Building for 400WHP

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Vincent@27WON

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Welcome to part 2 of our 400 horsepower blog series for the L15B7 found in the 10th generation Honda Civic. In part 1 we introduced to you the project of building our spare motor and gave you a sweet tear-down video to check out. Over the next few blogs, we will dive into greater detail on what parts were used and why. We will split part 2 and part 3 into the lower half and top half of the engine. Traditionally called the short block and the long block. Part 2 will look at everything from the deck of the block down. This includes the rods, pistons, crankshaft, etc. In part 3 we will focus on the cylinder head; valves, camshafts, valve springs, and more.

To keep things in order we will “build up”. So let's start at the oil pan and end this blog at the top of the engine block.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP 1678805604014


WE ARE BUILDING THE EVERYMAN ENGINE. THIS MEANS THAT ALL THE PARTS WE WILL USE ARE READILY AVAILABLE. NOTHING EXOTIC, NO CUSTOM HARDCORE BILLET CRAZINESS OR HIGH-END SUPER ALLOY STUFF. ALL PARTS THAT YOU CAN ORDER ONLINE AND HAVE SHIPPED TO YOUR DOOR WITH EASE AND WITHIN A REASONABLE BUDGET (FOR AN ENGINE BUILD). YOU’LL LEARN THAT YOU WON’T NEED MUCH TO BUILD UP A STRONGER ENGINE, SO LET'S GO.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP 1678805628884



For our build these parts are kept OEM Honda (reused):

  • Engine block
  • Oil pan, baffle, and pick-up
  • Front cover
  • Rear main cover and seal
  • Crankshaft
  • Crankshaft pulley
  • Crankshaft and connecting rod bearings
  • Oil squirters
  • Oil pump
First, let's take a look at the oil pump gears. Some of you may not know that there is an aftermarket upgrade for our L15B7. Boundary Pumps offers an upgrade for the L15. They are constructed from Chromoly billet and are super strong. They go through a hardening process and are machined very well; a great product and something to consider. Now, why didn't we use them? The short answer is engine speed. The stock redline for this engine is 6500 rpm but with a stock turbo, we short-shift at 5500 rpm because the torque tanks after that. On a W1 and some tuning, we bumped up our redline to ~6900ish rpm since our bigger turbo can now carry power to the higher RPM. For this engine, we want to rev out to 7500 rpm max. This can be done with OEM oil pump gears so we stuck with OEM. Since our goal is 435whp and 7500 rpm we stick with stock. If you wanted to go north of 450whp or 8000 rpm we would suggest the upgraded gears. Now you could argue we could have played it safe and did the gear upgrade anyway but this was $500 we just did not feel had to be spent for an Everyman engine. If you feel otherwise, pick up a set.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP 1678805652214


NEXT UP WE MOVE TO THE JOURNAL AND ROD BEARINGS. TRADITIONALLY ON MY ENGINE BUILDS I ALWAYS UPGRADE BEARINGS FOR THAT EXTRA BIT OF PROTECTION. THEY CAN TAKE MORE CYLINDER PRESSURE THAN THE OEM ONES AND HAVE SPECIAL COATINGS ON THEM FOR YOUR FIRST START WHICH IS SUPER HELPFUL. HOWEVER, WE WENT WITH OEM ONES, WHY? WELL BECAUSE AFTERMARKET ONES DON’T EXIST (AT THE TIME OF BUILD). WE LIKE GETTING ONES FROM KING BEARINGS BUT THEY DID NOT HAVE APPLICATIONS FOR OUR ENGINE.

