Starting to Think about Performance Mods for Wife's 2018 HB 1.5T 6MT.

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Hey everybody!

John from Nashville here.

New to this particular board, but I'm a veteran of message forums since around 2004 or so (Yamaha R1 Forum, various other sportbike and dirt bike forums, the Toyota Tacoma forums, motor oil forums, gun forums, knife forums, mountain biking, etc.).

Looking forward to learning a lot here, and hopefully contributing and answering questions if I can!

Anyway, to the point - my wife has a 2018 Civic Hatchback with the 1.5T and 6MT, but it's the less-common, non-sport version, so she has the dual exhaust outlets that are sort of hidden. She bought her car before we got married. We were dating at the time, and she went with the 6MT version instead of the CVT, on my suggestion. I had given her some basic instruction and manual transmission driving lessons on my 2016 WRX that I used to have, but, she basically taught herself to drive standard.

Only mods so far have been a set of the 18" stock Honda wheels that I bought off my buddy who bought a new 2019 Civic Si sedan (the wife's car came with the 16" alloys). And I bought a set of the new Continental VikingContact snow tires and had them mounted on her 16" wheels for when she drives back home to Northern Indiana in the winter (BTW I'm sure they're fantastic in actual winter conditions, but we haven't had the chance to really test them out very well so far - I can tell you that you don't really want to drive on the Vikings in anything approaching warm weather, as they're pretty squirmy and wallowy.)

We're in Nashville, only a few hours' drive from some great roads in East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, North Georgia, etc., and we love to go out and hit the mountain roads! I see you guys just had a rally at Deal's Gap. That's one of my favorite roads of all time, and the wife's car has made several passes! Hate we missed that - we probably would have driven out to say Hi if we'd known about it.

We also got married in April during the height of the "pandemic" (don't get me started on that one), and our planned honeymoon in Costa Rica turned into a road trip in her Hatchback through Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia (some great roads up there), Virginia, North Carolina, and East Tennessee. Good times!

She's mentioned that she wished her car had a more sporty sound, so that's got me looking around, starting some research on some modest, bolt-on performance upgrades for her car, such as cold-air intake, cat-back exhaust, and an aftermarket tuner such as the Hondata FlashPro.

So, I'm wondering if anyone happens to know if any of the better-known companies make a performance catback exhaust for the non-Sport Hatchback models. I know it won't add much in the way of horsepower, but we're just looking for a sportier tone. Really don't want a really loud, "fart can, ricer" exhaust note that will be irritating and drone on the interstate.

Also, what's y'alls experience with CAIs been?

The Hondata vs. the KTuner?

Anybody have the same car as us and done similar mods?

Thanks for any advice/suggestions...

John
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gtman

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If you're talking performance mods, it all starts with a tune. Nothing else compares or offers that type of easy power increase. In 5 minutes your car goes from ehh to WOW. Night and day honestly. With something like a TSP Stage 1 you'll see big gains. It was dyno'ed at around 220 whp and 250 tq.

A CAI is a nice addition for lowering intake temps and has a nice sound but don't expect more than a few extra whp.

KTuner vs. Hondata? I've used both on this platform. For the money, KTuner wins in my opinion.
 

ValkenDnB

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If you're talking performance mods, it all starts with a tune. Nothing else compares or offers that type of easy power increase. In 5 minutes your car goes from ehh to WOW. Night and day honestly. With something like a TSP Stage 1 you'll see big gains. It was dyno'ed at around 220 whp and 250 tq.

A CAI is a nice addition for lowering intake temps and has a nice sound but don't expect more than a few extra whp.

KTuner vs. Hondata? I've used both on this platform. For the money, KTuner wins in my opinion.
Does tsp stage 1 make a lot less whp on 91 octane vs 93? All I have around me is 91 and E85 a black from me though its arco so I usually don’t go there anyways as people say the gas there is bad.
 

NorrinRadd

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For the exhaust a lot of guys replace the resonator with a glasspack / cherry bomb muffler and delete the oem mufflers to get more sound. On mine I just deleted the resonator and left the factory mufflers behind it. It's still pretty quiet but at least it's audible now. You can go with a cat back but just understand that it's only giving you sound, not really any performance gains.

If you're gonna do 1 thing, get the k-tuner. I recommend getting it from TSP along with their tune.
 

NorrinRadd

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Does tsp stage 1 make a lot less whp on 91 octane vs 93? All I have around me is 91 and E85 a black from me though its arco so I usually don’t go there anyways as people say the gas there is bad.
I doubt it'll make a huge difference, it might pull timing a bit sooner if you're running it flat out in map 3 on a hot day.
 

gtman

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Does tsp stage 1 make a lot less whp on 91 octane vs 93? All I have around me is 91 and E85 a black from me though its arco so I usually don’t go there anyways as people say the gas there is bad.
It was designed to run best on 93. Where you might typically see knock control at .49 cruising around on 93, it might be more like .54 on 91. So if I'm guessing maybe 5% less power at peak? Just a guess but certainly not a huge difference 93 to 91.
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