My riv might be gone forever :( [somewhat totaled, needs new windshield]

Dude, I would not touch a $2k Z. If I ever got one, it would be a $10k+.

A $2k Z is just BEGGING for headaches and money dumps. I wouldn't recommend that to anyone.

Quote :

The B18C1 has been proven to be capable of 300whp boosted with a stock engine. 300whp in a 2500 pound car is no doubt quick being that light also pits a lot less stress on the suspension,

Have you ever heard about torsional stiffness, stiffness-to-weight ratio, or resistance to inertial loads under acceleration? A car's chassis needs to be very strong in order to put lots of power to the ground, or for hard braking. A lightweight chassis may handle well with respect to cornering, but just throwing a 300 HP motor into a car designed for 120 HP can cause some serious issues. The lightweight chassis can actually flex or bend under the increased stress of 2-3x its rated power output. You can have all kinds of problems, from wheel hop to cracking welds.

Also, even though the overall combined weight of a small Honda with a big engine may seem low, proportionally that extra weight is much more than say adding a V8 to a big car like Riviera. Consider the added load of an extra passenger on a sport bike - if the bike weighs 350 lb, and a rider is 150 lb, then one more rider means a 30% weight increase. That's huge, and presents noticeably more stress on the bike's engine, transmission, and suspension. However, to a 4000 lb Riv, a 150 lb passenger is only about 3.5% more weight. The Riv hardly knows the difference. Point: adding weight to a lightweight car is a bigger deal than adding the same amount of weight to a heavy car, performance-wise. The engine & transmission may be happy, but the little Honda chassis will be under more stress, not less.

For the exact same reasons, handling will suffer on a lighter car with added weight, because the suspension components were only designed to support the OEM weight. If you add a heavier engine, just the weight from that change will cause imbalance, sag, instability, and excess roll. With a heavier car, the suspension is set up to deal with more weight, so adding isn't so much a problem. For this reason, you can slap a Northstar V8 in a Riv like GM did with minor issues, or modify the 3800 to 450 HP or more with little side effects, because proportionally the changes are smaller, even though numerically they are larger.

One of the reasons sport sedans like BMW 3 series and R34 Skyline are popular for racing is because their chassis are overbuilt to support extra power. I don't know the limits of the Civic from that era, but I'd find out before trying to add significant power or weight. Both of these things will stress the car, and might require additional upgrades to the suspension, or weight removal from other areas.

[quote="AA"]

Quote :

However, to a 4000 lb Riv, a 150 lb passenger is only about 3.5% more weight. The Riv hardly knows the difference. Point: adding weight to a lightweight car is a bigger deal than adding the same amount of weight to a heavy car, performance-wise. The engine & transmission may be happy, but the little Honda chassis will be under more stress, not less.

I know when I have 2-3 passengers, ~300-450lbs @150lb per person, a 7 to 10% weight increase, I can definitely feel a difference in performance. This is what inspires me to drop 300-500lbs. I WILL DROP MASS WEIGHT. MARK MY WORDS.

When you drop that mass, you will notice each passenger's weight makes even more difference. This is why I prefer adding power to dropping weight for a daily driver like the Riv. I always seem to be hauling people and stuff around.

AA wrote:

When you drop that mass, you will notice each passenger's weight makes even more difference. This is why I prefer adding power to dropping weight for a daily driver like the Riv. I always seem to be hauling people and stuff around.

Relativity is a beautiful thing, isn't it?

charlieRobinson wrote:

Dude, I would not touch a $2k Z. If I ever got one, it would be a $10k+.

A $2k Z is just BEGGING for headaches and money dumps. I wouldn't recommend that to anyone.

shouldn't matter a whole lot being an early 90's car there's a little less electronics to go wrong so it comes down to mostly overhauling drivetrain as far as I know other than general wear and tear on components, which in my mind would be worth the hassle to build it the way you want and having it end up being around the same cost, but it would be a project car for a while lol

AA wrote:

Quote :

The B18C1 has been proven to be capable of 300whp boosted with a stock engine. 300whp in a 2500 pound car is no doubt quick being that light also pits a lot less stress on the suspension,

Have you ever heard about torsional stiffness, stiffness-to-weight ratio, or resistance to inertial loads under acceleration? A car's chassis needs to be very strong in order to put lots of power to the ground, or for hard braking. A lightweight chassis may handle well with respect to cornering, but just throwing a 300 HP motor into a car designed for 120 HP can cause some serious issues. The lightweight chassis can actually flex or bend under the increased stress of 2-3x its rated power output. You can have all kinds of problems, from wheel hop to cracking welds.

Also, even though the overall combined weight of a small Honda with a big engine may seem low, proportionally that extra weight is much more than say adding a V8 to a big car like Riviera. Consider the added load of an extra passenger on a sport bike - if the bike weighs 350 lb, and a rider is 150 lb, then one more rider means a 30% weight increase. That's huge, and presents noticeably more stress on the bike's engine, transmission, and suspension. However, to a 4000 lb Riv, a 150 lb passenger is only about 3.5% more weight. The Riv hardly knows the difference. Point: adding weight to a lightweight car is a bigger deal than adding the same amount of weight to a heavy car, performance-wise. The engine & transmission may be happy, but the little Honda chassis will be under more stress, not less.

For the exact same reasons, handling will suffer on a lighter car with added weight, because the suspension components were only designed to support the OEM weight. If you add a heavier engine, just the weight from that change will cause imbalance, sag, instability, and excess roll. With a heavier car, the suspension is set up to deal with more weight, so adding isn't so much a problem. For this reason, you can slap a Northstar V8 in a Riv like GM did with minor issues, or modify the 3800 to 450 HP or more with little side effects, because proportionally the changes are smaller, even though numerically they are larger.

