CATEGORIES FOR ARTICLE LINKS BELOW

Time for another update to the Honda Civic V6 Swap SH AWD

Turbo coming; Air to Water Manifold; Driving impressions

It’s been almost seven months since I got the car up and fully running with its torque vectoring AWD.  I had to make a short weekend trip, which was a six hour drive to another state, and thought: “Hey, lets take the civic and see how it does on a road trip.”  Turns out it does just fine.  It drives like a regular 1993 civic would.  Just happens to have a ton more power and handling.   The car doesn’t get the MPG’s that I thought it would.  It is the heaviest 1993 civic hatchback on the face of the planet at around 2970 lbs, but still a lightweight relatively speaking (it was 3140 with me in it.  As of right now it’s getting the same gas mileage as a 2005 Acura RL would.  The subtraction of 1,000 lbs hasn’t seemed to help much there. 

The handling of the car takes some getting used to as well.  I remember reading about this in articles when editors would drive the first SH AWD cars, like the RL, on race tracks.  The same writers are now saying the same things with the 2017 Acura NSX.  To get the AWD system to do its thing and rotate the car you have to be on the throttle.  This means that to take advantage of the system you have to get on the gas a lot sooner than you usually would.  So while typically you are through the apex of the corner before you slowly begin applying power again.  This car behaves much more like a Nissan GTR, or the new NSX in that you initiate the turn in of the car and get it pointed at the corner and then begin slowly applying power immediately just after corner entry.  It is a much different driving style, but once you get the hang of it you will be amazed by what the car is doing.

There is one exit ramp that is just a long sweeping right hand corner.  Typically on my FWD cars I would push faster and faster till the front end would just start washing out and under steer.  With the Civic, not only can I go significantly faster through the corner, but also when it does start to slide, the entire car slides all at once and very predictably.   What I am currently working on is doing a better job of getting the system to engage from standing starts.   Right now there is a slight delay before the AWD system kicks in and does its thing. 

For anyone that has driven a light weight Civic, or any FWD car really, in the rain with a turbo with big torque than you know what a mess it is.  This car with its big 3.5L V6 has torque all over the place.  One day it was poring the rain outside which gave me the perfect opportunity to REALLY see a difference in the car with the AWD system.  I pulled the fuse to the rear all wheel drive diff and went for a drive.  First thing I did was start from stop and get the car rolling at 1 mph.  I mashed the pedal and just spun the wheels.  I barely moved forward as I was basically just doing a rolling burn out.  I let of and switched to 2nd gear.  Car started to accelerate, but as soon as I got to around 3500 RPM, excessive wheel spin plagued the car.  I then pulled over and put the AWD fuse back in to bring the system back online.  Did the same exact 1 mph start and was blown away.  I could feel all the wheels spinning and the car had the same torque steer as before, but this time it was accelerating forward while doing it.  Shift to 2nd gear and I was met with a little slipping feedback through the steering wheel from the front wheels, but really the car just kept pulling forward.  I won’t lie……at this point I had a pretty big smile on my face.  I then took the car through some corners in the rain and the whole system is just impressive to say the least. 

So what’s next:

Not that there is anything wrong with a 270+ HP car, but I never would have built the car if that was the goal.  If I only wanted 300 wheel HP than a B swapped civic with a turbo and some really sticky Toyo R888 235mm tires would have done the job and be way easier.  The goal of this car was always to be a monster.   I am now preparing the car for a turbo.  I started by installing some Pre-Cat deletes:

I then have started to finish up the work on the Air to Water Intercooler that is built into a new intake manifold.  I would have LOVED to have just done a simple Air to Air intercooler, but I have ZERO room upfront for it with the large radiator and A/C condenser that I have.  This meant that an Air to Water was going to be my only option.  Then the question was: “where do I put that?”  With the turbo being located above the transmission and the intake for the intake manifold being right there next to that, there was no room for it.  I then started looking at integrating it into the intake manifold itself and moving the manifold further back.  Others had already built manifolds that looked like this one, but not with an integrated air to water intercooler in them. 

It is by far the most intricate thing that I have built and welded out of aluminum.  It has taken me over 40 hours or working the runners, and blending the welds after welding it.  The problem is the access.  If you build a manifold like this it causes the intake runners to basically be on top of each other.  This makes welding them up impossible from the top.   You therefor must weld them from the inside.  This heavily disrupts the flow, so after you weld them, you then must spend hours porting and smoothing them back out.  Also to get good penetration you then need the chamfer all the tubes and mounting plate so that when you do port and blend it back out you aren’t left with just a super thin wall that will burst once you put some boost to it.  Before anyone asks, no I won’t make another one, because I doubt anyone would be willing to pay for what it would take for me to reproduce it.  The materials alone were almost $800 and the time it took is nuts.

I also bought another spare motor. 

They are relatively cheap, and now I have a motor I can measure up the intake manifold on, the exhaust headers, and a spare wiring harness so I can clean up the RL harness and get rid of all the stuff I don’t need.

If I were going to make a list of things still needing to get done it would be:

- Mounting the Air to Water heat exchanger
- Ducting to exchanger
-Routing of Aluminum heat exchanger lines
- Wiring for air to water fluid pump
- Welding in coolant temp sensor to control water pump for air to water intercooler
- welding up over flow/ burp expansion tank for air to water intercooler
- fabricating turbo headers
- fabricating down pipe and exhaust
- welding in oil return bung to oil pan
- putting in turbo oil supply line and coolant lines

Ugggg…I’m going to just stop.  There is still at least 70-100 hours of stuff right there.  Oh and the cost.  Let’s not even think about the $$$$$.

So expect more updates soon, but right now I’m just enjoying driving the car so much that I don’t want to take it down for more than just a week at a time.  My goal right now is to have the car up and running on boost by spring, but between work/family and can be difficult at times.  Check back for more updates.