The New 'K-Swap' For Drivelines?

Honda are already well known for producing some of the best naturally aspirated engines in the world and what makes them better adding a Turbocharger we're here with Mo with his EK Civic behind me this is actually converted to four-wheel drive built as a drag car by b2r Motorsport and we're going to find out a little bit more about this build now for a start Mo let's let's get to the basics the car hasn't actually run down the strip yet so we can't talk numbers can we yeah no we haven't done any

thing more than a few test passes so far so yeah yeah okay let's get into the build itself and the the most obvious part is that's no longer running a B series engine you've got a K series in it uh what drove you to make that case while um I think back in 2012 um seeing him I think that was the height of the K20 era um seeing him everywhere and it was just something that I really wanted to um enjoy and discover you know um I remember the biggest thing about a K series back then was the talk you

know so like a 2.4 L the torque just naturally aspirated feeling the torque was awesome you know so yeah that's what it was really okay I mean obviously a bigger capacity to start with and it has got probably arguably one of the best flowing cylinder head anywhere for a 4-cylinder engine however you the stock K20 or K24 wasn't quite good enough for you as Gone full build as well what was the driving Factor behind that decision were you aiming for power levels that you absolutely knew the stock b

lock was not going to be capable of yeah so I would say it goes hand in hand with the four Drive um front W Drive I don't think you'd ever really need unless you're drag racing more than what a stock motor can handle so about that 370 Kow range that's on the edge of its life almost but um as soon as you go full drive and you get that first first gear traction at R Racing or on the street or whatever you automatically want more you know so um it gets addictive at that point so then you know you o

bviously I jumped a few steps I went straight to 1,000 horsepower and then we started learning limitations with the you know so you know you had head lifts you know um we had calling issues we had bearing issues we had whatever issue you could think of you know so um and these all start popping up around that th000 horsepower Mark yeah and another thing is I would say um in America cuz there these are Big in America um for them a sleeved block is much more cheaper so um it would probably cost th

em 1 to 2,000 USD whereas over here we've got to buy a block core um get them to SLE it and then the shipping is so expensive it's it's actually about half the price of a Billet block so by the time you invest into a sleeve block that does crack they do crack it's just you're on a limited life span um the other thing I'll just add there with the sleeve block I think people would assume that is a fix for all of the problems that you have when you're making high power but you also need to be very

very careful about who is doing the machine work to install the sleeves because sometimes you're fixing one problem but the number of times I've seen other problems created with the sleeves dropping in operation and then the head gaset leaks anyway so you sort of fix one problem and can potentially create others so need to be very careful about who's doing that sleeping in terms of the actual block itself who is the manufacturer bullet um racing engineering I think they call yeah so Australian m

ade uh well known in the Billet block uh area so the other aspect is when we go to Billet blocks uh often people will go to a dry block for a dedicated drag application by that I mean there is no coolant passing through the block great for strength and works well for drag racing but really does limit you in terms of what you can do with a car I've seen a radiator in this obviously haven't gone that way uh why did you decide to stay wet block um I think you know we're not at that point yet where

we're need a full dry deck the other thing is um we'd like to do a lot of rooll racing in Sydney and when you get to eliminations it's essentially pass after pass after pass so I don't want the complications of a dry deck or you know a separate head all you know block getting too hot things like that so I thought you know what for now I'll just leave it simple keep it wet deck um I know it's working we figured most of the cooling issues out and we'll worry about that later uh otherwise if it goe

s to a full drag car yeah I say the drve deck you know never lifting heads and stuff like that and stuff like that you know there's two elements actually there that I just want to clarify fire as well because we we you used the term dry dick and wet dick so that's really talking about whether or not water is transferred from the block up into the head uh Advantage with that is if we go dry deck where there isn't that transfer if the head does lift we don't get com combustion pressure making its

way into the water jacket which then means we don't get water under the tires so that's really important for safety and reliability uh however wet deck is sorry that dry deck does bring in the uh difficulties of the plumbing where you're getting the From the Block to the head that's obviously external so a little bit more complexity around there now in terms of the uh rest of the rotating assembly crankshaft connecting rods Pistons can you give us some insight into what you're using sure um so m

