Reliability of fbo and a tune

Byron Sexton

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Well, there is a reason they say "pay to play." The rule of thumb for a lot of folks is, if you can't afford to pay for engine repairs out of pocket, it might not be worth the risk. OTOH, many folks here have put thousands of miles on their modded and tuned CTRs, with nary a hiccup.

And that's the thing--from what I can tell, there is no way to predict what will happen in any one case. For your own peace of mind, it might be best to run through the possible scenarios. As in, "if the car done blowed up, am I f*cked?" If the answer is "hellz to the yeah," then, well, you get the picture.
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fk8mike

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search and found a tuner that you trust and KNOW those car's/ecu,on normal fbo's good fuel, and tune 370@390whp is a reliable powerlevel and smile addict powerband in city?
 

AlphaDigital

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Get a proper tune from a knowledge FK8 tuner, theres plenty out there. Mike above me here ^^, @kefi, Mike the Tuner, Drob, Vega, Butler, etc.

Stay consistent with where you fill up, never go with a lower octane than what youre tuned for
Dont lug the engine as mentioned before
Stay on top of your maintenance, oil changes, spark plugs etc
Stay off the antilag


Keep in mind that there is always that chance of catastrophic failure no matter if youre stock or if youre tuned. Ive seen horror stories of stock blocks grenading as well. You just never know. Do what you have to, to enjoy the car the way you want. If it goes, shit happens, figure out how to fix it or sell it off. You can only do so much. This applies to so many things outside of the car world as well.

The statistics are out there. A lot of us are tuned, bolt ons, full bolt ons, and rag on the car all the time at track days. These cars arent like Subarus with EJs, you can beat the piss out of them and they take it. You just have to treat them right, know the limits, and a bit of luck doesnt hurt here and there too.
 

gtman

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search and found a tuner that you trust and KNOW those car's/ecu,on normal fbo's good fuel, and tune 370@390whp is a reliable powerlevel and smile addict powerband in city?
Mike, you added your car to my tuning experience & reliability thread back in 2019. Could you add a new post with your current tuned miles, mods, tune changes or issues etc? It will really help with the tune reliability aspect of the thread. Thanks.

https://www.civicx.com/forum/thread...ence-reliability-thread-for-all-models.42361/
 


Noel-32

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Well, there is a reason they say "pay to play." The rule of thumb for a lot of folks is, if you can't afford to pay for engine repairs out of pocket, it might not be worth the risk. OTOH, many folks here have put thousands of miles on their modded and tuned CTRs, with nary a hiccup.

And that's the thing--from what I can tell, there is no way to predict what will happen in any one case. For your own peace of mind, it might be best to run through the possible scenarios. As in, "if the car done blowed up, am I f*cked?" If the answer is "hellz to the yeah," then, well, you get the picture.
Generally, what do you think fucked could cost to repair,?
 

Tyrannosaurus WRX

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Well, there is a reason they say "pay to play." The rule of thumb for a lot of folks is, if you can't afford to pay for engine repairs out of pocket, it might not be worth the risk. OTOH, many folks here have put thousands of miles on their modded and tuned CTRs, with nary a hiccup.

And that's the thing--from what I can tell, there is no way to predict what will happen in any one case. For your own peace of mind, it might be best to run through the possible scenarios. As in, "if the car done blowed up, am I f*cked?" If the answer is "hellz to the yeah," then, well, you get the picture.
I never really understood this thinking? I do have to respectfully disagree. With every car that I have ever gone full bolt-on and tune with, I NEVER approached those cars with the thinking of being willing to blow my car up in the name of pay to play. Back in the day I could barely afford the parts and mods and never would have done so if I realistically believed I was on the ragged edge of a risk for failure.

I think the pay to play does apply when someone is an early adopter to a platform and in that case all bets are off. Simply because the first year or 2 of a new model a cars reliability is still unproven. In that case it is absolutely the case that you are taking a very unproven risk that you better be willing to pay the consequences for.

