***Official What did you do to your ED/EF/CRX today!***

[~Sp33~]

Brake pads, tyres and an oil change.

[hondapop]

Where you at Michael?

Suspension upgrades and semi-race tyres on 15 x 6.5 rims for a start. If you don't want to go whole hog with adjustable coilovers, Skunk2 make shortened sports shocks, find'em on US ebay. Local lowered King springs (superlows for racing). 20mm swaybars and new bushes. If you stick with the "D" and it's a good motor, upgrade the early G/box to a later 89-91 (both have a 20 spline input shaft instead of the 21 spline in the 87-88's 190mm clutch, and can take the larger clutches available. 200mm for the 89 and 212mm for 90-91 and the later EG's). Brakes you can upgrade to front 262mm using DA9 Integra booster, M/cylinder, prop valve, calipers, hubs/knuckles, they will also lower the front about another 12mm or so. Replacing the front LCA with the DA9 one will give a bit more negative camber, but requires filing the forward bolt hole in the stock traction bar about 3mm longer to get the bolt to match up with the LCA bolt hole. If you want to retain the rubber RTA main bushes, the DA9 RTA also is a direct replacement for the ED9/EF7 one and has the larger bush with bulkier connectors in the bush. These are relatively cheap upgrades for a fun road/track car. Can be done a bit at a time.

[hondapop]

What I forgot to mention clutch wise is the need to get the appropriate flywheel to match the different size clutches, definitely in the case of the 190mm but not sure if the 212mm will fit the 200mm.

[~Sp33~]

ACT make a range of performance clutches for the 87/88 gearbox.

[michael.908]

Can someone tell me what this flap is for on my intake



It's connected to a clutch looking thing connected to a fuel line or something

[~Sp33~]

IIRC it pulls hot air off your header to bring the car to operating temperature quicker (reducing fuel economy).

[michael.908]

IIRC it pulls hot air off your header to bring the car to operating temperature quicker (reducing fuel economy).

Is it needed? I've been thinking about messing around with my carbs so I'm wanting to take the whole cover off and run some motorcycle cone filters with cut springs in the carbs.

[~Sp33~]

The car will never run as good as it will with all the factory vacuum lines in place, but it will still run with that flap removed.

Make sure you know where everything goes though, ive seen a few ED's now that have the emissions stuff taken off to do the 'motorbike filter' mod and end up just running like crap and they can't work out how to put it back together.

[hondapop]

The carby models had a mass of tubes going all over the place, early PGM-FI's weren't much better. That particular vacuum valve is as Sp33 says, draws warmed air off the exhaust headers to help vaporise the fuel entering the engine on and just after start-up. The warm air hose is that one underneath with the insulation wrapped around it. Provided it's working correctly, that valve will open fully once the engine reaches temperature to let air through from the filter. There will be a water heating connection, sometimes directly from the head (or by hoses) to the inlet manifold that takes over the heating. Emissions control stuff that's removed can cause all sorts of problems for daily driving. If it was a dedicated race car being run WOT, might be different.

[hondapop]

Just to add to that, I had a Valiant Charger back in the 90's that had a Cain alloy intake manifold that was not attached to the exhaust manifold (hotspots they were called, which prevented the intake from freezing) and had a 4 barrel carby. Great while cruising down the hi-way, gave some good power, but when you got back into traffic, drove like a dog, 'cause the fuel was icing up in the intake. Took a good 15 minutes for the manifold (big, long curved runners on it) to warm up enough to vaporise the fuel. Cross flow engines, have to rely on this sort of system to do the job.

[michael.908]

Just to add to that, I had a Valiant Charger back in the 90's that had a Cain alloy intake manifold that was not attached to the exhaust manifold (hotspots they were called, which prevented the intake from freezing) and had a 4 barrel carby. Great while cruising down the hi-way, gave some good power, but when you got back into traffic, drove like a dog, 'cause the fuel was icing up in the intake. Took a good 15 minutes for the manifold (big, long curved runners on it) to warm up enough to vaporise the fuel. Cross flow engines, have to rely on this sort of system to do the job.

So bad idea to get rid of it? I'm wanting to modify the metal air filter cover so that the carbs get more flow rather than the air going through seemingly one small area

[hondapop]

For street use and fuel economy, a bit of warmth in the intake air is a good thing, otherwise you're just chucking unburnt fuel out the exhaust. For racing you're after the maximum amount of air expansion in the cylinders you can get, hence cold air and max fuel. If you do away with that device, you'll get poor performance till the coolant reaches a high enough temperature to take over the warming of the intake. There's a big misconception that liquid petrol burns, it doesn't until it vaporises i.e. becomes a gas. That requires heat. Domestic market engines are designed this way to aid that process before the fuel/air mixture enters the combustion chamber. Where you have cold air entering the chamber, the droplets of liquid fuel (which is what they are, either from carbies or EFI), don't become gas until the heat from the spark plugs vaporise the fuel close to them and produce a flame front (heated air) that spreads to the rest.

This is why you see great spurts of fire from dragster exhausts, it's all wasted energy that wasn't used in the engine, but that's the price they pay to get what they want.