As mentioned earlier we kept all OEM timing components. We also kept OEM for all our gaskets and hardware as well. There is simply no need to get aftermarket timing chain guides and different rear main oil seals. OEM Honda is great quality and you won’t have any issues with those parts at this power level. You can in most cases reuse your OEM guides if they have low miles on them and show no signs of abnormal wear. We do suggest a new tensioner as that’s not something we like to reuse if we don’t have to. Most of the short block is glued together with Honda Bond so you only really need a new rear main. Never reuse a rear main seal. If that leaks it's a big job to replace when you could have just spent the $25 bucks.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP 1678805679530


Now for the bread and butter of the short block: the pistons and rods. This is where we see the biggest need for improvement. The pistons and rods see the majority of stress in this motor. As we crank up the boost and increase horsepower and torque demands we put a lot of stress on these parts. They are tasked with taking thousands of PSI of pressure and using that force to rotate our crank. The OEM pistons are very thin on the small bore end and this is a common place for a break when power is turned up. You can see just how thin it gets here in the image and why we want to add strength. Tons of heat and pressure get laid on top of the pistons and the material used is not up to the task for these higher-power targets. If it gets too hot in the combustion chamber then you can burn a hole right through them. An upgrade here is a must.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP 1678805695262


For pistons, we turned to JE and used part #357430. You might notice that part number is for a 73.5mm bore which is 0.5mm overbore. Unless we are building with a new OEM block or with an engine that has aftermarket sleeves pressed in we do not run OEM bore size. This is because after machining our cylinder-to-wall clearance will be too loose and we would give up power. We want to keep those tolerances nice and tight so we don’t have too much blowby. This piston material is 2618 which is a low silicon, high expansion alloy. Even with its higher expansion ratio compared to that of 4032 alloy we still keep tolerances pretty snug thanks to some high-end machining from our local machine shop. They have all the latest equipment to dial in our specs.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP 1678805710453


For rods, we turned to Brian Crower and used BC6007 rods. These are made of strong 4340 Chromoly steel and come with a much thicker profile. These will be able to handle the increased torque loads without breaking. You can see in the picture just how much thicker they are compared to the OEM piston. From the small bore end to the big bore end it is wider and carries a unique H beam design that allows us to run more boost. This comes equipped with ARP 2000 bolt hardware which is plenty for our 400+ goal. You can opt to get these rods with a custom age 625 rod bolt (stronger fastener) but again that was overkill for our build. These will work just fine for us.

THIS COMBO OF PISTONS AND RODS WILL BE MORE THAN ENOUGH FOR OUR 400+ WHP GOAL AS THESE PARTS ARE RATED FOR OVER 500 WHP. THE NEXT BLOG WILL DIVE INTO THE CYLINDER HEAD AND TALK ABOUT WHAT WE DID THERE TO ADD SOME STRENGTH. STAY TUNED AS WE BUILD FOR BOOST.
 

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Yeah agreed, I'll stick to my dial bore on the Honda coated bearings. Not a fan of Plastigauge as well, seems to be a hit or miss on accuracy.
If you want to eliminate the chance for scuffing anything, if it was me I would take a measurement of a bearing and then apply a tiny bit of tung oil which is an oxidizing oil on the pins of the gauge. Or perhaps you could try a wax. But measure and recalibrate the tool.
 

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If you want to eliminate the chance for scuffing anything, if it was me I would take a measurement of a bearing and then apply a tiny bit of tung oil which is an oxidizing oil on the pins of the gauge. Or perhaps you could try a wax. But measure and recalibrate the tool.
Concern was more the fact the honda manual was referencing plastigauge as if the coating was fragile. The mitutoyo dial bore has a nice preload and will lightly mark, and has quality carbide contact ball ends. Lubricant wont really help, as the carbide balls will displace that with tangential contact.

Plastigauge can be off by 0.001" which is massive when your range is around 0.00075" for these rods bearing tolerances (going from memory, don't quote that lol). Minor marking is more than fine. If your using a cheap dial bore, they have been known to gouge bearing, so be careful going the cheap route.
 

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Yeah I have a mediocre Jet dial bore. And mediocre jet mic’s. Should have went higher end myself. Live and learn.
 

