BoBaFreak

Very well done. Im curious to see how that sheepy build manifold holds up. (not saying it wont) but hes very local to me and i seen his products online but never installed around. Just to give me some thought if i were to boost the b series. only thing i need to see if any of his manifolds are ac compatible. Lord knows i need that in Socal. lol.

Mr. Dabolina

So my Mishimoto filler neck finally showed up after being on back order for almost two months. I probably could have picked up a similar one quicker but I know this will work with an early style Honda radiator cap that fits more with the build than a generic Stant one. I ordered a Feel's cap that's arriving Monday.

I started mocking up the filler elbow on the top hose. I kicked around working in a swirl pot but honestly I think they're unnecessary on most builds (especially as small as everyone makes them) unless you're strictly after the look. So this is what I came up with after some hole saw and filing action.







It needs some more work to be ready for welding unless I want to cut a hole in the hood. That'll get finished up once the radiator cap is here and I get everything aligned how I want.

For the keen observers, I started laying the harness out on the engine. It's mostly laid out how I want, but I need to figure out auxiliary sensor placement so I can put it some flying leads for them. More on that later though...

Mr. Dabolina

Thanks! Sheepey has an AC and PS compatible manifold, but it's a top mount. I can live without AC on a weekend car in Michigan, but I can definitely understand where you're coming from.

I haven't seen anything bad about their manifolds besides cost, but they do offer a pretty good warranty against cracking. It took me a bit longer than I expected to get the it since I think they're made to order (the website didn't say anything about that when I ordered), and I ordered an odd combo with dual V-bands. But, I didn't need it right away so it wasn't really an issue for me.

Mr. Dabolina

Yeeeeaaaahhhhhh more stuff! Sort of.

Finalized the coolant filler. I trashed the one I had in the previous post. I wasn't happy with the angle and general fitment of the old one so I started over and ended up with a better result. It is getting welded today or tomorrow and then I can start figuring out the coolant catch can placement. Didn't get a good picture with the Feel's Twincam cap, but it's a good match with the car.







I spent most of the day Saturday cleaning up and organizing my engine harness. I'm using this one to get the lengths and placement of everything and verify that I have power and ground in all of the right places before I start on the real harness. Solder in an engine harness is no bueno so I'll be redoing the harness with new connectors and "Mil-spec" components: Tefzel wire, Raychem boots, and all the good stuff.







That's all for now. Thanks for looking.

Mr. Dabolina

What's up, kids? Time has been tight for the last few weeks. Work is picking back up and I've been traveling and autocrossing a lot to take advantage of the last bit of nice weather we'll get in South East Michigan.

I never mentioned it before, but last winter I rebuilt and upgraded my driver side RTA so while I was waiting on money for parts I took a stab at the passenger side RTA. ASR LCA's, Hardrace bushings and toe links, AMR camber arms, and EP3 caliper brackets and rotors and a coat of paint. Also, don't mind the bubbliness on the quarter. It's the only spot of rust on the car and it's on the list after it's on the road.







Then I got busy rolling fenders to clear the new meatiness.



And.... the radiator got some mounts so I can get started on opening up the core support and welding it back into one solid unit. Up until now the radiator has been sitting in a tight groove used to locate it, but wedging it into the core support isn't a permanent solution. I really enjoy Rivnuts and rubber isolators. They're little touches that go a long way.






Oh and here's a little sneak peak of some early work on what I'm doing once it gets too cold to work in the garage.



As always, thanks for looking!

Mr. Dabolina

What's up party people?! The build's been on hold for a bit while I sort out my finances (i.e. sell my Focus ST and get my new (to me) Accord ready for daily duty). I did make some big driveline purchases for Christmas and my birthday, but no details on that until it warms up a bit here. 4 deg F isn't the best weather to work with the garage door open.

To keep myself busy and learning new stuff, I started teaching myself CFD (computational fluid dynamics, for you non-engineers). Hopefully, I can expand this into engineering consulting over the next few years, but for now it's just to help make some good decisions on the mild aero package for the car. So here's a few pics of my CAD models and some colorful plots. Downforce numbers are reasonable for the size of the package, but it mostly helped to balance out the car high speeds (i.e. preventing front end lift).

