MAPerformance
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2017
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- Location
- Cottage Grove, Minnesota
- Website
- www.maperformance.com
- Vehicle(s)
- 2017 SI Coupe
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- #1
Maperformance Civic X - Boundary Oil Pump
When we set out to build our 10th Gen Civic a few years ago we put our sights fairly high, we wanted to have the highest horsepower, and fastest ET of any other cars out there. We knew that with this would come many challenges, and we feel we have done a great job of finding them and sharing them as they happen, hopefully you guys feel the same!
Earlier last year on one of our first track outings of the summer, after about 40 passes that day on the stock motor we encountered a very loud knocking noise. With a few hours left of track rental, we decided that we had enough time to pull the oil pan and see if it was something that was fixable. As we lay on the parking lot, dripping hot oil and sweat, we get the pan off and as we start to look around we begin finding more and more aluminum bits floating in the pan. Our first assumption was that we cracked a piston, as this motor has now seen a few hundred ¼ mile passes, a few hundred hours on the dyno, and many of those making over 40psi of boost and about 550hp. But, as we began to look further we realized that not only were all the pistons in one piece, they looked to be in near perfect condition even!
Now we are looking around more, only to look to the front cover of our L15B7 to realize that the oil pump housing has come apart and these are the pieces we are finding in the pan. Once we found that, we sadly knew that our day was over and we packed up to head home. The next day we had the engine out of the car and began to tear it down. Once apart what we found was an oil pump gear that had split, and cracked into many different pieces thus cracking the housing.
Luckily, I knew just the people to call. On many modern engines, as you increase the power, and raise the rev limiter you begin to find the weak points. In many cases one of those is the Powdered Steel oil pumps found in most OE applications. Boundary Pump Division is a company that is no stranger to solving these problems, and I knew they would be able to help us sort a solution for the L15! Since 2005 these guys have been one of the top names in the lubrication equipment side of the automotive aftermarket, with solutions for the Ford Coyote V8, Mazda Miata, Nissan VQ, and many other platforms that have been plagued with oil pump gear failures.
What makes the Boundary pump better? Remember earlier when I mentioned the OEM Powdered Metal gears? Here is good write up from Boundary themselves:
“There is no comparison between billet steel used by Boundary and powdered steel used in OEM oil pumps. OEM oil pumps use a "cost efficient technique" called sintering because its cheap and produces tighter tolerances than casting. However powdered steel is even weaker than castings at only about 6000 PSI of strength. Good billet steels like the one that Boundary uses approach 110,000 PSI in yield strength or around 18 times stronger then OEM sintered steel.”
With this switch we are much more confident in the capabilities of this pump, and happy to be working with Boundary on this application so we can continue to push further and further!
We currently have a shipment of these inbound and happy to help with any questions you may have! Please call 1-888-MAPERFORMANCE or email [email protected] , Retail pricing will be $299.00 Shipped in the USA!