Acura Integra Type R BIG POWER Engine Build

This is my 1998 Acura Integra Type R, a car so pure it makes the Virgin Mary blush. Or at least it makes certain parts of me experience a sudden rush of blood whenever I drive it. Because this thing truly is one of the greatest driving experiences money can buy, as long as you're evolved enough to appreciate its perfect balance, incredible steering and shifting feel, and its glorious rather than expecting it to push you back in your seat in a straight line. But more on that later. The original 272,000 kilometer B18C5 1.8 liter 4 banger remains completely stock and made a whopping 181 wheel horsepower with a Comtec Icebox intake, PLM TA header, and Greddy 3 inch exhaust in place. And that's really the one area of this car's performance that I'm left wanting a little more from. Don't get me wrong, the B18C5 is an engine design masterpiece, but the DC2 chassis is just so good, especially after the modifications we've made to it, and I'd love to have another, oh I don't know, 50 to 70 wheel horsepower. There's certainly a part of me that thinks I should just accept that this engine is already putting out a very impressive power figure given its displacement and age, but Pete and I aren't exactly known for our ability to leave our car stock. Clearly we're not purists, but I do want to preserve the Type R essence of this very special machine while pursuing my admittedly irrational desire to add a significant amount of horsepower. Well guys, this hasn't exactly started the way we had planned. We thought we'd be here on a nice sunny day and we'd get you a baseline lap time in my Type R so that we can show you the progress we've made by the end of this video series. However, it's been raining non-stop here for three or four days now. The forecast is horrific. We're currently in a rainfall warning and there's no end in sight to it. However, we do have a good dry lap reference in this car from our FD2 versus DC2 Type R shootout that we did a couple of years ago. So I did a 122.1 here, which is pretty good at this power level. This car makes like 182 wheel horsepower, so we're going to find out at the end of this series, is my dream engine build going to deliver a significantly faster lap time? Is all this time, effort, and money going to pay off and make this car the, you know, K-Swap Civic killer, the Mustang Camaro killer around TMP that I want it to be? Or is it going to be a lot of heartache for a very small improvement? We do want to give a very big thank you to HB Academy who are supporting this entire video series, primarily so that we can show you their engine building course as we build my dream spec engine for this car. However, if you know HB Academy, then you know they offer courses in a wide range of subjects, including EFI tuning. They also have courses in motorsports wiring, diesel tuning. Now they have a suspension and car setup course, which is really valuable for say, learning how to set your car up on a rain day like today. They offer a driver training and improvement course. So if you want to learn about data analysis, that's an amazing course for that. They have courses on fabrication and design, including 3D scanning, 3D printing, and CAD design. And they even have a new module with our buddy Sasha from Mountain Pass Performance on electric vehicles. So they have it all at hbacademy.com and we will have a discount code for you in the description below. So without further ado, let's make a parts run and start picking up all the parts we're going to need for this dream engine build. All right, first stop on our engine parts pickup tour is Levine Motorsport. For those of you who don't know, Eric Levine, the owner and operator here is a legend in the Honda scene. He's built some of like the most powerful Honda engines in the time attack road racing world. He tunes a ton of the cars in Gridlife Touring Cup now. We jump over here, Eric's hiding back here, and he is taking care of the machine work on our engine block, which is conveniently located underneath the garbage bag. So we don't want to give it away yet, but Eric gave us a recipe for how to build this particular engine because you've built a ton of them over the years. And you've made really good power. When he told me the power number, I was like, no way, bro. But we're going to find out because we're using his exact recipe. And you said how much power do you think it's going to make? It should make over 250. Over 250, naturally aspirated. That's crazy talk. Is it a K? Is it a B? Is it a C32? Is it a J? I know you're a big fan of the J motor. That's a big J guy. He's a big J guy here. So let's load this up in the car, and then we'll move on to our next stop. Here we are at stop number two. We've got our engine block, and now we need things to put inside that engine block. And for all those internals, we have turned to our friends here at Garage 16. And here we have a big pile of horsepower making parts. This, of course, is Rick from Garage 16. You guys stock a ton of Honda stuff, don't you? You guys are really strong in the Honda world. I mean, we carry everything from turbo parts, all motor stuff, many brands, a lot of stuff in stock. Pretty much also we do a lot of free shipping as well. Ships same day. So a lot of stock, a lot of stuff go out same day. Certainly one of the biggest and best stocked performance shops here in the greater Toronto area. So for all you performance guys out there who want to shop at Garage 16, we do have a discount code