The EL / EP / EK outcome

[QikLude]

I heard on the grapevine that value for money you are better to go for a Phantom Grip type lsd if your gonna get it cusom made...  Sure they arent as good around corners as quaifes but they are less than half the price and I think if you put fairly tight springs in them they would nearly be better for drag than a quaife, clutch type LSD's are very good at drag racing, getting close to the perfect locked diff

If your drag racing with it, why not just have a gearbox with a locked diff? Its not hard to change the gearbox for some racing fun

Cheers Jw

[redr2]

Looking to see if anyone has actually completed the EL/EK motor swap with the City Turbo set up.  

I am in Canada and am currently running an 81 EL motor in my first gen Civic.   The car is running dual carbs and some other goodies but I am looking for more.

I am considering sticking to the carbs and having the engine built up with a ported head.  However, I am starting to think the gains may not be enough.

Now I see that the City intake and exhaust mani bolts up allowing me to run a turbo set up.  Good News.  I could build up my EL nice and strong and simply rebuild the head and run a turbo set up.

One thing I see that has not been covered is the swapping of the heads.  If you guys find a 79-81 EK motor the EL (non CVCC) head will bolt onto the EK.  You then have the advantage of ditching the CVCC set up and still being able to use the City turbo.   The EL head is suipposed to flow way better too.  

So has anyone actually completed this swap successfully.  I don't want to be the first one especially in Canada where there are no Honda City's .

This of course brings me to my next dilemna.  Anyone have a turbo set up they would be willing to ship to Canada (Guess I would need the Intake/throttle body, exhuast mani, tubo, distributor and ECU). Should all fit into a box!

Thanks.  It would be nice to see this discussion continue.

Here is my car:

www.roadsailing.com

[James]

If you want to go for a turbo EK with an EL head you would be far better off spending your money on buying (prices given in NZD estimates):

A turbo manifold $400
A second hand turbo $200
A fuel managment system ($600) and a friend to tune it, or pay a shop ($800).
Throttle body off an Si civic or something big. $10
Get someone to weld you up and intake.       $200

so that comes to about $1600 NZD worth of stuff which is about $1000USD

The city turbo stuff is too restrictive to make the best use of 1800ccs of grunt. The turbo would spool by like 1000 rpm but you would be well out of its efficiency map by the time you dug into some decent revs.

As for the managment, if you used the city turbo managment it would probably not be at all correct for that engine combination, and it also uses CVCC, with an aftermarket setup you will be able to tune it a lot better and you could get one with electronic boost control built in too, and then you can use some decently sized injectors so you can make some real HP.

As for spar I would go for a EN1 electonic dizzy if they fit and have it re-graphed for turbo use, either that or work out some way of fitting a crank angle sensor so you can run programmable spark.

Trust me, you will be better off going fully aftermarket than trying to f**k around with a system that is ment for an engine that was 1200cc and factory 100HP, when you are probably going to be aiming for twice that.

[redr2]

The reason I considered using the City's parts is because most of which you mentioned is not available for the early Honda motors.  It took me over a year just find an intake for my dual carbs.   Buying aftermarker parts is not an option for the motor.  

By the time I put together an aftermarket, injected turbo set up fpr an early 80's Ek or EL motor I would be far into several $1000s of dollars as it would have to be entirely custom.  

Hence, the reason I considered using the City parts. I have seen guys use a draw through system with a side draft carb or a boxed sysetem where by a Weber carb itself gets pressurized but I find the set ups to be a little too backyard.  Jackson Racing offered a Turbo set up in the early 80s that was rated at 126 HP but  the set ups are long gone now.  

I guess I just wanted to see if anyone actually made this swap happen.  There are about 3 seperate discussions on the topics each several pages long but no one has seemed to step up and made it happen.  

[QikLude]

I think its all possible after having looked at it, depends on how far you want to go really..

aftermarket with all the jazz is definatly the big power way to go, keep it simple and keep it easy will net some good power too!

