Happy BirthSiday

Well. Today is the Si's birthday. It's been two years since I drove it back from Dallas.

I've been driving it a lot recently, and I have given up on the no-rain policy. For almost 2 years, it only got rained on a handful of times.

The Sumitomo HTRZ II's are almost toast. So toast I'm afraid that I'll fail inspection. They only lasted about 10k miles, but never needed balancing. They never seemed to really hook up, and always felt a little greasy, but they were consistent. I might get another set since they are so cheap, but I'll see.

I recently took the Vibrant off. It was just too damn noisy.

Driveway pic because shitty blogs are supposed to have shitty pictures.

Milquetoast

It's been over a year since I promised pretty pictures of my wonder-whip. Sadness.

Lately I've been on a quest to make a cadre of nearly useless shift knobs. So far I have two 1.375" red spherical phenolic knobs, two 1.375" brushed aluminum spherical knobs, a 1" diameter, 4.5" long precision ceramic coated aluminum shift lever, and a red anodized aluminum robot claw with a M10x1.5 tap in the bottom. Pics to follow.

Also lately, I bought a Nighthawk Black Pearl Honda Civic LX coupe, manual transmission. After basking in the glory of the all-mighty habby death sled, my wife succumbed to the beauty of of the FG and had to have one for herself. COUPE FLEET FTW.



The Exhaust bypass project is still on hold until I find a welder.

The wagon. I am on it.

After what seems like an eternity, I am slowly executing the exhaust cutout plan. The Vibrant performance catback, though it's rambunctious monster truck like sound is entertaining, is just too loud. I genuinely feel bad for people I pass, even at part throttle.

The solution goes like this:
Chop up the stock exhaust AND the Vibrant. Weld the front side of the vibrant to the back end of the stock. Close couple splice in an exhaust flange about 12" past the header.

Someone's already done it, and they have videos up too.

Last night I tested out the timer circuit, controller and the valve. I used a magnetic reed switch to trigger the timer relay. It worked great.

I still don't have anyone to weld my pipes though.

Just Another Crappy Update.

Here's whats been happening:

I ran into my garage door backing up.

After taking the car back to the body shop three times, they were still unable to get the swirl marks out. I have since given up on having the paint as good as it was.

After sending the exaust cutout back to QTP and waiting over a month for them to repair the defective unit, I realized there is not enough room under the car to mount the damn thing anyway.

The Vibrant Performance cat-back that I bought, which I intended to put the cut-out on, is a piece of ill-fitting crap that A: melted my bumper and B: is earsplitting loud. I've since banged on it enough to get it away from the bumper and since it's so loud, there was little point in putting the QTP cutout on it, even if there were room for it. Seriously, you can hear it from a mile away. I'm not kidding.

So effectively, the Si is done. There are no more pending projects for it. It does however, seem to get better and better the more I drive it. After about 4 hours of time with it, it becomes less of a bumpy, loud, darty, jerky mess and more like a precision guided weapon of mass destruction. I guess thats worth having to keep a stash of earplugs in the car for passengers that are not used to being strapped in a missile.

I forgot what stage I'm on

...must...stop...buying...crap....

Just when I'm on the cusp of getting the car finished, I pull the trigger on an idea that I previously had but gave up on.

I until recently I settled on a mature sounding Tanabe Medalion Touring cat back exhaust and was just seconds away from buying it. Then I saw this Youtube video.

In import car world we have a name for cheap straight-through exhausts that are designed for maximum power gains with little regard for the awful noise they make: Fartcans. They sound like farts, or a bee buzzing. The car in the video is just a straight open exhaust, no muffler, no cat and it sounds amazing. That is the sound that fartcans try to capture, but fail miserably.

Unfortunately, running an open exhaust on the street is tee-minus-ten-minutes-to-ticket-time, even though those bastard Harley swine (sworn enemy of the import driver) get away with it.

