being inhaled by the engine. More air + more fuel = more power. The use of nitrous will increase the EGT slightly and enrichment fuel must be carefully tuned for to keep the AFR at safe levels. The importance lies in keeping the mixture from going LEAN.
There are three predominant types of kits on the market: Dry, wet, and direct port. Applications exist for carburetors, but we're not working on small block chevy's here.
Dry kits inject nitrous only and are the perfect solution for the idiot ricer in your neighborhood who wants to be like Vin Diesel and yell " I'VE GOT NAWWWWWWWWZZZZZZZZZZZ" at the people he shares red lights with". Dry nitrous kits consist of a bottle, lines, a WOT switch, an arming switch, and a solenoid. Such kits are cheap, and perform as such. You press the switch, and the valve opens. Your AFR goes through the roof and your ECU dumps as much fuel as it can to compensate. This invariably isn't enough, and you eventually burn up your valves from the heat and destroy a perfectly good motor.
Wet kits are incredibly better than dry kits, and are the staple of the educated market. Wet kits include a "brain" (microprocessor), WOT switch, arming switch, solenoid, bottle, lines, and supplementary fuel injection equipment (a wet fogger and fuel lines). When you press the switch, liquid nitrous and enrichment fuel are sprayed from the nozzle, which atomizes both finely in order to promote even mixing of the components. This mixture is inhaled by the engine and produces power with better efficiency and increased safety. Is this the best? Nope. It works for the majority of people though, and I recommend it over dry kits.
The end-all-be-all of nitrous is the direct port injection setup. It's application specific and there aren't many supported applications, so the majority of these setups are custom fabricated. Direct port nitrous places a wet fogger in each intake runner, providing each cylinder with its own dedicated supply of nitrous and enrichment fuel. It is highly recommended that these kits be controlled by an EMS that supports nitrous. Your EMS decides nitrous use is OK, and it opens the solenoids. Liquid nitrous and enrichment fuel are delivered equally to each cylinder promoting even power gain distribution and maximum gains. These kits are very costly and again...hard to come by. If you're smart, you'll invest the time and money by going this route.
Those are the kits, now here's the rhyme and reason behind why they all exist:
Typically speaking, a "fogger" or nozzle is placed right before the throttle body. This fogger, wet or dry, injects nitrous into the intake manifold at WOT. I have a theory on how nitrous destroys motors, and my experience in the field has corroborated that theory. Honda 4 cylinder engines have a firing order of 1,3,2,4. At high RPM's, this happens very fast. The cylinders closest to the mouth of the intake manifold will receive an overcharge of nitrous, while the cylinders farther away will receive an undercharge. This results in what I have termed "nitrous bias", which destroys the cylinders closest to the mouth of the intake manifold. Quite some time ago, I assisted my mentor in tearing down an NSX motor equipped with a dry nitrous setup. The exhaust valves and piston rings on the cylinders closest to the mouth of the intake manifold showed the most damage, while the cylinders at the back of the manifold exhibited the least amount of damage.
This is why dry kits are the worst, since they spray nitrous without enrichment fuel directly into the manifold, preferentially to the front cylinders. This causes the most damage in the shortest amount of time. Wet kits are better since they at least inject fuel along with nitrous to keep the cylinders cool and improve the AFR. This works for the majority of users.
Direct port takes all the guesswork and damage control out of the equation. When used with an EMS like Kpro, a direct port solution offers the ultimate in control and safety. The EMS will decide when nitrous use is safe, then it will open the solenoid as well as inject enough fuel to compensate for the nitrous injection. Each cylinder will receive enough nitrous, and you'll make reliable power.
Note that this extensive elaboration is based upon constant bottle pressure. Since "ideal" is not "real", you will need to use a bottle heating system in order to receive a uniform charge throughout the duration of your usage. As the pressure inside the cylinder decreases, so does the flow rate, and that affects your charge. Heating the bottle keeps the charge uniform as the cylinder is evacuated.
