TheShadow
Senior Member
- First Name
- Ben
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2018
- Threads
- 20
- Messages
- 238
- Reaction score
- 343
- Location
- Iowa
- Vehicle(s)
- 2017 FK8 Type R #00561, 2012 Civic Si, 2000 Civic CX Hatchback
- Thread starter
- #16
Time again for a small update just in time for the holiday season. Managed to score a couple of parts and get them installed along with swapping back into the winter tires. This is a good point to reflect on the progress I’ve made lately as it has been a long past week with my vehicles. The crappy car started misfiring, leaking coolant and popped a tire… so new plug wires, spark plugs, lower radiator hose, fresh anti-freeze and 4 news tires – yay! And to top things off I dropped a breaker bar on the fender of the R… Hello to a nice new scratch upgrade. Had to get fancy with the touch up paint and various rubbing / polishing compounds to more or less get it back to the way it should be (there is still a small area where the clear coat didn’t fully fill in the recess where the scratched happened. More coats would have fully fixed it – a project for when it gets warm again.)
First mod is the Radium Engineering coolant expansion tank. It's a two piece tank machined from solid aluminum billets and bolted together. The kit does come with new lines as well as a mounting bracket to swap right into the engine bay. Can’t say this kit doubled my horsepower by any means, but I did opt for it from the longevity aspect. I see some merit to the plastic OEM tanks getting brittle over time. Heating up and cooling down over and over again right next to the engine block can’t be a healthy activity.
The tank does have two unique chambers on the inside (forgot to snap a photo of mine, but I made a YouTube install video you can check out.) The first section is cylindrical and aims the incoming coolant so it circulates tangentially around chamber wall. This helps condense any vapors back down into a liquid before entering the main reservoir in the second chamber, which is where the return port is located. Also being aluminum should help shed some heat from the coolant better than a plastic tank. Plus I think it looks damn cool, especially with the spoon radiator cap. And I dig the sight gauge.
Next update is a bit of a guilty pleasure – a J’s racing strut tower bar. I know, I know. You are saying things like: “These bars don’t do anything because our strut mounts are welded into the firewall” or “Three piece strut bars don’t transfer forces from one mount to the other.” I don’t care. I like the way an engine bay looks with a strut bar. Plus I think any tiny amount of frame stiffening will help.
The bar is of nice quality and bolted in quickly and easily. I will say I reversed the bolts direction between the bar and the mounting feet since I couldn’t actually get a hex key on the passenger bolt head due to the coolant tank being in the way (not sure if the stock tank would have the same issue or not.) A very nice looking part though.
That about wraps up things for now and likely will for a while as winter approaches. The crappy car is primed to eat all of that winter salt and sand while I accumulate parts for the R. Next step will be to get my ECU sent off to Hondata for jailbreaking – I actually already have the FlashPro (very excited for this.) I also have the J’s racing monocoque bar on order, along with the RV6 Performance front pipe. Otherwise I still need to make the final decision on what intercooler route to go. The Mishi kit is nice and includes pipes, but it is large… Starting to like the looks of the HKS kit honestly – I’m just scared of that BOV that would be needed to complete the intercooler piping. Hoping people will flesh out how well these parts work over the winter months. I’m also wondering about upgrading the cars footwork – starting to research sway bars, rotors, brakes, and possibly even a set of forged rims. A man can dream anyway.
And for those who made it to the end of this thread, please enjoy a picture of my 8 month daughter dressed as a giraffe roaring like a lion.
First mod is the Radium Engineering coolant expansion tank. It's a two piece tank machined from solid aluminum billets and bolted together. The kit does come with new lines as well as a mounting bracket to swap right into the engine bay. Can’t say this kit doubled my horsepower by any means, but I did opt for it from the longevity aspect. I see some merit to the plastic OEM tanks getting brittle over time. Heating up and cooling down over and over again right next to the engine block can’t be a healthy activity.
The tank does have two unique chambers on the inside (forgot to snap a photo of mine, but I made a YouTube install video you can check out.) The first section is cylindrical and aims the incoming coolant so it circulates tangentially around chamber wall. This helps condense any vapors back down into a liquid before entering the main reservoir in the second chamber, which is where the return port is located. Also being aluminum should help shed some heat from the coolant better than a plastic tank. Plus I think it looks damn cool, especially with the spoon radiator cap. And I dig the sight gauge.
Next update is a bit of a guilty pleasure – a J’s racing strut tower bar. I know, I know. You are saying things like: “These bars don’t do anything because our strut mounts are welded into the firewall” or “Three piece strut bars don’t transfer forces from one mount to the other.” I don’t care. I like the way an engine bay looks with a strut bar. Plus I think any tiny amount of frame stiffening will help.
The bar is of nice quality and bolted in quickly and easily. I will say I reversed the bolts direction between the bar and the mounting feet since I couldn’t actually get a hex key on the passenger bolt head due to the coolant tank being in the way (not sure if the stock tank would have the same issue or not.) A very nice looking part though.
That about wraps up things for now and likely will for a while as winter approaches. The crappy car is primed to eat all of that winter salt and sand while I accumulate parts for the R. Next step will be to get my ECU sent off to Hondata for jailbreaking – I actually already have the FlashPro (very excited for this.) I also have the J’s racing monocoque bar on order, along with the RV6 Performance front pipe. Otherwise I still need to make the final decision on what intercooler route to go. The Mishi kit is nice and includes pipes, but it is large… Starting to like the looks of the HKS kit honestly – I’m just scared of that BOV that would be needed to complete the intercooler piping. Hoping people will flesh out how well these parts work over the winter months. I’m also wondering about upgrading the cars footwork – starting to research sway bars, rotors, brakes, and possibly even a set of forged rims. A man can dream anyway.
And for those who made it to the end of this thread, please enjoy a picture of my 8 month daughter dressed as a giraffe roaring like a lion.