Father Son Project any advice appreciated.

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dubztwit

I FINALLY OWN A CRX!
Father Son Project. NOW WITH LIVE STREAM!

So my father and I are building 2 cars.

He is doing a 454 1940's Gasser car, and I am doing a 91 CRX.

Both of which will be cruise and drag night cars. (I work from home so I barely drive as it is)

I told all my friends driving around with evo's and various tuners that I could make a CRX STOMP their 1/4 times with almost 1/4 of the cost. (hope I dont have to eat those words! lol)

I have purchased my CRX today off craigslist. Firstly I'd like to say that its very sad when you can't find a car that was so abundant when I was younger. Makes you start to feel like your getting old. Secondly, its hard to find a honda without a botch job of a motor swap. Anyway I picked up a CRX that had almost no rust on the rockers, rear fenders, and the floor was in great shape as well. The kid told me it had a B18B1 motor however as soon as I popped the hood I saw "ZC" as the first item in the engine serial. Now it has been since I was in high school since I've been into honda's and never had the money to find out what you can really do to them back then. Not to mention it appears that parts for my favorite old cars are just so easy to find.

I just have a couple of questions. Hopefully someone here can steer me in the right direction.

Engine serial: ZC 266539
Trans.: L3 - 2059486 (cable)

I am looking to run low 12's possible high 11's.

As the car sits its gonna need the motor mounts redone (hack of a swap job!!!) and all new suspension and alignment put in.

My question is this, to keep my budget low with a target time in mind, is this a good motor to work with?

If I were to keep this motor, are parts easy to come by for them? I do plan on boosting the motor just very unsure at this point as to how much, and can my motor handle the boost that will be needed to get me into the 12's.

I plan on picking up a replacement hood of whatever the lightest material I can find (carbin fiber / fiberglass). I plan on eliminating the factory fuel tank and replacing it with a fuel cell, along with a higher psi pump and regulator. (does anyone know what the stock psi on the factory fuel pump is off hand?) Relocating the battery. Picking up a fiberglass front kit that will allow me to better locate the cold air intake as well as enough room for a large intercooler. I was also gonna look into fenders made of a different material. I'd like to shed as much of the weight as possible yet still keep it street legal.

I would like to do cams, injectors, fuel rail, intake manifold, and try to squeeze more compression out of the motor.

I am hoping that this will get me into the 12-13's. I have a feeling its going to break the bank trying to shave off that last second to get into the 11's.

Another thing I am curious about is traction. Across the board it seems that the general consensus is never enough traction on FWD cars. Im sure everyone here has seen the "Red Rocket" civic videos on youtube. This car and several other cars Ive watched seem like they just spin for the first 3 gears then finally hook up in 4th. Seems consistent with the timeslips I've seen online. Slow 60ft times and insane trap speeds. Are there any necessity items I should get before I start dumping money into the suspension?

I really appreciate any help and guidance.

For those that like to follow along with projects I will be doing regular updates as well as have streaming cams from the garage as we work on the cars. (still finishing up the site. should be done in a few days. Work schedule permitting.) Tomorrow I'll be putting the CRX up in the air and making a shopping list.

Oh yea 1 more thing.... The car came with the clear alteza's? installed. (not sure if thats how you spell it) Thankfully they also had the stock rear brake light assemblies. I personally prefer the stock tail lights. However my fiance, mother and father all liked the shinny alteza's. Last I checked these lights were still frowned upon in the tuner world. Just wanted to see if anyone had an opinion on the matter.


P.S. Sorry if I sound like 100% noob. I am just now getting to that point in my life where debts are getting paid off (student loans are a B****!!) and am trying to spend more time with Dad. Hes the real mechanic of the two of us. I was really hoping to get into ECU tuning with this CRX but I'd need a new motor :( (I think anyway) I work with computers for a living as well as do web and application development. I can't imagine tinkering with a car's computer being harder to learn than php, mySQL, ruby, ASM, or any other garbage development languages I've had to learn over the years.

Thanks for reading my wall o text :) Looking forward to any advice and feedback I can get. This website has been SOFA KING helpful thus far, and I'm excited to talk to like minded people.
 
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zc is basically a dual cam d16. its got a few less hp than a b18b but can be made pretty quick.

if you want to go 11s,
turbo is your only choice.

if you want to go 11s without blowing up every week,
you're going to need to do internals as well.

You can get it there for 7-15 grand, give or take, depending what you need to do.
hell, you can probably cheap out and get it to do it for 3-4 grand.... but you will suffer in reliability.

turbo edit is available for obd0 cars (i think it got bought out by someone else, but its the same thing) so you do have tuning options.
and if you were to see the code for it, its assembly and in hex. makes php look like abc's.
 
zc is basically a dual cam d16. its got a few less hp than a b18b but can be made pretty quick.

if you want to go 11s,
turbo is your only choice.

if you want to go 11s without blowing up every week,
you're going to need to do internals as well.

You can get it there for 7-15 grand, give or take, depending what you need to do.
hell, you can probably cheap out and get it to do it for 3-4 grand.... but you will suffer in reliability.

turbo edit is available for obd0 cars (i think it got bought out by someone else, but its the same thing) so you do have tuning options.
and if you were to see the code for it, its assembly and in hex. makes php look like abc's.