Lucky for me, being an engineer and having experience in the lighting industry, I've come up with a solution that I think might just work.

#1: The exhaust cutout.

An exhaust cutout is basically a muffler bypass. Now that my catalytic converter is gone, the most restrictive portion of the exhaust is the muffler. Solution? Weld in this puppy before the muffler. ...but wait there's more.

#2: The cutout controller

This device replaces the momentary toggle switch control with a self calibrating 0-100% device. Most important is the trigger wire that when energized will open the valve to 100% then turn off the motor.

#3: The timer relay

This has a trigger wire too. A momentary or continuous input on the trigger input will start an adjustable timer. During the countdown, a relay contact is closed. This relay will be wired to the trigger on the controller.

The idea is to trigger the timer with the vtec solenoid signal, which will open up the cutout when vtec kicks and for a set amount of time afterwards.

Why? To scare children of course!

Disaster Plan

The stock header has been removed. Glorious victory over my mechanical foes, tube socks and all.

For those of you attempting this feat of endurance, remove everything that can be removed that can possibly come into contact with the header as you remove it. Keep track of your nuts and bolts - there is going to be a lot of them.

I actually ended up using a pet leash around one of the primaries as I removed the last nut from the header so it would not fall. I held the header up with my teethses.

DC race header shows up on Monday. Still no word from any of the local Hondata dealers about sending the ECU off for the reflash. The good news is that I'm going ahead with the reflash too. What does the reflash do, you ask? well:




Notice the massive amount of midrange power increase, and this is in addition to the 8-12hp gains already realized from the intake and header combo. Before, if you shifted before the rev limiter at 8300, you would fall off the big cam and end up in the rut, shown in green @ 6000 rpm. After, not only is the rev limiter increased to 8600, but shifting at 7000 rpm puts you back down into meat city around 5200.

Theoretically, the stock 5800 rpm Vtec engagement and gearing will allow you to always be on the big cam. In the real world, you are not going to downshift from 5800 rpm, to 8000 rpm, decel to 7500, accel to 8300 rpm and then have to upshift again. By making the big cam range wider, you downshift less, saving time and making the car faster than if you had just increased the HP. Blah Blah Blah...I know, but seriously: A stock WRX puts about 160-170hp to the ground. By the end of next week I'll be putting at least 210 to the ground in a car that weighs 400lbs less than a WRX, and will out slalom a Viper all for what I would have paid for a WRX. The bang-for-buck ratio would have been great if I hadn't also had to sell my soul to make it happen.

Here we go again.

It does not seem like 3 months since I started this whole take-apart-put-back-together mess, but then again I started planning the whole operation over a year ago when the first technical specs for the 2006 Si came out.

Anyway, my plan was to pull off the catalitic converter section and have an approximate replacement made without the cat elements. Turns out the header and the cat section are a 4-2-1 header and are designed to work together. I've decided to go with the crappy DC race header instead.

So...I'm flying the jackstands again in the process of taking off my header. So far, I've got two cuts and have broken a $50 plastic piece and still can't get the header heat shield out from the engine. Things are not going so well, but I'm determined to make this work.

The moment I get the stock header out, I'm ordering the DC.

Corner

At one point I had a huge post with a heat transfer physics lesson and everything, but it somehow got nuked when I was trying to format the color. I guess its my fault for not learning HTML.

Anyway.

I went and spanked through a couple of corners after work yesterday and pushed the car to it's limits. The results are far beyond what I imagined possible. Even as I could feel the grip giving out, the car held it's line with just a little bit of understeer. This was on line textured fresh cement, so I think some of the astronomical grip comes from that. I'll never buy race tires for this car, but I'm sure that the grip they would afford would be far beyond what my meager driving skills could utilize.

Tight corners result in a LOT of understeer. Brake then turn into a sharp 90 and the fronts just grease out. Anything more than 270° of input without loading up the suspension first is just asking for a plow share.