One big factor that I'd like to address is the ease of swapping. The ease of swapping falls upon the technician doing the swap, and is mostly under the control of the person receiving the swap. Things like proper setup, availability of parts and tools, and the condition of a motor to be swapped in must all be perfectly synched in order to be installed on time and run properly. In that respect, I will say that this swap was the easiest that I've done in recent memory. The motor we were going to drop in was flawless, no parts we needed to use on it were broken, and Timmy did a FABULOUS job in following my directions on how I wanted everything to be set up before I arrived on site.
Tim shipped up all of my essential tools (and luckily I brought every single one I knew I'd need) at his cost. He also procured at my request several important items like a cherry picker, all genuine honda fluids, and spare parts here and there in case I needed them. Needless to say, doing something like this has quite a few hidden costs and things like that.
Apart from what I just said, the other part of the operation lies in the skill of the technician performing the swap. Generally speaking, the more swaps the tech has performed, the easier it becomes. Typically speaking, the less amount of people working on the car, the better...less stuff gets lost and less stuff gets put back together incorrectly. I was happy that I had an entire day to myself to pull the motor on Tim's car. I was able to put parts where I wanted to, and this assured that when I did have help putting everything back together, I knew where to have people looking for what I needed while I was under the car. I hated to ruin the moment of seeing Tim's face while I removed the motor from his car, but I figured it would be funny to send him a cell-phone pic of the motor suspended in the air above the engine bay.
Since Timmy had everything I wanted and needed to get the swap done, I was able to relax, turn on some music, and pull the car apart the way I wanted to...not rushed, and not worried about stuff I might be missing later.
With that said, yeah...motor swaps are pretty straightforward. Be cautioned though, if you want one done, have money set aside (and ready to spend) on parts or equipment that may be needed during the swap. My experience with most people who want to do stuff to their cars is that they want the cheapest available option and they're hesitant to spend money on what they need to complete the work. In this regard...you can't be like that...when you're investing near $4000 into a swap...an extra $200 in pocket ready to throw away if needed shouldn't be a concern.
@Scott: I really want to show up but the only problem is that they're on Saturdays and I always work. I will attempt to take off on that day so I can come out and chill.
I'm glad the new belt tightened up the redline area (no pun intended). The laugh you and Cham shared was NOTHING compared to the laugh that Cham and I shared going down the highway in his car when he lit up 3rd gear. Now THAT was a laugh!
I need to know what's going on in February as soon as you guys know something, my schedule is EXTREMELY limited in that timeframe. I have a GSSF pistol competition the second weekend, and then sometime around the end of the month I'm going to Seattle for a week for an AAFS conference...and sometime in the mess of all that, I need to be in Cape Coral for Ben's birthday party. Please contact me with dates when they are available.
There is only one picture that is missing from the mess that has already been uploaded, and it's the one that was delivered via my cellphone of Tim's old motor suspended in the air above his engine bay. I can't wait to see the rest of the pictures from all the other cameras that were involved in the swap, they tell a great story. The best in my opinion were the ones of Cham and I dismantling the transmission. Manual transmissions are so beautiful to look at, and it was such a rush to be tearing one apart in somebody's garage, rather than the environment I'm used to seeing it done in...I'm still looking at all of the pictures they took...
yeah I think the completed swap pics are in his profile thread.
I'll give my own list of thank you's and acknowledgements.
Thanks goes out to Dominic for giving me a place to sleep and breakfast every morning (and driving an hour trying to find a harmonic balancer tool). Thanks goes out to Jen (Dom's wife) for being patient with us and dealing with all kinds of interesting smelly situations. A VERY big thanks goes out to Cham, whom I met for the first time during this swap. I was honored to work with him and actually share the same working space. There are very few people that have as much K series knowledge as he does. Thanks to Keith for being the one person at times to see me frantically waiving my hand from under a wheel well when I needed something but Dom and Timmy were too busy talking to hear me . Thanks to Steve for helping to break that stupid crank bolt loose. Finally, thanks to Timmy for shipping $1000 worth of my tools from Florida to Mass in order to complete the swap. Thanks also for actually doing what I say and buying the parts I recommend so I didn't have to jerry rig crap up and deal with stuff that I'm not comfortable working with. Finally, thanks goes to Timmy and Dom for making it warm in the garage for me while I worked. It was pleasantly warm enough for me to conduct my business without much extra clothing, and I wasn't slowed down at all by having to warm up in the house.