Thanks for responding, very good info.

When you say internals, what all did you have in mind? (any elaboration would be appreciated.)

Im very glad to hear that there are still tuning options. I'd love to find out more about "turbo edit" or similar software/hardware. I am not 100% fluent in asm but have done a number of projects that required assembly.

Thanks again for the great info! :)
 
our father/son DOHC ZC powered 89 hatch runs 13.7s all motor at 5800 ft. elevation - would easily run 12s at sea level - all stock internals with just cams and dual Weber carbs - email me at jlicrx@yahoo.com for more info

 
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want to beat evo's? lol, you'll def need boost. GL!
 
jli were you racing a karmen ghia? Nice car.

Are your friends evo's stock? If not you will probably need boost.

Is this a play car or a daily?
 
I will be driving the car on the street from time to time but nothing more than to go get cigg's or groceries. I work from home so I rarely drive. I've got a 2011 TC as a daily driver.

My friends have done minor work to their evo's. Just remap's and normal exhaust/intake's, upgraded boost controllers etc..

I do plan on boosting the car. For this reason I have started looking for B16's, B18's and H22's in the area to drop into it. Found a few donor cars that are wrecked. Hopefully I can pick something up for cheap. I'd really like to have a better base engine to work with so that I can explore the computer side of imports. Thus far on other forums I've posted on I've gotten a lot of "You will have to pay someone to map it", or "You can't learn how to map". The great thing about project cars is the learning experience. To be quite honest, I'm expecting to screw it up royally a few times before I start to understand it.

I wont go as far as to say that money is not an issue, however I still want to keep this project as cheap as possible to keep it under 1/4 of the cost of a new evo. 2011 Evo's go for $34,770 MSRP. So that leaves me with close to 8.5k to do this project. I've spent 1k so far on the car.

I guess my next question would be, for boosted drag racing which motor would you recommend? B series or H22A? Any advice is much appreciated.
 
with 8.5k to play with, you can do a lot to this car.. first off i would go w/ a GSR swap (b18c1)..
 
x2 on the b18c1 swap. perfect gearing for a track car and the engine will make gobs of power with the right turbo setup.
350-400whp will have you eating stock-ish evo's all day long, but youll need some traction parts as well.
 
Does anyone have any tips on how to locate this motor?

Thus far I am seeing JDM import sites list these as a complete swap for 2.8 - 3k. I just cant see spending that kind of money and limiting myself on later upgrades.

I imagine loads of teens have gotten these integra GSR's and wrecked them. Is it all just luck of the draw or is their a more efficient way to track these down?
 
Mmm H22.... or H23!

There is a JDM place an houre from my house that sells complete engines (B20B) for only $450, so engines can be had for cheaper. As far as tuning, Have you looked into Hondata? Such as the S300, lots of options there. Or are you more so looking at reprogramming the ECU directly. Neptune is also another option and so is crome.
 
If you are in a hurry then you should get an engine from someone like hmotors. If you have plenty of time then look around and you might be able to get a good deal. I looked for two years and finally found a guy selling a wrecked civic with a perfectly good b16a in it. I bought it for $800, kept the engine, and parted out the car. I made a profit of $250 in the end. b18c1 will be the best complete engine to start with. Yes its pricier then others, but you will have to do less work to get more power from it.
 
:withstupid:

I did the same, though I found the shitty car ($900) with the donor engine before I got the car I put it in :x. I broke pretty much even selling the limited amount of decent parts that were left (car was hardcore riced).
 
Thanks for all the awesome input so far.

Just an quick update(sorry no images)

I got a lead on a wrecked GSR with 68k miles on the motor. I will know tomorrow if I can get my hands on it.

I am wanting to move forward with the suspension upgrades.

I have yet to get the car up in the air due to a part coming in for another project (1970 C10 on a 3/4 chassis with a csb 350) that we need to finish up and sell so we have more room to work and funds to play with.

At a glance Id like to get

New caster/Camber adjusters and lower control arms for the rear.
For the front I also need lower control arms.

The car has new springs, it just needs new shocks and struts all the way around.

While I have the front end torn apart I was considering upgrading the brakes. Does anyone know off hand if the GSR front braking would be a considerable upgrade from stock crx, and is there anything special I would need to order for the conversion?

Thanks in advance for any input.

I have also been doing a tremendous amount of reading the past few days on the software/hardware mentioned above. "Hondata" I was wondering if anyone here has experience with the s300 system that would allow me to contact them on the phone. I'd really like to speak to someone that uses the system frequently that's not a salesman.

Again thanks to everyone that has chimed in. I promise to take pictures before I start tearing it apart so that you can all see the state of this car before I start dumping money into it.
 
The s100 and s300 systems are probably the most heavily utilized tuning software for hondas. There's gobs of information online (pgmfi.org is one of the best resources) about tuning using s300.

Something else to look into since you seem to be okay going to OBD1 is a piece of software called crome. You can find a ton of info on it at pgmfi.org and the software is free.

You'd still have to get the ECU socketed but there's no paying a third party for software and the interface is pretty easy to use. I'm kind of a geek and it seems really straight forward to me, but I'm not sure about other people's experiences with it.
 
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