The Absolute VTEC Macheen

[Bilbo]

Despite the misleading thread title, this is in fact a non-VTEC Honda Civic, with a mighty 90hp 1.4 D14 engine, a BTEC engine if you will.


The new daily, swapped for the mighty K11 and £200, it's actually pretty good! Almost a year's MOT, M2 rear lower arm things, coilovers, it's a beast!






It's the Tornado model, in Tornado Red, very fast and much race.


It came with some cool seats out of a Type R/DC2 Integra or something like that, but sadly it was going to add some cost onto the px, so I used them for a day while I found an OE seat, and have now removed them to return to my mate.




As you can see it is fully stripped out, and had some potentially snide harness setup (which I have now removed because OE seats of course).




I've put some interior neons in it already because I am fast, and potentially furious.






Unbelievable scenes. It also has a Spoon rep exhaust, which we have named the Spork, and some stainless manifold/downpipe that blows like a mf, I'll just weld the flange up on it, can't blow if there's no flange can it? Of course it also has a cone filter to hear the glorious BTEC in action.

It has some MaxSpeedingRods coilovers which actually aren't truly horrendous, and it handles quite well really, despite being on absolute balloon tyres and I think boggo EP2 wheels for now.


It's not exactly fast but it's quicker than the Micra and is just as cheap to insure, so it's a good daily, and it sounds alright on the limi. I also got a D16 inlet manifold with it which is supposed to be good for another 15hp ish, so I'll get that fitted soon. All in all, happy.

[Horney]

Live this, looks a riot.

[Zed.]

D series engine?

mate has this (in a '97 civic) that we keep discussing fettling although he's talking about selling the car so maybe no playtime



Rich.

[Bilbo]

Feb 2, 2021 13:05:41 GMT Horney said:

Live this, looks a riot.

It's actually great haha, I can see why people rate them.

[Bilbo]

Feb 2, 2021 13:35:55 GMT Zed. said:

D series engine?

mate has this (in a '97 civic) that we keep discussing fettling although he's talking about selling the car so maybe no playtime



Rich.

Yeah D14a4, so the 90hp one, I know some came with the D14A3 which had some different intake valve going on and they were 75hp.

You can chuck a D16 inlet straight on with some minor adjustments and it's meant to be good for like 15hp gain, something to do with the plenum being larger and much better flowing.

[scottydugg]

Shame to see the Micra go (I was hoping you'd turbo it), but this is probably better in every conceivable way.

[suggs84]

As above, sad to see the little Micra beast go as that had some potential, BUT.... this has even more potential! So fair play!

I got all excited when i saw those seats and was going to comment how much they are worth but alas, a fair deal to give them back - I had a red 30th Anni EP3 with red Recaros and it was epic, i bought the genuine Spoon exhaust for it so it the rep sounds even close to it, must be a riot!

[atlex]

Kswap ?

I love civics.

[howardb66]

Glad you removed the harnesses, in the unlikely event of an accident the rear floor anchors would compress your spine. That’s why the MSA specifically say it should be as near to horizontal as possible.

[Bilbo]

Feb 2, 2021 15:20:27 GMT scottydugg said:

Shame to see the Micra go (I was hoping you'd turbo it), but this is probably better in every conceivable way.

Haha, would have been funny, but yeah I think these have good potential, and it's pretty cool as it is.

Feb 2, 2021 17:54:18 GMT suggs84 said:

As above, sad to see the little Micra beast go as that had some potential, BUT.... this has even more potential! So fair play!

I got all excited when i saw those seats and was going to comment how much they are worth but alas, a fair deal to give them back - I had a red 30th Anni EP3 with red Recaros and it was epic, i bought the genuine Spoon exhaust for it so it the rep sounds even close to it, must be a riot!

It's a shame about the seats, but tbh I got an EM1 driver's seat for £35 with the rail and buckle, and it's not even that bad of a seat tbh! Yeah it sounds alright, though even with the cat still in it's very droney in the car, then again there is literally no interior behind the front seat so I guess that's expected haha. It also has some Ebay manifold/downpipe, it was blowing so badly, so I've just had the entire flange welded up on it haha, can't blow if there's no flange to blow through!

Feb 2, 2021 20:49:37 GMT atlex said:

Kswap ?

I love civics.

Hahaha, no way, I have a D15 intake manifold which has the larger plenum which I will be fitting, but other than that I don't think engine stuff will happen with this, 5 has to take priority for now. My mate is doing exactly this on his though, K swap.

Feb 3, 2021 9:11:16 GMT howardb66 said:

Glad you removed the harnesses, in the unlikely event of an accident the rear floor anchors would compress your spine. That’s why the MSA specifically say it should be as near to horizontal as possible.

Yeah I wasn't keen on it at all, it felt cool putting harness on, but just on those eyelets, I dunno. Not sure how he'd fitted the eyelets either, whether there was a spreader plate behind, probably not. Standard seatbelt has put my mind at rest about it.

[Crumpets]

Love this as i have a soft spot for old hondas!
The mighty D14! Cracking' little motor.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with it!

[FFS Corders]

Much honourable rice. Do an skid

[Bilbo]

So I sorted out the manifold-downpipe blow by just having the entire flange welded together, there's a ton of room to remove as one piece, and now it doesn't blow, so great success.

As I said I had a D15 intake manifold given to me with the car, it's a bolt on swap but requires a bit of messing with various things to get working.

Photo courtesy of Dodo, who has a load of cool info on D14 engines: dodo-upgrades.nl/index.php/intake-manifold-swap/



As you can see the standard D14A4 intake manifold is "downflow", where the throttle body just attaches straight into the 4 runners with no real plenum to speak of.


So I swapped the D15 manifold on (I believe it's a D15 after researching part number stamp). It took a lot of messing with coolant lines, opening up the loom for some better plug reach, blocking off some lines, extending some vac lines etc.

The original plan was to run the D14 throttle body, but the gasket had a tear and I was having massive idle issues with the idle control valve. So I swapped it for the D15 throttle body, running idle screw only for now. I will probably refit the other one at some point, but this gets it working, just idles a bit low when cold and takes longer to warm up. It was a ballache as the other one has coolant lines run through the idle valve, so I ended up having to bleed the coolant twice when I changed it again.

I bought a new gasket for the intake manifold to head, and spent ages with a blade getting the old gasket off of the head, 127,000 miles of heat cycles made it a bit of a nuisance.

Got in on and looks good:




The next issue was due to using the D15 throttle body the throttle pulley is round the other way, so I had to do a weld. I took the standard throttle cable bracket and cut it, extended it, and flipped the hooked part around, welded it up and it now holds the throttle cable nicely in its new position:





I didn't have much to make an intake feed out of, so janked together something with a mate's intercooler kit, an old filter from a Randall Cowl setup on the MX-5, and some cable ties and hazard tape:




Absolute budget motoring, cost me 20 odd quid to do it all, just had to buy coolant and the gasket, everything else I just pieced together from spares in the unit.

Having some jerky bucking throttle issues on very low throttle inputs, so I think the TPS on this throttle body is a bit dead, I'll swap my original one on soon, should sort it.

No idea if it adds power, but seems more lively, and it sounds a lot more rowdy than it did, so there's that, plus it looks cool. 2/10 would not recommend.

[FFS Corders]

Mods for making noisesare my favourite

I have the same low input jerkiness on the BROleno, I just take it as extra character

[Zed.]

Stop fuckin around with this & just drive it, the 5 is more important



Rich.