The end of the story went a bit like this:
After the motor was fully installed we went to start it. It amazingly started on the first turn of the key and we quickly filled the garage with gray smoke and carbon monoxide. After clearing the garage, we decided to pull the car out and start it again. We did so and the car ran ridiculously rich. I made the mistake of connecting the TPS connector to the MAP sensor, and vice versa. After a couple of starts, the car failed to turn over. We had destroyed the element inside the MAP sensor by forcing voltage through it, when it was supposed to be supplying voltage in the first place. Cham came over later that day and after 2 hours of driving back and forth, we tried to upload the tune from his laptop. After that failed, we checked for fuel, air, and spark. Coming up good on all three fronts, we were annoyed and tired. Finally, Cham noticed that the MAP sensor was reading 0.0, not atmospheric as it should. He asked me to disconnect the sensor tube and blow into it. I did so, and when the sensor did not respond, we knew where the problem came from. We swapped over to the sensor still on the TSX manifold and the car started right up for us.
Tim stayed up and installed some suspension components while Cham left and I went to sleep. The next morning, I woke up to Timmy saying that there was a puddle of tranny fluid under the car. I got up, showered, and went downstairs to the wonderful smell of new HG tranny fluid. After confirming that the driver's axle was not fully seated in the transmission, I took the assembly apart and had Tim and Dom re-seat the axle while I watched the clearance. After putting the rest of the side back together, we installed the wheels and took the car outside for its first actual idle time. After topping off the radiator and watching the AFR and water temps, we packed up our clothes and other stuff and started the street evaluation.
I started driving the car on the street and noticed a definite increase in power. The AFR stayed consistent, so I took the liberty of beating on it a little. In our rush to get things done, we had incorrectly calibrated the TPS, so when Kpro saw a TPS reading of 113%, it threw a CEL and disabled VTEC. After recalibrating the TPS and messing around with some things, Timmy got to drive. He was the first to hit VTEC now that the TPS issue was cleared. Oh what a glorious sound....We changed the tune when we went to advance auto parts to pick up two smaller belts, and the car pulled that much harder.
We then went to Dom's to pick up my keys (which I had left on the workbench), and then we made the trip to NJ. Timmy drove for the first two hours, and after dinner, I drove the final two.
Most of you know that my short term memory is shot...well..here's a funny story. So I was driving the car home..and going on my knowledge, Timmy and I were both running TSX transmissions, so I assumed that the speed correction was the same on his as it was for me...Basically when the speedo says 85 on my car, I know I'm doing somewhere around 75. So on the way home, I was doing my usual thing and driving what I thought was 10 over. A while of this (approximately an hour's worth) later, Tim asked me why I was speeding, so I replied, "well, the speedo says I'm doing 90, we're in a 65 zone, and that puts me at about 10 over". Then he said "No dude, you're doing 90". So I said..."You have a modifry and you didn't tell me?!?!?!" "I've been doing 90mph since Connecticut!?!?!" to which he replied "yeah dude...I TOLD you that I installed one directly into the Kpro harness". We laughed and kept on driving.
I arrived home just shy of 9pm and had Timmy come in for some food. After some BSing, he decided he needed to leave, and I forgot my sunglasses in his car...I forget things all the time...
So that's it in a nutshell...a successful swap. Who's next?
Cham is so asian, he doesn't need air to operate pneumatic tools...
Good morning, boys!
Last night we finished major work on the swap and we're almost ready to start the motor. I performed the valve adjustment yesterday morning before we hoisted the motor with the engine crane. After Dom and I drove around for an hour trying to find a harmonic dampener tool, we were able to get the crank pulley off of the TSX motor and remove Tim's UR crank pulley to swap over. Once the motor mounts were engaged we basically split up to cover more ground and that explains the lack of pictures for some of what we did. As it sits, the motor has oil, the tranny is filled, the radiator has been pre-filled, and we're waiting on a properly sized belt to fill the P/S reservoir. After that, it's time to prime the fuel system and begin the nerve-wracking 5 minute starting procedure. It's always scary for me, especially when a LOT of work went into preparation and we were poking around in the head installing the new camshafts.