From the CAD software:








And from the CFD software itself:












I'm already a couple iterations past this setup, but hopefully I can find some more easy grip. That's all for now. See you when I won't get frostbite outside.

hatmanafro

your level of detail is super impressive man! amazing build! wish i wasnt so lazy! i just cant wait to drive my car so i dont feel like doing all that work. lol. keep it up bro!

maxwellmercer

I'm mind boggled because the more and more I read, the more I realized we have the EXACTLY the same vision for a mini-ram turbo setup and we have both carried out that vision. Its crazy to see almost a mirror image of my ideas! Keep up the good work.

Ericjergs

Damn I'm really jealous. I'm going to be starting on a custom chassis mounted splitter closer to spring, and really wish I had these tools available.

I'm assuming the model is of your own car? Or was there a scan already available to download into the program? Either way, excited to see how this progresses.

Mr. Dabolina

Thanks man! I definitely miss driving this thing. It just rolled over 2 years. Some days I wish I would have left it alone.

That's funny! The mini-ram is the way to go over a full ram horn, but its definitely is harder to package than a cast manifold. Nothing is perfect I guess. Good luck with your build.

Everything I'm using besides Solidworks is free and available on the web (and there's free all alternatives to that). I found the Civic model online, but I had to edit and clean it up quite a bit with mesh editing software to get it good enough to model with. There's a actually a lot of STL format car models floating around online. It just takes some digging. I do have an affordable 3D scanning tool setup based on an Xbox Kinect receiver, but I haven't used it much yet.

Good luck with your own splitter design. It'll definitely help on the AutoX course assuming you can make it big enough. I hate how restrictive the SCCA's aero rules are in the street orientated classes. I think I'm going to end up in SMF with this car anyways so aero is pretty open.

Ericjergs

Nice to know, I might go looking for a hatchback one! But yeah I'm in FSP at the moment just from switching over the y8 intake manifold on my y7. It can be a little annoying. I'm debating on just doing some smaller more localized events that aren't very restrictive and set up their classes differently.

Mr. Dabolina

So after enduring a solid week of sub-zero temps (-7F with some gnarly wind chill), we had a weekend break from the weather. Since it was a little over 50F today I spent some time on the EM1.

I dropped the stock B16 (S4C) trans out of the car to get access to the flywheel since it needs a good resurfacing before new parts go in.



I also installed my Tyrannosaur Tightener to eliminate the roll pin (i.e. bitch pin) in the shift linkage. Hopefully this helps to tighten up the shifter mechanism along with my ES poly shifter bushings. The install was pretty easy. Just take a flap disk to the linkage pin and drive it out with a punch. Install the tightener and bolt it all together.







The last thing for the day was to pull the fuel pump and start modifying the hanger to accept a Walbro 450, upgraded wiring, and -6AN fuel lines. After a few measurements, I should be able to order fittings and a pump.





Hopefully, the weather will break in a few weeks and things can really get rolling.

Mr. Dabolina

Back again with some fuel system updates. Since a drop-in Walbro 255 would barely support my power target (appr 350whp) on E85, I modified the stock hanger to accept a Walbro 450, 3/8" quick disconnect feed and return lines, and upgraded pump wiring so I have room to turn the boost up in the future. The best part is that it cost way less than doing it with AN fittings and it fits under the stock pump cover. It's not finish welded in these pictures, but it will be tomorrow.











Since I have both ends of the fuel system figured out, I'll be ordering my Aeromotive FPR, fuel filter, flex fuel sensor, and plumbing supplies this week. Everything stock has gone in the trash so it will be a complete replumb. Not a small task, but it will be worth it in the end. The system I have planned should be able to grow with the car when I put in a built shortblock and push towards 500whp.

Once again, thanks for looking everyone!

ls joker

Is that the jbtuned e85 kit on the pumper hanger assembly.

Mr. Dabolina

Nope. It's a setup I came up with on my own. I was looking at the JBTuned kit until I realized it didn't fit under the fuel pump cover panel. Not a huge fan of exposed fuel lines inside the cabin of the car.

