D16z6 turbo questions

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ImportImpaired

New Member
Howdy guys. Brand new to the site, and small engine imports in general (hence the screen name). I'm looking at a Civic hatch that's got a turbo'd D16z6. Here's some specifics: d16z6 turbo with .60 trim
ram horn exaust manifold
dp dumps straight down
aem fuel rail with 450cc and 250 lph walboro fuel pump
car is tuned on crome at 12 psi, everything else is still stock
Told me he's running around 220-230hp

So here's my question, is that a good setup? I talked to a guy that "knows all things Honda" and he told me its gonna blow up pretty quickly with stock internals. He said 5 lbs of boost would be too much, and the .60 trim was WAY too big. I have no idea about these cars or turbos, but I'm wanting to get into em, but I don't want my first one to be a bad experience. Any input helps. Thanks.
 
That does sound like a ticking time bomb. That is about the max stress that stock internals have been rumored to handle and keeping it there for an extended period of time is living on borrowed time.

If I were you, I'd go check the car out. See if there's a wideband in the vehicle and watch the air/fuel ratios closely while the owner takes you for a test drive. If there's no wideband, I wouldn't even touch the car.

If there is a wideband in the car, check for oil leaks, check the oil level and hold the dipstick in the sunlight to see if there are any shavings. Any brass/bronze colored shavings is typically a BAD sign. Oil leaks around the main seals are typical on turbocharged cars, you'll find those on the bottom of the transmission (where the tranny mates up to the bottom of the oil pan) and on the opposite side of the engine underneath the timing cover (may appear to be a pan gasket leak at first, take a closer look.)

Again, just want to reiterate that this is a risky buy even if the car has been well maintained. 220-230whp is a lot for the wimpy D16 internals.
 
Honestly, it's all in the tune and the build quality. I've seen quite a few 220-250 whp stock block D16 builds that last a LONG time, like over 5 years of daily driving with 10s of thousands of miles and regular track use.

Just a trim number doesn't tell you anything about the size of the turbo- only the ratio of exducer size to the inducer, and you don't even know if that trim is for the turbine wheel or the compressor wheel. There's still the housing size, wheel sizes, a/r ratios for each side of the turbo- not to mention the design of the fins/wheels and the bearing/bushing type in the journal section.

Most of the ramshorn manifolds aren't cheap (if they're not the junk copies) and if it's tuned on crome, chances are someone knew what they were doing when they put it together. You won't really know until you inspect the build quality and look at the fuel maps, and especially until you run it on a dyno and drive it around with a wideband on it to map out how the engine is responding under pressure.

You could take a compression tester or a leakdown tester with you to better evaluate engine health too.
 
Well, now I'm evenly clashed still haha I really like the car, and I plan on putting head bolts on it in about a month (when I have the money), then pistons, rings, bearings, etc in about 6 months. Just wantin it to last til then. How do I check the fuel map? Take it to a shop? What would I be looking for? With a wideband, what kind of a/f ratio am I lookin for? Like I said, this is the FIRST turbo car I've ever messed with, so what seems obvious to y'all, I probably never heard of haha I had to google wideband
 
Get ARP head STUDS, not regular bolts. Stronger, better fastener configuration too.

Crome is an open source OBD1 tuning solution- if you have a chip reader, you can pull the ROM from the ECU and read back what's in it. Just looking at the maps alone won't tell you too much, but you can see if the tuner did something really screwy or not if the fuel and timing values are all over the place. There should be a pretty smooth progression from one end of the map to another.

With the wideband sensor, you're looking for air/fuel ratios typically in the 12:1 range when at full throttle.
 
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