Somebody school me on adding some HP

[TexMex247]

Buy a decent cold air intake and header. Advance the timing 5 degrees and run better gas. Nothing you would feel in the seat of your pants but you would squeeze a couple more ponies out of it on the cheap. The only "real" power adders would be cam/s, heads, header and exhaust, injectors, ecu programming and a turbo with intercooler all done together. Ideally you would run a better quality oversize piston as well. So rather than blow 3 to 5 times what you paid for it...weeze a little juice with a few bolt ons and manually advancing your timing.

 

[atticus finch]

I have plenty of room to redirect my intake to a better/cooler spot. Thats a cool idea for the jeeps





Ill look into that.

Ive noticed that wet ground is no friend of the civic... how did you find out?

I'd already known, as you've noticed, the civic was not fond of wet roads although it wasn't anything extreme. However when I moved the air pressure from 32 psi which I'd been running at to 40 psi the difference was very pronounced and something I wasn't expecting. First time it got loose in a curve and damn near nailed a guardrail. At first I though it was just chance, maybe a particular bad set of conditions at that spot. The second time I hit the brakes and the car literally kept going, right through an intersection. At first I thought I'd had a brake failure but the car stopped & after that I started thinking about what was going on. I reset the air pressure down to 35 & it made a big difference, the car still wasn't fond of wet road but it was a lot better than what I had going before. So now during the non-wet months I leave the tread at 40 psi, come the rainy part of the year I back it down to 35 psi & run that. I keep a gauge with me if I have it set at 40 psi in case the weather does its usual, Texas being the only state where the weather has bi-polar disorder.............

Changing the sidewall profile, or tire dia hasn't had much of an effect on the speedo, that I can see. I run to the same speed & the tach shows higher revs than before, which is what I expected. I havn't had any tickets for speeding given the speedo being off, although I don't speed anyways. Also I don't notice traffic moving at a radically different speed than what I'm indicating on the speedo so I havn't done the math to calculate any difference and what it would be. The math is simple to calculate the differential if you're worried about it it's basically N1 devided by N2 times original speed reading. N1 & N2 being the different tire dia's.

Add edit: changing the tire dia hasn't messed with any shift points so to speak, the only difference is what normal rpm I'd shift at the car is moving at a slower speed due to the lower overall gearing relative to the speed the car would be moving at with the taller tires.
The name of the game with this is to increase the torque available to move the car due to changing the overall gearing. You're not trying to increase the engines torque output, you're trying to amplify it via changing the gearing. that's why the car will accelerate a bit better without losing any mileage, you're giving up some top speed ability since the lower gearing won't allow the car to reach that speed in return for a lower gearing ratio which makes for a higher torque amplification. It is why I did the tire change, why do I need the car geared to where it'll redline at 125 mph or so? Where am I going to drive that speed on the streets? change the tires, gain some torque effect down at the speeds I normally drive at..........like the posted limit.

 

[Ole Cowboy]

"Spray" isn't going to amount to enough to hydrolock an engine. Old mechanic's trick to de-carbon an engine is to warm it up and let it run as you carefully spray or drizzle water into the carb.


I was thinking about Water Wetter the other day... Water is the most efficient material known for transferring heat, so I'm fuzzy on how an additive would be better than just diluting your coolant with more water for making the cooling system more efficient.

Sage. I am not sure where you heard of the trick to inject water into the carb to de-carbon and engine (known as a poor man's valve job), but you are mostly likely 1 of 2 folks on here that know this, the other is me. Not much call for it today in clean burning and unleaded gas engines, but in the old days that was common, done it many a time on the ranch trucks, tractors etc.

On the other hand, you better check you coefficient of heat transfer charts as water ranks somewhere in between porcelain and polyethylene (HDPE) at 1.05 and .5 respectively. Water coming in at .58 and ALum blowing them all away at 237. What WaterWetter does is reduce surface tension, thus it allows the water to stay in contact with the metal far better and it keeps micro air pockets from forming. They claim up to a 20 degree decrease in temps, but I have not seen that. Usually 10 + degrees in my testing using 50/50 water antifreeze mix.

 

[TheDan]

Sage. I am not sure where you heard of the trick to inject water into the carb to de-carbon and engine (known as a poor man's valve job), but you are mostly likely 1 of 2 folks on here that know this, the other is me.

lmao

 

[Dust]

Make me number 3 then. I think the only thing you might look into doing is a transmission swap. It won't add horsepower, but it would aide in the "fun" department of the car, which is what you mention several times.

How have you maintained the car? Spark plugs, wires, CV joints, brake fluid etc. Making sure it's up to date should help with a little more horsepower. You could also seafoam, or water like the above posters mentioned, or even try a piston soak to make sure the rings are sealing and piston tops are clean.

If you got the car for a steal, why not sell it and pick up something else?

 

[Ole Cowboy]

Make me number 3 then. ?

LOL be happy to. This is an old trick that goes back before WWII. When I owned my garage way when it was a standard part of a major tune up we performed...saved many a customer hundreds of dollars on a valve job they did not need, just pur a soda can full of water down the throat of a warm fast running engine. We would sometimes remove the muffler so the chunks of carbon did not fill it up. Customers could not believe their eyes...

 

[Kyle]

Make me number 3 then. I think the only thing you might look into doing is a transmission swap. It won't add horsepower, but it would aide in the "fun" department of the car, which is what you mention several times.

How have you maintained the car? Spark plugs, wires, CV joints, brake fluid etc. Making sure it's up to date should help with a little more horsepower. You could also seafoam, or water like the above posters mentioned, or even try a piston soak to make sure the rings are sealing and piston tops are clean.

If you got the car for a steal, why not sell it and pick up something else?

Once I sit down ill address prior posts.

I've looked into the tranny swap, looks fairly simple given the masses of available info online. I've certainly considered it.

Reason I want to stick with this car is not only because it got me out of a gas guzzler but because it made me money in the process as well as cleaning up some debt I have. I'm putting on about 1500-2000 miles a month so I am really enjoying the gas mileage gains right now. I figure I can run this car for a couple years and still be ahead of the game after selling it. So getting something different is basically defeating the purpose for what my intentions are.

As far as maintenance, I haven't had it long enough to do any really maintenance to it yet. It had a fresh oil change when I got it. However I may need to do a piston soak. I noticed a bit of exhaust coming out of the oil fill cap when I went to check fluids after getting it good and warm.