For the Auto guys, supercharged b20 on MP7A JDM automatic tranny
- Thread starter Spawne32
- Start date
Spawne32
Shut up baby, I know it!
So I feel this thread finally deserves a bit of an update.
If you haven't guessed already from the obvious lack of posts, the results turned out to be far less spectacular then I had originally planned for them to be, in fact, so bad that I was completely and utterly humiliated and embarrassed, and the whole project left me with more questions then it did answers.
I had the car dyno'ed back in september over at RSTECH in atco, nj with randy shoener, some of you may have heard of him, some of you not. His team of racers has some of the fastest car's around in my area for honda's, so I felt it only be in my own best interest to have him tune and evaluate the car. The automatic honda was a relatively new thing to him, so we spent about an hour doing trial and error to make sure what we were seeing on the dyno was entirely accurate. Long story short, the base run on the dyno when I drove it in put down a whopping 142hp. After I regained consciousness after that first run (joking), we did some checks to verify that it wasnt the dyno running the incorrect ratio from doing the pulls in second gear, we verified this by doing some short pulls in 3rd without the car trying to automatically downshift, and wound up coming out with almost the same result every time. We also pinned down a very specific problem I was having in my valve train, which ill get to in a minute. We discussed alot of different scenarios on what could possibly be the issue, whether the clutch plates inside the trans were slipping or whether or not there was a problem with the motor, or just an overall loss of power in general through the trans. Finally after alot of discussion it was leaning towards an issue with the cams. There was a whole heck of alot of noise coming from the valve train after 3 different valve lash adjustments I had done on the car prior to bringing it in, and it just wasnt making the kinda lopey race car type sound that we had both expected from the cam profile I was going to have. After it was all said and done, randy wound up finding an extra 37hp in the tune and put me up to a whopping 179whp.
So i called derek that night and discussed with him what happened, and we both kinda agreed that alot more in the way of investigation needed to be done as to what the fuck went wrong here. The first thing I wound up finding was that the regrind cams turned out to be seriously wrong. So much material was removed from the base circle of the cam that it threw the rocker geometry so out of wack that it was only touching the back end of the rocker pad and there was almost no more adjustment left in the lash screw to try to change this. This was the horrific noise the head was making and the reason for the general lack of cam sound, as the profile was just not making it all the way to the valve at all. I informed derek of this and he promised to make a new set of cams for the car, which I was very thankful for, but unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances related to hardwelding more material on the cam's, this would not be corrected. (derek can elaborate more on the nature of non vtec cam's) So I opted to go with crower 402T's instead.
The crower cam's I wound up going with were a complete shot in the dark, I didnt want to raise the powerband so high above 7000rpm that it would be unusable, as the automatic will only rev out to 7600-7700rpm's, and crower had claimed that this cams would make excellent mid range power for my setup. However after installing the cams I only saw a 3% increase in overall fueling requirements. Which unfortunately after all the testing, yielded a net gain of .2 seconds at the track.
These issues began to wreak havoc with my confidence about the integrity of the motor now, so I decided to compression test the motor at least 4 different times over the 3 months, and too much surprise, compression is actually LOW. I'm only seeing about 220psi across all 4 cylinders. Which now gives me even graver concerns as to what the actual problem is, after a long discussion with muckman about what could be the issue here, I now have concerns that the valve guides on this P8R which already had bad seats when I bought it, are actually bad. Slowly but surely im losing compression threw an increasingly poor sealing valve seat on both sides of the head. What should be 11:1 compression is now effectively only 10:1 compression if that, that is only being now aggravated by the fact that Im using .469 lift cams and very strong dual springs which are slamming the valve shut extremely hard.
I also have begun evaluating the swap to a turbo, a small turbo, something along the lines of the super 60. While the M45 is still making roughly 7psi on this setup, its efficiency is now in the toilet according to eaton's efficiency maps, heat output is becoming an ever obvious problem during the summer where my power seems to drop 20-30hp depending on whether or not the ambient temp varies 10 degrees in either direction. The whole project is just being plagued with all sorts of problems.
Over the next few months I have alot of work to do, I picked up a new P8R head, that has a much more aggressive port and polish, that will be flow benched to verify that my gains are actually there for the cam's. Should I decide to upgrade down the road, I want to be certain that the head will be able to support it as well. I need to verify that my compression was calculated properly with the given chamber size in the head. I also need to verify that there is no damage to the cylinder walls due to piston slap, because on a cold day this thing is problem the noisiest motor ive ever heard in my life. So there is a whole boat load of concerns that need to be checked out, but hopefully in the spring time this beast finally turns into the animal it should be.
For the moment though Ill have to be content running 14.6 and picking on 5spd b16 civic's on the street.
If you haven't guessed already from the obvious lack of posts, the results turned out to be far less spectacular then I had originally planned for them to be, in fact, so bad that I was completely and utterly humiliated and embarrassed, and the whole project left me with more questions then it did answers.