for you. It's just SA10 for 10% off. Anything on the website. So get to shopping, guys. Now that we've got all our parts, it is time to head back to the shop and show you a little more of what we've got. And we are back at the shop. We finally collected all the parts we need for this engine build. And let's not delay it any further. I'm sure a lot of you guys know what's coming, but this is, of course, a B20B. So we are going to be building a 2-liter B-series engine, but not just any 2-liter B-series engine. This is designed to beat up on the K-series, guys. So my whole fantasy with this build is to build this motor to make K or better power and to go to TMP and actually beat up on some of my buddies with K-Swap Civics or K-Swap whatever they've got. For engine internals, we are not using stock components. We are actually using Levine Motorsports' Super B20 recipe. So we're using all the parts that Eric at Levine Motorsports specced out for this build, including CP pistons. You can see from that dome to top, that is quite a high compression ratio. I'll explain that a little bit more as we get deeper in the build. We're also using manly rods, ARP head studs, and King bearings. So this is going to be the basis of the short block build. For the cylinder head, we have gone with a GSR or P72 head. And if you look quickly down here at the combustion chambers, instead of having a perfectly circular chamber, it actually has these flat quench pads, which bump compression ratio up a bit. So this motor is going to be right around 13 to 1 compression ratio. And the head, of course, has been gone through completely by Dave and his team at Head Games. In fact, they have a video of that complete process on their YouTube channel. So do jump over to Head Games' YouTube channel. There's like a 20-minute video of him going over this head in great detail and not only having it CNC ported, but loading up the valve train in here, which is SuperTek valves, SuperTek springs, SuperTek retainers, and GSC Power bronze valve guides. And I'm really excited to have SuperTek and GSC in this head because we've used their parts a ton in the past. Always been flawless, really good stuff. So thank you, Dave, and everyone at Head Games, and of course, SuperTek and GSC Power too, because this is a killer cylinder head setup. For electronics and fuel, we are using a Link G4X. This is their plug-in unit, design-specific for Honda B-Series, and we are pairing that up with their Cam Lambda because tuning matters. And we're also using this really intriguing new product called DigiDizzy. And as the name implies, it is a digital replacement for your distributor, plugs right into the factory wiring, and it converts the engine to coil-on plug. And on the fuel side, you can see we have a radium fuel rail and their very nice clickety adjustable fuel pressure regulator and damper. And for injectors, we're actually using Honda RDX injectors. So there's a little adapter that we have to order to make these work, but the versatile wiring harness will plug right into these. There's a lot more cleaning to come in the actual build video on this engine block, but we're actually going to start by just giving it a general cleanup because it's quite dirty having been in the machine shop. And I actually had the block blasted as well by JPS Stripping Technologies. That's why it looks so clean on the outside, but there's lots of little blast debris around here. So we're going to give it a very good cleanup. There you have it. We have a initial cleanup complete on the block. And as you saw, we pulled all the plugs out and really flushed it out as best we could, all the oil galleys, coolant passages, all of that. And you saw, we soaked and cleaned the bores as well as everywhere else on the blocks just to get it as clean as we possibly could as a fresh starting point. And it's also critical once you've cleaned the bores, not to let them just like air dry because they will flash rust and that rust will fill all the little valleys in your home surface there and not allow for a good oil seal or a good oil layer to build on the sides of the cylinder. So we're going to spray a little stable fogging oil on there, which says stops corrosion in stored engines, which is pretty much what we're doing here. Although this won't be stored for long. So we're just going to give this a little squirt on all four cylinders and I'll just give it a little bit of a wipe, but make sure that we still got a good coverage on those cylinders so they don't rust. With the engine clean, it now begs the question, am I making a terrible mistake? Everyone is taking out this masterpiece of a B18C5 factory sealed engine, which has never gone wrong in 272,000 kilometers to put in a built by Dave, B20 VTEC Dream Spec engine. Is this thing going to stay in one piece? And is it going to make the power advertised? Well, you're going to have to stay tuned to find out, of course, but in the next episode, we're going to build this thing from top to bottom using HP Academy's 10 step process. And if you don't know what that process is already, of course, you can jump onto hpacademy.com and buy their practical engine building course, which has that 10 step process in it. And in fact, we even have a discount code in the description below. So go and check that out. And of course they have courses on all other kinds of cool stuff, which we'll be telling you guys all about in this series. So stay tuned to find out if I've made the best decision in my life or the worst.