Dan Chwalibog here with a long update. I haven't really been active in the community for the last couple of years as I've made some pretty significant life choices that has led me into a new career and has also led me from Maryland to Georgia (Go Dawgs... apparently). However I still have this little rust bucket
. A bit of my car history... Some of you might recall that I had an EK coupe with a B18C1 in it that I totaled in a dispute with some wildlife about 10 years ago. What you may not know is that I pulled everything from that and have been lugging it around with me for about 5 different houses collecting parts along the way. Luckily I acquired this crap little auto DX hatch that I bought for $500
at the time. I switched it to manual in time to experience its 1.5 liters of fury at Expo 12 at Mid-Ohio. Shortly after I was fortunate enough to buy Jay Haire's black GSR, it was owned by Nate and then Conleycakes before I acquired it. I then promptly broadsided a work van totaling it... I bought it back from insurance and stripped it. Now I had two B18C1 motors each with a Type R trans, one assembled and in working condition the one dismantled to make it easier to store. Time for the D15 to go! I put in the motor from the GSR as it was as simple as taking it from the integra and dropping into the civic. Along the way I replaced the suspension: In the front I have junk2 upper control arms, with GC and koni shocks and springs, integra lower control arm and knuckle with hardrace bushings and ITR brakes along with Kingpin compliance bushings. In the rear I have the PCI trailing arm bushings, along with PCI camber and toe kits. Integra rear disc and an ITR rear sway finish up the rear. The car was great, attended EXPO 14 at Road America and except for an overheating issue the car was a lot of fun to drive with the motor that Jay and King Motorsports built; and that's how it stayed for years.
Since I moved down south the car has been solid, but I noticed at an event at my first event in 5 years at Atlanta Motorsports Park it had started to burn more oil. Also, I got black flagged for how loud the Buddy Club Spec 2 was.
Come September 2019 I bought the book, How to rebuild Honda B-Series Engines circa 2008, and finally dusted off that old C1 block from my EK and began disassembling it.
I took it to a local machine shop here in Gainesville GA and it was bored and honed to .02 over it. During my decade of acquiring parts i had an OEM bottom end gasket kit along with new oil pump and water pump. I purchased replacement OEM bearings and a set of P30 pistons which I put on the stock rods after they had been checked by the machine shop. I purchased a second set of rings for the pistons cause apparently I'm less accurate at grinding them down when I drink...(what a noob). I then came across a set of Toda B spec cams that were for sale on this site! It's not easy talking a pregnant wife into a set of cams, she didn't even know what they are, lol. By November I moved the block indoors to begin assembly.
Taking my time and researching the different ways of assembling the motor, from the book, to the factory book, to the internet I almost got it together by the time Joanna was born in February.
LOLDuring my 3 weeks I took off work between helping my wife with the baby I finally finished putting it back together and threw it in the car, (Erik the viking Hegganator and I had revamped the head years before with new valve seals and toda springs and retainers).
I reached out Derek at IMW in Carlisle PA as I, like many of us, am familiar with his work and have been to the shop during the PA MEATZ!! I was able to get a baseline tune in order for the initial start up and on April 1st it finally ran for the first time. The only issues I really had at the time was not freaking out about any and all noise the car was making. Making sure it came up to temperature and checking for any leaks.... which there were.
I had an oil leak so bad I ended up putting kitty litter down so I could park on top of it to soak up what was running down the header. I was like "no big deal, I've had leaks like this before." I bought a magnaflow muffler, and took it to a shop and got it welded up to take care of the black flag issue. Back to the oil leak, I replaced the oil pan gasket, that didn't fix it. I replaced the PCV gasket, which was a lot easier than I remember, to no avail. Keep in mind this is on a fresh build which I had already replaced those gaskets with fresh ones. I want to get it up to Carlisle and not have it take an oily shit on the dyno. The motor was hemorrhaging oil faster than the deep water horizon. This past week I jacked up the front end of the car and was going to switch out the PVC black box thinking even with the new gasket it still didn't seal. I cranked the car and slid under it and just watched with the flashlight on my phone. Low and behold https://youtu.be/qFtaowjZ4Ic The weld had failed on the bottom of the PVC box. Luckily I already pulled it off the other block and replaced it. Took it for a drive and HEY! No more smoke show. I seriously felt like stereotype down here for awhile. Don't get me wrong the cars still fuggin rough, but at least I'm no longer straight piping it in a cloud of smoke down the GA backroads.
Here's how it sits today.
The only thing left is to go through IMWs checklist for the dyno and schedule my trip and my time for a tune. The plan is to get back into HPDEs and make the transition to R comps.
It seems like things have changed in this community in the past few years. I hope we can still schedule at least one event a year that we can all make it out to. It'll be nice to see Yack ride a bike on fire, watch Steez and Jesus drunkenly slip and slide all while drinking beer and doing burnouts in golf carts.
