Ltrain7

well it seems that im the only one trying to mod a non FI car but o well.
i just wanted to know if any one has played around with carbs on there Hondas...i have gotten good power (relative to the stock 86 lol) from my es2 motor and want to push it a little further before going to a b series.i think i might have around 115hp biased on pulls against my friends cars.

so what is a good carb to replace my stock one with (wouldn't mine eliminating all those vacuum lines either my motor has predator hair! )

1grex

http://www.piercemanifolds.com/

2ndGenGuy

No, you don't have 115hp especially if you've still got the stock carb. It's a torquey motor, which gives you a good advantage off the line, and the car is lighter than most Civics. But that's about all the advantage you have. Not much else.

Best carb to put on that motor is the Weber 38, at least as far as being able to bolt parts on. Anything too drastically different is going to require a custom manifold. The 38 will eliminate all the engine bay mess. Last I dyno'd mine with the 38, DC header, full exhaust, 9lb flywheel, was like 100hp at the wheels. Power still peters off in the top end, so a good cam might help move that torque up the powerband for a little more horsepower.

I wouldn't waste too much time with it though. Get an A20 engine from an 88-89 LXi Accord. It drops right into your car and has quite a bit more power. The stock EFI system will bump you up to 123ish HP, and should net you around 35mpg. If you want to keep it carb'd, you can get a Weber DCOE manifold from Rowland Manifolds for it and run some real carburetors. If you conver the car to EFI though with an OBDI ECU, you can even turbocharge the A20 if you want to run 250+hp. Would make quite the little sleeper.

Here's just a sample of what your engine bay will look like. Mine was still a bit cluttered at the time with A/C, Power Steering, Cruise Control and all that... And don't mind the zip ties on the air cleaner, I did purchase the real clips a few days later. Wish I had some better shots of the engine before I pulled it.

dangercartjason

weber side drafts. thats what im going with on my rex.

Ltrain7

i heard the side drafts can be a great carb. any one try to use the dual carbs off the ludes? i live right next to a massive junkyard and the owner is a friend so i get a lot of free-b's

2ndGenGuy

The Prelude dual carbs won't bolt onto your motor, and they're sort of known for being problematic. You might be able to run them on your motor, but you will need to build a custom manifold. That's the only problem with the ES motor really is the intake manifold. Nobody makes anything, and building something custom would be a huge undertaking due to the auxiliary runners for the CVCC head. If you want to build something custom, you could try to find a Canadian cylinder head that will swap on in place of yours. In Canada, they got the 1.6 liter EZ motor and 1.8 liter ET1. Either cylinder head should work, in theory, but I haven't tested them yet. They'd be a lot simpler to custom make manifolds for, and should be a bit more reliable without having the CVCC stuff built in. It's just 4 round ports in the head.

You could swap the whole cylinder head from the Prelude onto your motor. Pretty sure you could keep your cam too with it. Problem still being those carbs. But at least there are aftermarket manifolds available (or were) for the ES1 motors.

Ltrain7

yeah i totally forgot about the cvcc heads ...and f*** tryin to build all that you think that you could tig up something custom before you hit the runners for the cvcc? i mean i never really looked into it but i know how to be laze just leave the complicated **** be.
how much will a Weber cost me?

2ndGenGuy

You know if you block off the CVCC runners, it will probably still run just fine. There's a guy on Prelude-Power (WTF is with censoring other forum names on this site?) who did it to his car. I think he even removed the CVCC rockers. So you could just build a regular manifold. Can't hurt to try right?

Regular Weber conversion is usually around $350-400 for the complete, pre-jetted kit.

Bozwell

iv'e made the airbox inlet to exacly the same position as the fuel injection throttle body so the carbs will breath cold air





oh and there is a second inlet for a second air filter for more flow



FCR flatslides so no butterfly, should flow nicely

2ndGenGuy

Jesus! That's a beautiful intake manifold. Did you build that yourself? Is that an EL cylinder head? Need more info! Do you have a build thread?

Well, doens't look like an EL or EK there isn't a place to bolt on the thermostat housing where it would be on the EL/EK. What motor is that? Not a 1200, because both valve guides are on the back of the motor. I'd assume the 1200 has the intake valves on the front of the engine for the front exit exhaust...

And what do you mean where the throttle body was positioned? Was this some sort of EFI engine? The ER Turbo was CVCC as well. Just wondering, looks badass!

Bozwell

it's for the 12valve EW3 engine


one of the many spare manifolds



and the carbs (these are from a S800 and just used to get the spacing as the flatslies came off a S800)


start with cardboard patterns





to make these


the holes will be port matched to the manifold once they are welded on :D


cut the manifold next,




once the manifold has been milled to the black line then the carbs will line up perfect

then it's weld the flanges on, weld the injector holes and a bit of shaping and grinding to the outside to disguise the fact that it used to be an injection manifold

then port flow and match to the carbs and head

next stage , still loads to do yet








the vacume take offs are underneath to keep it looking tidy

and the airbox is made from sheet aluminium










the only bit i didn't do is the welding

2ndGenGuy

Nice work! Looking good, cool to see the build progress pics! What size are those carbs? EW3 is a 1500 or 1600?