Stage II.5 complete

I have installed the Hondata intake manifold gasket, the K&N short ram intake and have gotten an alignment for the Si.

First of all, there are a couple of good DIY's for what I have done here and here.

Driving Impressions:

The combination of 1.2° of negative camber up front, the HFP suspension and the Progress rear sway bar result in induceable oversteer. Stable unless provoked. A.K.A. - Perfect.

The short ram intake, well, the wave of evil that leaps forth from just above your knees and into your ears at 6000 rpm is worth every penny. It makes children cry. It may suck a little hot air when your are not moving, but for the most part it's Satan screaming after Vtec kicks in.

A few pointers for the noobies:

Clean the area above the IM BEFORE your start. Use a vacuum cleaner and a toothbrush to get all the grit out of there. You WILL be struggling to get this damn thing off, and shit WILL drop into your head. By the time I got done, there were aluminum shavings on the head from where the stud threads gouged the IM.

The Hondata instructions say to remove the LH stud. Don't. There is not enough stud sticking out after the IMG install to get the stud all the way in using the two nut method. You CAN use the 2 nut method to get it out, but then you will be totally clueless on how to tilt the IM back on with both studs in place.

The bracket under the IM, the one that does not go to the bar, does not need to be removed from the IM if you unclip the wire harness that is attached to it about half way up. It can be removed from under the car.

Push hoses, don't pull them. There are 8 trillion hose ends you have to push off. You will be an expert by the end of this project and will be taking them off and putting them on as easily as plugging in a hair drier.

I tried to cheap out and half drain my coolant. I was holding the IM up with one hand, and pushing off the pink hose with the other when I discovered that there was quite a bit of coolant left in my engine. So here I was on the cusp of FINALLY getting it off and my shoes were getting soaked.

Use a vacuum cleaner to suck up any bits of crap that fall onto or into the head. DON'T SUCK GASOLINE YOUR VACUUM WILL EXPLODE.

Extensions extensions extensions. Be sure you have plenty of extensions for your ratchet. I was able to get to the bracket bolt on the underside of the IM from under the car using a stack of extensions. A universal joint and extensions are required for this job, as are a 8,10,12mm sockets and a 8,10,12 mm wrench. Here's a pic of extension being used for getting under the IM.

Also note the copious use of 3m blue masking tape. Basically, if it lead to somewhere after the intake filter, it got covered with tape if I was leaving it overnight. I also covered the fuel rail with a plastic bag to keep dust off the injectors.

Camber Bolts

Camber Bolts went on without much trouble. A few tips for any DIY'ers out there:

• Use a bright colored paint marker to clearly mark the head of the bolt. Once you get it in there, no telling where the lobe is.
• The lobe on the bolt is forged, and therefore has a rough surface. Turning the lobe inside of the knuckle is easy, getting it into the knuckle, not so easy. Use the nut to pull the lobe through once you are sure you have it started in the knuckle hole.
• The socket sizes for the nut and bolt are different than the stock nut and bolt. The camber bolt is a 15mm and the camber nut is 18mm. Be prepared.
• For maximum camber, point the lobe perpendicular to the line between the two spindle pinch bolts.
• The provided directions, though correct, are misleading. Install the bolt with the small tab lined up with the lobe, but ultimately the big handle needs to be pointed in the direction you want the knuckle to go, and perpendicular to the line between the two spindle pinch bolts.
• Before tightening the bolts, load the suspension to take out any slop in the bolt holes. I did this by putting a piece of wood on my jack and carefully lifting the suspension by pressing up on the brake rotor. BE CAREFUL! Don't put the entire weight of the car, or lift the car off the jack stands. Why? The front hubs will turn and the car will either roll off , or eject your jack into your leg. You only want to lift enough to compress the spring about an inch.

And... I found a screw in the shoulder of one of my tires. Funny how even the best plans can fall apart as a result of the smallest circumstances. So rather than driving my car to the alignment shop, it remains on the jackstands.