After a car has been out for years with tons of FBO and tunes running around, there is a certain "safe zone" that is established from those early adopters. Most people from there on who tune are doing so because they believe they are making a well established sound relatively safe decision, not because they are down for the risk of pay to play. I am tuned FBO and WOULD NOT have done so if my research hasn't led me to believe it is close to as reliable as stock. With that being said, I do understand nothing is a guarantee. I have heard of stock engines failing so of course you can increase your chances some. But what the OP is just looking for is this FBO path relatively safe and reliable in the FK8 and I believe the answer to be overwhelming yes. It seems Honda has brought their A game here.
 

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Japanese car makers have been leaving untapped power in their cars for decades. Some agreement between all the automakers at first. A tune on this engine technically does lower it's reliability, but getting up to the 400ish HP range is not taxing the engine all that much when used as a DD. I would not go much higher than 400HP without upgrading the cooling system. Higher up than that and I think you are looking at upgrading internals to maintain reliability.

I can't imagine going back to stock. A whole new experience with some parts and a tune. I have not gotten a custom tune yet. I am running the Phearable Stage 2 OTS with PRL IC, HVI, Inlet and charge pipes. Getting around 370HP on 91 is my guess.

I can look back now and say this is a no-brainer, but I felt as you do now before I did it. It feels good knowing I was able to do all the installations myself. I am now doing all the standard maintenance because I don't trust the dealerships and really enjoy working on it. Saving some cash as well. Speaking of which, I am in a good financial place if something were to happen. I would have never considered even buying the car if I was not. Experience has taught me that. The K20C1 is up to the task if you are.
 

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I’m about to hit 40,000 miles, hondata base map since release. At the moment I’m full bolt ons. Prl intake, 3.5maf housing, prl inlet, Mishmoto intercooler, full race radiator, invidia R400, Dream Catless down pipe, hondata fuel system, flex fuel, RS-550. No issue here 👍 love driving it everyday.
 

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I never really understood this thinking? I do have to respectfully disagree. With every car that I have ever gone full bolt-on and tune with, I NEVER approached those cars with the thinking of being willing to blow my car up in the name of pay to play. Back in the day I could barely afford the parts and mods and never would have done so if I realistically believed I was on the ragged edge of a risk for failure.
I'm certainly glad you have had good luck. Fact remains though that when are modding cars you are pushing them outside the parameters that the manufacturer decided were appropriate for the vehicle as sold. I agree that these parameters are largely conservative, and that in many cases you can push them pretty far with only the usual tradeoffs like NVH and stuff. But in the end, you are still throwing the dice. One may feel the dice are loaded and are likely to roll sevens most of the time, but there is always the chance for snake eyes.

And that's when people actually know what they are doing. How many posts on this forum, and every other enthusiast forum on the web, consist of some variation of "hey, guys, I did X, Y, and Z, and now the car won't work?" And how many times does it turn out that those guys didn't do their due diligence, or got in over their head, or paid someone to do a bunch of stuff they thought would be cool based on what they saw on some forum? If you do your research, know your stuff, go with good parts, and all that, sure, modding can be relatively low-risk. It's never going to be no risk, though, and given how clueless so many people are, I still think the best advice is to only go that route if you feel confident that you can handle the worst case scenario. YMMV of course.
 


Boostd4

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Modern engines are amazingly good at protecting themselves
We have 71 tuned Type R's in my CivicX community tuning reliability thread and only one of those cars had a failure. It was a very aggressively driven FBO high power custom setup.
Any details on the failure? I'm curious as to whether or not there is a common point of failure with these engines.
 

Boostd4

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How can there be a common point of failure if only 1 vehicle failed
Well, when you take this 1 failure...and then when other failures similar to this one pop up and they are the same failure...then you have common point of failure. It's called collecting data over time.
 

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Boostd4

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