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First Drive of the All Wheel Drive Civic Project

The Honda J35a8 V6 is tuned and driven

Contributed by: Enginebasics.com

For any project one of the biggest days is that first drive.  While it usually ends up being short and sweet due to all the problems and leaks you find, it is still a happy day.  This project was planned for 3 year, and took 2 more years to get to this point.  5 years is a long time, but for me it’s not always about the finished product, but the journey to get there.  I love to fabricate, design, and tinker and it’s almost therapeutic for me.   Many car guys find that therapy from going on a long drive or giving their car a good wash and wax, but for me…..wrench time can be the best time.  So while it’s been 5 years the time has come to take the car off the stands and drive it.
            Let’s first talk about the bad:

1. The camber is WAY messed up.
2. The suspension geometry is WAY messed up.
3. I am rubbing HARD on the fenders all over the place.

Ok these things will need to be addressed. 

            Lets now talk about the good:

1. The Infinity ECU has been way easy to tune.  Car starts right up and idles just fine.  The ecu is controlling all of my outputs perfectly and the inputs are all working just as they should.  I have had zero issues so far and can’t wait to really stretch the cars legs and see what this ECU can do.  It has SO MUCH POWER and control over everything it is quite impressive.  After driving the car around the block over and over it is driving like stock and behaving perfectly.  I couldn’t be happier with its performance.
2. The car drives.  No really.  The clutch engagement is great, transmission feels good, and radiator and fans are working great.  Really no problems from a mechanical standpoint other than the suspension.

So there is a lot more work to be done but for the most part I’m pretty happy.  I am going to have to flare the car out do to the increased track width of the RL, but I knew this was going to happen and bought some fender flares for the Civic.  While I’m not totally sure of the “fender flare” look, I will start with it, and can go custom flared later if I end up not liking the look.  So for now I don’t know what to say really…..it runs, it drives, I have only tuned the car to 4k RPM, but I can tell you the car is going to be quick.  The j swap is a fairly popular swap and when swapped into a small Civic most people run low 13’s to high 12’s.  Basically the car feels like a new 5.0L mustang GT.

            Hopefully you enjoyed this update to the project and will be checking in more as we go.  Be sure to also check out the many technical articles that you can find here on the website and follow us on Facebook for notifications and updates. 

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