THE STEADY MARCH OF PROGRESS

Recently I was redesigning one of our mount kits and it got me to thinking. Over the years Hasport has made numerous changes to the mount kits. Some changes were brought on by warranties, some where aesthetic, and some reduced manufacturing costs. The mount kit that probably went through the most changes is the second mount kit I designed, the B-series mounts for the 88-91 Civic and CRX chassis. 

After some digging in our warranty bin, I came up with an example of each one of the iterations for the right-hand mount. Here they are.

As you can see, they've always been aluminum, but over the years as engines made more and more horsepower, the the mounts got beefier. win spite of more powerful engines, there are still some of the original mount kits installed in people's cars. Every now and again some one sends in a old set to have the urethane replaced. 

Here is an example of our original mount kit. This particular kit is 10 years old, but it's been 11 years since we introduced that design. My how time flies when your having fun. 

Here's what the kit looks like NOW.

Thanks for your support all these years.

brian g

Pushing the Envelope with the V6 Engine Swap

I've had some hair-brained schemes over the years. One friend commented, talking to me was like talking to a 17 year old about what they were going to do to modify their car. The plans were outlandish, but unlike the 17 year old it would eventually happen.

Old Faithful is getting a V6 engine swap. If you want to follow along, I'll be covering it in another blog, just click here – Projectcarpalooza 88 CRX 

Sometimes You've Got to be Flexible

Several weeks ago, Super Street decided that there were going to be no forced induction cars at this years Honda FF Battle. I had planned on bringing our 1988 CRX with the supercharged K24, perhaps you've seen it?

It's been in a few events before, American Touge, Super Lap Battle, Ultimate Street Car Challenge, Redline Time Attack, Modified Tuner Shootout and probably some stuff I'm forgetting. It's been a good car and a crowd favorite. For FF Battle I had planned to debut some new products, an intercooler kit for JR Super Chargers and cog belt drive.

FF Battle is comprised of three events, dyno, drag and time attack. Horsepower is obviously a big plus on the first two events, and because the time attack is at Cal Speedway, it's a big plus there too. The section of the track that is run on the oval can be treated like a big giant straight, and a car with serious boost can get a huge lead on the NA (naturally aspirated) cars in that section. In fact an insurmountable lead if he is a decent driver on the rest of the course. That's kind of a problem. If you wanted to win this event the obvious solution is to make a car with more HP than anyone else and that kind ruins it.


We've settled on a new engine and are getting to work on installing it. This will be a fun event and if you're in Southern California on July 30th, please come by Cal Speedway and check out the event. There will also be a car show along with the FF Battle so there will be lots to see.


Stay tuned, more blog posts coming about the install of the new engine in the 88 CRX.

I Think it'd Be Cool Build a Wind Tunnel.

You know what would be fun to have? A wind tunnel. Something small that I could run tenth scale cars in. I have some projects that need aero development. With my 3D printer, I could make models of the cars  and then test front wings, rear wings, flat bottoms, rake, ride height, splitters, diffusers and ducts.


Last summer while taking some classes at ASU I saw their wind tunnel and I don't think it would be hard to build. I roughed out a sketch based on what I remember, and it looks like this.

After doing some snooping around the Net I found a company called Aerolab that sells wind tunnels. I'd guess ASU has one of their designs.


This type of wind tunnel is called an open circuit wind tunnel. It is less expensive to build than the closed circuit wind tunnels and can be built as large or small as you can afford.  The difference between open circuit and closed circuit should be pretty self explanatory based on the name. With the closed circuit design the same air is recirculated, which has obvious efficiencies, and the open circuit design sucks in air from outside and accelerates it.  One of my favorite open circuit design is A2 at AeroDyn in North Carolina.


Open circuit designs are typically made up of five sections, the settling chamber, contraction section, test chamber, diffuser and fan section.


The settling section usually has some screens and honeycomb to equalize and align the air flow as it comes in from outside.


The contraction chamber which accelerates the air and reduces variations in pressure.


The test section is where the model being tested resides. Here things like smoke nozzles, and test devices are also inserted. 


The diffuser section gradually transitions from the test chamber the the fan section.


The fan section of course has the fan.


Any volunteers to help build this? You can use it when I'm not. 

What to wear to the Super Street Honda FF Battle 3

Well, it almost summer and that means the Super Street Honda FF Battle Numero Tres (Part Trois?) is coming. What will I wear? Something yellow, a la James Chen?

Or how about red, like last year? I could make some improvements, take a little in, let a little out.

Maybe black this year? Sophisticated, but with an edge.

Maybe an original creation is called for? Whichever, time to get crack-a-lackin.