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Concern was more the fact the honda manual was referencing plastigauge as if the coating was fragile. The mitutoyo dial bore has a nice preload and will lightly mark, and has quality carbide contact ball ends. Lubricant wont really help, as the carbide balls will displace that with tangential contact.

Plastigauge can be off by 0.001" which is massive when your range is around 0.00075" for these rods bearing tolerances (going from memory, don't quote that lol). Minor marking is more than fine. If your using a cheap dial bore, they have been known to gouge bearing, so be careful going the cheap route.
Cool. I don't have a Mitutoyo dial bore gauge but I have 3 other Mitutoyo measurement tools(protractor, combination square, and metric micrometer calipers) and love them all. You can't go wrong with their stuff. If it's me I am using a really light Motorex 2W oil on whatever I am measuring. Just a tiny smidgen. It needs to be enough to help but not enough to make a huge measureable impact but some testing should clarify what the offset is which can then be added back into your equation. Of course oil is part of the formulas but when flowing of course via full film it will be much more substantial.
 


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Cool. I don't have a Mitutoyo dial bore gauge but I have 3 other Mitutoyo measurement tools(protractor, combination square, and metric micrometer calipers) and love them all. You can't go wrong with their stuff. If it's me I am using a really light Motorex 2W oil on whatever I am measuring. Just a tiny smidgen. It needs to be enough to help but not enough to make a huge measureable impact but some testing should clarify what the offset is which can then be added back into your equation. Of course oil is part of the formulas but when flowing of course via full film it will be much more substantial.
You don't need to get the best of the best. Mitutoyo for the dial bore I would definitely go with though. The Jegs rod bolt stretch tool is pretty good (ARP version is over priced), I tested the Jegs dial gauge on a cnc Z axis and it was spot on the 0.0005" markings. For mics Fowler and Accusize is actually pretty good budget options. Yeah a light oil wouldn't make it worse in terms of marking, probably change 1-2 microns which is more than fine.
 
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Some Dial bore data from Mitutoyo, figure would be interesting to share and a good visual.
1679910200184.png
We use the ball tip so its nicer on the bearings. Then a good assembly lube to bring it all together.
 


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Assembly lube on the ball tip? A thin coating on the bearings?
all measuring is done dry, with no assembly lube at that part.
Then assembly lube for final assembly.
 
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Bienvenidos to part 3 of our journey to build an “Everyman” 1.5L Honda turbo engine capable of supporting 400 WHP. In our last blog (part 2) “we started from the bottom now we here”. Part two covered the lower part of our engine block build going into detail on the rods, pistons, oil pump, crank, etc. In this blog, we take you up top and explore the cylinder head and valve train and wrap up the build.

Before we get started it's worth mentioning again that we are building the Everyman engine. We did our best throughout to build an engine with readily available parts that do not cost an arm and a leg to acquire. So with that let us dig in.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP Cylinder+Exhaust+port+27WON+Honda+Performance

WE WILL STRATEGICALLY WORK OUR WAY UP FROM THE DECK OF THE CYLINDER HEAD (WHERE OUR SHORT BLOCK ENDS AND OUR LONG BLOCK BEGINS). STARTING WITH THE HEAD GASKET THERE ARE REALLY ONLY TWO OPTIONS HERE. DO YOU STICK WITH OEM OR GO WITH THE ONE FROM COMETIC? THE COMETIC HEAD GASKET IS A NICE PIECE BUT IN THIS CASE, WE STUCK WITH OEM. WE HAVE LEARNED THAT THE OEM HEAD GASKET IS NOT REALLY THE WEAK POINT. NEARLY EVERY CASE OF A “BLOWN HEAD GASKET” THAT WE HAVE SEEN WAS NOT BECAUSE THE HEAD GASKET FAILED BUT RATHER BECAUSE THE CYLINDER HEAD LIFTED FROM LOSS OF CLAMPING (HEAD STUDS).

