Should Honda have kept VTEC engines in Civics or is the 1.5T a welcome change?

The Vyzitor

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I think it depends heavily on which K engine we’re talking about.
The K in the Type R? Yes. It’s a modern example of what Honda can do.
The K in base Civics? It’s port injected, naturally aspirated, and makes an uninspiring like 70 or 80hp per liter. It’s a solid engine, but would be a hard sell to even make it in to the top 10 best naturally aspirated engines Honda has made in the past 25 years.
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suhhh

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Man I love the 1.5t.. the amount of torque you can get all over the powerband combined with the great mpg. Even though the clutch is pretty weak it's super light which is perfect for me since I do city driving daily. Great tuning potential if you want to go fast with just a few simple mods like tune or flex.

I think all in all Honda made the right choice with these motors. People can hate all they want, but VTEC wasn't going to stick around forever. I've talked with multiple older car heads who don't necessarily favor Honda's and they all have said how Honda really knocked it out of the park with the 10th gen after slacking for a few generations.

The motor is the perfect all arounder and I'm glad Honda chose to go this route
 

Gruber

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Charging stations will be a short -living transition thing, if they ever spread at all. Here is the true future "they" are preparing for you:

"My advice to New Yorkers is, ‘Do not buy a car," de Blasio said. “Cars are the past, the future is going to be mass transit, biking, walking.”

“I just think cars don’t make sense with all the other options,” de Blasio said.
 

The Vyzitor

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Even if I agreed that the only gas engines to compete with future electric vehicles must be naturally aspirated (which I don’t) what would make the K20C2 the “best” 4-cylinder engine to take up that fight? The 4-cylinder in the Corolla makes more power, more torque, and is just as fuel efficient and reliable, and available with a 6-speed. The Mazda SkyActiv 4 is more cutting edge and dramatically more powerful.

Nothing about a port injected naturally aspirated 4-cylinder with uninspiring power output screams “last of the great gas engines!” To me...
 
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gtman

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Coo1rim, this will be my only post in this thread because when I do try to be the voice of reason with you, I have no luck.

But I'm still going to try.

I've driven a lot of cars in my time. Started with a '65 Barracuda. Had a '72 Duster. Graduated to a '79 Trans Am. After that, I went smaller, lighter and more reliable. '84 CRX, '87 Integra, '94 Civic. Then tried some of the Korean cars... Elantra GT and Forte SX. Almost all of them manual. I love to drive and consider myself a good and skillful driver.

Having said that, a few points. I get it. You love your base non-turbo with the manual transmission. And that's great. It's a nice economy car with a bit of that old school Honda feel. There's definitely some fun to be had.

Your constant bashing of the 1.5T as being an inferior engine gets old. Time will tell on reliability but Honda knows their stuff when it comes to engines and durability. Modern turbos are quite reliable and in my opinion the dilution issue is overblown. Drive to normal operating temps, change oil regularly and it should be good.

On the performance front, it's an excellent engine. It's gas efficient if you stay out of boost, which is easily done when cruising. The gobs of torque give it great low and midrange pep. Get it between 3500-5500 and it really takes off. It offers the best of both worlds. It's a terrific engine that mates well to the manual or CVT.

At the end of the day though both engines are good.

Last but not least, in terms of big and easy tuning gains, the 1.5T easily surpasses your 2.0NA as the better platform choice.
 
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gtman

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Fair enough. :thumbsup:
 

Gruber

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Forget the 80s. Or the 70's. They won't come back. Today car manufacturers don't leave so much on the table. It's much harder for the aftermarket to easily harvest the low-hanging fruit by attaching a bigger pipe here and there.
 

charleswrivers

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Forget the 80s. Or the 70's. They won't come back. Today car manufacturers don't leave so much on the table. It's much harder for the aftermarket to easily harvest the low-hanging fruit by attaching a bigger pipe here and there.
Yeah... rough castings galore... the introduction of emissions control equipment slapped on to old engine designs not optimized at all in the mid-70s. Old muscle cars absolutely got their legs cut off and removing emissions control equipment and modding the engines to wake them back up meant 1/4-1/2 again the stock power was sitting there waiting to be found. That's one of the reason I got into Z cars in the first place. In the 90s... when I wanted to buy old fun cars... I had to look to the 80s. A 300zx was cheap to buy and turn up the boost and was a relatively good handling platform too. The same era V8 muscle, to me compared to the new offerings (I couldn't afford) had their back broken from the 70s and hadn't got their feet back under them and I didn't see/understand the diamonds in the rough they could be with some TLC. I still could never get over the 80s muscle cars aesthetically though. The cars seem... awkward.

I'm a old Z guy at heart... and its funny that while Nissan didn't have VTEC... and I'm not familiar if they ever dabbled in variable lift (I assume they have at one point, but not in the Zs I've owned)... variable valve timing was a thing they also did pretty early on... so my old Z has variable valve timing on it's intake valves... and was something they'd implemented all the way back when they did the concept with the VG30DETT back in '87 to strengthen the low/midrange. Some of the methods of doing things are sort of archaic by todays standards... but they were a thing. I'd call variable valve timing w/o variable lift implemented on a turbo engine fairly mature in the whole scheme of things and older than a lot of folks on the forum.

