PROJECT, DCOE + MANIFOLD ( PhydeauX )

[A20A1]

She looks puurrrdy!

[CARBurn]

The work looks impressive. Can't wait to see how the final engine pics turn out.

[PhydeauX]

I finally found a welder willing to take on my manifold. Nice guy who was actually willing to sit down and talk with me about it. I found out why no one wanted to touch it as well. It turns out that japanese car manufatures are notorius for cutting their castings with tin and other white metals, which makes welding them a challenge. The flange I have is just cut from a stock carb manifold and is problaby the reason that the other shops turned me away (would have been nice for them to have talked with me about it first). This guy was willing to trial weld one of the runners on to see how bad the metal was and make his decision from that. The metal is a little dirty and it doesn't make for the prettiest weld, but it holds strong so he was willing to take on the job. Only one hitch, because of the bad metal the welding goes slow. It took him I'd estimate about half and hour just to attach one runner to the flange, I was watching so he wasn't dilly dallying. He estimates it will take a little over 2hrs. At $70/hr thats not going to be cheap, but nothing that makes a car go faster ever is.

andy

[A20A1]

We need a smiley throwing a party... or something like it...


Sounds good... hey did you ever find out if the dual carb manifold off the prelude fit's the webers?

[88LXiHB]

Sucks about the trouble you've had, but it'll be worth it

[guaynabo89]

When is it going to be done?


I wanna see some pics.

[PhydeauX]

Nah, that prelude manifold wont fit 2 webers. It fits 2 cv carbs, and it wont fit to an a20 anyway. My manifold should be done friday. I hope it will be done before I have to go into work. If not then I'll probalby have to wait till monday.

andy

[CARBurn]

At least you are making some progress.
When will you be able to install it on the car?

[PhydeauX]

Ok, its back from the welders and its installed. Now before anyone asks me how it runs I just got the carbs on an hour ago and I still dont have the throttle cable hooked up. I did start it though, not an easy task with carbs that have no chokes and the accelerator cable not hooked up. I didn't have to a thing to the carbs to get them to start, it took a second but it started and idled with the base settings (though its realy rich). I had to rev it, it bogs a little but revs alot more freely then it did with the DGV. It also sounds bad ass, no other way to describe it, it has a grunt that is reminicent of old forumla cars from the 40's and 50's. Any way, on to the howto.

I picked it up from the welders this afternoon, turned out better then I expected.





I drilled, taped, and installed the fitting for the brake booster and that took care of the fabricating, so its on to the install.

First step is to get the old manifold off. This is alot easier at the junkyard when you can just cut all the crap out of they because your never going to be putting that car back together. But once its off it looks something like this.



Next step is to put the new manifold on. Its harder then it looks. That 15° angle and the way the flanges line up makes it just as hard to get at the bottom bolts as it is with the stock manifold, even though there is alot more room. It looks like this when its on.



Then all thats left is to mount the carbs and hook up the fuel lines, brake booster (that is the only vacuume line in this system), and cables. It looks nice when its all done. I'm not 100% finished yet but it looks so nice that I had to take a few shots.





Besides hooking up the throttle cables I have to get air horns and filters for them. But I'll get that out of the way soon. The throttle cable isn't compadable with my linkage kits, so I'm going to have to modify it a bit.

Oh for those who are wondering how much this ran, this is what I can remember.

2 used DCOE carbs $200
Rebuils parts, linkages, etc $150
Stock A20A1 manifold $7
2ft of 2" OD 1/8" wall aluminum pipe $20
2 prefabricated aluminum DCOE flanges $90
Welding and milling $300
(200 for the welds 100 for the milling, I could have found a cheaper place for that, but then I couldn't have put it on today)

Time: a whole helluva lot

That makes for a grand total of $767 which puts it about $200-$300 less then the average DCOE conversion kit.

andy

[locknload68]

WOW, that looks amazing. I can't wait to hear about how it really runs.

[carotman]

whoa, it just looks like the Prelude 1,8 I saw at the drap strip.

Those things are the best looking carbs in the world, not smog legal but still they look good.

[guaynabo89]

oh yeah. looks good

Do you think your gonna have any clearence problems when the engine tilts back under hard acceleration?

Again looks good. I love custom stuff.

