Originally Posted by KPowerSquadron

bumpp

Originally Posted by Katman

egads!
this question of yours brings back fond & shitty memories simultaneously.

Dylan (Gold EG on my site: ff-squad.com) bought a supposed Spoon ITR engine from Speed Fuctor back in 1997. At that time, I was not fully skilled in the art of the Honda knowledge that I have today but it was a stepping stone.
But this is my/our story of buying a brand spankin new Spoon crate engine...

E! Inside Story
--The year is 1997--
After researching, my friend Dylan (gold eg on my site) and I found out we could order a full blown Spoon crate engine. Dylan, having a nice paying job at a local bodyshop - saved up his pennies, ordered + put a down payment on one through a Spoon distributor known as SPEED FACTOR, back in then. They're not around anymore, gee I wonder why. Mind you, this was during the making of Dylan's beautiful gold EG.
I'm some of you may recall those past magazines with the Speed Factor/Spoon EK on the mag cover, yes? Well, he waited a loooong *** fawking time for this engine to arrive - about 4 months!. Well, when he got Dylan got that special phone call, we immediately went down to Speed Fuctor and picked up this Spoon engine. It was nice, everything was brand new and I mean EVERYTHING - all loose parts were in clear plastic bags covered with Spoon logos - boxes had spoon logo'd tape all over them also. We filled up the car with all of his Spoon **** and we were on our way. Oh, did i mention that Dylan paid $8000 for this ... this...damn engine?
yeah.....8 THOUSAND DOLLARS! It's still hard for me to comprehend that to this day, even.

Anyways...We were stoke to see all this new stuff for the very first time. The engine was a B18C3 w/yellow valvecover, ITR intake manifold, & ITR tranny which wasnt bolted to the engine. On the yellow v.cover, we later found out it was rather cheezy. Spoon put some kind of thick yellow paint over the red ITR v.cover and it bled red through the yellow paint a lil' bit.

The actual performance parts it came with from Spoon, were these items:
- Full 3 puck (triangular) race clutch with billet Spoon flywheel
- Spoon 421 header, upper half only
- Spoon headgasket
- Spoon cam sprockets
- The rare aluminum AC mount
- Spoon reprogrammed OBD2 ECU
- Spoon magnetic oil drain plugs

I think there were a couple other small things it came with too, but thats the majority of actual Spoon parts it came with. The engine itself, was put together, block+head+ITR intake manifold by Spoon. The tranny was seperate from the engine. To this day, we still don't know if the transmission has a Spoon LSD or normal ITR LSD - nonetheless is has an LSD.

Well, some time passed on (a couple months to be exact). Dylan lagged because he had to convert his car to OBD2 wiring in order to utilize the Spoon ECU. While he researched wiring and all the other BS it took to convert to OBD2....
I gained knowlege on other things - comparing parts n' such - finding out differences between JDM and US Honda goods.
A couple things we found out:

- Dylan had to get a US OBD2 oil pump which has a built-on crank angle sensor
(later on, found out he didnt need it since JDM OBD2 ECU's don't look for that sensor)
- Had an issue with the VTEC solenoid on the B18C3 - it didn't have a VTEC pressure switch on it. Later on, found out that All JDM OBD2 engines don't have a VTEC pressure switch and JDM OBD2 ECU's don't look for one which was good news.


And now for the real downside of this story

1) Dylan spent $8000 on this brand Spoon/B18C3 engine + $1100 more (sometime later) on Spoon cams since I found out the engine didn't come with Spoon cams.

2) The engine harness & ECU were meant for an OBD2 equipped car!
Although Dylan DID order an engine for an OBD1 EG civic, he ended up with this OBD2 crap - 1st ding against Speed Factor. Soo....Dylan went through the pains-taking procedure of rewiring his whole car to 96-98/OBD2, just so he could take advantage of the Spoon ECU - whatta fawkin drag that was. And thats why he uses an EK cluster in his EG. Heh, I get quite a few emails asking how he installed and wired up that EK cluster into his EG - I just reply back saying you don't wanna do it. Also, OBD1-OBD2 ECU jumpers weren't around back then so that was another negative surrounding Dylan.

3) After extensive research on my end and getting involed with the internet world in 1998, I finally meet Eric Bauer/Honda Hybrid. I found out along with Eric, that Dylans B18C3/Spoon engine was not even a Type-R engine like what it was suppose to be! wtf you say, right? Since Eric is basically in-there-like-swimwear with Spoon - he emailed them Dylan's B18C3 block serial #, ECU #, and anything serial # related. Spoon sent him back an email saying his engine was not a Type-R engine and to match those specs of an ITR he would need to raise compression (meaning get ITR pistons) and change the cams (to ITR). Pretty lame info coming from direct from Spoon - which means Speed Factor ****ed with Dylan.

By this time (almost a year has passed), Dylan is thinking about taking legal action against Speed Fuctor, but is slightly weary of it since it's dragging on. We later find out there are other people who got reamed by Speed Fuctor also and took legal action against them- that's why they're outta business and a NON-Spoon distributor anymore.

So, Dylans B18C3 was basically this...
Assembled by Spoon (woopty doo!)
It was an SiR-G B18C block (a JDM version of our GSR engine)
w/ B16A head+cams + ITR intake manifold and TB.
ITR trans.

Yes, he had s o m e parts that were ITR but the main ingredients behind the ITR's power were NOT there = ITR pistons and camshafts.

Dylan got robbed of HP and a lot of $$...
In fact when we told Speed Factor about this new finding at the beginning, they acted like "we sell what they give us", that was their disclaimer for Dylan. They even had the nerve to say that there were a batch of these crated engines that were setup, by Spoon, for turbo applications using a mixture of factory Honda parts..... WTF?! go figure...

(now to back up our ignorance heh)
Spoon crate engines were too new back then and we didn't exactly know what a Spoon engine actually came with - nonetheless Dylan paid way too much.

....Dylan did eventually get his EG running - it ran good too - but, he would dissapointingly (my own word) get smoked by Lee's EG(SiR-G B18C powered) easily - you can look in my video archives for proof. Also, in search of more power, Dylan had the stock head on his B18C3 ported at Portflow in early 98 along with the purchase of Spoon cams (as stated above)... he dynoed 181 to the wheels even though he was running low compression due to the B16A head and SiR-G barley domed piston combination.

Today, Dylan parted out the B18C3 long block and is running a B16A long block.
In fact he's going to be selling his EG soon.


Bottom line -

Spoon crate engines are way too much fawkin $$, even if you do get a brand new Spoon engine for a bit less. Wouldn't you rather save a couple THOUSAND dollars and buy a used ITR engine? or even build up your own engine??....
*tisk* Dylan sure wishes he did.

School yourself with knowledge before buying a Spoon engine if you do go through with purchasing one. Know what it comes with and what it doesn't come with.

Make sure the place you buy the Spoon engine from is a reliable one. You don't wanna get fawked like Dylan did.

.....that's about it.

PS: I'm not totally sure....but I don't think Spoon sells B-series crate engines anymore since the K series are out now.

yeah real tiiiiiite expense...
(Aerosmith accepting applications? heh, old pic he dont looky like this anymo)



[Modified by Katman, 4:58 PM 11/14/2001]


[Modified by Katman, 5:00 PM 11/14/2001]