Honda Civic 10th gen Should Honda have kept VTEC engines in Civics or is the 1.5T a welcome change? 109870_6m
 

charleswrivers

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As much as de Blasio sucks (which is all I'll say to not get into "politics") he's 100% right here. In 30-50 years, the human piloted ICE automobile will be treated exactly how horses are today: kept by a few enthusiasts as money pits and kept near places where they can be used. You can literally use it as transportation, but it will be very archaic and it will be quirky and quite a sight to see someone doing so in traffic.
I expect that self driving cars electric cars that are retained at automated charging stations that are 'high duty cycle' autos will be common by the 2nd half of the century in a lot of locations. When you only actively use your car for 1-10% of it's actual life... having self-driving pay-per-use vehicles vice buying them you mostly sit unused... maintain them... insure them... is probably going to be big business. Batteries will continue to get more energy dense... and less expensive.

Tesla was touting R&D on million-mile batteries... which at their alleged 4000 cycles on a 300 mile range car would hit 1.2 million miles. While age will also be a factor on battery packs and most owners would be age vice usage limited for a pack like that, a fleet of self-driving Teslas that can go a million miles on a battery pack with an electric powertrain requiring minimal maintenance sounds like a winner to me from a business sense.

Large scale mass transport may see some explosions here and there in major metropolitan areas... but when you already have a road and electrical infrastructure... you already have what you need for a pay-per-use self-driving car to take off. It'll be like seeing all the electric scooters all over the place in big cities... only it'll be cars.

Might be 100% wrong. We should all log back in in 30 years to this post and see if we're there yet. There's a lot of young people I know that don't even care about having a drivers license or owning a car... and many would happily pay to be driven somewhere by a HAL-9000.
 

ManofGod1000

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As much as de Blasio sucks (which is all I'll say to not get into "politics") he's 100% right here. In 30-50 years, the human piloted ICE automobile will be treated exactly how horses are today: kept by a few enthusiasts as money pits and kept near places where they can be used. You can literally use it as transportation, but it will be very archaic and it will be quirky and quite a sight to see someone doing so in traffic.
You clearly have not been to Buffalo, NY. :D Mass Transit here is archaic, at best, and will not ever improve. (See the train to nowhere.)
 
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staylurkn

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I don't see it. But I do remember some random posts from people complaining they don't see any boost at lower rpm. This is totally not my experience as I see boost way under 2000 rpm and don't seem to ever be "caught off-boost" except for the first two feet off the line. Practically, I see boost at any rpm when needed, so I'm afraid if you need upper rpms to get boosted, there is something wrong with your car.
No, nothing wrong with my car. Boost comes on quick in city driving, but drive more spiritedly and you still need to be higher in the rev range for better throttle response. Maybe this is due to the use of mono scroll turbochargers. This is of course my opinion.
 

Gruber

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I expect that self driving cars electric cars that are retained at automated charging stations that are 'high duty cycle' autos will be common by the 2nd half of the century in a lot of locations. When you only actively use your car for 1-10% of it's actual life... having self-driving pay-per-use vehicles vice buying them you mostly sit unused... maintain them... insure them... is probably going to be big business. Batteries will continue to get more energy dense... and less expensive.

Tesla was touting R&D on million-mile batteries... which at their alleged 4000 cycles on a 300 mile range car would hit 1.2 million miles. While age will also be a factor on battery packs and most owners would be age vice usage limited for a pack like that, a fleet of self-driving Teslas that can go a million miles on a battery pack with an electric powertrain requiring minimal maintenance sounds like a winner to me from a business sense.

Large scale mass transport may see some explosions here and there in major metropolitan areas... but when you already have a road and electrical infrastructure... you already have what you need for a pay-per-use self-driving car to take off. It'll be like seeing all the electric scooters all over the place in big cities... only it'll be cars.

Might be 100% wrong. We should all log back in in 30 years to this post and see if we're there yet. There's a lot of young people I know that don't even care about having a drivers license or owning a car... and many would happily pay to be driven somewhere by a HAL-9000.
What if the current battery energy density and life are about the best that can be done with practical chemical storage (despite the ever so promising research on unobtainium platinide :Dbatteries)?

As much as de Blasio sucks (which is all I'll say to not get into "politics") he's 100% right here. In 30-50 years, the human piloted ICE automobile will be treated exactly how horses are today: kept by a few enthusiasts as money pits and kept near places where they can be used. You can literally use it as transportation, but it will be very archaic and it will be quirky and quite a sight to see someone doing so in traffic.
Of course, ;)and I'm sure shortly after that time, in 80-100 years, even the idea transporting human bodies at all, either individually or in big batches, will be seen as archaic, quirky, extremely unsafe, and just a silly thing to even try.
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