e I'm an O guy um I bought a brand new K20 crank from Honda um you know I I've always kept o cranks I've never seen them break you know what I mean um I have seen b ones break and stuff like that and um I I think people move more towards the Billet stuff when they D stroke stroke up etc etc I think the Honda ones are so reliable there's really not many options even if you did want to go off the market I I think a lot of people Overlook that some of these faty crankshafts are actually exceptional

ly good and even though it's designed for a low horsepower naturally aspirated engine and stock form these are a quality Forge crankshaft they are really really good and you can sometimes go well over 1,000 horsepower with that stock crankshaft the benefit is if and when it does start to crack or fail it's also much cheaper to replace than a Billet crack up correct oh much much cheaper the other thing is as well um off the shelf rods off the shelf rotating 7ly period you know what I mean I know

a few friends with Billet or D Str or whatever it's 6mon weight for rods just rods you know so having that off the shelf availability means if you need to replace a part you H do it almost instantly of course I was I was going to do a 2.2 to set up cuz this was a 2.4 um and then just looking into how long I had to wait for a set of four rods or whatever or if I broke a crankshaft or anything it was 6 months the cars out down so you know and they're not cheap parts to really keep stock or if the

part fails then you've got a useless brand new part in the box there so you know keep it simple keep it allm I want a combo that I can pretty much buy the parts in two three weeks and get back together cuz the reality is we are racing and you know things do go wrong yeah absolutely so ultimately you are at 2.4 no no it's to later now okay two later I was going to ask the the the difference there or the way up between the 2.4 the additional capacity the additional bottom in torque and boost respo

nse you get with larger turbos how did you weigh that up against the ability to RI the engine I mean obviously you've decided to stay 2 L yeah well I was originally 2.4 um but I had loads of issues with harmonics so once you get up to around 9 and a half 10 ,000 upm with a 2.4 lit you either have to droke or just drop the rev limit down back to 9 UM the reason why I went to lat was because um that was Honda's engine that they designed to rev and you know I just thought with a shorter Rod oh sorr

y um with the shorter stroke and all that it would be much much happier to rev um the interesting thing what we did see is the twl actually makes more power up top with the RPM so it carries way better whereas the 2.4 youve got download Torque brings on the turbo better but it drops off a lot earlier than two ler and I think it's it's all about sort of understanding your application as well the 2.4 if it's a street application or maybe a hill climb car you want that lower bottom end torque and t

he Boost response but when you're drag racing or Roll Racing you're launching off a two-step you've got that boost and you're probably only operating between I'm guessing maybe 8 and 10 and a half 11,000 RPM so you're always within that power band is that right yeah especially with the um paddle shift the clutchless you never drop out a boost so the the shift is that fast that you're always in boost between gears now the next element I want to talk about is the the Pistons themselves and then th

e compression ratio and that sort of brings out the other question is what what fuel are you running because that obviously drives the decision on your compression ratio yeah so 9 and2 to1 compression ratio it's a speed Factory Outlaw areas piston made by CP cillo um and I think it's a BME Rod allo Rod um the fuel varies so E85 e98 um c85 really depends on the application um straight drag racing I'd say we'd use c85 just because it's much much safer um no no interest in moving to a full methanol

fuel as opposed to alcohol based or ethanol based fuels look there is interest but the only interest would be purely speaking of how expensive 85 fuels are getting over own methanol fuel I think it really is getting ridiculous because we can't r on pump quality anymore so you've got to go to a a race grade E85 yeah so it's not like a full I know everyone says street car street car street car but you know if you're driving your car to work and you need a bit of power and you put E85 out of the p

ump and it's sometimes e70 e75 yeah that's cool but when you're at this level you don't want a e75 fuel you want a guaranteed ethanol content so you buy a barrel that's E85 or higher right but the barrels are just getting ridiculously or there's no stock cuz everyone's buying them um um so you know the methanol looks extremely you know um tempting in terms of budgets availability etc etc etc not I don't you know power is power you're going to make Power the way but you know is it like a methanol

stpp of 98 now you know I think that the thing that is worth mentioning is that the methanol does come with some significant downsides first of all you you need to run around about twice as much fuel in order to make the same amount of power give or take and then obviously that affects the your fuel system sizing pumps injectors Etc and also I mean E85 has its problems but methanol is another level of corrosiveness to the to the entire fuel system so there's those considerations as well all rig