Projectcarpalooza 88 CRX – How Many Engines Has your car had? Part 2

This is part 2 of the engine saga of Hasport's 1988 CRX, the K-series engines.

Although we were well on the way to building a 1.9 liter B-series engine for the CRX, the car magazines were starting to pay increasing attention to the K-series swaps. Hasport already had three successful K-series swaps kits on the market for EG Civics, EK Civics and DC2 Integras plus there was a lot of talk on the interwebs about doing a K-swapped EF. Earlier in the year when we were prototyping the H22 mounts in the red CRX I quickly tried the K20 in the engine bay, so I knew it could fit.

So the B19 was shelved and a K20 was wheeled in for prototyping the engine mounts. Although I knew it would fit, it wasn't really a good fit. K-series engines are tall. The K20 is taller than an H22 by almost 1.75 inches, and a K24 is even taller by another .75 inches. To keep the oil pan from smacking into the ground we designed the mount kit for the shorter K20. Of course when we did our swap, there was no way I was going to settle for the 2.0, not after driving the supercharged K24 powered EP3 for the last year.

Back in the 70's when I was first getting into cars, an engine sticking out of a hood was a regular thing. If you saw a set of dual quad carbs on a high-rise manifold sticking out of the hood, you knew the car meant business. So as far as I was concerned the added impact of a K-series with supercharger sticking out of the hood of the CRX was the right message. Even to this day, you gotta admit it's pretty damn cool looking.

This was the first K-series engine to find it's way into the CRX. It was a K24A1 with K20A2 head. It pumped out about 280 HP. The first event this car went to was the Super Street Eurotuner Time Attack in November of 2004 where it finished first in the Limited FWD class with Rich Hayes driving.

After that first K24 went in several others followed. Next was an AEBS sleeved monster motor with Pauter Rods, JE Pistons, Eibach valve springs, IPS cams, the JR supercharger, custom SC pulley, DC sports header, MagnaFlow exhaust and two huge bottles of Nitrous courtesy of Nitrous Express. On the Supercharger alone the car made about 350 HP and with nitrous 450 HP. The engine was detuned slightly for the Sport Compact Car's Ultimate Street Car Challenge because on street tires anything over 400 HP was flat out undrivable. 

Later in the year at the third Super Street Time Attack, this engine met an unfortunate and early demise as the bottom end decided it had had enough of racing. The postmortem wasn't conclusive, but one of the rods decided it didn't want to push the piston up and down anymore and mowed through the block. The moment of destruction was caught on tape by Joe Flores of K20 engine swaped Fit fame. The video is below, expletives have been beeped out to protect delicate ears.

The pictures still make me want to cry. *sniff sniff* This all happened a couple of days before the American Touge 3 filming so a quick replacement was needed. This time we opted to go cheap and bought a CRV engine. We took a bit of a hit on horsepower with that swap, from 350 down to 278 HP. That was OK though, the Touge test driver was complaining about too much horsepower. Imagine that, too much horsepower.

That's basically how the car sits now. The only other improvements were some Skunk2 K20A3/K24 Stage 2 cams. That brought the horsepower back up to 300, thank you very much. But now it's time to make some improvements. This time we are going to address the two biggest complaints of the Jackson Racing Superchargers – belt slippage and intake air temps. I got a hold of some super trick parts to test on the supercharger, a cog belt drive kit and adapter for intercooling the supercharger. Heh, heh, heh, stay tuned.

Projectcarpalooza 88 CRX – How many engines has your car had?

With 9 project cars to cover I've decided a little content management was in order. So I am starting a new blog for each individual car. That way I can keep like posts organized. New entries will still appear here and redirect to the associated car's blog. Separating project car posts by individual car should allow me to make threaded entries that are easier to follow. So, without further ado...


Of all the cars Hasport has built over the years my favorite is the Yellow 1988 Honda CRX. And it's not just my favorite it seems, I get more questions about this car than all our other projects combined. Hasport originally bought the car and I used it as a daily driver. It replaced the 1990 CRX I was driving, whch got an H22 transplant and turned into a drag car. (read more)

Hasport's 88 CRX, before the K-swap

V6 Power Stealth Mode Engaged

The mount kit we use in the V6 powered EK is the EKJ2 mounts. They have dual mounting heights. Originally when I installed the engine, a J32A Type S motor, it was at the lower position. It was fun driving it around town in Phoenix, the car was quick but looked like almost any other EK hatch with too many stickers. I got to surprise a lot of BMWs, Mustangs and big ass 4X4 trucks with it. I think the only clue they had that something was up was the sound of the exhaust as I pulled away. That car did not sound like a typical four cylinder Honda. It had a deep almost angry sound to it, very cool.

