After spending the last few years spamming the Honda-Tech forums with hypothetical NA and turbo build ideas that never ended up coming into fruition, I actually managed to get a set of Buddy Club Spec IV cams and that's what I'm sticking with. My goal is to hit 200-230whp with a healthy, useable powerband. (Very vague, I know.) In general, I want to hear your guys' experience with these cams, but I would also like some input on my plans!

For the most part, I have my plans for the motor mapped out, besides a few oversights and areas plagued with indecision/lack of insight. Points I highlighted in red are where I'm having trouble:

B18C1 GSR
- Password:JDM or J's Racing Tsuchinoko Intake
- Professional Products 68mm Throttle Body
- AEBS Intake Manifold
- Golden Eagle Pro-Series Fuel Rail
- Blox Fuel Pressure Regulator Cap
- RC 370cc Injectors
- Fuel Pump?
- Magnecore XV85 Ignition Wires
- Dragon Fire Distributor
- Buddy Club Racing Spec Condenser
- Buddy Club Spec IV Cams
- Buddy Club Cam Gears
- Valves/springs/retainers?
- Pistons/rods?
- GSR crank
- Header/cat/exhaust?

1) I currently have Supertech 70 lb dual valve springs and chromoly retainers in my B18C1. I am considering replacing them with the Buddy Club dual valve springs and titanium retainers because I can get them for cheap. However, the Buddy Club valve springs are advertised as having a max lift of 12.0mm, whereas Buddy Club's own Spec IV cams have intake/exhaust lift specs of 12.3mm and 11.8mm, respectively. A rep from Buddy Club told me the springs would work fine with the Spec IVs, but I'm still uncertain. Will using the Buddy Club springs really be okay? Or should I keep my Supertech setup? Should I keep the stock valves, or upgrade to flat faced ones? Also, seeing that the Spec IVs cam produce power beyond 9,000 rpm, I assume titanium retainers are a necessity regardless?

2) Fuel pump? Should I upgrade to a Walbro 190LPH (or maybe even 255LPH?), or is the stock GSR unit more than enough?

3) For the block, I don't have a solid goal in regards to compression ratio, piston selection, bore, etc. From what I could find, Spec IVs seem to thrive in the 11.5:1 to 12.5:1 compression range. Rods will most likely be Eagle H-beams with ARPs. As for the pistons, all I know is that I would be selecting 4032 alloy over 2618. Not sure about the bore, either. Most likely just going to do 81.5mm, but is 82mm safe on stock sleeves? Wiseco seems to be one of the cheaper yet reputable options, but their piston skirt design interferes with the B18C oil squirters and I would like to keep those. I don't know too much about balancing, PTV clearance, claying the motor, etc. but I can only hope that whatever shop I take my block to is beyond competent in building Honda engines and won't mess up in those areas.

4) I don't even know where to begin when it comes to selecting a header. I know that the Spec IVs share a similar, if not the same, VTEC lobe profile as the classic Jun Type III, and those cams work well with the matching Jun 4-2-1 header, but I doubt that the Spec IVs will work well with something like that. I've seen names like DTR/Six Sigma Racing, SMSP, RMF, HyTech, Toda and even DC Sports etc. (and their cheap PLM and 1320 replicas) be used in conjunction with these cams with good results. But... I still don't know what header to pick or how to pick one. Only barely read into the importance of runner length...

5) The exhaust; most likely the header will have a 2.5" collector, so I plan on getting a cat to accommodate that. However, I'm wondering if I could also get by with using a bolt on 2.36" catback exhaust like an A'PEXi N1? Basically, I'm not in a position to have a more ideal 2.5" exhaust fabbed for my car, regardless if a shop does it or I do it myself. I'm planning on just buying a regular 2.36" catback. I know there will be bottlenecking/back pressure, but at the same time I saw an old post where TheShodan out of all people mentioned using a Mugen 4-1 and a 2.36" Mugen Twin-Loop when using Spec IV cams (I think he swapped them out for Toda Spec Bs though.) Surely, 2.36" shouldn't be too bad, right?

Sorry for such a long winded post. I guess I'm just anxious about finally starting to build this motor after years of setbacks and shitty life situations. Also doesn't help that I only just started looking into naturally aspirated setups after reading nothing but the forced induction forum on here for so long. I really, really, really appreciate any input, experience or help!

 

Bump!

