Building for the road course...again

[Enki]

What's the class cost of a similar powered swap?

 

[gotovato]

I say get a BMW. An older 3 series or 5 series and race that. You'll go RWD but spare engines can be had for cheap plus they'll handle well. By older I mean you can get a 2012-2016 340i for less than 10k and its an inline 6 turbo. Do the crank hub upgrade and you'll be good to go.

It sucks you keep going through motors with your Honda. Being that you like high revving NA engines, another option would be to do a early 90s Corolla but with a 4AG Silvertop or Blacktop swap. You can also buy a FWD 6 speed transmission that bolts right in too. I had a Silvertop swap in my 91 Celica. Nothing like ITBs from the factory plus a 8.5k redline stock.

If you followed the Formula Atlantic build specs for those engines they put down about 280-300 NA hp revving to 12-13k.

Good job on keeping up with those AWD cars with double your power. That isnt an easy feat considering their weight isnt that much higher than yours.

You bring up alot of interesting unique build options. I like them.

Those 340i make stupid power and have great handling aftermarket. To go mid to high effort on a time attack build it could be stupid fast. Damn lol.

Part of my problem is being in Canada. Shits so expensive here. It’s all bought from the US so taxes and shipping and exchange makes it dumb

 

[gotovato]

What's the class cost of a similar powered swap?

Hmm. That’s an interesting question. I’m actually not sure.

If I went k24 in my one series I’d be fine. Same class. I could make more power and torque but losing rpm means I need to fuck around with gearing which gets expensive again

 

[Easter Bunny]

New plan drive/trailer the car to raiders new place in Ohio for a build weekend

 

[L337TurboZ]

Part of my problem is being in Canada. Shits so expensive here. It’s all bought from the US so taxes and shipping and exchange makes it dumb

How far from the border are you? What if you buy it in the US and then just pick it up instead of having it shipped to you directly?

 

[gotovato]

How far from the border are you? What if you buy it in the US and then just pick it up instead of having it shipped to you directly?

I would love to do this. I’m about 1.5 hours from the Niagara Falls border right into Buffalo. I just need a US shipping address I guess?

 

[gotovato]

New plan drive/trailer the car to raiders new place in Ohio for a build weekend

Haha yea that’d be cool. With the truck and trailer now I can tow this thing anywhere. It’s nice.


Thinking I’ll have to assemble the short block with the parts I have, then just wait until I can afford a new cylinder head setup. It might be later in the season but better than another oem long block?

 

[Easter Bunny]

how much is a junkyard motor?

 

[gotovato]

how much is a junkyard motor?

600-800 on marketplace. Junk yards want 1000-1400.


I have a guy maybe 25 minutes up the street from me. He runs a part out business parting out all the desirable Hondas. Civic si, rsx, tsx, blah blah. He’s my personal scrap yard I’ve dealt with him enough that we’re kinda buddies now.


He called me today saying he wants to offer me a sponsorship deal to get me back out there. He offered me a k24 long block, k20 long block, or just a cylinder head. Whatever I want. I just gotta run his decal which is no problem.


I just took at look at my cams and valve train and it looks completely mint. Definitely reusable.

I think the move is my budget forged short block with the same head package I ran now. That would be a healthy setup considering the power vdyno said this shit was making as is.


I know reusing the rods from my blown motor might be sketchy but in my NA engine the rods are likely the least stressed components. Power stroke is fuck all and compression stroke is also fuck all. Because NA the rods are just along for the ride. It’s the rod bolts, pistons, and wrist pins that hate their lives

 

[Enki]

I know reusing the rods from my blown motor might be sketchy but in my NA engine the rods are likely the least stressed components. Power stroke is fuck all and compression stroke is also fuck all. Because NA the rods are just along for the ride. It’s the rod bolts, pistons, and wrist pins that hate their lives

Do *NOT* underestimate the stresses that RPM puts on the rods. All that hate the wristpins have for themselves is channeled through the rods.

 

[Easter Bunny]

Pistons are probably close to breaking the sound barrier every stroke

 

[Enki]

There's math that can be done to figure that out, but having a longer rod ratio lowers the mean (psure it's mean not median) piston speed, but still, it's not entirely uncommon for a rod to be pulled apart like taffy if the conditions are right.

