CityTurbo.com

THE CITY LIFE

Here's the beginning of it all, THE VERY FIRST CITY (The Silver Slug)

Honda City-E (Black Top N/A)




THE SECOND CITY. (The Silver Bullet)
Honda City-R (JDM) (Red Top Combax Cvcc N/A) Manual




Changed Tires








My version of the Cabriolet






Detailed Engine Bay



THE THIRD CITY.
Honda City-E (Black Top N/A)






NOW THE FIRST OF THE TURBO CITY'S.
After sorting a few issues like rebuilding the turbo i noticed the car had potential so i played around with it over the weekends & now things are looking up for the pile that it was, i was really starting to enjoy driving it by this stage as the Turbo bug started biting & not to long after that i had a 2.5" exhaust, different intake setup (bad idea behind radiator), HKS Fuel Cut Defender & some Prelude injectors with boost up around 16psi.






It was fun & running well but wanted more as i read these engines can handle over 20psi on stock internals so i whipped it up to 20psi but then started blowing head gaskets, 3 gaskets later i got engine rebuilt and added a aftermarket head gasket & ARP head studs. Now it was proving reliable so time to take it to the drags, best time of the night was a [email protected] i was stoked, at this stage it was making 84wkw.



THE SECOND TURBO CITY.
In the process of getting the black beast running properly in time for the drag racing season i picked up another T1 City for parts.





So after the first drag event i got into doing some more mods, custom cam grind done by Kelford Cams in Christchurch, T2 intake manifold & throttle body plus black box & ECU to run it correctly. The cam shifted the power up higher in the rpm range, boost also was increased to 24psi so with that said it was off to the drags again & i managed a personal best of [email protected].



Now that i had finished drag racing the black City for now i thought it was time to sort that terrible paint job created by a previous owner, so with that said the City was stripped right down as rust was noticed in the engine bay as all city's get at some stage in there life but i took that opportunity to get it fixed properly so the car was stripped, dents were taken care of & then the car was painted Satin Black as photos below show. Oh & to the keen eye yes the plates are different, the previous plates were damaged & looked crap so i got new replacements.






















Many months go by until i got bored enough & had a lot of spare parts so decided to paint the White T1 City myself (bad idea) & get it up & running again, so all i had to do was tidy up the rear guards with some filler............some........i mean a lot give it a good sanding & paint. Its hard to believe its the same car but the photos do justice as the panel & paint wasn't very good.

I installed the Water/Methanol Injection & Nitrous setup, main reason for running both systems is to see which benefits the engine more - LOW BOOST with nitrous or HIGH BOOST with Water/Methanol, as you will notice i do not run a intercooler so need something to cool the air at high boost levels.

The other reason is nitrous is likely to be easier to get the car off the line better as that's where the car needs to benefit if im to get my times down, this is where nitrous is good as it builds boost quicker & can be used as a ANTI LAG option however this is not recommended as it is hard on the engine.

As some of you maybe asking why did i put the water/meth nozzle there rather than before the turbo for better intake/air density & spool, well its mainly due to me running a open port blow-off valve as its likely to spray water/methanol all over the engine when i lift off the throttle.

Oh & if you hadn't already guessed, yes i ended up Turbo swapping the red City.

17.11.2014 - Test & thrash engine dropped a cylinder, number 3 most likely as that was the one that has been giving problems.

Pulled engine out today after work, i drained the oil out to only find it had a liter left so in that 18k drive home once she started sounding like a Subaru it pumped 3 liters of oil out the breather due to compression & combustion (if any) bypassing into the sump pressureising the oil return galleries which then did not return the oil back to the sump so had to go out the breather instead, i should have had a oil catch can as it would have made clean up a bit easier.

So i got stuck into the strip down today after work & as i had anticipated number 3 cylinder had failed badly.

Just so you're up to date with the on going engine issue i had been having over the past few weeks well number 3 cylinder had been running hot even under low boost it was burning out spark plugs over time, what i mean by burning them out is that the white ceramic/porcelain on the plug would blister over time & eventually crack & break off & some times melt the end of the finger which all points to over heating & detonation but i could not find what is causing it. I tested spark plugs, leads, dizzy, ecu, fuel & injector flow with no issues there, i was informed there could be a vacuum leak pre-valve but that would be impossible when the engine runs a turbo & therefore runs positive manifold pressure so that leaves only one thing left which could be a sticking/bent valve, anyway i will get the head pressure tested to be sure. Here are the horrible images of what detonation does.

