This is just a guide of bolt-ons you can use to get the extra power you want!
Order of operations:

Basic

1. Cold-air/short ram intake, Free-flowing air filter such as k&n

2. Underdrive pulley set, get rid of a/c and power steering if equipped

3. Free flowing cat, catback, and muffler exhaust system

Suggested diameters:
1.6 liter 2"
1.7-1.8 liter 2.25"
2.0-2.2 liter 2.5"
2.3-2.4 liter 2.75"
for nitrous, tubo, and super-charger applications add .5"

4. Free flowing header (exhaust manifold)

5. Adjustable fuel pressure regulator

6. after market clutch/flywheel

7. Higher octane gas, slight ignition timing

Intermediate

1. Hotter cam

2. Extrude honed stock intake or aftermarket intake manifold

3. Slight overbore of throttle body or aftermarker throttle body

4. Hotter ignition if planning to raise compression (plugs, wires, coil, etc)

5. After market ground kit

6. Chiped/tuned ECU

7. Bolt on turbo/super-charger

Add to it if I missed something.

 

Not too bad.

 

Good list indeed.

 

This isn't a bad list of possibilities, but if you wanted to do a write-up, you need to expand on each one. It also says "Order of Operations," implying that that is the order in which you should do those mods.

You have underdrive pulleys listed 2nd, and to someone new just looking at this they might think that pulleys are the 2nd best mod you can do. I think we have all agreed that changing your crank pulley is dangerous and ill-advised for the minimal gains produced. The Alt and AC pulleys are fine, but if you have any stereo to speak of, underdriving the alternator is just gonna kill it.

You also have adj FPR listed at #5. Most people wont need this unless they have a very long list of mods, FI, and/or some sort of engine management and need to adjust the fuel pressure.

I believe that the general consensus here is that 2.25" exhaust is the ticket, and 2.5" for turbo or nitrous.

Higher octane gas will do nothing for most cars. Octane rating is just the fuel's ability to resist pre-ignition, or detonation. The gains from advancing the timing a few degrees and running high octane might be Ok for a night at the track, but I wouldn't run my DD like that. If you advance it too far, you are just asking for the "death rattle."

Extrude honing is awesome, but do you know how much that stuff costs? Not exactly intermediate.

I do like the fact that you mentioned ignition with high compression or FI.

 

Yeah, these are more or less guide lines. I don't expect beginner tuners to go out and do everything on it!

 

Another thing to keep in mind that in most cases, the gains from most of the mods listed are going to be fairly minimal. I don't know about anyone else here, but I started out as a domestic guy. Chevies, to be exact. And GM, as well as the rest of the the Big Three, often left a lot to be improved upon when it came to the intake and exhaust tract. Plus, we're talking motors that are nearly four times the size of a Civic motor. A K&N filter along with a cold air intake is good for maybe 10hp on a Camaro or Mustang, depending on the year and engine. Even then, you're not really going to feel the difference. It'll make more noise, sure, but that's about it.

On a Civic motor - even a B16 - you're not going to see a huge gain from a cold air intake and header. Check out the Civic buildup at www.sportcompactcarweb.com - they dyno'd the car after installing a trick new header, but saw nothing in terms of gain. In their words, 'the Honda engineers didn't leave much to improve upon.' If you've ever taken a look at what passes for exhaust manifolds on most Camaros or 5.0 Mustangs, however, you can see why headers are more of a must-have for these cars. Also, when, say, K&N advertises a "15hp gain!" what motor was this gain measured on, at the crank or at the wheels, was it already modded (cams? ECU? Turbo? Full Exhaust?).

Unless you're frying your clutch doing drag launches, an uprated clutch isn't going to do a damn thing on a stock motor, or a mildly modded one, until you start exceeding the torque that the stock unit was designed to handle. In the case of Honda motors - not exactly known for their torque - you're not likely to need it until the motor starts seeing boost. A lightened flywheel, however, is a good investment, but find out exactly how much the flywheel you're planning to buy weighs versus stock. Why shell out 400 bucks to shed 2 pounds, not to mention the cost of installation?

Adjustable fuel pressure regulators, as mentioned, are a waste of time and money until you boost the motor. Running higher pressures to trick the injectors to squirt more fuel on a stock motor, or a modded one that doesn't require the extra fuel or where the ECU is accomodating the extra airflow on its own, is actually going to cost you power by making you run rich. You make power by running leaner until you reach the threshold of detonation, and then you back it off a hair.