 

[gotovato]

Pistons are probably close to breaking the sound barrier every stroke

Piston speeds are quite high. Here’s some numbers

K20(86mm stroke) 26.3m/s @ 9200rpm
K20(86mm stroke) 23.7m/s @ 8300rpm(factory rev limiter)
K24(99mm stroke) 29.9m/s @ 9000rpm
K24(99mm stroke) 23.1m/s @ 7000rpm(factory rev limit)

2025 F1 engine(53mm stroke) 26.5m/s @ 15,000rpm

2025 nascar engine(83mm stroke) 24.9m/s @ 9000rpm

As we can see, the numbers are ridiculous. In the aftermarket world we mainly get China crap and we’re asking it to perform at the same level as F1 and nascar. People really think oem Honda block or China forged internals are on par with nascar and F1? A high revving k24 is drag only. It will not last with me on track. It will probably die in 1 race. If it lasts tuning that is.


The load also isn’t linear. 100rpm is not just “a little more stressful”. The load increases exponentially with rpm. It’s pretty wild shit

 

[gotovato]

Do *NOT* underestimate the stresses that RPM puts on the rods. All that hate the wristpins have for themselves is channeled through the rods.

This is fair. The risk is there but I still trust BC rods over the cheaper shit out there. I know it’s all China but BC is slightly better China

 

[jdab555]

I hit the realization (without blowing motors but still) that I:

A: Will never be truly competitive in a speed3.
B: Really like my car and the noises it makes.
C: Am only really interested in driving MY car on track.

That helped me a lot in my investment/enjoyment calculations. If you really like the platform, stick with it and find ways to track it cheap; if you really want to be competitive, get a better platform that really rewards a great driver. Tracking a car really sucks when it's all about breaking expensive motors instead of breaking cheap shit.

 

[Easter Bunny]

Yea velocity is squared in the load calcs so it gets bonkers pretty fast.

In other news 2.3 liter lima 4 has a shorter stroke....
96.04 mm (3.78 in) bore and 79.4 mm (3.13 in)

 

[gotovato]

I hit the realization (without blowing motors but still) that I:

A: Will never be truly competitive in a speed3.
B: Really like my car and the noises it makes.
C: Am only really interested in driving MY car on track.

That helped me a lot in my investment/enjoyment calculations. If you really like the platform, stick with it and find ways to track it cheap; if you really want to be competitive, get a better platform that really rewards a great driver. Tracking a car really sucks when it's all about breaking expensive motors instead of breaking cheap shit.

The car is already competitive. It’s actually overly competitive. Keep in mind my class is 2x the HP and 3x the torque and I’m right there with them.

If I move down 10mm in tire size I can run in the appropriate class for a car of my build and in that class it would almost not be fair.

With how developed the chassis is there’s absolutely nothing I could buy and build for even double the cost that’ll touch it. I’m in Canada. There’s nothing cheap here. Not quick and dirty builds.

a type R is minimum 40k for last gen, current gen is 65k+. Still needs wheels and tires and it’ll lay down similar lap times. Imagine blowing one of those engines? Fucking gg boys.

The Hyundai N cars don’t appeal to me. They have engines blowing up left right and center. Just poor build quality. Oil squirting falling off on oem unmodified blocks.

Wanna talk about brz’s? As someone who spends many many days competing…minimum 2 brz’s blow up per event. During my May event 3 brz’s lost their engines and 2 started smoking so bad they are going to need engines.

no platform is perfect. There’s no golden goose so to say. Cars are pieces of shit and the sooner people realize that the happier they’ll become.


I took an oem long block with 225k miles on it and revved it way way way way past any sort of safe zone. I took the risk. My tuner warned me and I said let’s go fully understanding it’s gonna pop.

my forged engine only failed because Wiseco sucks. 0 to do with me.


All of the above being said, there is a difference between being competitive and fighting for podium vs “just having fun” and fighting for 7th. It’s a different mindset, different strategy. Tenths are important when you’re 3 tenths off first place. Tenths don’t matter when you’re 3 seconds off first place.

it’s hard to explain it to people who don’t compete. Most of my career has been open lapping just having a good time but now the competition bug has bit me and I love it. It’s all part of the game.

 

[gotovato]

Am I any worse then idiots blowing up their speed3’s doing Mexico pulls? To me that’s embarrassing. Nobody gives a fuck about your highway pull against a GTI. Literally nobody cares yet guys are blowing their shit up for what?

 

[Enki]

TBF my shit blew up (come to find out, not really) because of Wiseco.

 

[gotovato]

TBF my shit blew up (come to find out, not really) because of Wiseco.

You suffered a Wiseco related failure as well????? Sometimes failures happen due to quality of parts. As an end user it’s difficult to find a company to trust. Specially when every single person on the internet is a fucking liar.

“I rev my k20 to 9k allllllll day”.
Lmao. No you don’t.

“Wiseco is amazing in my race car..which I race in Mexico doing 5 pulls per month”.

that’s the shit we have to go off of. Fucking useless.