So that leads us to our first upgrade, HEAD STUDS. We upgraded to some ARP Head Studs. Now as of this writing, ARP does not have a specific kit for the Honda L15 engine. However, we have found that ARP Kit part #271-4701 works for our engine. This kit is actually for a Suzuki GSX 1300R Hayabusa. Yes, you read that correctly, we used a head stud kit from a motorcycle for our tiny little engine. But it works “mostly”. Let us explain.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP Performance+Head+Studs+27WON+engine+build

In order to use that ARP head stud kit we need to run some spacers. The head studs supplied in the kit are about 10mm too long. The spacer allows for proper clamping onto the cylinder head. MAPerformance has a kit that combines the ARP Hayabusa kit and the required spacers in one easy-to-purchase package. This kit has everything you need for a successful upgrade of the head studs and ensures that when pushing north of 32+ psi we won’t lose a head gasket due to the cylinder head lifting.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP head+stud+spacers

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP 27WON+Built+engine+parts

MOVING UP THE HEAD WE MAKE OUR WAY TO THE INTAKE AND EXHAUST PORTS OF THE CYLINDER HEAD. IT IS NOT AN UNCOMMON PRACTICE TO SEE BUILDERS START TO GO WILD ON CYLINDER HEAD PORTING FOR BUILT ENGINES AND IN MANY CASES THAT HAS ITS PLACE. NOT WITH OUR BUILD! WHY? WELL, REALLY IT COMES DOWN TO TWO THINGS. FIRST, WE ARE REUSING THE OEM CAMSHAFTS. SECOND, WE WANT TO KEEP THE INTEGRITY OF THE CYLINDER HEAD
  1. A crazy ported cylinder head that operates with OEM camshafts does not really make much sense. When you spend the time to open up the ports, clean up the bowls, and make everything smooth it's normally because you are stuffing a big cam into your car. The bigger cam gives longer duration and more lift than the OEM cam and your porting exploits that. They work together to take in as much air as possible to help increase volumetric efficiency with the goal of making more power. Keeping our stock camshaft profile does not really merit us touching the head.
  2. The single port around the exhaust head is pretty close to some cavities and water jackets. We don’t want the porting to be cutting into those and making them too thin. For that reason we keep the OEM ports untouched for the Everyman build.
Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP Cylinder+Intake+Ports+27WON+Honda+Performance_

Rounding off our cylinder head upgrade is a set of performance valve springs, keepers, and retainers. These parts replace the OEM components and seal up right over our OEM intake and exhaust valves. These are made of high-grade silicon alloy and have a greater seat pressure than OEM. We upgrade our valve springs because, with the bigger turbo, we want to carry the RPM on the engine out further. OEM redline is 6500 rpm. With basic tuning on a stock engine, we can get away with 7000 rpm. However, we know the W series line of turbochargers can keep on delivering the boost well into 7500 rpm so we need the hardware to support that. If we tried to maintain those high rpms on stock springs the OEM valves could float and cause some serious head damage. To put our minds at ease we went with the full kit from Brian Crower that can be had for less than $300 bucks. These springs are not too soft or too stiff and are just right for this build.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP BC0088S+valve+springs

With that last piece of the puzzle in place, our engine is finally ready to come together. We marry the top and bottom half together and then drop in this fresh build into our nice and clean engine bay. Then we load up our new engine with every 27WON bolt-on you can imagine. CAI, FMIC, Full Exhaust. TIP, I mean the works all in the pursuit of 400whp. Oh and remember that big surprise that I mentioned back in design blog part 1?