I will say that the motor Tim got was MINT. So mint in fact, that I've never seen one so new. The valves were still shiny, the head was glistening when we removed the valve cover, and the camshafts just began to show wear on the lobes...
Tim and Dom are out plowing the driveway since we did get a bit of snow last night. After they are done, we're going to the store to pick up Timmy's belts and then it's time to crank and pray. Updates will be posted as soon as they are available.
I know I've been a stranger recently...but I've been working hard at school, and all my hard work has paid off. I completed the hardest semester I've ever had and now it's time to stretch my legs.
I'm currently in Mass in an undisclosed location performing a K24a2 swap in Timmy's car. I arrived on Thursday and set up the vehicle with Tim and his friend Dominic.
The status update for tonight is short and unfortunately, no pictures are available. I'll just say this...
I worked for a couple of hours with Tim and Dom setting the car up for the work I'd be untertaking. We unloaded the fresh K24a2 from Dominic's truck and put the car on jackstands. After about 2 hours of actual work, we went to sleep.
Tim and Dom went to work this morning and I pulled the motor myself. It took just about 8 hours. I'm dreadfully sorry about the lack of pictures. There will be plenty to come since I will be returning to work tonight to install the new camshafts, help out with the LSD, and begin assembly of the new motor.
Honda/Acura MTF was recently reformulated in the past two years. If you want a definite reason, I can get it for you, but I personally do not know why it was changed. I'm willing to bet they added some friction modifiers to combat the 3rd gear situation. But still, I'm not sure that was the reason for the reformulation. All new honda MTF has a white cap to signify it is the reformulated version.
About using other brands of MTF, it's all preference. If you want to use it, it's your car, and I'm not going to stand in your way. HOWEVER...if your car is under warranty (which most of ours are well out of by now), you can be denied coverage because you used aftermarket performance transmission fluids IF IT IS DEEMED THAT IT CAUSED A TRANSMISSION FAILURE.
I've used two brands of transmission fluid in the time that I've owned my car: Honda MTF, and GM Synchromesh FM. Both are quality transmission fluids and I can vouch for the effectiveness of both. I am not recommending that you use off-brand transmission fluid in your vehicle. I recommend the use of Honda/Acura MTF because it was designed for the transmission and Honda/Acura have strict quality control specifications that the fluid used in the transmissions will not cause failures. The same cannot be said about other transmission fluids. Sure, all the performance people are going to say "but this is super racing rated 900% safe and will give you 140 horsepower to the right front wheel". I don't care...it's not honda branded, and I don't use it. I don't trust anything that wasn't made and endorsed by honda. It's amazing that I considered using aftermarket brake rotors and pads....there was a time that I didn't even want to do that...
I'm not trying to say that I'm brand loyal, but I do try to cover my butt whenever I get the chance. By choosing only HG fluids and supplies, I limit the amount of variables that my car needs to deal with. I don't need to worry about juggling the maintenance schedules of 10 different fluids and enhancers, and I don't need to worry about future incompatibilities with new products or complications with old products meeting new ones....and if you sicko's are wondering....YES...I DO use Honda Genuine windshield washer fluid.
As for fluid change intervals, Paul is right on the money. The book says every 30k miles. That's good for your average driver that doesn't beat the hell out of their car. If you're one of those (and I'm not pointing fingers because I'd rather not point a loaded finger at myself), change your tranny fluid at 15k intervals.
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. Thanks to Steve for helping to break that stupid crank bolt loose. Finally, thanks to Timmy for shipping $1000 worth of my tools from Florida to Mass in order to complete the swap. Thanks also for actually doing what I say and buying the parts I recommend so I didn't have to jerry rig crap up and deal with stuff that I'm not comfortable working with. Finally, thanks goes to Timmy and Dom for making it warm in the garage for me while I worked. It was pleasantly warm enough for me to conduct my business without much extra clothing, and I wasn't slowed down at all by having to warm up in the house.