 

from my quick experience and others will chime in also

70mm Skunk2 TB
Skunk2 Ultra street intake manifold
toda style header with a good 2.5" exhaust ( you can still run a cat and resonator depending on how you want the car to sound)
rdx 410 injectors
deuatchwerks (sp?) fuel pump DW 300
OEM Plug wires
Oem dizzy or Coil on plug
if using a gsr crank, you can go with oem rods with arp bolts, or go manley or eagle rods your choice
Pistons - you can go budget and use a cast nippon racing piston or aftermarket ( Personally I went Wiesco 12:5:1 81.25" max go to 81.5")

Cams: you can stick with your supertech's if they can handle the buddy club cams ( if they are old and used, might be better to upgrade)
cam gears you can use whatever ones you want. YOU MUST DEGREE THE CAMS I cannot stress this enough, there's no magic drop in setting. Deck height, aftermarket pistons, has the head been milled etc will all factor in where the cams will be once degreed. Read up on degreeing cams, it can be confusing.

Cast pistons keep the oil squirters, forged you can get rid of the squirters

Lastly find yourself a reputable machinist/builder I can see this build going sideways in a hurry especially as your first build. A good engine builder will take the time to measure everything and be meticulous in assembly. A good machine shop will nail all the clearances and tolerances within .0001" or 0.0001 grams

Engine management spend money on a good ECU IE: Hondata s300 if on a budget or go Ecumaster, Haltech, AEM etc - Best to talk to a tuner as I hope you will have someone dyno tune this motor. go with what they recommend and what they are comfortable tuning with.

You still have lots to plan and learn.

FYI my simple setup - B18c5 stock bottom end (high mileage tired) with Toda B cams (w/ matching valvetrain) and degreed, with a toda header (real) fujitsubo exhaust (2.38") rdx 410 injectors, dw300 fuel pump, tuned on hondata made 200 whp. its doesnt take much to hit that magic 200 everyone was clamoring for in the early 2000's

This is in my ITR which makes for a fun street car with smooth power, new motor will have the same top end with a skunk2 ultra street intake and 68 mm tb with the bottom end consisting of wiseco 12.5:1 pistons and it should easily make more power and more torque to drive around in.

Remember all those Japanese cam manufacturers built and designed their cams for mid range power for road racing, not drag. There's tons of cams that make great top end power but are useless for a street car since most of your driving will be in that mid range. I personally think the Spec IV are over kill for what your wanting but use them since you have them, a competent tuner will figure it out and get that powerband you are looking for

 

So this sounds like a pretty street build.

Lots of 25 year old tech on your list. @hybridnorth already hit a lot of your points. My additional comments in green.

1) Stick with your Supertech stuff if you have the 70lb ones. They are good for 14mm of lift and won't pound the **** out of your seats. More spring pressure than you need costs power too. Avoid Ti retainers on street cars, stick with your chromoly ones. Ti retainers require regular inspection and aren't meant for long-term use.

2) I like AEM here.Their green 340lph is about 3x more pump than you'll need and won't die from ethanol, if you ever decide to go that route (DW pumps will die a slow, hard to diagnose death from ethanol exposure). The AEM pump is also quiet and has lower amp draw than an equivalent Walbro pump. Upgrade your wiring, no matter what pump you use. A healthy OEM pump would suffice as long as the wiring is handled (you need <100lph at your desired power), but they don't do well with increased pressure if that's a route you or your tuner wants to go. Pumps are incredibly easy to install and are really inexpensive insurance considering the cost of everything else, so it's really a no-brainer to upgrade.

3) As was pointed out already, you can get away with cast pistons and stock rods (with upgraded fasteners) for a build like this. If you decide to upgrade rods, focus on lighter ( = more $$$). You don't expressly need stronger rods, so adding the weight is counterproductive. Buy yourself a high quality ring compressor. There's no shame in buying a new single-sized one every time you build an engine of a different bore.

- Keep the oil squirters if you can. Make sure they are straight and clean and functional. RS Machine have some cast options for good prices. Wiseco are a good option if you decide to go forged.

- Stick to 81.5mm with this build if you can. Leaves you room to go to 82mm later if you need to rebuild. If you start at 82mm you'll be looking at a sleeve job should you need to rebuild. Word of general advice though - Never choose your bore size or order pistons until the block is torn down and measured, unless you are dead set on oversizing anyway. Following this rule will eventually save you from ordering pistons twice.

- Don't worry too much about the balancing, that's up to the machine shop to handle. All you need to do is bring them all of the parts that rotate, from your crank pulley to the clutch cover. Watch some videos/read some articles to educate yourself so you can have an intelligent conversation about it and/or not get ripped off, then let them handle the rest.

- Watch some videos and buy/rent/borrow a cam degree fixture for measuring your clearances. No need to clay, it's all doable with the fixture (or your machine shop/builder should be able to give you guidance)

4) For a street car, any of the Toda knockoffs are going to be a good choice. The Skunk2 Alpha is pretty nice and way better made than some of the cheap ones, while being really reasonably priced itself. You can find ones that make a little more power here or a little less there, or push the torque peak around, but the Toda style all seem to work fairly well and have good ground clearance.