I had the car dyno'ed back in september over at RSTECH in atco, nj with randy shoener, some of you may have heard of him, some of you not. His team of racers has some of the fastest car's around in my area for honda's, so I felt it only be in my own best interest to have him tune and evaluate the car. The automatic honda was a relatively new thing to him, so we spent about an hour doing trial and error to make sure what we were seeing on the dyno was entirely accurate. Long story short, the base run on the dyno when I drove it in put down a whopping 142hp. After I regained consciousness after that first run (joking), we did some checks to verify that it wasnt the dyno running the incorrect ratio from doing the pulls in second gear, we verified this by doing some short pulls in 3rd without the car trying to automatically downshift, and wound up coming out with almost the same result every time. We also pinned down a very specific problem I was having in my valve train, which ill get to in a minute. We discussed alot of different scenarios on what could possibly be the issue, whether the clutch plates inside the trans were slipping or whether or not there was a problem with the motor, or just an overall loss of power in general through the trans. Finally after alot of discussion it was leaning towards an issue with the cams. There was a whole heck of alot of noise coming from the valve train after 3 different valve lash adjustments I had done on the car prior to bringing it in, and it just wasnt making the kinda lopey race car type sound that we had both expected from the cam profile I was going to have. After it was all said and done, randy wound up finding an extra 37hp in the tune and put me up to a whopping 179whp.
So i called derek that night and discussed with him what happened, and we both kinda agreed that alot more in the way of investigation needed to be done as to what the fuck went wrong here. The first thing I wound up finding was that the regrind cams turned out to be seriously wrong. So much material was removed from the base circle of the cam that it threw the rocker geometry so out of wack that it was only touching the back end of the rocker pad and there was almost no more adjustment left in the lash screw to try to change this. This was the horrific noise the head was making and the reason for the general lack of cam sound, as the profile was just not making it all the way to the valve at all. I informed derek of this and he promised to make a new set of cams for the car, which I was very thankful for, but unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances related to hardwelding more material on the cam's, this would not be corrected. (derek can elaborate more on the nature of non vtec cam's) So I opted to go with crower 402T's instead.
The crower cam's I wound up going with were a complete shot in the dark, I didnt want to raise the powerband so high above 7000rpm that it would be unusable, as the automatic will only rev out to 7600-7700rpm's, and crower had claimed that this cams would make excellent mid range power for my setup. However after installing the cams I only saw a 3% increase in overall fueling requirements. Which unfortunately after all the testing, yielded a net gain of .2 seconds at the track.
These issues began to wreak havoc with my confidence about the integrity of the motor now, so I decided to compression test the motor at least 4 different times over the 3 months, and too much surprise, compression is actually LOW. I'm only seeing about 220psi across all 4 cylinders. Which now gives me even graver concerns as to what the actual problem is, after a long discussion with muckman about what could be the issue here, I now have concerns that the valve guides on this P8R which already had bad seats when I bought it, are actually bad. Slowly but surely im losing compression threw an increasingly poor sealing valve seat on both sides of the head. What should be 11:1 compression is now effectively only 10:1 compression if that, that is only being now aggravated by the fact that Im using .469 lift cams and very strong dual springs which are slamming the valve shut extremely hard.
I also have begun evaluating the swap to a turbo, a small turbo, something along the lines of the super 60. While the M45 is still making roughly 7psi on this setup, its efficiency is now in the toilet according to eaton's efficiency maps, heat output is becoming an ever obvious problem during the summer where my power seems to drop 20-30hp depending on whether or not the ambient temp varies 10 degrees in either direction. The whole project is just being plagued with all sorts of problems.
Over the next few months I have alot of work to do, I picked up a new P8R head, that has a much more aggressive port and polish, that will be flow benched to verify that my gains are actually there for the cam's. Should I decide to upgrade down the road, I want to be certain that the head will be able to support it as well. I need to verify that my compression was calculated properly with the given chamber size in the head. I also need to verify that there is no damage to the cylinder walls due to piston slap, because on a cold day this thing is problem the noisiest motor ive ever heard in my life. So there is a whole boat load of concerns that need to be checked out, but hopefully in the spring time this beast finally turns into the animal it should be.
For the moment though Ill have to be content running 14.6 and picking on 5spd b16 civic's on the street.
Spawne32
Shut up baby, I know it!
After the failure, and having to rip the whole motor apart only to find problems with the cylinder walls and rings, i decided it was time to make a few changes. Changes that started with selling the supercharger kit, and looking into a future with a turbo. That being said, ive listed alot of the parts for sale.
http://hondamarketplace.com/showthread.php?p=48223064
http://hondamarketplace.com/showthread.php?p=48223064
Spawne32
Shut up baby, I know it!
wow, its been a while since ive updated this thread. Lets see where were we last? Oh yeh, timing belt broke, but no damage to the engine.
So, as I have originally left off here, we saw the damage to the cylinder walls on 3 cylinders and immediately assumed that i had an issue with cracked or damaged rings. Turn's out this was not the case...
As far as I could tell, after all the measurements, and testing we did, the only reason the pistons made contact with the walls was somehow they got too hot, opposite of the way the cylinders are cooled, and on the intake side, which left quite a puzzle to say the least. The only conclusion I could make out of the whole thing was that somehow oil was getting into the cylinder through what we believe is faulty guides, and eventually bad valve seats, which is what led to the lower then normal compression numbers, and thus lower overall output on the dyno. The pistons were badly coated with carbon on the top, and the faces of the valves showed signs of overheating as well.
