My friend blew his motor on TSP stage 2

FlexRex said:

@Gotch .. just so I understand, if i dont own a xgen civic i cant look at data and threads objectively and draw conclusions?

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I don't think that's what he meant, otherwise he would not take advice from me. He knows I no longer own an Si

PowerPerLiter said:

I so used to be the opposite of what im about to say.........

Im in the leave them COMPLETELY alone camp.

Sigh.

Can't believe I'm admitting that after the INSANE amount of time I spent dissecting my old one.

If it was my only play thing I would feel different. If I ever go down the same road again with my 2020 I absolutely WILL EXPECT problems to arise eventually.

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Ha ha, this is not our Dad's car anymore, so to speak. Every component is pretty much controlled by the ECU. Sensors everywhere. Throttle, fuel/air mixtures. These have become complex machines. One thing off and Kboom. Who would have thought 10 years ago you could get 205 HP efficiently out of a 1.5L without breaking it? I remember I drove a Toyota Corolla XRS with 170 HP, and I thought that was the shit. Of course you had to rev it out to almost 8000 RPM to pull the power. Now you just rev it to 2000 rpm to pull the same power

amirza786 said:

Ha ha, this is not our Dad's car anymore, so to speak. Every component is pretty much controlled by the ECU. Sensors everywhere. Throttle, fuel/air mixtures. These have become complex machines. One thing off and Kboom. Who would have thought 10 years ago you could get 205 HP efficiently out of a 1.5L without breaking it? I remember I drove a Toyota Corolla XRS with 170 HP, and I thought that was the shit. Of course you had to rev it out to almost 8000 RPM to pull the power. Now you just rev it to 2000 rpm to pull the same power

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I get what you mean but I'm used to most everything about the cars, the hangnail is direct injection. That's what makes the ecu so "smart" out of necessity and creates the issues im referring to.... if these were manifold injected ALOT of things would be different.

By design the combustion process and timing of injection events e.t.c are much more precise, therefore everything is much more critical. Alot of assumptions are made by the Honda strategy as it pertains to the "hardware parts". Any deviation skews this. At that point the cars are reliant upon the "feedback" control system of the sensors reacting to abnormalities...

PowerPerLiter said:

I get what you mean but I'm used to most everything about the cars, the hangnail is direct injection. That's what makes the ecu so smart out of necessity and creates the issues im referring to.... if these were manifold injected ALOT of things would be different.

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IMHO, I think Honda should have gone the direction of Toyota/Lexus and used Port plus Di. It would have added some expense, but solved some of the Di issues like carbon build up. Of course Toyota/Lexus do this because they have not gone the turbo charged route (except the IS300 2.0t) yet and are trying to get more efficiency by using higher compression engines. My IS350 uses both, and switches to 100 percent di at high throttle, but switches back to both Port and di when running normally. Anyway, I wish Honda had taken this route, but they have their reasons

I wasn’t implying anything FlexRex, your knowledge outside of xgen Civics is welcome. I think we are talking the same language regardless. Unless you are tuned with a 10gen, you are speaking from past experience and applying to our Civics. This is both excellent and diversified at the same time. This poor little 1.5l vs engines of more displacement may seem discouraging to others, but real world I can walk a Subbie WRX in my tiny little Civic tuned...

amirza786 said:

Ha ha, this is not our Dad's car anymore, so to speak. Every component is pretty much controlled by the ECU. Sensors everywhere. Throttle, fuel/air mixtures. These have become complex machines. One thing off and Kboom. Who would have thought 10 years ago you could get 205 HP efficiently out of a 1.5L without breaking it? I remember I drove a Toyota Corolla XRS with 170 HP, and I thought that was the shit. Of course you had to rev it out to almost 8000 RPM to pull the power. Now you just rev it to 2000 rpm to pull the same power

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I remembered back in the early 80s when my older brother was building a mildly modified Buick 231 V6 uneven fired for his 1977 Chevy monza 2 +2 I asked why not a V8 he told me you can get something big out of something small and also said which stuck with me for a long time
Watch these auto manufacturers in the future they going to make four cylinders just as powerful as V8s and get better fuel mileage also this was around when the 1984 mustang svo came out
184 HP 2.3 liter turbocharged intercooled then in 86 200 HP he also mentioned that the Japanese will capitalize on that I guess he was right

saz468 said:

I remembered back in the early 80s when my older brother was building a mildly modified Buick 231 V6 uneven fired for his 1977 Chevy monza 2 +2 I asked why not a V8 he told me you can get something big out of something small and also said which stuck with me for a long time
Watch these auto manufacturers in the future they going to make four cylinders just as powerful as V8s and get better fuel mileage also this was around when the 1984 mustang svo came out
184 HP 2.3 liter turbocharged intercooled then in 86 200 HP he also mentioned that the Japanese will capitalize on that I guess he was right

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Yep, he was right. They have been downsizing since the 70's after the oil embargo. Just like The Road Warrior, the last of the V8's and eventually V6's are imminent. Right now pretty much a few sports cars are keeping them alive

Ahh the good old days Amirza... I had a built 79 Pontiac Grand Prix that started life as a 301 coat hanger crank 2 bbl V8 that I transplanted a 400cid small block Chevy with a 350 crank into a 8000rpm, high 10’s (on 10” slicks) beast. Mid to high 11’s on DOT meat on the street. It was a fun car but I prefer my Civic. Way less maintenance and still a hoot to drive. And way less excessive noise violations ! Lol

So guys, what are we to conclude? On the one hand we have the tuning reliability survey showing 97% problem free from people who have responded. We have hundreds of topics where people are gushing about how terrific their tunes are. Or how conservative Hondata and KTuner tunes are.