Bozwell

EW3 is 1488cc. the flatslides i have are 35mm.

cbstd

Moderators: Make Bozwell's post a sticky!

Boys and Girls: This is how we used to make power back in the old days.

Boz: Beautiful work! It brings me to tears for two reasons- One, I will never be able to fabricate like that. Two, no one will ever make a commercial product like that.

The EW/D15A3 engine is another one of Honda's little secrets. Blessed by the factory with an ideal rod ratio, it was also cursed by the factory with a hideously restrictive intake manifold. Racers of the era slapped on a pair of Mikuni or Weber side drafts and made well over 100hp per litre.

Boz, you are my hero. But you are an old school rascal who refuses to bend to the winds of cutting edge technology. As good as the four slidies are, fuel injection has surpassed the old fashioned carb. I know, you make your living tuning multi-carb set ups. But the rest of us mere mortals are confounded by the multi-carb balancing act.

Larry, The Old One, of Endyne makes the ULTIMATE power maker. He constructs an F1-style manifold with internal velocity stacks that uses a single throttlebody. Maybe not as sexy as all those visible velocity stacks, but you can not argue with his results.

One day my EW will approach the performance of Boz's engine... maybe.

Scott

Bozwell

many thanks for your kind words. but i am a long way from building an engine. the carbs have been sitting in the corner of the room gathering dust for quite a while now. i'll get to use them one day though.

building engines is not cheap so i may actually never build a full engine but just stick a cam and carbs on a standard engine. only time will tell.

Ltrain7

wow guys never would have thought that i would get this much great info i almost don't want to go efi! bozwell and 2ndgenguy you guys rock! when i posted this i honestly thought i was going to be told to ef my self and go get a 92 civic! i have a tranny coming for my other car 84 bmw 733i once i get it bolted up and have another car to get to work i will start making a setup similar to bozwell's i think....ill keep yall posted

Ltrain7

by removing the cvcc systems it will make the car supper lean running the stock carb right? to my knowledge the only thing cvcc dose is create a pocket of rich mixture to provide a good place for the flame front to perpetuate its self, the rest of the mixture is lean. allowing for a more complete combustion and lower emissions. supposedly you can run these things without cats and they will pass deq. so does the Weber support this system? or is the whole thing pumping out stoichiometric ratio. if it is(im pretty sure it is) then why isnt anyone that runs a cvcc motor with custom carbs not building manifolds or moding heads? once u remove that stock carb with the 3rd barrel providing rich mix then cvcc is useless

2ndGenGuy

Oh yeah, what I meant was you can block off the CVCC stuff if you swap to an aftermarket carb. And yeah doing any of this destroys your emissions. If you have to pass DEQ, there's really not much you can do to your car other than putting in a newer, fuel injected engine. They say Webers can be tweaked to pass emissions, but if you have a visual inspection, then instant fail. If it's just a sniffer test, it might be possible to lean it out, but that creates other types of emissions. I'm not sure, I've never had to **** with or try to pass emissions where I live.

And yes, once the stock carb is gone, CVCC goes right along with it.

Bozwell

i think the S800 carbs would be a great carb to use. it has the advantage of variable venturi at low rpm then once the dash pot is fully up it works as a fixed venturi at higher rpms. (taken from the S800 workshop manual)

i think these carbs get confused with just variable venturi carbs where as there are a lot more jets than just the one needle and jet per carb. once set up they will be perfect for everyday use and for high rpm driving. they are designed for a 9,000+ rpm engine but with great low end drivabality. someone needs to try them out. problem is they are not cheap (although the MK2 carbs are not so sought after. the Mk1 carbs are usually bolted in place of the MK2 carbs so a set of MK2 carbs should be cheaper)


and they look like a Mugen upgrade rather than a bike carb set up thrown on


'Hondawizard' has a set for sale

Ltrain7

yeah i have never had to pass deq or any smog crap. i live in the boondocks and in oregon if you have a car that 25 years old you dont need to any way...
but i have bigger fish to fry, today i went to go to work started up my car to let it warm up as i always do. i let it run through its cycle then i went to be on my way but i couldn't get it into any gear...not **** happened except for a real nice grinding sound when i tried to select reverse. i did all the quick diagnostic run down of everything, seems to be fine clutch cables and pedals are working properly, car runs fine, tranny shifts when the motor isn't running,car ran yesterday and shifted just fine,
so i thought maybe there is **** in the pilot bearing so i turned off my car and put it into first and cranked it. it acted like it was at half clutch engagement ..
i just had a friend with this problem. i fear i have a broken clutch disc....like snapped in half.....dumb!