I will try to keep my rambling to a minimum in this thread but I figured this information may prove useful to future searchers.

First off, Why did I do this?: This car has been my daily for over 10 years now and has been extremely reliable. However the -MAYBE- 100whp the stock NA F22B2 put to the ground was extremely lackluster, made it difficult to keep up with modern traffic and sometimes was a cause for concern(like when high speed merging, etc). My goal was to improve the driving experience of the car by adding usable torque and horsepower. The one rule I wouldn't budge on when doing this build was that it MUST remain completely functional as a car. Meaning all the accessories like A/C, P/S, cruise control, etc must be retained and the car must be completely reliable. I didn't need it to be exceedingly fast because I already have a built, big turbo car making north of 500whp.

There's quite a bit of info on turbocharging these cars out there so I won't go into much detail on things that don't need clarifying. However there is not a whole lot of concrete info on turbocharging an automatic. It has been done before(even by myself, on my first car back in 2011) but the information has been lost to time or wasn't made available to begin with.

So here's how I did it. First thing you're gonna do is turbo the car. How you accomplish this is mostly up to you. There are plenty of setups to reference. If you intend to keep A/C it's going to be a pain to work around the A/C compressor and lines. Keeping A/C was a must for me so I had to make it work. The generic eBay log manifolds move the turbo too far towards the A/C compressor and result in very minimal clearance to work with for your downpipe. For somebody with a better welder and cutting tools, maybe it would be possible to clear with a lot of pie cuts but I personally wasn't interested in trying to make it work. I ended up sourcing a Treadstone manifold which centers the turbo and gives another 1" or so of clearance for the lines and compressor. This allowed me much more room to fabricate my downpipe. Due to space constraints I had to use a 6" section of 2.25" diameter piping directly off the turbo, which would then open up to 2.5" go down and back to a 2.5" flowmaster 200 cell catalytic converter, and eventually connecting to a custom exhaust. I recirculated the wastegate because I didn't want all the noise or stink. This also required quite a few pie cuts and tricky welding to accomplish but I made it all fit. Overall this was definitely the most labor intensive and timing consuming part of this build. The car is only barely louder than stock though and I don't have to listen to the wastegate everytime I hit boost.

Next up was the intercooler or lack thereof in my case. Most people will tell you that you can't have a turbo setup without an intercooler or you can only run 5psi of boost, or something along those lines. This is technically true but you do not need a physical intercooler setup. There are other ways to do it. In my case I opted for a water/methanol injection system for multiple reasons. I was familiar with it. I know it works. I have turbocharged many Accord/Prelude chassis in my day and I know what's required to make it work. I did not want to mount an intercooler, relocate the washer fluid reservoir, etc etc. It was easier, less intrusive, and less obvious to bystanders for me to just use a water/methanol injection kit. If you want to do a setup like this then you will have to do your own research on WMI systems as it's too much to explain here. I will just touch on the key points. My setup is boost referenced/activated. It drastically lowers IATs and is basically the equivalent of running racegas but only when you need it. This is perfect for a daily because I can still run 87 octane pump gas. With this setup the stock fuel pump was sufficient for my fuel needs(because of the extra fueling from the methanol), so I didn't have to go cutting an access to replace the fuel pump or dropping the tank.

Then the tuning part. There is much confusion about this. Some people say you can't tune an automatic, amongst other things. For the 94-97s it's very possible. For a 94-95 I have already made a thread here: https://honda-tech.com/forums/honda-...ccord-3379211/ that covers most of it. 96-97s require much more wiring because they are OBD2 but it's still possible for those motivated enough. The short of it is you use an automatic P75 out of a 94-95 Integra which can be chipped, communicate with our stock TCU, and be tuned like anything else. This car is tuned with Crome and it works great.

A few notes regarding the automatic transmission. First, you want to make sure yours is in decent condition before you start this. If you have any flaring or slipping or anything of the sort it will just get worse when you add the torque of turbocharging. You CAN adjust the partial throttle line pressure via the cable that runs from the throttle body to the transmission. I would recommend at least making sure this has no slack, and if you would like you can add some preload to this to make the transmission happier under partial throttle conditions. That was the only thing I had to tweak transmission wise. I did not have to add a transmission cooler, or anything else. The engine and transmission are completely stock. In fact if you make it this far you should let the car completely warm up before driving it hard. You actually want a certain amount of heat in the transmission fluid or else it will not work properly. My transmission does not slip or have any issues with around 9-10psi of boost and 250whp/tq. I have done many WOT passes through the gears and it just works. It even chirps the 1-2 shift consistently. However, I can't say that I would recommend doing this for anyone who wants to constantly beat on their car. I drive mine fairly normally most of the time. If you are out going WOT at every stoplight with boost, I don't think the automatic would live very long.

