Quote Originally Posted by Hullabaloo View Post
Was the "official" reason we didn't get the jap spec k20a in our DC5 due to 98 octane not being readily available?
Or is it that regardless of availability, 98 isn't good enough as 100 octane (or higher?) is available in japan?
The JDM k20a was tuned for 100RON. We only had max 98RON at the time and that was only in the major cities. As a result, Honda Australia probably specified that the engine be tuned to run on 95RON, hence the power decrease.

Quote Originally Posted by Hullabaloo View Post
as a side, are the evos, sti's, ferrari's, etc that australia get all considered detuned?
Ferraris are not detuned because they are imported under SEVS. They did that because the low sales numbers would ensure a high resale value and that they didn't have to do any crash testing for them over here.

The AUDM STI's and EVO's are detuned. They make much less torque and power than the JDM ones (of course, JDM will always specify 208kW).