In July, when we took the car in the Super Street Honda FF Battle we flipped the mounts and reinstalled the engine at the higher mount position. We raised it up to keep from dragging the oil pan on the gator bumps and curbing at Auto Club Speedway.  A also had to cut a hole in the hood for manifold clearance. No more stealth mode. It was kind of cool to drive it around like that. It reminded me of driving in my friends 55 Chevy back in the day with the dual quad carbs on an Edelbrock "high-rise" manifold sticking out of the hood.


Recently I was updating the front end of the Civic to use with the ExoSpeed wide front end. It's designed for the 99-00 Civic headlamps and hood.  While I was changing parts I bolted on a TL Base Model intake manifold onto the J32A. I wanted to be able to close the hood again and the TL Base model manifold is shorter.

Here's a picture of the two manifolds; the TL Base model manifold is on top and and it's about 1.4 inches shorter than the TL Type S manifold shown on bottom.


Here is a picture of the TL Type S manifold on the engine in the car.

For reference the same shot with the TL Base manifold bolted on the engine. The difference is significant.

I mounted the new hood and the hood wouldn't quite close so I trimmed some of the hood skeleton.

After trimming the hood I slapped it back on the car and the hood closed with room to spare. If I get a hold of some of the other manifolds I will check these for clearance as well.

I need to get back to the dyno and see if this causes a bog lose of horsepower, but for now, stealth mode has been re-engaged.

-BrianAtHasport

Thank You Skunk2

I have a land speed race car. A couple of years ago Tim Kelly from Xact Dyno and I went to the Bonneville Salt Flats to set a land speed record. There are a hundred different classes, the one I compete in is G/GT. The G before the slash is for 1.51 liter to 2.0 liter engine and the GT stands for 2 seat production car with stock exterior. The class divisions are a little more complicated than that, but that's my class rules in a nutshell. There's more information on how the classes break down on the Southern California Timing Association and Bonneville Nationals Inc website if you're curious. 

The existing G/GT record I was running against is 157.805MPH, and was set over 20 years ago by a 1987 Ford EXP. The Ford EXP was a brick so I figured this record was ripe for the picking and I had the perfect combo, A K20Z3 and an Insight. The best 2.0 production motor made in the most aerodynamic 2 seater in production. This wasn't the first time a Honda tried to break that record, In 2002 Car and Driver Magazine made n attempt in a modified S2000. There is an interesting article on the Car and Driver website chronicling their assault on the record. This wasn't my first time either. A year earlier I seized a modified K20A2 engine at around 130MPH. I say seized, but actually only one piston seized. Kinda of funny, it felt like I had hit a really strong headwind. Upon inspection of the engine it appeared the no. 1 piston seized and the crank pulled the wrist pin out the bottom of the piston and then pounded it into shrapnel. This story probably deserves it's own post.

This year would be different though. Tim had tuned the car with some long pulls to simulate what the engine would go through. Bonneville it tough on engines. We broke the record by .064 MPH. I had expected better honestly. I mean I had an Insight with a K20?!?  Thats when I found out the car that held the record had over 400 HP. It was powered by powered by an exotic DOHC "Ford" engine sourced from a race car in England. The Insight only had 200 HP. OK, not so bad after all. 


Here's a video of the record breaking run. It looks boring on video, but driving the car is unnerving. You don't steer a car at that speed on the  salt, you just make suggestions. When the car feels like it, it starts heading in the direction you want. I'm not particularly worried about spinning at high speed, but I do worry about rolling. That would suck.

I'm going back this year to bump the record up a little, but I needed more horsepower. I called my good friends at Skunk2 and talked to Dr. Charles and Aaron Bonk to see what they could do. They were nice enough to suggest some parts to help the stock K20Z3 breath a little better. The first parts I installed were some Skunk2 stage 2 cams, valves and valve springs. A trip back to the dyno revealed a solid gain of almost 20 HP. Sweet. I was still waiting to install two other parts though, the new 06 Civic intake manifold and a 74mm throttlebody. 


We finally had a some time and installed the manifold and throttlebody  a couple of weeks ago. The parts had to be modified a little, the 06 Civic manifold is made for the drive by wire t-body which has a slightly different bolt pattern. Once modified and installed the car went back to Xact Dyno for some Tim-tuning. Here are the results. Click on the image for a larger picture.

The dyno shows three plots, 1) the baseline before modifications, 2) after the cams, valves and springs and 3) after the intake manifold and throttlebody.  The intake and throttlebody netted another 22 horsepower. Whoa, impressive. I was expecting about 10 HP. Granted the actual number has probably  been effected by the weather. By Arizona standards it was cold last week. But seriously, the software is supposed to compensate for that and I've never seen the weather effect one of our cars by more than 4 or 5 horsepower. Well, we'll know better this spring; when the weather gets warm again I'll retest to check the gains. 


