From Stock to Hot… A story of a Little Honda Civic that Could
“I was 5 when my dad drove the car into the driveway, all I can really remember about it was saying, Cool,†reminisces Ryan about his Honda drag racer back in its days as a daily driver. Keep in mind, this was back in the 80’s when the phrase, ‘There is no replacement for displacement’ was still very truthful. Today, we know that a Garrett turbocharger can change the rules of small displacement engagement with just the turn of a few bolts.
Ryan began to plot the resurrection of the faithful daily driven Honda before he could even drive. As many young tuners, Ryan began his quest with a simple body restoration to rid the Civic of body rot, and has found himself where he is today, with a 568 WHP fire breathing dragon, puffing 34 psi through its renowned GT35R turbo.
It was not an easy road to reach the 500 WHP goal he had set for himself. In fact, his first build only produced 260 horses, leaving the remaining 240 ‘combustionally’ challenged ponies suffocating in the Honda’s stock iron block until RLZ Engineering introduced a better ‘head’ onto the Civic’s shoulders.
Ryan initial Civic tuning was comprised of an Apexi turbo, 3†exhaust, homemade boost controller, and mostly stock tranny. Ryan’s Honda Civic could run 13’s all day long at the track with this concoction. Add in a pair of K-Sport Lower control arms and Progress Custom Valved Drag coilovers, and the Honda was able to see 11.9 @112 for the first time.
Using basic hand tools and his driveway as a garage, he installed a Garrett GT35R turbo as the base power from which he would build upon the rest of his transformation. Unfortunately, a flatulent monkey hopped on his back when the installation was complete and the Civic became bogged down with a waning power band that ceased to produce the numbers that Ryan had hoped for.
Thanks to a set of extensively machined RLZ heads and a few tweaks of the Honda’s AFC tuning, the cars disappointing 100 rpm power band leaped to 3,000 rpm and the car scorched the rollers at a very long awaited 568 WHP and this is all with a single cam mind you.
Anything can happen if you put your mind to it…
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:51 pm
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