Black exhaust smoke civic type R

BuenoFk8

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Has anybody else had black smoke come out from their FK8 exhaust? It doesn’t happen while I’m driving, it only happens when I’m cold starting the car and go into reverse I may rev the engine a bit and I see the black smoke on camera. After that everything is normal, it’s happened a few times to me Out of random. I came home from work and revved the engine after I had driven it and nothing came out it’s only on my cold starts, Does anybody know the causes? The only mod I have is a PRL intake.
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civicls

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The PRL full intake system or just the connecting pipe to the turbo/manifold?
 

civicls

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Full intake system
Full intake systems are frankly useless without a proper ecu flash/tune. Not sure if you have a tune, but the engine will run poorer if you put a modified intake on without a proper tune. I deem the filter as the culprit. The engine's probably compensating for the lean a/f mixture, running rich
 
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BuenoFk8

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Full intake systems are frankly useless without a proper ecu flash/tune. Not sure if you have a tune, but the engine will run poorer if you put a modified intake on without a proper tune. I deem the filter as the culprit. The engine's probably compensating for the lean a/f mixture, running rich
I’m not tuned yet I’m waiting on it till later this year/early next year, I got the intake for the noises since I’m not tuned lol, I figure it’s not too serious of an issue since prl said no tune is required to run it? I’m just burning more fuel right?
 


Hatchi

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I’m not tuned yet I’m waiting on it till later this year/early next year, I got the intake for the noises since I’m not tuned lol, I figure it’s not too serious of an issue since prl said no tune is required to run it? I’m just burning more fuel right?
Richer fuel mixture isn't gonna kill the car instantly but its not good for the car or the engine, in rare cases even in the short run. A rich fuel mixture is gonna end up causing some problems down the line so I'd suggest figuring it out sooner rather than later. It'll also take away some power realistically because your combustion isn't happening as efficiently as it should (though you're like not gonna notice it, it's not that bad).

Some cars have "Crackle tunes" that just run a super rich fuel mixture so that it gets sent to the exhaust to make the sounds, but these people don't keep it on that tune beyond to get the sound, and for good reason.
 

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You sure its black smoke? I'd have someone stand back there and film it on their phone, the back up camera is pretty crappy. Does it smell like anything?
 

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black smoke means Rich fuel you are running Rich bro
 

civicls

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I’m not tuned yet I’m waiting on it till later this year/early next year, I got the intake for the noises since I’m not tuned lol, I figure it’s not too serious of an issue since prl said no tune is required to run it? I’m just burning more fuel right?
Manufacturers love saying that--and while they are technically right they mean that by saying it will not blow a head gasket. If you modify the intake you change what the computer has been programmed to compensate for. Thus, performance will negatively impacted.
 

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COLD START will always be rich. You are 100% fine.
 


kefi

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Manufacturers love saying that--and while they are technically right they mean that by saying it will not blow a head gasket. If you modify the intake you change what the computer has been programmed to compensate for. Thus, performance will negatively impacted.
While this is true for many cars and intakes, not so much on ours. The only thing the intake really affects as far as needing a tune is the MAF sensor calibration, and the big boys have already run the numbers and found that the only intake that requires a tune (so far) is an Eventuri.

Intakes do not require a tune on the Type R.

Your car will not be running richer or leaner than intended by using an intake without a tune. It wasn't just confirmed by the manufacturers, it is also confirmed by Hondata, KTuner, and our ECU datalogs themselves. Our ECU has a mechanism for correcting all this even when the MAF sensor is miscalibrated. It measures the oxygen content in the exhaust to make sure it's all burning correctly and will change the amount of fuel it uses if it finds the exhaust is rich. Most recent cars have this mechanism, actually.

If these intakes were truly doing what you describe, we'd all be seeing LTFT (long term fuel trims) hanging out outside of 1-2%. But we don't, and the tunes inside of Hondata/KTuner for each of these intakes change literally nothing, EXCEPT for the Eventuri. They are blank mod files because people wouldn't stop asking for them.

That being said, this mechanism only runs after the engine has warmed up. There may be another issue, but it's not the intake. OP, are you sure it was black smoke? Like, actually black - not gray or wispy. I see it on my rear view camera all the time.
 