5) a 2.5" mandrel bend kit and your choice of straight through muffler and resonator would be most ideal and likely about the same cost, after fab, as an N1 or similar. But there's not a ton to gain here... Your -2.5mm of exhaust diameter isn't going to cost you much, so buy whatever sounds best. Thanks for running a catalyst. If it's on the street, it really should have one.

Consider adding to your list:

- ATI Super Damper or Fluidampr. Your choice. This is important. DO NOT reuse the crusty old thing living on the motor currently, and DO NOT trust a parts store/RockAuto aftermarket one with your build.
- Replace the oil pump with a new OEM pump while everything is torn apart anyway. They rarely fail but you're already in there. Ported is not necessary but won't hurt. This guy does it properly: https://the-bad-guys.com/. There is no such thing as a 'Type R' oil pump, all B series pumps have been the same for at least a decade now.
- Coil on Plug conversion. I'm currently using the HondaRulez board with Denso coils and it works flawlessly. Bypasses all of the old distributor electronics, your distributor becomes nothing but a set of engine position sensors.
- Flex Fuel if it's available in your area. Pump gas sucks these days and it's only getting worse. E85 is bad for the environment and the economy but it makes hot rods smile.
- A new engine loom from Rywire/Wireworks/CJ's/etc. Whatever harness you currently have sucks and is full of gremlins. I promise.
- Engine management. S300 at the bare minimum, or HTS/NepTune on a Moates board. Don't waste your time with chips/Ostrich/Hulog/etc. Leave that crap in the dust bin of history. For only a few hundred $$$ more you can do a link G4 plugin and have a really capable ecu with proper map blending, COP capability onboard, all kinds of easy to access features like traction control, lambda sensor over canbus, you name it... And it fits in a stock ecu case.

 

Thanks for the response!!

I actually went out of my way to find Buddy Club cams because I heard how great the midrange on them are. The large primary lobe profile attracted me, since this is supposed to be a street car. I was hoping I could find a set of Spec III+s, but the IVs popped up for a good deal so I snagged them.

Your setup sounds pretty close if not on the dot to what I want in terms of driveability and powerband. Only questions I have are regarding the oil squirters and exhaust setup: I know forged internals negate the necessity of the oil squirters because they dissapate/resist heat much better, but is there any drawback to keeping them? I wanted to keep them for the sake of cooling the piston i.e preventing detonation, but at the same time maybe that would only cause oil temps to be higher/oil pressure to be lower than if the squirters were deleted. As for the exhaust, do you experience any issues with the Fujitsubo? Everyone is telling me to get a 2.5" mandrel bent piping kit and have it fabbed but if a typical ~60mm Japanese exhaust can get me to 200+ whp I'll be fine.

And yeah I've read up on degreeing the cams. If I don't get a shop to do it I could always just by a degree wheel and try it out myself and triple check my measurements. Not gonna lie, there aren't too many good tutorials out there on it except for Justin Gadell's video for his turbo CRX, so we'll see.

 

 

Thanks for your reply! I just have a few more questions/comments if you don't mind:

1) I neglected to mention that I already have some of the items listed: AEBS manifold, Buddy Club cam gears and Professional Products throttle body. I got them for cheap both brand new in the box, and I always figured that the manifold at least was decent, at least back in the early 2000s. Also, I actually do have a CT Engineering Icebox currently on my car as it sits. It took a long time to arrive and when it finally did, the casting was pretty off. It eventually warped itself to the point where the cover can't even fit onto the rest of the box anymore. I was originally going to use it in conjunction with a 3" ITR intake arm, but seeing that its somewhat defective I thought that I should look into other alternatives, and although the Password:JDM intake carries some negative connotations with it I have seen some dyno graphs that demonstrate decent gains all throughout the rev range, even in comparison to a home made icebox setup. And Password:JDM was recently bought up by some other company called Technocraft Composites, and they're manufacturing the intakes again along with other items.

2) Yes, I have the 70 lb Supertech springs. I've definitely heard of titanium retainers being a wear item, but I recall TheShodan stating that they should only have minimal wear (if they wear at all) if the spring/retainer combo is snap fit. I know most, if not all, of the guys revving 9,000 or higher use titanium retainers to reduce valvetrain weight, but is it a necessity? If I can keep my chromoly retainers and reliably rev that high (I won't be driving the car too hard, just the occasional pull. But if the cams are designed to operate that high in the rev range then why not prepare for it) then I'll definitely stay away from titanium retainers.

3) Yeah, I'm staying away from E85 or any specialty fuel/additives like water/meth injection. I was actually planning to buy the AEM 340 when I was still planning to build this car for forced induction. Definitely a superior product over the Walbro or Grams units. I was kind of leaning towards the basic Walbro 190 or even 255 purely because its a few bucks cheaper and a common purchase amongst Honda owners, even if they aren't made like they used to be.

