I ran into way too many problems with the Civic this year and ended my autocross season early due to getting burnt out from trying to keep up with everything. But even with all of that, I still had good times with friends and attended three track days which I had never done before so it wasn’t all terrible.

Current State of Affairs

First up, the B20V I built this spring is running strong, and pulls hard to 8700RPM but it took a ton of work to get to that point.

I haven’t had the chance to dyno it yet but I will try to get it dynoed next year so I can share what kind of power it’s putting down. This was the first car I’ve ever tuned and other than a couple of spots in the tune that’re too rich it feels great.

Beyond the engine, the car hasn’t changed drastically. I switched out the stock LS confetti seats for Corbeaus, replaced the tachometer, designed a custom gauge pod (prototype), and upgraded to an aluminum radiator.

The Bad News

I had to swap my engine three times this year. The first time was to remove the B20B to drop in the B20V. The second time was to put the B20B back in because the B20V had damage, and the third time was to re-install the B20V because I finished rebuilding it for a second time. That sucked, but also proved I had made a damn good call on keeping my B20B as a backup. Having a known-good spare motor sitting on an engine stand is a godsend when you need it.

B20V Rebuild 2 - Electric Boogaloo

The B20V didn’t make any odd noises and wasn’t producing any smoke of the blue or white derivative but when I changed the oil for the second time at (roughly) 500 miles there was too many metal flakes in the oil for my liking. The flakes weren’t magnetic which ruled out the cams or bearings but they were clearing metallic and I wanted to know where all that aluminum was coming from.

It didn’t take long to find the source.

The cam journals at the front of the head behind the cam gears were scoured and galling and the cams themselves had some damage.

The rest of the journals looked okay minus some very light scouring so I suspect it was insufficient oil lubrication on first start up. During assembly I made sure to use plenty of assembly lube but I had forgotten to prime the oil pump prior to it’s first start and it took roughly ~15 seconds for the engine to build oil pressure post start (I remember anxiously waiting for the oil pressure gauge to climb). These journals are the furthest ones from the oil feed line on the head which is why I believe they faired the worst.

With that much damage I had no choice but to pull the engine and do a tear down. It was a lousy feeling seeing the shiny engine come out.

During the teardown I found the bottom had end taken some damage as well. There were bits of aluminum embedded in the main and rod bearings.

The oil pump had some scratches, and the cylinders / pistons had very light scratching from debris getting between the piston skirt and cylinder wall.

Knowing this wasn’t going to be a quick fix I put ole reliable back in the Civic so I could at least continue racing. I’ve done enough engine swaps on this car that I’m fairly confident I could do one blindfolded at this point.

A Few Months Later

Jumping ahead the boring bits of a rebuild the B20V was ready for a second try by early September (I had pulled it back in May). Over the summer I had brought the head to a machine shop and they gave it the ok and it just needed some light sanding to smooth out the damaged surfaces. For the bottom end I washed out the block to ensure no debris remained and replaced the bearings, rings, seals, and honed the cylinders to give the new rings something to bite into.

Another engine swap later.

And she was back!

Oil pressure is solid, the engine sounds healthy, and I was able to tune it without much trouble. As of the time of writing this, it has 1,200 miles on it and has survived multiple autocross events, 2 track days, and a few multi hour highway trips.

Also no issues hauling my minibike.

New Radiator

During my second track day with the Civic at Palmer I managed to trigger the overheat protection on my s300 and the car went into limp mode. The engine itself was fine but it had gotten hot enough to boil over the coolant and overflowed the reservoir. I had purposely set the thermal limit pretty low at 235F but nonetheless I suspected my OEM Integra radiator wasn’t up to the task of keeping th engine cool while running at 6000+ RPM for 15-20 minutes at a time.

To replace it I stepped up a solid aluminum Mishimoto radiator intended for a DC2 Integra. My custom fan shroud took a bit of modification to work with the new radiator but other than that the radiator was a drop in replacement.

I’ll be taking the cooling system one step further over the winter by building an air duct in front of the radiator to force the incoming air through the radiator and will be adding a second fan.

I may or may not add a hood vent as well if the other mods aren’t able to keep the engine cool. I need to really push it on the track first to figure out if that’ll be necessary.

New Seats

I love autocross but after each run my forearms would be hurting from having to hold onto the steering wheel for dear life to keep myself from being thrown around inside the car. I had been running a set of OEM confetti seats out of an LS Integra and they looked awesome but they don’t have big enough bolsters to keep you planted.

The arm pain was getting pretty intense so I caved and ordered a set of Corbeau A4s in black suede.

They look great, feel great and overall I’m happy with them.

The one thing I don’t like is that I now have issues with the steering wheel being too close relative to the pedals because the Corbeau’s sit lower so my legs are more flat and extend further.

I’d like to get a spacer for the steering wheel but there’s no off the shelf solutions for EG Civics from what I’ve found so far. I have seen some EK Civic spacers out there but I’d had to swap the steering column to an EK column and get a new steering wheel so I’ve been putting it off for now.

What’s Next

I haven’t decided what order I’ll tackle these in yet but I’d like to:

Shorten up the gearing in my LS trans to better suite the wider RPM range of the B20V
Improve the steering wheel setup
Improve the cooling setup
Suspension tuning like playing with spring rates and roll center correction

And definitely get more track time.