Engine BLock and Internals (56K get owned)

[smufguy]

Okay, firt move towards the turbo project is simple as getting a spare motor. Thought it would be in good condition, not that it matters, but its just horrible to look at inside. The motor has been running rich and most of all, been burning oil. here are the pics, its dirty, very very dirty and very very smelly. THe head is stinkin up my car since its been wrapped and sittin in my car. Cant wait to get this project started, but damn scares me when i think about the time and work that needs to be put into it.

i took the crank to Jack Merkel Performance (my friend's dad's shop) and had him look at it and looking at the crank he knew it was forged and it was pretty damn solid. He said 400 hp out of that stock crank is very easy without any nitrating or cryo treating it and if i wanna do anything more, the crank would hold up. moving to the head, he found it to be weird. Since the spark plug placement was towards only one intake valve and usually it should be facing towards the exhaust valve for better flame propogation from hot to cold areas of the cylinder. He still needs to check the valve seats and see how bigger of the valves he can use and also take apart the springs since i dont have a valve spring compressor. He doubts if the head can successfully flow around 340cfm without rough idle and not sacrificing too much streetability. Whenever im free in the next week, i wanna call him up and go over and pull the springs out and have him tell me how the valve are in the head feels like and see how it can be done. One thing he said was that the exhaust valve sizing in the stock form is a pretty nice area, so we gotta work on the intake side a lot more than the exhaust side. im also looking at getting the pistons swain coated if i have enough money left over and possibly cryotreat the rods if merkel wants to. but its too far into the year and it all depends on how my life accomodates this project. With god's blessing, i wanna finish this before this year atleast.

but for now, relish the pics lol

[shepherd79]

very nice. so are you just going to cryo freez the stock rods?
I wonder how much stronger they will get.

[smufguy]

very nice. so are you just going to cryo freez the stock rods?
I wonder how much stronger they will get.

not the stock rods, the aftermarket rods. I still dont know what brand i wanna use, and looked at carrilo, skat, crower and such, but looks like skat would be a great cadidate and if i can get that swain coated it would be the best ever for thermal insulation. the main purpose is to keep the heat from being transfered to the pistons and rods and so to keep the heat loss minimum and save the limited volumetric eff.

then of course i got the turbo to select, which i have pretty much narrowed it to three right now, then its placement, then header design with the turbo placement and the hood clearance (i can always work that out) and possibly utelize electronic water pump and power steering pump to keep the parasetic loss and crank vibrations to the minimum under high boost/ engine rpm. and engine wiring for the standalone is another mess that i have to undertake and basically make the tec3 plug and play after hacking the stock ecu holder pins to link the tec3 wires. U should see the stuff i have on paper. man.... that shit is already 15 pages long. sheesh

im also moving the radiator forward and wedging it bwt the front cross beam and the space bwt the headlight buckets rather than the stock location, This is cause the 2" thick radiator needs more room to clear than the stock one and also a custom front cross member (6061 al) to keep the nose weight down.

The greatest mod is still under design phase, and once its done and u see it on the car everyone will drop their jaw its a secret upuntil then.

[bobafett]

pauter billet rods would be cool too, im probably getting those for the 240


well im glad to see you taking this on, i need to do an OEM rebuild on my accord, the only "performance" parts i will add are better bearings and oil pump... but its good to see someone who is trying to build an accord motor right, theres not that many out there!

[rjudgey]

well i used spare exhaust valves and turned them down to 33mm and had the guides reamed out to the exhuast valve size, you could try that, also that was using the existing stock seat, but some seats are slightly bigger than others so 32mm valve might be safer!! but 33mm makes a huge difference and is also still driveable with low down power as well, p.s the B20A has 33mm inlet valves and the ports are more restrictive on the B20A than A20.

[88accordhb]

your a ricor praveen.

hehe

[NXRacer]

im scared to see what the old motor from my coupe looks like inside.

[Vanilla Sky]

$50 says i have 3 motors here that look worse... one is in my running car... i gotta rebuild bad...

i'm glad to see you rebuilding your motor and goin with some good parts... i would like to go all out NA with mine instead of turbo, but the more i think about it, the more a turbo sounds good...

[ehulst]

O mines prob way worse....i'll get pics posted when my engine head is off this week at some point....

[AccordEpicenter]

the only thing that looks bad about that engine are the valves, praveen they look like sheeeattt... Stock a20a rods are good to prolly around 400hp too if you shotpeen em and use good rod bolts. Those Eagle H beams are disgustingly strong and very good for the price, with the results ive seen other people get on them id have to say theyre prolly your best bang for the buck... what pistons are you gonna run and how much power are you looking to sustain ?

[smufguy]

rjudgey, i remember now what u did bro. interesting stuff. The stock A20 intake valves are a max of 30.1mm and the exhaust valves are 35.1mm max. So using two intake valves with the 33mm vavle face would defenitely increase the flow, i will keep this in mind and thanks for the heads up .

