Of course I'm planning on building my car, but should I stay with all motor, or use a turbo to enhance the power. I know that if I want to get a turbo, there are many more things I must do to get it turbo ready but what do you think I should do?

 

What do you want your car to do? Go fast?

You have to think about how much power you want to make and how fast you want to go before we can suggest any sort of setup.

 

FI
I'm biased

 

What do you want? A revver? Torque monster? Where do you want your power? What are you going to be doing, drag, autox, road race?

 

I want low-end torque. I value 1/4th mile times more than Top Speed.

 

Low end torque, go buy yourself a v8. But if you want torque, turbo is the way.

 

Well, I have a similar dilemma actually. However, I do know I plan to use the motor for road racing and auto-X, and I hope to go get a rebuilt, bored, and sleeved B18c from www.importbuilders.com (someone from this site recommended them). The engine will go into a '89 CRX Si. I am planning to go turbo with an off the shelf turbokit. I hope to get anywhere from 300-340whp for my final setup.

Three factors that matter to me are pricing, reliability and performance. I already have some ideas of I want based on what research I've tried to do on these forums, but I could be misinformed, so pls help me out.

On one hand, it seems to me that it's just cheaper to go turbo if you really want to make lots of power and torque. I don't know however, if it costs as much to go all motor (vs forced induction) if I wanted the motor to make something in the early 300whp range. What do you guys think? Does it cost about the same, or is it just really expensive to get power figures up that high with a N/A B18c? I'm also guessing it would be difficult to make decent torque figures without going fi, but I could be wrong

About the performance part, making power aside, I'm also concerned with the engine weight itself. Here's where I'm worried about fi. WIth a forced induction motor, I'm guessing there will be a lot more wieght with the sleeves and the actuall turbokit alone. Maybe the whole setup will weigh some 100 lbs extra. Maybe more, maybe less, I'm not sure. What do you guys think? Would the extra 100 lbs upfront be a huge problem? I'm also guessing an all motor setup ought to be much lighter, so it at least has that advantage.

In termns of reliability, I've heard N/A is a lot more reliable that fi induction in general. Is this true? What setup can I expect to last longer? A low compression, low redline, but highly boosted fi B18c, a n/A, high compression, high redline B18c, or something in between? Which tuners out there offer reliable products and good customer service for fi and n/a tuning? I was thinking about going with Toda Racing for n/a, but for RevHard or ImportBuilders for fi,

Pls let me know what you think, thanks!

 

If you plan on going autocrossing and road racing it would be best to look over the rules of whatever organization you'll be participating in to see what you can get away with in each class.

Also, it's better to build up your skills on an underpowered car with good tires and chassis tuning than to put a monster motor into a car and then try and figure out how to control the thing.

 

Well, I did consider the route you've mentioned, but I blew my CRX engine recently and I have to replace the engine. Since I have to do a swap anyways, I thought I might get something I'll be happy with in the long run. It does already have a set of 15in Rotas and some Azenis tires, it's gutted, so the suspension is at least decent for the time bieng. Of course

Otherwise, I do try to do track events often with my VW Passat, which is pretty much like the car you mentioned. It has f/r swaybars, it's gutted, has around 221whp (from my last dyno, but it's around 2,900 lbs so it's somewhat underpowered). I'm also using a Koni Yellow/Eibach setup w/ 17x8.5 SSR Comps & Kumho Ecsta V700 rubber. I definetly agree it's a great idea to start out learning with something like that, but I feel confident I can move on to something quicker.

 

I've gotten used to people asking questions like yours who have little to no competition experience but are more than willing to throw a lot of money at a car. My apologies...I've just gotten a little cynical/jaded lately.

Anyway, you would need one extremely exotic motor to get over 300 all-motor hp to the wheels from a B-series. Not to say that it can't be done, but I imagine that the power peak would be around 11,000 RPM. You could spend 13 grand on the spiffiest motor Importbuilders builds which is basically two liters with a ton of headwork, high CR, lumpy cams and individual throttle bodies. With an ITR intake manifold similar motors have hit 240 whp, but your guess is as good as mine on how much power the ITB's will add. I'm thinking the ITB's are good for maybe another 20-30 whp for a total of around 260 to the wheels. No, it's not 300-something whp, but in a 2100 lb car you've already matched the power/weight ratio of a Corvette Z06.

Now if you threw 13 grand at some sort of forced induction project, it would most assuredly top 300 whp. You'd have to tune the fuel pretty tightly but with that much of a budget I wouldn't be overly concerned about reliability. Any motor regardless of induction setup is perfectly able to blow up if it leans out and detonates.

On the weight issue, most of the weight you can remove from a CRX is in the engine compartment (the interior doesn't weigh much) by getting rid of the A/C and other miscellaneous stuff you might not need. Moving the battery to the passenger-side of the trunk helps the distribution out a bit as well.

I don't know how much money you want to spend, and forced induced Hondas aren't legal for most forms of road racing that I know of. Once you get into motor swapping and such you really do have to look at what you can and can't do for a given class.