So i tore the block down, rehoned the bores after measuring them, and proceeded to get new pistons.
So this is basically where we are now, in the process of reassembling the motor. The block is ready to go back together this week pending me getting a ring file, and I now have a new P8R cylinder head with a much more aggressive port that i just finished cleaning up that is ready to go off to the machine shop for guides and decking.
Today i also finished setting up the engine bay for the new half rad...
to accommodate this new addition...
So, as I have originally left off here, we saw the damage to the cylinder walls on 3 cylinders and immediately assumed that i had an issue with cracked or damaged rings. Turn's out this was not the case...
As far as I could tell, after all the measurements, and testing we did, the only reason the pistons made contact with the walls was somehow they got too hot, opposite of the way the cylinders are cooled, and on the intake side, which left quite a puzzle to say the least. The only conclusion I could make out of the whole thing was that somehow oil was getting into the cylinder through what we believe is faulty guides, and eventually bad valve seats, which is what led to the lower then normal compression numbers, and thus lower overall output on the dyno. The pistons were badly coated with carbon on the top, and the faces of the valves showed signs of overheating as well.
So i tore the block down, rehoned the bores after measuring them, and proceeded to get new pistons.
So this is basically where we are now, in the process of reassembling the motor. The block is ready to go back together this week pending me getting a ring file, and I now have a new P8R cylinder head with a much more aggressive port that i just finished cleaning up that is ready to go off to the machine shop for guides and decking.
Today i also finished setting up the engine bay for the new half rad...
to accommodate this new addition...
Spawne32
Shut up baby, I know it!
Finally, the head is back from the machine shop. They took .003 off additional to the .002 that was already done prior. So i have just under .01 total between the head and the deck milled out. I had two ever so slightly bent valves, but no evidence of them ever coming in contact with the piston, so im not sure if the valves were bent from the bad guides on the old head and them being loose, or what. Running all the old back cut valves, and the two i had to replace had them back cut to match along with the 3 angle.
and heres a comparison of what i started with when i bought the head that was done by DFE, and what i wound up with after I was done cleaning it up. DFE on the left, my work on the right.
and....just about fully assembled, gotta make some cuts and splices on the harness to get it all tucked up nicely, and finish mocking up some other stuff.
and heres a comparison of what i started with when i bought the head that was done by DFE, and what i wound up with after I was done cleaning it up. DFE on the left, my work on the right.
and....just about fully assembled, gotta make some cuts and splices on the harness to get it all tucked up nicely, and finish mocking up some other stuff.
somalia757
New Member
I just recently changed my trans out to a rebuilt unit on my 94 DC and totally forgot about the torque converter can you pm me a link to the site that sells that unit also the clutch kit you obtained.
Where did you find all the information on the transmission system on these 94-95 I've been searching for weeks and barely found a thing useful. Can you steer me in the right direction.
I have a B20B stock with exhaust had it in there for a few years now then the transmission finally was on its way out am found a replacement rebuilt unit for $200 I was so excited about the price I put it in right away without thinking of changing other things out.
Spawne32
Shut up baby, I know it!
torque converter was purchased through precision of new hampton... http://gopnh.com/
6656 is the part number your looking for, contact them and tell them you want the street stall max version...
there is a bunch of optional features you can add as well for racing...
http://gopnh.com/Racing-Stall-Torque-Converters.cfm
The clutch pack kit is a standard rebuild kit from transstar. http://www.makcotransmissionparts.com/70006D.html
The information i found was from technical diagrams, service manuals as well as information from other people skilled in automatic trannys. Took alot of time to get all the information together. If you are interested in having your trans computer modified or want to buy one modified, id be happy to do it for you for a price. Just pm me about it.
6656 is the part number your looking for, contact them and tell them you want the street stall max version...
there is a bunch of optional features you can add as well for racing...
http://gopnh.com/Racing-Stall-Torque-Converters.cfm
The clutch pack kit is a standard rebuild kit from transstar. http://www.makcotransmissionparts.com/70006D.html
The information i found was from technical diagrams, service manuals as well as information from other people skilled in automatic trannys. Took alot of time to get all the information together. If you are interested in having your trans computer modified or want to buy one modified, id be happy to do it for you for a price. Just pm me about it.
somalia757
New Member
Thanks for the response. When my semster ends I plan on delving further into the project.
I also have a 91 DA I am working on getting a swap for thats going to be the track car.
But my DC is my daily with the B20 and I want a fun car that my wife can drive also with all the stock options for her.
I looked over the information on the sites and I never realized the technology was even available for the auto transmission. So I am excited about that and the fact that I can now work on upgrades for better power and response.
Also I am glad I have been searching around because I didnt even realize that the trans had its own "brain" but I kinda suspected it for some reason.
When the time comes I will contact you about the computer for the trans.
Thanks for the inspiration and the information brother.
Godspeed
Spawne32
Shut up baby, I know it!
somalia757
New Member
Hey man how is the build going?