I will be building another city turbo setup in the nearish future, i will grab an EL and have a play with one then as it wil be for racing so more power while remaining simple would be good...

PS bigelboe/colza , I have started working on my t1 again after a while off the project, should be going again soon, am just making intercooler brackets etc at the moment, will post up some piccys soon

Cheers

Jw

[Colza]

Who feels like dragging and old post out of its grave...

I am once again considering building a big block City motor.

Has anyone tried anything more since this thread was last in discussion?

[James]

Dragging is out again

I am seriously considering a big block city turbo build just to see how much punishment the EL/EK block can take. Its an Iron block so Im thinking Ill be able to run a fair amount of boost. Will be interesting to see what breaks first, my money is on the rods.

If I get around to doing anything I will make sure to photo document it thoroughly so we can finally get some decent info on this whole subject.

Just a quick question, anyone got an EL conrod out they can measure?

[BOOSTBOY]

Just a question, but why wouldnt you use the EL head and just make some new manifolds and use a decent ECU? The city head is pretty athesmatic with 1.2L underneath it!

[Colza]

After watching over bigelboes shoulder for the past few days while hes been researching this, i think the ES/ET is the way to go. They are the little brother of the A series which is the little brother of the B series and share a few of the internal measurements. They dont bolt in quite as easilly as the EL/EK but it looks like you can use B series rods and with a 1mm overbore use B series pistons, so there is potential for putting down some serious power numbers.

Havent been able to look into gearboxes but you never know, maybe a B series LSD isnt out of the question...

[James]

I plan on using the EL head and block. Will be using standard city manifolds (with a bigger TB) to start with to see how much punishment the EL can take, if it holds out I will make some decent manifolds.

I am going to build an EL motor to be a copy of a city turbo motor, all the same sensors and stuff so it can just drop in. Should only take a couple of hours to do the transfer and be boosting hard.

I will be using a chipped city turbo ECU with some B20 injectors for managment. Col has a wideband o2 sensor I plan on chucking on to check the mixtures, If charles manages to get me that mugen rom then I will use that as the base mpa and tune from there.

EDIT: Accidentally edited boostboys post instead of quoting it. my bad Ive done that twice now.

[mangusta]

My engine is getting tired (burns a lot of oil and my dad is pushing towards getting a 1400 block and putting the city gear on it.

What sort of work is involved if I use the city head and just put the 1400 short motor under it?

[James]

not sure what block you mean, honda hasnt made a 1400 that I know of.

If you mean the EL 1600 block then there isn't too much work to get all the manifolds and ancilliaries onto the engine, most are described furthur back in this thread. The hardest bits are tuning and knowing how much boost this engine is gonna take before it goes pop, two things I intend to work on in the next few months

[mangusta]

Yeah, realised after I posted that I got the wrong size...

OK, I'll wait to see how you get on

Cheers
Paul

[turbocab]

ive read over this entire post three times in the last few days and although i still dont understand some of it,i am thinking about abandoning the idea of trying to squeeze as mutch hp as i can out of the stock t2 engine and leaning more toward one of these larger capacity honda engines so the el 1600 is looking like a good place to start.
i remember reading that i can use my t2 gearbox?this is preferable since i have the quaife lsd for it.
bigelboe and colza have either of you guys made any progress? what about people on civic 1200.com?
perhaps i could build the first one with some expert guidance from bigelboe and colza and see how long it lasts on high boost and ile have one of my t2 engines to throw back in when she dies.
ive been looking to take on a bit of an engine building project since ive never dabled in this area before.
any idea what sort of rough price ime looking to pay for the basic bits to get me started ie 1600 engine,injectors,a throttle body,machining work?????(and what year model acords have the el engine ile be wanting and any other things i need to look out for ie how to identify the engine in question)
ime watching this one with great anticipation.
matt

[city_cabriolet]

Good stuff, if anyone in aus can pull this off, your definately top of the list!

Do us proud.

p.s i think some of those blocks are jap or rare. NZ get all the jap leftovers