ht let's get back to to the engine the other element you've really gone top shelf here with is the cylinder head so the factory cylinder head wasn't going to cut it for you uh talk us through what you've chosen um so we've went for a four piston Kingpin um cast head um so what happens with the factories in the heads is they crack so after you stop cracking your factory blocks and you go bill it then you start cracking your heads so we're just chasing the problems down the line as you fix one and

start making more power you find the next weakness yeah so the head lifts F fourth gear whatever um and then you know head cracks whatever etc etc um the Kingpin head has three times as much material it's got more clamping Force we've tested them um there's me and two other guys in Australia that have had very successful results where they've put their cars on methanol put their cars on other fuels you know done everything except for dry Deck with a factory head and nothing's worked we' put the

se heads on cool and pressure perfect you know right across the line 30 40 passes I think one of the biggest problems with high output turbocharged engines is always that head gasket integrity and yes there's different types of head gaskets there's B stud materials but the reality is ultimately you end up limited by the amount of material on the deck surface of the block and similarly on the deck surface of the head so these aftermarket components much much thicker in those areas makes it much m

ore rigid much less likely to flex and on that note we talked off camera you're actually not using anything too exotic for the actual head gasket itself talk us through that yeah so it's just a multi-layer head gasket um we've got a stainless o-ring machined into the the um the block and that you know that's it so just crushes into the head gasket talk the head gasket down you know what I mean check your head studs every couple passes whatever you know make sure they still talk down correctly an

d that's it man you know um I I my meth my method is always just keep it simple as soon as you complicate things you're never going to finish the car like you've just got to find that next issue deal with it and then find that next issue and eventually just get to a point where there's no issues I think there solid advice for those building project cars is always tempting to just continually iterate the car and never actually get it to the racetrack but when you do that you never really find out

what the problems are that you need to work through and you also don't get to enjoy the car on the track which is just as important all right the the next question that's going to be on everyone's Minds is power level can you give us some insight into uh first of all what turbo it is what boost pressure you're running and uh you know what power level even if you can give us a bit of a ballpark as to where you're at yeah um so the guys I want me to say any figures on on camera or whatever but I

can give you a rough p park um right now it's sit on around 56 pound of boost um and it is a very conservative or very large figure I'd say you know so we're definitely in the four digits we're over 1,200 I can tell you that um but we are planning on taking this car to 80 90 PSI it's it's really enjoying 56 lb right now so you me off camera before 56 PSI and you referred to that as as as low boost so that's that's no still no joke that's sp1 as we'd call it yeah and the the actual turbo pick you

've got on at the moment oh so it's a next gen 885 Precision um absolutely love this turbo I think it's a match made in heaven for this engine to be honest um I never would believe that I'd be spooling a turbo this size before 6,000 RPM on the two later to be honest 6,000 that is that is truly impressive and and what do you Riv it out to ultimately um we can go all the way to 12 if we really want to you know but that is a very wide power band it's you know people think 6,000 is a little bit late

but it's not late in the cas series to be honest you know you it feel it like that you know so yeah I mean that's one of the things that I've seen since I stopped Dr racing with turbo technology it's come so far and back in my day I I was running a 2 L 4g63 and we weren't seeing full Boost until after 7,000 RPM ring to 11 so if you can get that sort of boost at six uh that is simply amazing Electronics what are you running to control this engine yeah so um ECU wise link g4x um we've got uh motc

h uh PDM PDM 30 um I've got uh Pro wire who's wired the entire car in rayam the12 um we've got te cell whatever your name full Mill spec loom full Mill specon you know um a few things I didn't seal just for maintenance like injector clips and all this and all that because I knew I'd change them um so everything else is sealed um we've got the PRP new coil packs which are rated to 4,000 horsepower in the right application we have maxed the 35 ones out um on this setup um we've got a Elixir fuel p

