Supercharged K20a2 Vtec - Race Spec by cptkirk

7 minute(s) of a 377 minute read

Rockingham = Not Happening

Me making any more deadlines to try and stick to = Not Happening

The winter is here so I am going to be taking my time now (like I wasnt taking my time before I hear you say, in my defence doing pretty much everything on your own takes a lot of time).

Work continues but I dont have much in the way of photos right now, will try and get some over the weekend and get stuff posted.

12-14-2009

Progress has been slow, to say the least.

When I took the car to have it tuned I asked the guy to take a look over the car and advise of anything he saw that I might have done wrong or that were problematic or could prove to be problematic in the future. This has led me to to require a new diff for the car along with considerable reworking of the coolant piping and a few other bits. So its fair to say that I have recently hit rock bottom with the project, not only has the money run out but the weather is rubbish and the thought of running a cable round to my little cold garage isnt floating my boat right now.

However in the midst of all this woe I can see the light and will start to hit it again over christmas as i have some time off. Then January will see me hitting both the wagon and the car.

So over the last month or so I have had a Quaife ATB installed in the car, which wasnt cheap as for some reason the Gripper diff in the car had 10mm bolts in it but Honda use 11mm so I had to pay to have the holes in the final drive ring gear made 1mm bigger at £12 +vat per hole by spark eroding, plus new bearings, plus new bolts for the ring gear. I have to praise Guy at CPL Racing for his help and advice through this change and he only charged 2 hours labour as I dropped the box off to him.

You may be asking yourself why I had to change the diff - the Hondata ECU I am using relies on the use of the speedo pickup for some of its stratigies, like locking out reverse and allowing the vtec to work. So the Gripper diff didnt have a speedo ring gear, and after speaking to Chris at Z's I was told it didnt have the facility for the speedo ring gear.

So I spent the best part of a fortnight on the internet researching the different diff types out there for the K20. There quite a few and I was very close to buying a Wavetrac Diff as they seem to have overcome the only downside to the Torsen type diff (the Quaife is a Torsen type diff), the downside being that when one wheel lifts the diff will react like an open diff. If you want to read up on it heres the link: Quaife ATB.

The diff that I used was not the normal diff used for the Civic Type R, it is the diff specifically designed for the Ariel Atom, the helical gears in the diff are cut at 23deg not 31deg as normal. This makes the diff less agressive and ultimately much better for a lightweight, mid engined, high powered vehicle. I know and knew before I purchased it that it has the downfall of the losing dive if one wheel is off the ground but its major selling point to me was that its biasing is progressive (not like a clutch type LSD which is either on or off), this will make the car far easier to drive in day to day situations, OK it might let me down on a super tight corner on a track but as its not an out and out racer I am arsed......

Another consideration is that the Quaife is a fit and forget, not requiring any maintenance, unlike clutch types..

Another niggle that was brought up was that where I had mounted the temperature sensor for the coolant system was not ideal (I had mounted it on the outlet from the radiator), so again on advice I need to get it as close to the block as possible. The second problem with the coolant was that it wasnt pumping fluid to the radiator under 3000rpm, not helped by the heater matrix bypass pipe that I had purchased a few months before, so I hatched a plan to kill two birds with one stone.

I decided to make a bung/temp sensor adaptor to fit in the block where the outlet for the heater matrix was. This would involve me getting a blank for the heater matrix pipe that goes to the thermostat, some solid brass hex bar and an M20x1.0 Die, the 1/8NPT tap for the temp sensor I already had. I ordered the Die off fleabay on the 2nd Nov and only received it last week, the first brass bar that I ordered got lsot in the post, leading me to get a refund and having to order some more at nearly twice the price, this time it did turn up. Last week the prevous bar ordered in early October turned up as well, the only bonus of the last few months.

So I now need to make the part and install it. My only reservation is it proximity to the eggsauce, although I will make a shield for the outer housing of the sensor. The sensor itself will be well and truly in the flow of the coolant fuild so although it might show a slightly warmer temp than normal it should still be more accurate at showing the engine temps than near the radiator. As a safeguard to over heating I have three linked switches for the fans, one being the radiator switch, one being ECU and another being the external output from the SPA gauge, which can be set to whatever temp you want and can be easily turned on or off, so you can have an over-ride facility allowing constant fan if necessary.

So as you can see its been a testing time recently, not helped by lack of funds.

On the bright side only 7 more days until the days start getting longer..............

One more thing that was thrown up was the engine mounts needed upgrading due to the engine moving about 1" under load. So I bought some Innovatives from the states and have to install them at soem point also, typically they arrived 3 days after re-installing the gearbox (couldnt wait any longer as the car was booked in at a mates garage to use his two poster ramp), so another trip to the two poster in the future to change those over.

For info I ordered the 75A (track) version, 75A being the hardness of the rubber (for those that didnt know) and I only ordered the front and rear mounts as a different side mount is used on the Zcars kit. Approx £230 for the two inc P&P.

I got stung for VAT and a £16 handling charge from the robbing gits at Parcelforce.....If possible when ordering stuff from over the pond dont use USPS as everything they send comes via parcelforce, happened a couple times now.

The one thing I did get done recently was mount the Air Horns. I will let the pictures do the talking on this one as my fingers are aching from the two previous post - ha ha......

compressor mounted behind washer motor.



piping fed through another gland - handy things those glands....




with the cover in place - neat eh?