Anyway yes your car can rev to 10,000 not on the stock valvetrain. You need better valves and valvespring or youll float your valve and then bam piston meets valve not good. Plus reving to 10k is only worth it if you have cams which make power that high (ie JUN or TODA) rev that si to 8 cmon I know you want to

I gotta stop sinking money into my stereo and start adding some more engine mods..=] Bolt ons only go so far... like nowhere...

Yeah basic breather mods wont do much on a honda. If you want to go force induction get a jackson racing supercharger. Or you could go all motor madness with new cams and high compression pistons

I guess you guys dont want to hear about my 8.1 liter big block 502 Im geting a wopping 7 MPG LOL.

7mpg? That's wasteful. You need fuel injection. :*)

Calvin

Im a little late coming into this but I love car talk as much as the next guy. Here's a small movie of one of my ongoing projects. It's an 87 Buick Grand National with a Buick stage 2 276 CID twin turbo engine. Pumped out 930 horsepower at the rear wheels at 28 PSI. Car has run a best of 8.40 @ 164. A friend of mine owns this car here in Dallas and I do the upkeep. I originally built this car when I lived in Florida for someone else and the original owner sold it to someone in California who in turn sold it to my buddy here. It was a basket case when we got it back here but we straightened it out in short order and got it back running correctly. It's amazing what someone with no knowledge of calibrating engine management systems can do to a car.

Here's a couple of shots of my car. It's undergoing some changes at the moment and I hope when it's done it will run 9s with the AC on.

Front
Back
Side
Engine

Buick power

Those Grand Nationals are *fast* *fast* cars. Easily modded too. Too bad they're not readily available used or new. I bow down to the GN. :-D Fast with class.

Calvin

I do have fuel injection it's a 2002 model.

Is it "school bus yellow" or what?

I guess tanstaafl cant answer my question

I'm sure he could, he just hasn't been on the BBS a lot lately. Sometimes he gets busy and can't follow all the threads. I'll let him know this thread is here.

http://32.97.151.30/JasonTesting/midas_touch.MP3
man this is funny

I guess tanstaafl cant answer my question

My sincere apologies! Somehow, I missed the last five posts on the other thread, and did not see your question until Tony pointed it out to me. No fair! My question was a lot easier to answer than yours!

I have a question for you. What is the benefit of valve overlap at high rpms and what is the benefit of a stepped exhaust manifold and why? These question are related feel free to discuss flow velocity versus flow volume in your discussion.

Valve overlap at high RPM is required in order to compensate for the inertia of the gases involved, both burnt and unburnt. One might think that having both the intake and exhaust valves opened simultaneously would cause problems, but in actuality when the intake valve opens the burnt gases have been flowing out the exhaust valve for the duration of the exhaust stroke and have developed considerable inertia flowing in that direction, while at the same time the intake charge is virtually stopped because the intake valve has only been open for a short time and it takes time for the inertia of the intake gases stacked up behind the intake valve to start pushing the intake charge into the cylinder. This means that there will not be excessive mixing of exhaust gases into the incoming intake charge, and not much of the intake charge will be lost out the exhaust valve. The more overlap you have, the more mixing you will get, although this is very much a function of engine RPM. Note that this is before the piston begins its downstroke creating the partial vacuum that will then continue to draw the new fuel-air charge into the cylinder.

I am afraid I do not know what a "stepped exhaust manifold" is. This is entirely my shortcoming, I am not accusing you of making a trick question, I am just not familiar with the term. Does it have something to do with different cross-sectional areas of the exhaust manifold at different points along the length of the exhaust manifold runners?

If so, then a stepped manifold would set up standing waves which, in accordance with Bernoulli's principle, would have maximum flow velocity at the areas of lowest pressure which would (unintuitively) be the areas of smallest cross sectional area; and maximum flow volume in the areas of highest pressure which would be the areas of largest cross sectional area.

Did I do good?

tanstaafl.

you did well the effect you are talking about with valve overlap is called scavenging. You are right though valve overlap is really only good at high RPMs hince VTEC but thats another discussion. Stepped headers have diameters that increase along the lenght of header. This creates antireversion chambers which basically prevents the exhaust from flowing backwards

All I have to say is:

Doug & Squirrel, bravo! I don't understand a damn word you're saying*, but it sure is fun to read! At the very least it seems you two have a bit more respect for one another.

On a side note, are these guys just talking, or is this for real?

*exaggerated for effect, in reality my Buddha-self knew all of this.

