Hey, Honda-Tech. I haven't really worked my way around this whole website yet but I'd like to get my feet wet here in the EF community and show you my first Honda project. Meet Rocco, the 91 Honda CRX.



Rocco needed a lot of help when I picked him up, and I knew very little about Hondas. So clearly to logical thing to do was to yank the engine out of the bay. To be fair, the previous owner scooped the car up from somebody that had blown the head gasket and let it sit for five years. Five years later and the moisture in the cylinder walls created a lot of pitting. Needless to say, this car smoked bad.



So apart came the engine to have the cylinders bored.



I also took this opportunity to do a Y8 head swap (oh, this car had a D15B2 block. Had. We'll get to the has later in the post), throw some flat faced Ferrea valves in, DPFI to MPFI swap, P28 ECU, Vitara pistons with P2P0 rods, and pretty much every other little thing required to make this all come together.








Everything went together, I left the ECU in it's stock configuration, and life was good. I had a little hatchback that I could drive to work and save a bit on gas. Now if you haven't already guessed, the rods and pistons were added in preparation for a turbocharger. This is where things get a little funky.



This wasn't really working out for me. I mean I had a car running 6 psi with a T04E 60 trim .68 A/R, but the whole package just wasn't working harmoniously. First and foremost, the poorly placed radiator wouldn't allow me to cruise anywhere near 3,000 RPM since I wasn't getting enough airflow on the radiator. I also had an improperly placed IAT sensor and no knock sensor. I know my engine/ECU combo did not come with a knock sensor so I have an after market knock sensor enroute now. Why? Well, I blew the engine up on the dyno after some serious detonation at 14 psi. The rings lands looked like this on all pistons.



Oops. Once I finally had some free time to pull everything apart, I noticed I now had pitting in the cylinder walls (damn moisture) and I didn't want to bore those cylinders any further. I had an extra set of standard bore Vitaras laying around, so I found a D15B7 on eBay, smoothed out the tops of the pistons, got them ceramic coated, and set off on trying to do things a little more proper. In case you're wondering, the fuel system was upgraded prior to the turbo install to 450CC injectors and a 255 LPH fuel pump. There are a lot of little things not mentioned in this post in the interest of condensing the post.



Huh, the pistons are the same diameter as the compressor housing inducer.



The ISB was trashed, so while I was in there replacing that, I also replaced every bearing, seal, and synchro.



Once I got the pistons back from the shop, the short block started to go together.



I sourced a different turbo manifold so I can have the radiator placed a bit more properly. Oh, I'm also running a .48 A/R housing now just to give me a bit more to play with in the power band.



I went ahead and made most of the exhaust with what pipe I had available. Just waiting on some 2.5 inch pipe for the down pipe. I made a 3 inch down pipe on the first iteration of the turbo, but I had to bang the crap out of it to get it to fit between the engine and cross member.

Now I just need the knock sensor, pipe for the down pipe, and I can wrap this up and hopefully not blow things up again. I think with a now properly placed IAT sensor things should go smoother. I am going to retard the timing a lot initially and advance it until the knock sensor tells me to stop. Just for the fun of it, I started making little videos of the engine re-rebuild. This is where the #lolhonda name came in.




So this is where the car currently sits. This week I should be starting it up, seating the rings, and going for round two on this little turbo CRX project.

 

Cool!

 

subscribed! looking forward for future updates.

 

liking the videos!
to the music.

 

this looks like an awesome thread!

 

great work man...