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP 2018+civic+si+built+engine+

With the combination of 91oct and E30 along with some outstanding tuning, and our biggest turbo yet the W3 we safely eclipsed the 400whp mark as measured on our Dynapack dyno. Our built engine can take this horsepower and torque without even trying and with more fuel and turbo pressure we can take it well beyond the numbers you see in the graph below. The Everyman engine can take this extra pressure and is an engine you can easily build for yourself.
Side Note: We developed this engine to test the biggest turbo we’ve developed, the W3. It resides on a full TD05 center section and has some massive wheels. However, after dyno and road testing and thoughtful consideration, we shelved it because we don’t love the powerband. Due to the L15’s small displacement and its tiny exhaust port paired with a large A/R turbo, there is a huge hit in the spool department. Looking at the graph below you can see we don’t see max torque until past 5000 rpm which makes the car a very lazy daily driver and takes away from the fun nature of the car. The old saying is - there is no replacement for displacement - but in this case, some displacement or a lot of headwork would be needed to make the W3 shine.

Honda Civic 10th gen Building for 400WHP Big+Turbo+400whp+engine


It’s worth remembering that in order to get 400whp on the L15 you not only need a built engine but you also need the right turbo, the right tuning solution, and adequate amounts of fuel. It’s our hope that you have found this series of blogs useful and we can’t wait to make power with you!!!
 

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Do your ball bearing on the dial bore gauge roll?

Mine are stationary on my dial bore. Just curious.

Also fantastic write up and great photos!
 
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What was your solution to the fuel problem?
 

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Bienvenidos to part 3 of our journey to build an “Everyman” 1.5L Honda turbo engine capable of supporting 400 WHP. In our last blog (part 2) “we started from the bottom now we here”. Part two covered the lower part of our engine block build going into detail on the rods, pistons, oil pump, crank, etc. In this blog, we take you up top and explore the cylinder head and valve train and wrap up the build.

Before we get started it's worth mentioning again that we are building the Everyman engine. We did our best throughout to build an engine with readily available parts that do not cost an arm and a leg to acquire. So with that let us dig in.

Cylinder+Exhaust+port+27WON+Honda+Performance.jpg

WE WILL STRATEGICALLY WORK OUR WAY UP FROM THE DECK OF THE CYLINDER HEAD (WHERE OUR SHORT BLOCK ENDS AND OUR LONG BLOCK BEGINS). STARTING WITH THE HEAD GASKET THERE ARE REALLY ONLY TWO OPTIONS HERE. DO YOU STICK WITH OEM OR GO WITH THE ONE FROM COMETIC? THE COMETIC HEAD GASKET IS A NICE PIECE BUT IN THIS CASE, WE STUCK WITH OEM. WE HAVE LEARNED THAT THE OEM HEAD GASKET IS NOT REALLY THE WEAK POINT. NEARLY EVERY CASE OF A “BLOWN HEAD GASKET” THAT WE HAVE SEEN WAS NOT BECAUSE THE HEAD GASKET FAILED BUT RATHER BECAUSE THE CYLINDER HEAD LIFTED FROM LOSS OF CLAMPING (HEAD STUDS).

So that leads us to our first upgrade, HEAD STUDS. We upgraded to some ARP Head Studs. Now as of this writing, ARP does not have a specific kit for the Honda L15 engine. However, we have found that ARP Kit part #271-4701 works for our engine. This kit is actually for a Suzuki GSX 1300R Hayabusa. Yes, you read that correctly, we used a head stud kit from a motorcycle for our tiny little engine. But it works “mostly”. Let us explain.

Performance+Head+Studs+27WON+engine+build.jpg

In order to use that ARP head stud kit we need to run some spacers. The head studs supplied in the kit are about 10mm too long. The spacer allows for proper clamping onto the cylinder head. MAPerformance has a kit that combines the ARP Hayabusa kit and the required spacers in one easy-to-purchase package. This kit has everything you need for a successful upgrade of the head studs and ensures that when pushing north of 32+ psi we won’t lose a head gasket due to the cylinder head lifting.