[PhydeauX]

The clearance shouldn't be an issue, I have about 8-10" between the carbs and the firewall. That will shrink when I put the stacks on there, but they are only about 2" or so (50mm) so that wont be a problem. The #1 barrel is going to be close to the brake booster when the air horn is on, but I dont think its going to be too close. The air cleaners are just foam socks that fit over the stacks, they wont have a problem even if they do hit something. The gen3's engine bay has more room then the gen2's anyway. The firewall is farther back and the master cylender/booster assembly is over more to the left so there should be plenty of room in a gen3.

andy

[locknload68]

What kind of car were those carbs originally on?

[PhydeauX]

Not sure exactly, I got them off ebay. I believe it was an older alpha romeo. They came from Italy so it was some sort of european sports car.

andy

[1989 DX R]

Mmmm...sexy carburetion goodness.

Not smog legal you say? Uh oh...

[Justanothermike]

nice

[1988starter]

I cannot wait to hear about it when it is done.

[accordlx]

Great job on a very hard project. I would have never tried it myself.

[CARBurn]

You give me and I know a couple of other carb people such inspiration. I don't know how you do it. The manifold looks awesome. I wish I had the time (and money) to invest in a project like that. At least with all these how-to's maybe I will in the future.

Again awesome work

Oh, the power of carbs.

[PhydeauX]

Ok, the throttle cable is on and the carbs have a quick tune. Much more of a pain to tune then the DGV, and they dont idle nearly as nice, but as long as it doesn't stall constantly I don't care. I took it for a little spin around the dump and industrial parks. The cops hardly ever go there, unless they get wind of some raceing going on down there. Its a good thing none were around cause this thing is loud, and it gets up to 80 before you know it. It slams up aginst the rev limiter in no time and shifts into second and third cause the tires to squeel and the front end to get a little loose. It doesn't go rich enough under accleration, the pump is a bit small so it bogs when its mashed at low rpm, and there are no air horns on yet, but the only way I can describe it is "it hauls ass". I gotta get some parts, but I hope to take it to the track soon to see how much of an improvement this really makes.

andy

[POS carb]

haha, sweet. May the carb gods be with you!!

[A20A1]

PhydeauX

[PhydeauX]

I finally got the parts to finish up the carb install. I paid my price for driving it around with out the stacks on to hold the venturis in, when one fell out and got run over. It had to happen right before the 4th to so the shipping took even longer. So besides haveing to get some air cleaners and the stacks I had to order a new aux ventrui. They run $21.50 which wouldn't have been bad except that my carbs are old and they had #3 aux ventruis in them, which are no longer made. So I had to order 4 #4s at $21.50 a pop, do the math, so I really wish I had held off on driving it so much untill I got the stacks on. And then to add insult to injury 2 of the stacks I ordered were miss packaged and were #2s, so I have to send 2 back and wait for them to be replaced with the right ones. I'm running it with 2 of my old #3s and the 2 #4s that came and its driveable. The #4s give more fuel at full throttle then the #3s do and I really shouldn't be doing it, but I don't think any harm will come. This also delayed me trying out the coilovers I installed along with adding some gen1 integra rims complete with rotted junkyard tires. They are all better tires then the ones I had on it, but still miss matched with 3 diferent brands. I only got a little bit of seat time in because little bugs kept coming up that I had to fix (I still want to know how 2 of the spark plug wires managed to come off, gremlins I sware). It rides alot better I think. A little bouncy, but I put 450/350 springs on stock struts (original stock struts on the back) so thats to be expected. I also only have about 1/2" of travel before the fronts hit the stops due to this just being a rig job of a cheap coilover kit that wasn't designed at all for a gen2 accord. Surprisingly this doesn't effect it too much. I never felt it bottom out, bumps don't really slam and jolt it, it squeaked and rattled before so thats no change, it turns in alot better, and it doesn't slam on the back stops when its floored (though that did look cool, it just made for a lot of wheel spin). It still could benefit greatly from a good set of shocks, but that'll have to wait.

Well, thats much more of a rant then I had expected, here's a shot of the carbs with the air horns on and all the linkages are hoked up, no filters yet, the oil's not dry.



andy

[MoonScryer]

Droolishly beautiful dude.