Don't get me wrong, it's your money. I'm all for making real power and going faster rather than popping the hood to show off my ricey mods to my friends so they'll think I'm cool, so my priorities may or may not be different from yours. I've learned, however, that it's often hard to beat factory-designed parts - who do you think did more research, Honda,or Weapon R or whomever? Granted, these parts don't get oohs and ahs, don't come in red (makes it faster!) or neon yellow, and are rarely polished or chromed. However, they work, they last, and again, it comes down to what you want.

Let's do some math. I went to www.summitracing.com and poked around for a bit. I looked up some basic B16A parts mentioned above and lets see what we find:

Edelbrock Shorty Headers
Headers, Honda Del Sol 1994-97 B16A VTEC, Pro-Flo Ceramic Coated
2/12/06 $393.39

AEM Cold air intake: there were many to choose from, ranging in price from 110 to 300 bucks. I'll split the difference and say $150.

Adjustable fuel pressure regulator: again, lots to choose from here, so let's go with the low-ball - there were several to choose from at 50 bucks, although there were just as many at 150. We'll say 50.

Clutch kit: froogled this since summit's search engine is a royal pain in the ***, but ACT clutches range from 400-600 bucks. We'll say 400.

Ignition wires - around 50 bucks. Until you've got some serious mods, however, these are going to do absolutely nothing but look good when you're showing off that rice.

Before I bore you to death, let's add up the fairly basic mods we have here:

header 400
intake 150
AFPR 50
Clutch 400
Wires 50
= 1050 dollars. For what? maybe 20hp on a B16A? Much less on a D-series? If you're lucky? With careful shopping, you could easily turbo a D16 for a little more. Do a cam swap on a B16 and actually make power. Hell, if you're talking a D15B2 or non-vtec D16, stock Civic motors that most of us start out with, you could buy a ZC - full swap, no less - and have it shipped to NY from Nippon Motors. Add 500 bucks and get an early B16 swap, minus the parts needed to convert the shifter. Worthwhile power gains all.

It's your money, do what you want. I will, too, and I wonder, really, who will be looking at a pair of tail-lights?

 

thats a really good read i was thinkin of doin lots of this stuff 4 my poor d16y7 (yuk) but it sounds like the way 2 go is turbo,, yes?
thx troy

 

Yeah, I'd go turbo. I'm thinking of using a K03 Turbo from the VW/Audi 1.8t. These are always on ebay, because that's basically the first thing to go if you want to make serious power with the 1.8t motor. However, on our smaller 1.6l options for the Civic, I think this turbo will both exibit the charactersistics that it displays on the 1.8t - instant boost response, making it feel like you somehow swapped a V6 into that hatch. I think it'll be able to run to redline and make power all of the way - it starts to run out of breath on the 1.8t at about 5500rpm, and even if you're talking maybe of the power plateuing at only 6000 - leaving, say, 1200 available rpm on a ZC or SOHC VTEC motor - hell, that's all my old 8v Jetta would rev to, and it was plenty.

The other nice thing about this turbo is that it's currently in production on a wide scale, it's a modern, efficient design and, as mentioned, spools instantaneously - if you went back to back in two otherwise identical Golfs, say, one with the VR6 and the other with the 1.8t, unless you were so familiar with the particular response and power/torque curve of both engines in the same car, I doubt you'd be able to tell which was the turbo'd car - it just feels like a bigger motor, not a laggy turbo car. Imagine, a Civic with real ***** - *****=torque. It's why people who don't drive fast like American cars - they have lots of low-end torque and feel fast to them and are easy to drive in traffic because of it. In no other way am I ever nostalgic for my old Caprice, than when I'm in bumper to bumper traffic in my Civic.

I'm a weird fit for this forum, because if I didn't already own a Civic and a bunch of parts ready to bolt on as soon as the motor gets in, I'd likely be over at SE-R.net or www.mr2oc.com - I'm probably more of a Nissan guy than a Honda guy, but my Civic came up when I finally couldn't take driving an old Rabbit Diesel anymore, and I really like the car. I'm just more into that Nissan style power (which also happens to be similar to German- and American- style power) which is to make sure that you have as much power under the curve as possible, instead of just going for peak power. Think about it - how much time do you spend at redline? Even in a full race scenario? Honda's power philosophy is different - high revs and high end power but not a lot of torque, even in their V6's when compared to, say, a VG30 or VQ35. Even the little 1.6 in the base model Sentra feels ballsy.

Anyway, enough Nissan love (I'd probably really like an early 90's Sentra, but unfortunately they have crap for suspension travel, are a smidge heavier than the Civic, and I'm so pleased with the way the Civic handles - even with just the stock, base suspension, no sway bars or anything - that I can't wait to see it with some half-decent grip and the Teg sways I have for it installed. Driving one with a fully modded and properly tuned suspension, with some nice wide, grippy tires, must be a real treat.

Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention in reference to my previous posts is to always be skeptical about small hp claims - 6-15 hp. Because what is never mentioned is that dynos aren't 100% accurate. Hp on the same motor, same day, minutes apart can vary from 3-5%, easily. Intake charge temps can easily affect the hp by that much, if not more depending on the engine and it's ECU setup. On a 200hp engine, that 5% difference is 10hp. All of a sudden, that "15hp gain!" might be 5, or nothing at all. Imagine the bull**** claims you could get away with when you're talking a 300hp turbocharged WRX STi, or a 400hp (or 505hp Z06s kick much ***!) Corvette.

Before anyone thinks I'm smarter than I am, it's all in the magazines you read - I grew up reading Car Craft, which if you were never into domestics used to be more down-to-earth and realistic when it came time to mod their cars - they printed their actual costs, down to the fastener, for their project cars (I wish that the better import-based mags would do that, but they probably don't because it's scary to think about how much money it really takes to do even basic mods on a car), they always went for speed over flash, and were always looking for ways to do things on a budget - junkyard tech. When I got into imports, I hated most of the mags I read until I picked up Sport Compact Car. I've learned a lot about cars from that mag, and it's all real go-fast stuff - what to do if you really want your car to do it all, handle, accelerate, brake. **** the ricey bull**** that wastes money and makes you look like an idiot to anyone who knows anything about cars - go faster! Grassroots Motorsport is also a good mag if you want a no-bull**** approach. If you want half-naked chicks (why not just go ahead and get a Hustler?), ricey cars that don't go fast but have lots of chrome and nice paint and every decal known to man, and a staff of geeky asian dudes trying to make you think they're cooler than they are, by all means go pick up Import Tuner or Super Street. Every time I see a car with Super Street stickers, A) it's a ricey, slow, ugly peice of ****, and B) I laugh my *** off.

Another good idea is to simply go ahead and buy one of the Gran Turismo games (anything from 2 on up is an excellent choice). Build up a Civic, or another car (I'm guessing some of you might also own a Miata, 240SX or the like in addition to your Civic) and see what works and what doesn't. My own personal thing is to do time trials at Laguna Seca - I make sure that the cars have the best tires available and run two laps, and see how they do against one another. It tells a story, because it's same tires, same course, same driver. If you **** up and keep putting one car in the weeds but not another, and you're fairly good at tuning the cars (you can basically set up a similar starter tune for all of them and tweak from there) you know that you'd likely do it in real life. Another thing I want to do is pick another course and keep the tires the same, but return all of the cars to their stock condition and do the same thing - this is especially a good idea if, say, you want to buy a car but know you're not likely to be able to afford to modify it. Miata or 240SX? Find out!

An intersesting thing happened doing this: it really validated the Colin Chapman approach, in other words lighter is always better. I had an 800hp Z06 that was the fastest non-race model that I had - and I had a lot of cars in my garage - followed by another 800hp car, A Nismo 400R (special edition Skyline GT-R), a 600hp Ruf AWD Turbo, and other badass machines. I bought an Elise for the spec race, and after winning the golds (you had to leave the car stock besides tires) I ran it with just a race flywheel and the spec tire, nothing else, and this little 192hp car beat my Vettes time by a second! Fully modded at around 300hp, it would go on to beat the Vette by 3.5 seconds total.

Later, I did the same with a Civic SiR. I was expecting it to do well. It did - it beat, in fully tuned and modded form, my Vette's time by a second.

Telling, indeed.



...Sorry for the long post (I'm a bit high )

 

Oh, and don't feel too bad for yourself there - your motor at least has potential. Whereas, even if my D15B2 wasn't shot to hell, it'd still be hopeless (but it'd at least be getting me to work! [:@]) check out last months Sport Compact Car, they did a how-to homemade turbo on a D16 - it made over 200hp at the wheels, I believe. Which would make any Civic decently fast - quite decent, actually.

 

Ill-informed. The D series motors do not have harmonic balancers, I've done extensive searching on this (considering I have a set of UR sitting at home waiting to be put on) as well as calling UR to hear their side, what the D series motors have is called an elastometer, it is not a harmonic balacer. The crankshaft is balanced so there is no need for a harmonic balancer. Yes underdrive pulleys will place more wear on bearings but it is minimal, if properly installed the underdrive pulleys will not cause engine failure after 15k miles like some of you have read on 7thgen or some other forums.

Underdrive pulleys are "safe" to use on a DD.

Oh BTW that list that he has up there comes from a book called "High-Performance Honda Builder's Handbook" by Joe Pettitt.