ump um custom made 680 lph we have tested the fuel pump and on this setup it will do 1,500 methanol one electric pump okay so you've got enough fuel pump to last in eternity yeah and when I'm idling when I'm cruising around whatever I like you know I drive it to work and stuff you know street car street car yeah it runs like a 255 you don't hear nothing so it's extremely quiet it's like a factory pump that can flow to you know five six pumps it's it's crazy you know so um I give a shout out to a

lixa um AI aftermarket industry supplied the um hanger um and the fc500 the ventur system and all that I love his stuff I've never had an issue with it I've used it for years his engineering is top quality um now I noticed in the back you've got a nitrous bottle as well so talk us through how you're using that nitrous is this just to SPO the turbo on a two-step um I've never actually used nitrous in this car it's kind of like a you watched the Fast and the Furious too much as a as a younger guy

didn't you it's just kind of one of those things like when I built the car I've noticed from past experiences if you don't put something in you're going to not have a place to put it so when you build your cage and your boxes and your firewalls and stuff like that um put put everything you think you're going to use and then use it later because so future proof the project exactly I don't want a I don't want a nitrous bottle sitting next to me where my handbrake sits and stuff like that so you kn

ow but um in terms of spooling I'm very happy with how it spools until we start racing on a slick and see how it leaves the line I guess we might use it you know but uh if I'm not happy with the 1500 horsepower from this turbo I put another 200 in it whatever it takes you know um yeah easy is the other aspect of this car we obviously need to talk about is the four-wheel drive conversion which is now I wouldn't say common place with the Honda platform but it is becoming more and more accepted mor

e and more common what is the transmission that you're using and what is involved in that four-wheel drive conversion yeah so um I'd say the fourwh drive is the next case swop that's what I call it but um so right now this is running a quy um sequential it's the all Drive sequential so you've got the quy rear part of the box with which is their casing and I've got a Billet bell housing that makes up to a CRV transfer case um from so the CRV transfer case is the Honda part that really is the keyy

to this four-wheel drive conversion yeah so you need the Honda transfer case and on the back you've got the Honda wagon or the CRV diff the ratios just work you know what I mean um in the middle we got a viscus coupler so essentially the wagon are so much harder to find they're a 1980s car um none of them came to Australia not many went to America they're more of a Japanese full drive sort of thing Factory components are about um 3 and 1/ half 4,000 us without shipping then you've got to get th

em I've got to I had to get the viscus rebuilt I had to get the diff rebuilt it it like I'm going to go out on a limb and say these stock components probably really weren't designed by Honda to support 1500 horsepower either how reliable are they in a drag application look I've never broken anything and I've been launching this car so um it does hook to yeah yeah so I I would say like I don't like to refer to America just because you know I feel like we don't see a lot of stuff they break you kn

ow what I mean but um they're saying they're going sevens on Factory components we have seen them go Sixers so um yeah look it's an awesome bit of Kit and the factory stuff will do you anywhere up to a th000 like you know it's just when you really want to go drag racing what you're going to run like you're going to have a Freewheel drive or you're going to have a you know so you want Tod in the back and all that etc etc but yeah all right ultimately I know you haven't really laid down a full pas

s in this as yet can we get can we get some predictions on where you think it might be running yeah so the real reason why we haven't ran a passing this is not because of engine troubles Etc it's actually we've had trouble finding a clutch to support the power because the car does get a lot of grip surprisingly so um you know there's a lot of times where we do pass we get a really good 60 and then by Third Gear the clutch is slipping and the pass is gone you know so at candra I did a 15 on Stree

t ties with 30 pie in the ties and then the clutch just let go and I did like a 105 at 100 mph so you know I was on the brakes halfway down the track um hopefully I've got a new clutch system in it now um and that's just like the next thing you know what I mean so if the clutch holds we are aiming to go low 87s we're trying to for Australia the the current ET is 800 um that's you need to be in that 7c bracket yeah so we're trying to break the Australian 7c the brick wall you know we're trying to

shoot for it um and no one's on that drag car Etc any any Honda you know what I mean so um that's what we we're aiming to do right now um and hopefully we get there um I have taken a lot of weight out of it there's carbon roof there's lots of carbon components and yeah you know hopefully we get there all right M the the car is an absolute credit to you uh it is a really unique boild and we definitely wish you all the best with with getting into the sevens thanks mate I really appreciate and I l

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