head+stud+spacers.jpg

27WON+Built+engine+parts.jpg

MOVING UP THE HEAD WE MAKE OUR WAY TO THE INTAKE AND EXHAUST PORTS OF THE CYLINDER HEAD. IT IS NOT AN UNCOMMON PRACTICE TO SEE BUILDERS START TO GO WILD ON CYLINDER HEAD PORTING FOR BUILT ENGINES AND IN MANY CASES THAT HAS ITS PLACE. NOT WITH OUR BUILD! WHY? WELL, REALLY IT COMES DOWN TO TWO THINGS. FIRST, WE ARE REUSING THE OEM CAMSHAFTS. SECOND, WE WANT TO KEEP THE INTEGRITY OF THE CYLINDER HEAD
  1. A crazy ported cylinder head that operates with OEM camshafts does not really make much sense. When you spend the time to open up the ports, clean up the bowls, and make everything smooth it's normally because you are stuffing a big cam into your car. The bigger cam gives longer duration and more lift than the OEM cam and your porting exploits that. They work together to take in as much air as possible to help increase volumetric efficiency with the goal of making more power. Keeping our stock camshaft profile does not really merit us touching the head.
  2. The single port around the exhaust head is pretty close to some cavities and water jackets. We don’t want the porting to be cutting into those and making them too thin. For that reason we keep the OEM ports untouched for the Everyman build.
Cylinder+Intake+Ports+27WON+Honda+Performance_.jpg

Rounding off our cylinder head upgrade is a set of performance valve springs, keepers, and retainers. These parts replace the OEM components and seal up right over our OEM intake and exhaust valves. These are made of high-grade silicon alloy and have a greater seat pressure than OEM. We upgrade our valve springs because, with the bigger turbo, we want to carry the RPM on the engine out further. OEM redline is 6500 rpm. With basic tuning on a stock engine, we can get away with 7000 rpm. However, we know the W series line of turbochargers can keep on delivering the boost well into 7500 rpm so we need the hardware to support that. If we tried to maintain those high rpms on stock springs the OEM valves could float and cause some serious head damage. To put our minds at ease we went with the full kit from Brian Crower that can be had for less than $300 bucks. These springs are not too soft or too stiff and are just right for this build.

BC0088S+valve+springs.jpg

With that last piece of the puzzle in place, our engine is finally ready to come together. We marry the top and bottom half together and then drop in this fresh build into our nice and clean engine bay. Then we load up our new engine with every 27WON bolt-on you can imagine. CAI, FMIC, Full Exhaust. TIP, I mean the works all in the pursuit of 400whp. Oh and remember that big surprise that I mentioned back in design blog part 1?

2018+civic+si+built+engine+.jpg

With the combination of 91oct and E30 along with some outstanding tuning, and our biggest turbo yet the W3 we safely eclipsed the 400whp mark as measured on our Dynapack dyno. Our built engine can take this horsepower and torque without even trying and with more fuel and turbo pressure we can take it well beyond the numbers you see in the graph below. The Everyman engine can take this extra pressure and is an engine you can easily build for yourself.
Side Note: We developed this engine to test the biggest turbo we’ve developed, the W3. It resides on a full TD05 center section and has some massive wheels. However, after dyno and road testing and thoughtful consideration, we shelved it because we don’t love the powerband. Due to the L15’s small displacement and its tiny exhaust port paired with a large A/R turbo, there is a huge hit in the spool department. Looking at the graph below you can see we don’t see max torque until past 5000 rpm which makes the car a very lazy daily driver and takes away from the fun nature of the car. The old saying is - there is no replacement for displacement - but in this case, some displacement or a lot of headwork would be needed to make the W3 shine.

Big+Turbo+400whp+engine.jpg


It’s worth remembering that in order to get 400whp on the L15 you not only need a built engine but you also need the right turbo, the right tuning solution, and adequate amounts of fuel. It’s our hope that you have found this series of blogs useful and we can’t wait to make power with you!!!
Awesome write up why not use two-step peformance head stud kit for this car from arp?
 


 


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