EJ_ALLMOTA

Your build is shaping up very nice man. Im loving all the attention to detail.. It reminds me of my build.. Keep up the great work..

Mr. Dabolina

Thanks. The details suck up a ton of time, but they'll be worth it in the end. Hopefully, I'll save a few headaches by doing it right the first time.

Mr. Dabolina

Spring appears to finally be here in Southeast Michigan. I sold my Focus ST and picked up a 2005 Accord from my brother. That's really helped to free up some cash to get this thing together before the end of the summer. I've been stashing parts, and I currently have enough stuff on had to put together the entire fuel and brake system.

I finally got my flywheel back from resurfacing so it was time to put it back in with a new clutch to handle the turbo. It's a Stage 2 Exedy 4 puck clutch with a sprung hub. Hopefully, that should give me good torque capacity and still be bearable around town.



All bolted up with ARP flywheel and pressure plate hardware.



But now to the real fun stuff that I've been sitting on since Christmas. I picked up a semi-built S4C trans from one of the guys on the EM1 Crew FB page. It made the long trip to Michigan from Virginia and stayed boxed up in my garage until now. It has a Spoon LSD and Gearspeed carbon synchros. It's a fairly fresh rebuild so I should be able to get some time out of it.



I swapped all of the mounting stuff over from my stock trans and hung the trans in the car. Definitely a lot easier to do with all of the stock stuff out of the way.





Now that the trans and engine are bolted back together, the subframe will come back out tomorrow so I can start plumbing. More updates to come later this week.

Redcoupe

Just dropping in to show some love. Got bored with social media car pages and came back where the solid og information lies.

Car is shaping up nicely.

Mr. Dabolina

Thanks. Social media car pages just aren't the same. It's a shame all of the good info is getting harder and harder to find as all of the forums die off.

maxwellmercer

Progress is looking great!

b16racereg6

iTrader: (2)

Baller work! Good stuff

LankorDie

Really liking this build, keep up the great work!

Mr. Dabolina

Thanks everyone. Getting good feedback definitely helps keep me motivated.

I've almost finished up the fuel system. It's been taking longer than I expected since my first plan of attack didn't quite work out. I've also been fighting some type upper respiratory sickness which has kept me out the garage the last few days.

The first piece to show is this awesome fuel rail that Shawn over at Rosko Racing custom made for me. It's his standard B-series EV14 rail without a built-in FPR port. I really wanted to use an external FPR for silly aesthetic reasons, but this rail also let's me run a more common EV14 (i.e. 14mm top o-ring) injector. More common = more cheaper and more options. Even though the custom job on the rail added some cost I still ended up saving money vs running an off-the-shelf setup since injectors are so much cheaper.





Speaking of which, I have a set of 88 lb/hr (925 cc/min) Deatschwerks injectors on order, but in the mean time I borrowed one of my many spare Bosch EV14 long (68mm) injectors from work for mock-up. It looked like the rail was designed for the EV14 medium (42mm) body injectors so a small order of studs and spacers from McMaster-Carr solved the fitment issue.







Against my better judgement, I spent Saturday and Sunday trying to work out plumbing. I like to use hardline as much as possible, but it definitely sucks up a lot of time while getting it right. Not the best pictures here, but it's really hard to get good shots under the car with it on jack stands. A few final pieces showed up today to finish the plumbing. Then I can lock down the line routing clamps and it'll be done.

The general layout is Walbro 450 pump to 10 micron microglass Aeromotive filter to hardline and Aeroquip pushlock to the Aeromotive FPR. The FPR returns through hardline and push-lock, to a Continental ethanol content sensor, and back to the tank. Everything is set up to support E85 so we can have some real fun once the car is running.









I'd like to knock out the rest of the fuel system this week so I can start on brake plumbing next week. After the brakes are done, the last major project is installing the standalone and wiring. Then it's a ton of small stuff to finish once the car is running.

Thanks for looking. Stay tuned.

Mr. Dabolina

Had a few free minutes after work so I test fitted my HKS SSQV. The bung is tacked onto the intercooler pipe. It fits pretty well so I'm going to finish welded tomorrow.











Also, I threw on my HPS silicone heater hoses. The stock ones were almost 20 years old and were getting a little soft and nasty.