Well its your turn try and stump me cmon I know you can do it.

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

African or European?

I don't know.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hehe

Well its your turn try and stump me cmon I know you can do it.


Okay... true, real-life question:

Unless I run premium gasoline in my old 1969 Toyota Land Cruiser (snow plow truck) my oil pressure is dangerously low. Why is this?

tanstaafl.

And another reali life question... Lets say i slap a Jackson Racing Supercharger on my Civic, the specs of which require at LEAST 92 Octane gas. I live in California... where they recently allowed the spec of "supreme" to be dropped to 91 Octane. (i believe you can still find 92 some places, but not that i've seen so far). So... what would i do?

You could use some kind of ingition retard to pull a little timing out like the MSD DIS ignition or you could build/buy an alcohol injection system or if you want to go right out on the fringe, a propane injection system.

Ill tackle loren's question first since its right up my alley. The only problem with running lower octane is you would have a tendency to detonate, so you can do a couple of things. First you could get a a J & G Safeguard system which would let you run on the ragged edge of timing safely because if it senses any knocking itll yank the timing back to prevent damage, or you could get the water injection system that JR has available. The water injection system injects a mist of water into the intake manifold and therefore cools the intake air down considerably you would have to refill the water bottle at every fill up but oh well. Yeah the MSD DIS Ignition would be a good investment as it does retard timing as boost goes up but unlike the J % G safeguard it cannot sense detonation before it happens.

Here is what you wanna get.....
MSD 6BTM ignition and set the retard rate at 1.5 this will let you keep off boost power and yank back the timing as boost increases.

Arent the Honda's DIS? How is a 6 BTM going to work on a DIS ignition? Keep in mind I dont know [censored] about Honda's but Ive used the BTM quite a bit on other applications.

Honda's are not distributor less ignition so the 6 BTM would allow him to retard timing as boost increased.

Cool.. Im surprised Honda hasn't gone that way. I thought almost all new cars were DIS now. I've used lots of MSD 6-BTMs on supercharged Mustangs I have built. They work really well as long as you keep them out of the elements. They sure seem to fail at the worst possible times also.

Yeah they are hella noisy if you keep em in the cabin and dont hold up to the weather. Yeah us hondas still have distributors, trust me I just replaced the rotor and housing a couple of days ago.

That would be a J&S Safeguard.

Calvin

This one has me stumped, though I have my guesses. Ugh, somebody answer this one! :-D

Calvin

Your right I have J and G on the mind. Of course Ive heard negative things about the J S safeguard, ie its a little over protective and would yank timing back when its not needed.

I have a J&S box not yet opened. Just bought it. Overprotective-- I like that. :-D

Calvin

Well its overprotective at times and then sometimes isnt protective enough. I have a friend who had it in his Jackson racing supercharged GSR running on the 8 lb pulley. He ran it for a while and his car was slower and even pinged a couple of times so he ditched it.

Ever see that funniest home videos where a street car gets a fire extinguisher sprayed into the engine while hot.

Bang

Engine parts everywhere!

Ill tackle loren's question first since its right up my alley.

And a good question it was! Of course, he could just get an SHO, where the engine management computer has knock-sensing built right into it. If I run low-test fuel, I don't get knocking, but I do get a decrease in maximum performance.

But, what about MY question? BTW, I do know the answer...

tanstaafl.

Oh his car has a knock-sensor well I think it does I know the GSR and Type-Rs have it, they just arent that great it takes alot of sound processing to discern between knocking and normal engine noise. Im still thinking about your question its really stumping me

Well, standalone engine management computers are pretty pricey compared to a J&S.

Calvin

Could it be:

Running too low of an octane causes pre-ignition. Pre-ignition get's everything hot, especially the pistons and walls. Getting everything hot causes the oil to heat up as well. Hot oil gets thinner, and the oil pressure drops.

What was octane in 1969? Like 100? Plus the gas was leaded too. I could imagine it actually being tough to keep that old of an engine running in good shape on "today's gas".

???

Not to mention that most of the standalone engine management systems (At least the ones I work with) have little to no knock sensor provisions.

The old batch fire DFI (6.0 box) and sequential box have a knock sensor circuit however it's set up for a straight 10 degrees retard upon detonation detection and is very slow to restore the timing. I haven't had a chance to try out one of the Gen 7 boxes yet.

The F.A.S.T. system offers a slightly better knock sensor implementation but only on the bank to bank model. The sequential model doesn't have a channel available for knock detection so it isn't available.