One of the reasons sport sedans like BMW 3 series and R34 Skyline are popular for racing is because their chassis are overbuilt to support extra power. I don't know the limits of the Civic from that era, but I'd find out before trying to add significant power or weight. Both of these things will stress the car, and might require additional upgrades to the suspension, or weight removal from other areas.

Well I doubt I'd be wanting to add power to the honda tbh, but if you think about it, those motors don't push much toque, so I doubt 300whp would do much to the chassis, also a b18 weighs maybe 40 pounds more than a d15 I'm guessing. 300 horses in the buick motor would destroy a honda chassis because it would be pushing close to 400 ft lbs of torue to the crank unless some serious airflow mods and cams were done I'm guessing. The honda would be about half as stressful as a buick V6 with the same power. The R34 skyline RB26DETT motor can push just as much torque as our 3800 which is why the skyline actually needs to have a very strong chassis.

Now if I planned on racing a little honda with 300whp, yeah I'd be worried about the chassis, but for daily driving and zipping around, not so much.

Then again, I'd never put much effort or resources into a honda unless it was an S2000 which are very expensive cars, which is simply unrealistic

I was actually thinking about taking that M62 and possibly trying to make a manifold adapter using my spare LIM in my welding class lol. too bad class got canceled the past 2 weeks from snow

AA wrote:

When you drop that mass, you will notice each passenger's weight makes even more difference. This is why I prefer adding power to dropping weight for a daily driver like the Riv. I always seem to be hauling people and stuff around.

adding power to the riv works so well because it's a heavy car in general being around 3800 pounds. Torque is a wonderful thing, but if you're driving an overgrown golf cart, you don't need as much torque to achieve the same speed; horsepower being torque*(RPM)/5250. Also less torque in smaller cars like a corolla or honda means the internals are banging around a lot less stressfully which is an easy answer to their fuel mileage and reliability IMO

^you already knew, just stating the obvious lol
But I still love torque too much to want a little 4banger

There are a lot of factors involved, but I do know that a big torque push-rod engine can be just as efficient or more so compared to a high revving DOHC one. Go to fueleconomy.gov and compare a 2004 S2000 to a 2004 Corvette. Both with 6 spd, cty = 17MPG, hwy = 23 MPG for S2000, 26 MPG for C5 Vette.

The impressive part is the C5 weighs 400 lb more than the Honda, and makes 110 HP more. The C5 makes 200 lb-ft more torque. It has higher top speed, is much faster to 60 mph and through the 1/4 mile. About the only thing the s2000 does "better" is revving to higher RPM, but just barely. LS1 engines have been known to rev to 7k, even 8k RPM with slight modification.

Just saying, either type of engine can be made efficient. I depends on how when the engine is designed. A lot of care has been taken to perfect the LS1, and similar tweaking was done to the 3800 up to the end.

And not knocking the S2000 - it's a fun car to drive. My friend has one, and I love riding along any chance I get. But another friend has a C5 Z06. There's just no comparison.

AA wrote:

There are a lot of factors involved, but I do know that a big torque push-rod engine can be just as efficient or more so compared to a high revving DOHC one. Go to fueleconomy.gov and compare a 2004 S2000 to a 2004 Corvette. Both with 6 spd, cty = 17MPG, hwy = 23 MPG for S2000, 26 MPG for C5 Vette.

The impressive part is the C5 weighs 400 lb more than the Honda, and makes 110 HP more. The C5 makes 200 lb-ft more torque. It has higher top speed, is much faster to 60 mph and through the 1/4 mile. About the only thing the s2000 does "better" is revving to higher RPM, but just barely. LS1 engines have been known to rev to 7k, even 8k RPM with slight modification.

Just saying, either type of engine can be made efficient. I depends on how when the engine is designed. A lot of care has been taken to perfect the LS1, and similar tweaking was done to the 3800 up to the end.

And not knocking the S2000 - it's a fun car to drive. My friend has one, and I love riding along any chance I get. But another friend has a C5 Z06. There's just no comparison.

I wouldn't consider the F20C engine a gas sipper by any means lol, but there are some lower powered D series non vtech engines that have up to 45-50mpg out there. The R18 also responds very well to low boost to achieve high MPG. Ford went from the duratec 37 engine in some of their SUV's and cars to the ecoboost 3.5L pea shooter turbo setup for example. A supercharged Duratec37 engine will push 420+ horses like nothing happened, yet they designed a smaller 3.5L turbo engine with 365hp that gets a lot more MPG, and it makes less torque.

But I guess there's just different ways of looking at things. More torque is useful. you can achive it with either bigger displacement <-- not really saving gas

Or you can increase volumetric efficiency (saving gas) things like higher compression ratio, forced induction, better intake temps, cooler running engine will help sometimes, better airflow meaning smoother, not just more air, the right tire and suspension setup even affects mpg as well as paristic loss from belt driven hardware, towing weight and curb weight, rotational mass of the engine relative to the valvetrain suspension compliance has some effect a well.

People think pushrod engines are bad and that overhead valves are better which isn't always the case. for higher RPM it is better but not always better for gas. look at the F20 engine in the S2000, it's a dohc tiny 4 banger that doesn't get good MPG, because it's cammed very agressively stock to get that high power per displacement that engine has. sometimes a more mild cam saves gas even though it won't go as fast, somtimes a bigger throttle body will lower MPG. Everything has to be tuned right for MPG but you already know all that, it's just different ways of saying I guess

edit: actually the ecoboost wasn't the best example for a number of reasons lol

and holy crap, why do I read engine specs in a Jeremy Clarkson bored-but-still-trying-to-entertain-people voice?