Some photos of what it was doing to cylinder 3 spark plugs on a regular basis.

that'll buff out....

Man its rooted.

Right, got my poor condition spare T2 pistons out today to use as i didn't want to use my good T1 spares as im only going to thrash this engine & chances are i'll break it again but when i was checking one of them i noticed a difference, the replacement piston does not have extra oiling holes like the ones that came out of the T1 block so i checked my mint spare T1 pistons to see if they had extra holes which they did & then realized T2 pistons are different to T1's.

Buggered T1 Piston



Poor condition T2 Piston



My mint T1 spare piston comparison, how it should have looked

Now that is really interesting, something i've never seen brought up before, good spotting!

Looks like the T2 pistons have more metal underneath the oil ring, probably for the higher standard boost levels. (8 vs 12 psi)

Yeah that was my first thought that the T2 piston is likely to have more strength but thats under the oiling ring & not so much to support compression ring loads. As for boost well i found all t1's i owned ran 11psi once wastegates were unseized/freed up. While we are on the topic of engine differences i also noticed that the T2 uses longer Cvcc valves which sit the valve head a little closer to the combustion chamber which could give a very small increasement in compression ratios & they also have the marking 'Z' whereas T1 Cvcc valve has the marking 'D' just like the non turbo Cvcc engine.

Anyway as you may have guessed i had to strip the engine completely as number 3 cylinder sleeve was damaged & all other bores showed signs of vertical scratching so i sent block & head away to a specialist to get honed & checked. Block came back ok but its on its last legs as bores have been machined/honed in the past & therefore has no more tolerance. As for the head well cylinders 1 2 & 4 came in good but 3 had damaged/deteriorated exhaust valve seat which may have played a part in the issue & the inlet valve had a hair line crack in it so these issues were fixed.

Engine is all back together & running good. DYNO TIME: Got the car on the rolling road dyno on thursday which was a success, but before doing power runs the tuner & i needed to make sure everything was working right as we still weren't sure what had caused the dropped piston. What we found was some cross-firing between leads but that was only on cylinder 4 but other than that there wasn't anything else. We put on new leads & the cross-fire was resolved, the tuner done some low boost runs with no issues so boost was increased to 20psi, at 20psi the fueling ratios were very good & that's on stock T2 injectors which was a surprise but the fuel pressure regulator was bumped up a few pound to help, the tuner said there's still more left in those injectors which was a bit of a shock as i usually use B20 prelude ones for high boost runs.

NOW FOR METHANOL. 96wkw without at 20psi & 98wkw with water/meth, that was with the T2 Turbo & 2.5inch exhaust. What this also shows is that the cam is making 12wkw more power on the same 20psi boost than on the stock cam. Last time i got 103wkw on 24psi with straight through 2.5inch exhaust & Prelude injectors, not to far off the race spec T2's which were 104wkw at 22psi according to the forum.

As for the nitrous well it wasn't worth trying it on the dyno as 2 days before i tested the nitrous on the road, even though its only a 50hp shot it was way to aggressive for the engine, as soon as i hit the nitrous in second gear it went straight into wheel spin but the clutch started given way so i didn't try it again after that until i get some smaller jets to drop the power shot. I have never felt that sort of power from a city before even when running 24psi so at a guess i would say its making around 120wkw with the nitrous.

So i got some 30hp nitrous/fuel jets & have fitted & tested them with fairly good results however when nitrous is used it ups the boost pressure by 2-3 psi which the T2 turbo cant control so as the revs rise the boost is also rising which is abit annoying as its going upto 14psi & although the engine is handling it ideally i only wanted to run a max of 10psi with the nitrous. Im not sure if i will run it on the strip like this but at a guess i'd say its around the 110wkw area as its seems to perform better than when i have run the car on 24psi & that is just over 100wkw.

O.k. if anyone reading this was at the Masterton Motorplex drag strip today you may have noticed the red piece of crap city i drive was there racing & once again the car did not want to perform, the best time was a 14.9sec at a miserable 145kph on the second run so i gave up, i couldn't be bothered wasting my time with high 14s, im not sure what the hell is up with the car.

I found a problem with one of the injectors yesturday, it turns out that when i run high boost one of the injectors leaks out from the plastic part where the plug is which then starts to cause the injector to miss as the fuel is shorting out the connection, it must have split some how. I put in some T1 injectors & it runs smooth again.

Your city was on Facebook from the page of the place you took it to in Wellington, got quite a bit of positive comments! What did you get on the dyno?