4) Yeah, I've definitely considered just keeping the GSR rods (maybe even having them shot peened), adding ARP 2000s, and buying a set of OEM pistons. It might be hard to get a compression ration of 12:1+ with something like P73-00 ITR pistons or P30s for that matter. PCT B16Bs will most likely get me there but I know the doming on those cause issues that I hope I won't encounter. (I know that I won't necessarily need that high of a compression ratio, but at the same time the few examples of Spec IVs I've seen online use anything from 12:1 to 12.5:1, except for one guy with 11.5:1) Hence why I was looking at forged: options for compression ratio and extra security, although I have been considering the extra weight of something like Eagle H beams. I know it's been proven to work, but something doesn't feel right to me about using the stock rods with upgraded rod bolts and just going at it.

5) I've definitely heard great things about the Toda design, and in extension the various replicas. Seeing as I cannot afford the real Toda header, I'll just get the replica from PLM. I wonder how it compares to the PLM RMF replica though...

6) Thanks for bringing the damper pulley point up. I definitely had it planned to replace it but neglected to mention it. Still trying to decide which to go with though, as I keep discovering various arguments and evidence regarding rubber damper vs. viscous fluid damper.

 

If you've already got some of those things, run them or sure. You can always change later if you're unsatisfied. Bird in the hand or whatever. Yes, shot peening the rods is a good step to take while prepping them - you'll have to have the big ends resized with the ARP bolts too. Definitely look into RS Machine pistons as one of your options too. Cast pistons could be a reasonable spot for you to save some money on the build and still get the piston shape you are looking for. As far as which damper pulley to use, get whichever one you can get the best deal on when you purchase - thy are both good products, just whit different approaches to achieve the same goal.

 

Supertech makes good pistons for the price. The 12.5:1 variant is closer to 11.7:1 in a GSR engine.

I like that they're 4032 forging and that it's a fully coated piston. The machine shop had me sign a waiver when I told them how tight I wanted the clearances. Used forged pistons so I could block the piston squirter and increase oil flow to the rest of the engine.

I used Eagle rods cause I got a really good deal on them, like $160, new in the box. Otherwise I would have just done the ARP rod bolts with the stock rod, and resized the big end.

 

I found that the Buddy Club Spec Condenser was very underrated, and I run them on both my Turbo and NA Cars. Many people dismiss them because they are devices that in and of themselves don't make power. Instead, their job is to make the power you're making more consistent without worrying about any bad grounds and surge points in the powerband. Because of that smoother transition,

The Shodan Goes NA circa 2010



I do agree with many of the points here, however, just because the choices used are about 10-12 years old (25 years is stretching it a bit there, ) but the midrange of the Spec IVs were not nearly as good as the Toda Spec B's, and I had both of them, and sold the Buddy Club IVs. The Buddy Club IVs need to 2.0 litres and a very large primary header to really work, from what I remember.

11-16-2010

 

Thanks for your response! Really cool to have your input on here along with the forced induction forum.

I think I was reading a post from you regarding the Racing Spec Condenser which is what made me interested in buying one. And I also do recall seeing some sporadic posts of yours while researching the Spec IVs. Something about them being used in another car and not working well with the Mugen 4-1.

I wish I had found your thread prior to purchasing the cams. I found plenty of positive reviews of the Spec IVs but were very lacking in information and analysis of real world driving. That being said, I'll honestly just keep these cams and make them work. A lot of people seem to be doing just fine using them on a 1.8L, but I don't doubt that a they would benefit from 2.0L. I'll probably just go with the previous advice and get a Toda, SMSP or RMF header replica from PLM. I know these cams can peak pretty high in certain conditions, so would chromoly retainers suffice for 9k+ rpm?

Also, unrelated, but I've always been a huge fan of your work and approach to building turbo Hondas. Your extensive knowledge really motivated me to figure out what I want from a turbo car, and even I decided that my current GSR won't be seeing the wonders of boost, I'll definitely be buying a TR3030R once I snag myself another B18C1

 

Much appreciated! I've always been one to try and help, although it's slower going these days. But I've got one more project up my sleeve before I retire from the game for a bit.

 

One more project TheShodan ?!? Oh, do tell.

 

Not to deflect from the the thread...
It's just a final rework of my personal DC2 turbo project. Shouts out to Affinity Aero, Haltech, GSC Power-Division, Hayosh-Fab, HASport, Fast Brakes, and Canton. (Teaser companies).

The last Hurrah...😉 I'll keep you updated especially JRCivic1.

 

Oooooooohhhh... I feel giddy like a little school girl !!! I can't wait. I will be adding a build thread (or maybe two) this year as well.

OP, my apologies for a temporary hijacking... now back to your regularly scheduled program... er, thread.