This motor is a A1 carb motor that came out of steve's coupe before his B16 went in. He said he was running rich, but actually he was burning too much oil. The combustion chamber was horrible in the sense that the piston top and the clearance volume area are just downright crap. I have posted a pic of my 195K valvetrain when i was pulling the secondaries out and they are soo spanking clean cause every other oil change i do the motorflush and engine restore at the same time (i know there has been debates and threads created about them and their horrible effects, so please dont make this thread talk about it).

As for the rods, im still looking. its most likely going to be what the NA mopar or chevy guys or even the turbo V6 (u know what im talking about lol) guys run. its upto my machinist and my friends father, Jack Merkel, to decide. Last year when i started to think about the turbo, i wanted just a 200whp one, then end of last year i wanted a 300 whp (350hp+ at crank) one, but after the small visit and crank inspection, 400whp was suggested (470hp at crank) so given this, i dont know, i might settle for 400 hp at the crank or god knows what merkel does with the head. I know he can work his magic since he had a good impression on the head aside from its weird plug position. So we will see, its not finalized, i am still in the process of playing with buncha factors other than just higher boost, lower intake temp, valve duration and lift, overlap, piston head design, stroke, fuel and ignition maps so i dont know. like i mentioned earlier, i have narrowed it down to three turbos that seem to have a solid and high efficient compressor maps and i still gotta work out the traction problem, suspension, anti-wheel hop mechanism (the ones for the stupid civics). I am actually studying their construction to fab one in my college machine shop and see how much it helps. All i know is that when the car is finished, it will atleast be tried to enter four major magazines with a minimum of two front covers and most importantly high input shows like nopi and HIN to expose the 3rd gen once more. People need to realize the importance of this car to make life a lot easier.

given all this, i bet in about 5 years, 4th gen accords will take our place followed undoublty by the 5th gen. But to me, this project is the last for this accord. Once everything is done right in this car, it ends there. This is not a bragging right or hobby or 'just for the hell of it' kinda project. the main reason for this project is to test and push myself in the design area to see how much i can actually achieve and where i stand in my engineering field. Its a benchmark for me, made by me, to evaluate myself in this proficiency. With proper desing charecteristics and making every single design i make for this car available for everyone at their leisure , is gona be my goal.

Long live this unique 3rd gen for a lot of years to come

[AccordEpicenter]

well if i were you i wouldnt worry about wheel hop too much, the civic traction bars basically do what our radius rods already do, because civics dont have them, plus they have shitty motor mounts. Ive never had wheel hop be a problem on the 3g, if you do, fix your mounts and make sure your suspension is good, it really shouldnt be a problem. If you work on getting good flow numbers i wouldnt worry about much else, everything else is easy. Big valves and big lift with some good port work should do the job, plus a good intake and turbo manifold. You could bore it out a little to help make power, but dont go nuts, .020" is the max before you can develop cracks between cylinders. I think your on the right track praveen... what are you using for managemant? No matter how you do this it aint cheap

[smufguy]

I know the bore is 82.7mm stock and 83.1mm is the overbore. BUt im gonna keep it under 83mm if it needs any. The motor still has factory crosshairs on the cyl walls amazingly. its gonna be tec3 that elijah has for me, their coils and their crank trigg system. bye bye vaccuum advance dist. i know this is not gonna be cheap, that why im still in the product choosing phase so that i can get rough numbers down and start setting aside some money. I still gotta pay a lot of things that leave me with 20 and 30 bux in the bank everymonth leaving the saving to nothing. and manifold is still not designed yet since the turbo needs to be decided soon and also its placement found. then the manifold will be drawn upon proe wildfire and done 3d construction and see if i can run some flow numbers thru it. I can see a 10 or 15 shot of nitrous lurking around in my mind.

ps: engine mounts are gonna be one of the pain in the ass and im trying to run our part number with other part numbers of honda cars and its a bitch since different companies run different ones. Im just gonna pull them and send them in to get it custom made or even matched.

factory crosshairs




untreated valve train



Motorflush treated valvetrain (everyother oil change used with engine restore always)

[AccordEpicenter]

judging by the pistons and the cylinder walls, i wouldnt be surprised if this engine hadnt been previously apart for some reason... generally by 100000 miles the crosshatch on the cylinders is polished away, plus the piston skirts look clean

[smufguy]

Steve had the motor from 159K to 196K, and the motor was never pulled out or rebuilt. i have 196k on my motor now, but a lot better in shape than this one. The DSM guy on the Turbo mag (march 05) came to merkel to build his motor and when they took it apart, they found the factory cross hairs on it and it was never rebuilt prior to it. So i dont know, seems like if used good, they do last.

[HondaBoy]

shit, i didnt really think much about what running rich is doing. i think i'm going to reset my A/F ratio this week because i know mine is running rich.