The counterpoint to that are the dozen (a rough guess) or so topics where someone has had a catastrophic failure.

Are the vast tuned majority just lucky or are they doomed? It still seems to me most issues have come on vehicles with one or more of these factors:

1. Car was tuned for way more power than a base tune or TSP Stage 1.

2. Full bolt ons were used in an effort to produce more power than a base tune.

3. Cars were abused (overuse of anti-lag, two step, street racing, money shift etc.). Or maybe full 85 was used.

Now clearly, all of the above are easy to figure out. But we also have some cars on base tunes with no bolt ons with issues. In some of those situations the OP never really followed up with the full details. So we were left to just guess what happened.

There's a whole lot of fuzzy and gray here and few conclusions.

Yes, a tune causes more stress, yet, percentage-wise, the majority of tuned 10th gens seem to have done well.

I guess the only conclusion to draw is if you want the guaranteed warranty coverage and even better reliability, don't tune.

gtman said:

I guess the only conclusion to draw is if you want the guaranteed warranty coverage and even better reliability, don't tune.

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This.... and I'll add..... don't bolt on besides cosmetic or cat back....

@gtman wrote “So guys, what are we to conclude?”

Don’t push this little 1.5L beyond base tunes and the TSP Stage 1. A CIA intake and cat back exhaust are about the limits.

Im adding a PRL SRI this spring and then I’m done. No race MAF bullshit, just the street version. I’m happy with the power, it is after all, a sporty econobox, not a race car.

My conclusions are the following:

Base tunes by themselves do put additional stress on the engine, but are generally safe

Base tunes likely will decrease engine life in the long run, more long-term data is needed to determine how much

Bolt-on's (especially aftermarket intakes) with tunes, both custom and base factor into many of the failures

Ethanol use is definitely one factor that seems to keep coming up, especially when failed injectors are mentioned

The biggest conclusion for me is trying to cram to much power without building this engine is a recipe for disaster, @JDMpo0kie and @kshawn are prime examples

I didn't mention owners beating on their cars because this is bad regardless if you are stock or tuned

gtman said:

if you want the guaranteed warranty coverage and even better reliability, don't tune.

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In pretty sure that has been a standard disclaimer on any thread where people are wanting a tune on their bright shiny new car... but really don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. It’s always a risk. The evidence would seem its statistically small... but it’s definitely there.

I was on the fence on ethanol and would have it already, if not for the closest station selling ethanol being a good 20-25 minutes away. After what info has trickled in, I’d rather buy a 27Won turbo and get an etune on 93 if I wanted to exceed 250 whp. It might cost me a grand more... but it’s push the torque peak a bit to the right and let the car pull a bit harder over 4000 RPM to redline. As it is, I think TSP Stage 1 is about as much as I’m interested in asking an economy car on a FWD platform to give me.

As someone else mentioned earlier though... as to there being lower headroom, yeah, I agree. It still is a pretty tiny little engine. Shooting for the moon with 1.5 liters sounds pretty terrible. In the 90s/00s if you told me a little 1.5L engine would make nearly 250 whp on a reflash... my response would have been, “Yeah? For how long?” To me, that’s no different than my old Zs 3.0 making 500+ whp... and that was about the limits of the stock block w/o doing any work.

How many were failures on oem tune @gtman? Iike 1-2 or a significant number like 1/4-1/2 of failures. In WRX world most failures happen on Cobb OTS maps followed by guys pushing the envelope as far as power goes. But there is also a significant number of oem failures to, but to a lesser extent.

If it were me @Gotch id leave the car stock (perhaps an intercooler upgrade only) and flex it. Id do the same if i were to do my wrx over again. All fbo hardware is relevant only on 91/93oct but on e50/flex fuel car will produce (within 10-20whp) same power being stock vs fbo, thats at least on wrx 2L platform. Id also get a custom tune or run an appropriate ots hondata flex tune (same hardware setup that tune was calibrated on) w appropriate eBlend. Most likely a custom tune though, conservative/daily map like i do now.

gtman said:

Am I the only one that would like to hear from JR, Derek, TSP, and Doug when we talk tuning failures and an open discussion regarding the safe power limits of the 1.5?

It would be awesome to hear from those tuners in terms of bolt ons vs. no bolt ons, ethanol use and anything else that might affect longevity.

I mean, in some ways isn't it in their best interest versus these blown motor threads that wind up being nothing but conjecture?

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Well, Doug (Hondata) recommends the +6 with an upgraded clutch on top of that. It sounds like the +9 is for the daring that wants the most power out of a tune.