The Engine

This engine has pretty much been to hell and back. Shortly after the turbo conversion in 2001, the engine blew. Is was due to a combination of the boost spiking and the timing being too advanced. Despite having a creacked ring land in cylinder #2, the engine continued to run very strong. Eventually, the compression got so bad, that there was barely enough vacuum pressure to get the steering going. On the day before the rebuild, the car pretty much had manual steering, vibrated extremely badly, and smoked like dirty chimney on cold winter day.

I figured since its going to have to be rebuilt, why not rebuild it right! After speaking with serval people at Honda-Tech and Larry at Endyn, I decided to go this Eagle H beam rods and Endyn FI Rollerwave pistons. Say what you want about them, but this piston/rod combination is the best!

When my engine blew, I noticed that the head lifted a bit from the bolts stretching and there was oil all over the block. My mechanic told me that it must have detonated pretty badly, and that the head gasket even shifted a bit. Didn't want that type of problem to happen again so I invested in the ARP head bolts. The are pretty pricey here in Japan so I ordered them from the States for less than half the price. Definately a good insurance policy for any built engine!

Sorry for the poor out of focused pic, but this is a pic of the engine after it had been rebuilt about an hour before it went back in the the DC2 chassis. Before lifting it back in the car, it was benchmarked on an engine dyno. Since it was freshly built, we couldn't rev it too high, but it smoked heavily! It baffled all the mechanics for a while untile we found the cause of the problem. The downpipe still had the fiber glass header wrap on it which was drenched in motor oil. We removed it and it stopped smoking...whew!

Here is a better shot of the engine and the turbo. The manifold wrap looks a lot prettier after the oil burned away, but boy did it smoke badly! Luckily it didn't smell as bad as it looked. Kind of smelled like pancakes.

I Switched the clutch to a Cusco Super Single because the ACT that I had installed earlier could not handle the power and basically disingrated when I dumped too much RPMs on it. Changing to Cusco made a huge difference!

As requested, here is a little lame video of the engine on the engine dyno, and of me revving it up after it was put into the car. No big deal so don't get too excited. If you listen REALLY carefully you can hear the turbo spool and the blow off valve hiss slightly. Of course its MUCH louder when I'm actually driving. Almost like an F-15 taking off. Hopefully I have something better to upload soon.