I've worked quite a bit with Electromotive's TEC-II in the past and at the time they had no knock sensor provisioning and the same goes for Motec and Haltec although I haven't worked with any of these particular units in several years so the feature could have been added.

Overall, and I tell this to everyone who contemplates a standalone unit, I recommend if you don't need it, don't go to it because it's my opinion that you lose a lot of driveability going to the standalone stuff. There is just things that the stock ECM does so much better.

I mainly work on very fast straight line cars where the standalone stuff is concerned. I cringe when I see someone with an 11 second car running an aftermarket engine management system. Maybe in the import world you need it at that level but I've had no problem getting the domestic stuff to go that fast and in some cases even faster with the factory electronics.

Yeah the stock honda ignition is usually fine for any all motor situation, they only benefit of having a different one is the ability to have a soft rev limiter instead of fuel cut. I prefer the hondata standalone fuel management systems myself.

Wouldnt less dense oil have greater volume causing higher pressure?

Wouldnt less dense oil have greater volume causing higher pressure?

No. Tracerbullet nailed it perfectly -- excellent job!

As the oil gets hot, it gets thinner, that is, less viscous, and thus is more easily able to escape around the crankshaft bearings and back into the sump, causing the oil pressure to drop. Remember that at a given engine RPM, the oil pump will deliver a fixed volume (not weight) of oil to the bearings. The more that escapes, the less pressure you are going to end up with.

tanstaafl.

Man I thought of that I knew running that low of octane would increase engine temps but figured that would increase oil pressure stupid me. I should have known I mean they tell people to take asprin to thin their blood to lower their BP. Oh well I was on the right track just was over thinking it i guess.

Well, I guess you haven't had the wonderful experience of seeing your engine overheat and watching the low-oil-pressure light come on while on your way to a Rush concert in the summer of 1986. Consider yourself lucky.

(I made it to the concert, by the way.)

I drive a honda of course Ive never overheated

I drive a honda of course Ive never overheated

I drove a Honda Prelude for a few years... when it blew a head gasket, it certainly overheated!

It was an old first-generation Prelude, probably had 150,000 miles on it. When the engine went, I gave it to the wrecking yard for the cost of the tow.

I haven't missed the car one bit!

tanstaafl.

I drove a Honda Prelude for a few years... when it blew a head gasket, it certainly overheated! (...) When the engine went, I gave it to the wrecking yard for the cost of the tow.

After unbolting the snow plow and putting it on the truck, right?

Actually I had to forward the congratulations to a guy here at work, we got to talking about it the other day. I helped, but wouldn't have made the whole connection on my own.

It was mentioned that this is common on high performance boat engines I guess, they are tweaked for high octane gas with additives, and while they run on "normal gas", oil pressure drops from the preignition heat, and they know not to push it too hard.

Bad news everyone. I overestimated my cars handling ability Friday night I sent her into a spin at 65 I did a 180 and slammed the passenger side wheels into the curb at about 20. Looks like I buckled the rear lower control arm and the front broke off and busted through the rotor and is smashed against the wheel. My neck is sore as hell and my car isnt driveable Im hoping I didnt do frame damage. I learned a huge lesson that I will never forget.

Yuck. I did something similar to my GTI many years ago (at a much lower speed, there was a patch of sand in the parking lot that I didn't expect), and really did a number on my left front suspension. So I know you you feel. My condolences.

There aren't too many standalones that offer knock sensor capbilities. The ProEFI offers it, but is not a general purpose standalone. I think the J&S does fit a very particular niche very well.

Calvin

Bad news everyone. I overestimated my cars handling ability Friday night I sent her into a spin at 65 I did a 180 and slammed the passenger side wheels into the curb at about 20. Looks like I buckled the rear lower control arm and the front broke off and busted through the rotor and is smashed against the wheel. My neck is sore as hell and my car isnt driveable Im hoping I didnt do frame damage. I learned a huge lesson that I will never forget.


F*** the car. Worry about yourself. Cars are replaceable. Just please tell me you saw a doctor about your neck. I had a problem with that after I got hit in my Jetta (not sure if it was the impact or that I carried the guys bumper off the road for him so traffic could still move). While I came out ok after two weeks, my sisters seen some unattended to spinal cord injury horror stories while working for EMS.

Im fine I went to the doctor and it was a side impact and I had tensed my neck so all i did was pull my neck muscles no biggie. You dont understand my car is like a child. You can replace kids too but they are never the same