But whatever the results, thank you Skunk2. 175 MPH, here I come!

Fun with the water jet

One of the cool things about having the ability to fabricate is knowing that if you need something custom you can build it. It's a blessing as well as a curse though. Plans can become elaborate when there are less restrictions. 

Here's a great example: I need a surge tank, but the ones like the one in the picture aren't quite as large as I'd like. So instead making due with what's available, I spend an hour modeling in SolidWorks, half an hour on the water jet, 20 minutes on the press brake, 20 minutes welding and half an hour fitting. Then I'll modify and move the gates from the ATL surge tank to my aluminum one.

Oh well, hopefully the engine will appreciate it. 

Finally, some progress

The last two days here at Hasport were calm enough that some work got done on project cars. I was feeling pretty bad that I put up a post on the projects and then nothing. But business has been good and we've been busy at Hasport, so projects have been pushed to the back burner. Back when there were only a few employees at Hasport I used to joke, "If it weren't for all these customers, I could get some work done." We've got more employees now, but more work too, thank heaven. Seriously, if weren't for the customers spending their money, we couldn't afford to do the fun things we do. Kind of a "Catch 22."


One of the long overdue projects is the getting more HP out of the 2000 Honda Insight. For those not familiar, the Insight and I are the record holder for the G/GT class at the Bonneville Salt Flats. In 2009 we broke a 22 year old record set by a 400 HP Lincoln LN7, and did it with just over 200 HP from a stock K20Z3 engine. The old record was 157.805 MPH and we eked out 157.869 MPH. This year I'd like to bump that up another 10 MPH. To start with, we were able to add about 16 HP with Skunk2 cans, but it seemed to be petering at the top end. That's where we need power too. So we're adding this –

This is the Skunk2 manifold for the 06 Civic and the 74mm K20A throttle body. You're not supposed to use this t-body with this manifold but hey, we had an 06 Civic engine and intake, but a cable operated Accord Euro R throttle body. Since the Skunk2 manifold is designed to use the drive-by-wire throttle body and we can't use that, we had to modify it to use the big 74mm K-series throttle body.

Check it out, this should open up the breathing on the top end and give us a little more hp. Next, I'll haul it over the Tim Kelly at Xact Dyno for some testing. When done, dyno charts to follow. By the way, I'd like to give a big shout out to Tim for helping with the record run in 2009. I might not have been able to do it without his help.


-brian at hasport

January 1, 2011 The New Year is upon us.

And by "us" I mean "me." As is my custom, this year I am biting off more than I can chew. This is my way of getting things done. It seems, sometime during high school, I decided I did my best work under pressure; so I'm piling it on. If I get half of it done, it will be a pretty effing phenomenal year.


The Project cars  Nine project cars is too much, so I decided to add a tenth project car. An H2 road racer, so I can start racing again. (Example of piling more on in two ways; that's efficient!) Honda is paying some big bucks to entice grass roots involvement of amateur racers, so why not. I am an amateur when it comes to racing. The car will be a 90 CRX with a B20. The B20 and CRX combo should be very competitive, whether or not I am, is another story. I'll post more on the project when I get started.


Blogging  In addition to this blog, I am launching a website to house all the information on the project cars. It will be updated regularly as the project cars are worked on. We won't just cover the nuts and bolts of the modifications but also the thought process behind the modifications. I'm still in the early stages of development of the site, but should have it up soon.


Video  I have a project I have been working on with two very talented people that I think is very exciting. (Did that sentence sound like a marketing guy or what?) It will be a web-based video show on Honda performance. It's called Nacho Speed Garage and it's coming soon. We've started a Facebook Fan Page and have started trickling out a few pictures, with video to come soon.


Podcasts  A few weeks ago, Will Cannady of Will's Car Cast interviewed me for one of his episodes. It got me to pull the trigger on my own podcast and I started recording some practice podcasts with Rodrez from Honda Tuning. The podcast will be about Honda's (what else) and what's happening in the Honda scene around the world. It will soon be up and I will be sure to post some links for anyone interested in listening. By the way, if you're interested in hearing Will's podcast follow the link above, he has some really interesting guests.


New products from Hasport  With addition of some new equipment at Hasport, waterjet and CNC press break, the product development pace should pick up this year. In fact in the next week of so, stock replacement mounts for the 06 up Civic Si will be available. Yay! But not just new mount kits are going to be released. The big push this year will be on peripheral products to make engine swaps easier and less expensive. Less expensive is good, huh? And if you have a suggestion for a Hasport product, drop me a line brian@hasport.com, I'd love to hear your ideas. I really need more things to do.