Overall I accomplished my goal of adding usable power and torque to the car. It improved it in every way. It's quick WOT but the real gains were everywhere else. Keeping up with traffic is a breeze now. With a smallish turbo I am making 5-6psi of boost by 2400-2500rpm. It completely transformed how the car drives everyday. Passing power, throttle response, etc is greatly improved. The engine doesn't feel like it has to labor super hard to move the car around anymore. It makes enough torque to pull it around with ease.

This thread is mostly just to be prove that it can be done reliably if you do it correctly and to help anyone who may be interested. Initially I was going to do an F20B/H22 swap but after some consideration I figured the low end/midrange power would still be lackluster. This came out much better. It's been almost 6 months now as of this post without any engine or transmission issues.

I may add more detail to this later but I'm out of time for the day. I will leave this off with a brief video of a pull on 9psi or so.

 

Very nice to see! I was well on my way to researching how I wanted to go about doing a turbo on my 97 Accord wagon before it got hit. I already had swapped in a fresh F23A into it, along with an Accord SiR LSD H22 auto trans. With that setup alone, it was about as quick as a 5-speed EX coupe/sedan, and doing a small turbo with the goal of 250whp would have been right in the sweet spot from my reckoning. I had installed a Koyo radiatior on the car, so I lost the transmission cooler portion of the factory radiator. Installed a small trans cooler to the lower radiator support and caught fresh air from the bumper. Worked like a charm.

Nice to see there was a factory Honda ECU you could pair with the factory TCU that would work. I had been looking into the Neptune/RTP auto setup that is out there, but a chipped P75 on Crome or HTS would be much more budget friendly.

Having that extra power is so nice though. I ended up parting out my wagon and picked up a 08 RDX. With Hondata plus some bolt-ons, I'm sitting on a bout 260awhp. Not "fast" by modern standards, but plenty of power for passing and to have some fun every once in a while at the local 1/8 mi drag strip.

 

I bet that setup was quick with the H22 trans. I have thought about sourcing one of those in the past but I ended up setting the car up for 5 speed instead. I actually have everything to do the 5 speed swap and have already done the pedals and a few other things. Initially I was just going to to turbo the automatic to see if the engine would hold up to boost and then 5 speed swap it but I like the auto with the turbo so much I'm probably just going to keep running it as is until it's done lol.

You could use Neptune/Hondata or anything you wanted for engine management, just as long as the base was an auto P75 and the auto circuitry was left untouched. I just used crome because this was a mega budget build out of a lot of leftover parts from my other car. I still ended up with like $1200 in it but it transformed the car and gave it a few more years of life. I was about to get rid of it for something bigger with more power.

260awhp is quick I'm sure. Something RDX sized is probably about what I'm looking for in my next vehicle.

 

It was a huge upgrade over the stock wagon drivetrain. Being that the wagon is about 300lbs heavier, its already at a disadvantage. Plus since I had an LX, the F22B2 was barely adequate. The F23 powerband with the shorter final drive in the LSD trans was much better suited for the car. But like all H22 transmissions, sitting at 3900rpm at 80mph took some getting used to. Its definitely the transmission to get if you're dead set on staying auto, but if you already have the 5-speed stuff ready to go, then that's the obvious choice when the time comes.

I like the size of the 1G RDX. Cargo space is almost identical to the 5G wagon. A little less space length wise with the seats down, but way more vertical space, which I have found is more practical for hauling furniture and such. Plus, with the SH-AWD the car handles closer to an AWD sport sedan than a typical SUV. Definitely not the numb driving experience that a CR-V of the same year offers. When the RDX first came out, it actually got a lot of flak for being too sporty, and not enough of a "luxury" CUV, But I've found its the perfect fit for someone who came from modding older Hondas, but now needs the space and size the RDX provides over say a Civic Si or RSX, etc. Still plenty of character, and enough power to not be a total slouch performance wise, without being a premium performance SUV like an M or AMG.

I'm hoping to hit over 300whp by fall. My turbo is finally showing signs of wear at 226k, so I'm grabbing a second one to send off for a rebuild and to upgrade the factory turbo with a larger compressor wheel and more efficient turbine. Will basically be pushing as much out of the little TD04 as it will do. That way i can still maintain the factory setup and placement for ease of switching back if need be. Will then get it properly tuned on both 93 and e85, and be able to have some fun again. My end goal of the car is to dip into the 12s in the 1/4 mile. I've previously ran a 13.9 on just bolt ons and a Hondata reflash with all season tires. Hopefully the added power and some sticky summer rubber will get me there. But overall the power delivery should improve nicely with the upgraded turbo.

 

12s is moving. Having a factory turbo vehicle makes things easier for sure. Good luck with it.

I feel like this automatic setup is around mid 13s on the butt dyno with a decent launch. It's pretty surprising lol. It's getting a little faster each time I revise the tune. Would like to get it out to the local track at some point but may just settle for some dragy stuff for now.