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Hatchi

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COLD START will always be rich. You are 100% fine.
This is always true, little science lesson to explain why just real quick for the education of OP or anyone else reading ;) .

The underlying reason is because the K20C1 (our engine) is direct injected only. Direct injected engines are more efficient at getting fuel in the combustion chamber at a high pressure and will result in better, more precise, and fuel efficient combustion (and will technically cool the cylinder walls a little bit too, letting you run it harder).

Port Injection is the other commonly used method which doesn't have the benefits of the direct injection, however the major benefit is that it's a more efficient way of starting the engine because the air and fuel mixture can be properly mixed before the intake valve opens up to let the air/fuel into the combustion chamber.

TL;DR
Port injection is better at starting cars and won't be affected by carbon deposits.
Direct injection is better at running the cars, and will give you more power/efficiency.

Also as a add-on for the post above too by kefi, the Bosch ECU is the reason for not needing the tune. The best way I've heard it explained is that the ECU is basically a fancy air volume calculator by default. It will sense the air amount and temps and adjust the fuel injected accordingly, so there isn't much tuning you need to do.
 

kefi

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Also as a add-on for the post above too by kefi, the Bosch ECU is the reason for not needing the tune. The best way I've heard it explained is that the ECU is basically a fancy air volume calculator by default. It will sense the air amount and temps and adjust the fuel injected accordingly, so there isn't much tuning you need to do.
Yep! I wrote the stickied megathread on tuning the Type R and that's basically how I described it too. The majority of 'tuning' most people do to this car is actually just increasing safety limits in the right spots (especially once you have the mods to support it) and changing the torque request curve to feel different. The ECU does the majority of the work. There's some gains to be had in ignition and fuel pressure, but almost no one actually has those tables tuned past what the basemaps do, which is minor and linear.

Every engine should be thought of as an air pump, and the Bosch ECU takes that to another level by having just about every table be tuned based on actual molecules of air (not PSI) in the cylinder rather than blindly by RPM and throttle like literally every other Honda ever.

This is closely related to 'volumetric efficiency' tuning, which is what most Bosch-based European cars like the VW have done for years.

The Type R is not your normal Civic in any way whatsoever.
 
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civicls

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Also as a add-on for the post above too by kefi, the Bosch ECU is the reason for not needing the tune. The best way I've heard it explained is that the ECU is basically a fancy air volume calculator by default. It will sense the air amount and temps and adjust the fuel injected accordingly, so there isn't much tuning you need to do.
You are right, except that most cars do not tune the ecu to run rich for the given air intake mod. The FK8 may be an exception, but for the 90% of cars on the road today slapping a cold air intake will do nothing but harm (on your wallet). The ECU's coming from the factory on your average cars are not programmed to adjust for an excessively lean mixture. Even if they are, the computer would have to adjust by dumping more fuel, giving you a really poor fuel economy and performance. That is the fundamental difference between a stock tune and a race tune. The stock map will have to run excessively rich, while a racing tune will add an excessive a/f mixture into the combustion chamber with precision--more wear but more power.

And no, direct injections do not intentionally run rich on startup. They are not like diesels where you have to heat the combustion chamber, as diesels continuously burn in their power stroke, as opposed to the otto cycle engines where power comes with a single "bang". The pistons are intentionally designed to "swirl" the air/fuel mixture prior to injection of fuel. Although no system is perfect, the DI systems still produce a bit more soot than their port injected counterparts.

Just clearing up some forum folklore :)
 
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I can't help but speculate that for what soot we see at the tip, there is 10x that much on the front of the CAT Ceramic. How in the world can that much soot be good for the cat? If the cat isn't burning it into its constituent elements, and it's waste out the cat, then isn't there a large quantity on the cat itself?
I had a 370Z for 10 years and it never had that much soot on the exhaust tips at any time. I barely had to clean it.
I personally haven't heard of any 4 banger with a turbo and cat having to replace the cat or having operational difficulties due to the cat being filthy but it does make me wonder.
I mean soot is waste product, and it can't be good for the cat to be that filthy.
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