Yesterday I went from 6th to 2nd in my car. I have a k20a3 civic si motor with an rsx-s 6spd transmission with the ep3 final drive in it. I've had it for over 6000miles now with no misshifts. When I drive it hard, I'm very attentive to the feedback from the shifter. I've gone into the wrong gear before, but could tell before I released the clutch. So yesterday I'm putting along at 4000rpm or so in 5th (about 60mph). I decide I need a little more power to get around the car on my left (left turn coming up for me). I blip throttle slide it into what I thought was 4th, release clutch, before I know it, 9000rpm on the tach for a split second before I stabbed the clutch back in.

Amazing thing is I drove it the remaining couple of miles to class, too my exam, and drove 40 miles to work. Car sounded like a motor cycle, but the fact that it ran reassured me that valve damage was minimal, although something was clearly wrong.

After work, I limp 5 miles to my nearest friend's house, pop the valve cover to take a look. Two exhaust rocker arms had the roller bearings cracked & siezed. One cam lobe was worn down from contact with the siezed rocker, the other somehow escaped damage. Intake side appears to be fine. When I pull the head I'll have the final bodycount on valve damage. Cost is shaping up to be as follows:

exhaust rocker arms = 20$ x 2
exhaust valves = 20$ x unknown
head gasket = 50$ x 1
exhaust cam repair = 50-100$

I was pleased to find a place that does camshaft repair. A new cam costs in excess of 300$, and given that there are no aftermarket cams, i would have rather just parted the motor out & accelerated completion of my built motor.

They have a 1 day turnaround, so I could concieveably get the repaired cam back in a couple of days.

I'll have pics up later. Thank god it was only the exhaust side rockers. the intake rockers are 100+ a set (type-s ones are close to 200$ :eek


Modified by chunky at 10:03 PM 5/2/2005

 

Got any pics? Haha. Sorry to hear about yourt money shift...

Pirate

 

couldnt you throw a type s head on it?

 

LOL @ money shift. yeah, it sucked. oh well. it's the first head i've bent valves in ever - and I drive roughtly 36k miles/yr for the last 7 years or so. that's a lotta driving.

I already have a 2nd engine build i'm working on. it's just waiting on the head porting job. If i was in a real pinch, I could have the head sent back w/o the porting and put it onto my 2nd high compression block.

thankfully I can fix this head for cheap and continue to wait on the port job.

 

That sucks.....

 

sorry to hear....pics!!!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by all mOtor h23 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">sorry to hear....pics!!!</TD></TR></TABLE>

yea....lets see some pics!!!

 

pics.

lobe #2 doesn't look so bad

Just some scoring that wouldn't be a big deal to fix.

This is what had me worried., lobe 3

less than 1mm deep, but that's a lot in the world of cams




cyl# 2 rocker w/ flash

w/o flash

cyl#3 rocker w/ flash

w/o flash

 

I sent pics to the cam shop, and he said $50 bucks to fix the exhaust cam.

if it's only 50$ to fix, that will be awesome.


Modified by chunky at 10:03 PM 5/2/2005

 

damn looks bad....$50 isnt bad at all....k20a2 head time

 

 

I've already got one of those actually. I've got a k20a2 head and k20a2 bottom end. bottom end is fully balanced, rods are cryo treated, type-r 11.5:1 pistons, it's good stuff. I just have been waiting for the head to get ported.

this motor just needs to last me until the head gets ported.

 

Is it me or does it seem like a lot of guys have been overreving their k20 motors more so then B series guys??

 

it's a lot easier to raise the redline on the k-series. Honda offers reflash options as well as the k-pro.

This overrev was 100% my fault. I wasn't paying attention while driving. The 6spd probably exacerbated the problem since the shift gates are tighter, but the 2nd gear is a lot shorter on the 6spd than on the 5spd. On the 5spd, at that speed, a 5-2 money shift would have landed me at 7500rpm which the k20a3 could easily survive. Since I have the type-s tranny, a 5-2 shift landed me at 9000rpm for the speed I was driving at. If I had a k20a2 head, it would have survived.

 

damn....ive done that before, hit about 8000 or so on an LS. no problems though

 

Iam a tech at a local Acura dealership here in Arizona and I can tell you that I personally have changed a total of 3 heads for the same exact reason. The k motors definately seem to be more prone to having valve train issues. In the last month we also saw 2 type s rsx's come in with very large holes in the blocks. I will try and get some pics of the carnage.

 

Damn man that's pretty brutal. I've heard of that happening pretty frequently becasue the shift gates are a lot closer spaced. Good luck with the rebuild. I feel your pain... who knew a stock GS-R couldn't handle a money shift to 11k?

 

Well, that is really not that bad looking. It did not grenade the whole motor. Thanks for the pics WHile Delta is fixing your cam why not throw another $50 at them and see if they will regrind both cams' lobes for a little bump in power if you are not going to swap to the K20A2 head?

Pirate

 

hahahahahaha it begins....

 

heh heh heh.

I was thinking that. but at this point, I just want everything fixed in the least expensive fashion possible.




Modified by chunky at 10:05 PM 5/2/2005

 

are you going to dissasemble the bottom end to make sure none of the rods are tweaked or the cylinders are fucked up?

 

I'll base that on the damage to the surface of the pistons.

if there are just slight knicks, then i'm not going to worry about it.

 

well, I'm sending both intake & exhaust cam up to the cam shop. They're going to take a look and see what the cost would be for a performance re-grind on both cams sooo dyno's etc hopefully coming soon. :D

how do I always manage to talk myself into these situations? My built motor started as a simple head swap and grew into a ballsy high comp made from scratch build.


Modified by chunky at 10:05 PM 5/2/2005

 

I did a k20a3 at work a couple months ago. The rockers, and cam looked the same as yours, but bieleve it or not it didnt bend any valves. Honda has updated the rocker arms too, maybe for this same issue. The new rocker looks alot different from the origionals.

 

really? is this on the exhaust side? maybe I'll go ahead and order 4 new ones.

do you have the updated part # so I can make sure that's what i'm getting?