Breathing Cooler Air

It's a well known fact that colder air has higher O2 density than hot air.  Hence if we could supply as much cold air as possible into the combustion chamber, we will have a better chance of increasing the power output of the engine.  So that's being the motivation, it's time to look for the best Cold Air Intake (CAI) system available.

After much readings, it seems that the AEM cold air intake is best intake system on the market. Many have proven via dyno result that this system makes the most power of ANY intake system in the market, in comparison with other brands such Iceman, Weapon R, RS Akimoto, PRM, etc. Some of the reasons include how the system was engineered where AEM claimed that they "tunes" the system to each application - the length of the overall tubing, the diameter of the tubing, and the minimal number of bends all work together to make this system create the maximum power from your motor.  In addition, the tubes are ceramic-coated, which reduces the absorption of heat from the engine bay.

So I've decided to go with AEM.  Unfortunately, I 've made a mistake during ordering the correct P/N for the CAI.  There are so many models available in AEM's catalog.  So I thought I should go with the one that is meant for the chasis i.e. 4 door EK.  I ended up with this:

Upon its arrival, I found out that it didn't fit my EK's engine bay.  The design of the pipe requires it to go through a hole at the chasis beam behind the headlight, which my EK doesn't has that.  I can either drill a hole for the pipe to go through, or sell it off and buy the correct one.  I decided to go with the latter, and the AEM CAI fits nicely in my friend's EJ (locally assembled EK i.e. Malaysian Domestic Market or MDM).

Back to AEM catalog, after much studying on the model numbers, I then realized that there is in fact a hybrid unit that is meant for B-series engine transplant into the Civics.  The unit comes in a larger pipe diameter at 3", instead of 2.5" like my previous unit.  It is obvious now that this is the one for me.  How here it is, as it arrived to me:

The good thing about this unit is that it comes with the replacement bracket for the gearbox, so we can discard the bulky and ugly front gearbox bracket, and replace it with the nice and shiny bracket in the bottom left of the above photo.  I'll show you how it looks in the engine bay later on.

The air filter is grey in color instead of white.

This is the Air Bypass Valve, which is meant to avoid the intake system from sucking water into the engine.  If there is an occasion where there is a heavy rain or the car is being driven through a pool of water that the end of the intake is completely submerged, this handy thingy is supposed to let air comes through it (instead of from the end of the pipe) thus avoiding water from being sucked into the engine and kills it.  But I am not going to install it, since I usually don't go trouble myself driving through a pool of water on the road if I see them (although that is sometimes quite hard to avoid in this country by the way).

Fueling the Fire

In the past, I had encountered several occasions on the dyno where the tuner said something like: "Can't go higher (whp), fuel maxed out already!".  I'm sure many of us have had the same problem during our crave for more power out of the engine.  To those who are unfamiliar with the term, it means that the stock fuel system can no longer be tweaked any further to supply more fuel to the combustion chamber to make more power.

Because of the modifications done to the cylinder head, as well as replacement of the intake manifold and throttle body, and usage of higher profile camshafts, the amount of air that is rushing into the combustion chamber has increased significantly.  To take advantage of this, more fuel is needed to keep the Air/Fuel ratio at its optimum level to produce the much desired power.  Coupled with proper ignition tuning, we should be able to fine tune the engine to work exactly like what we want it to, when we want it to.  Good idle when standing still, and when we floor the paddle, it would give us a big grin in face.  Because of this, fuel system upgrade is essential!

The first to look at is the fuel pump.  The stock fuel pump is said to be more than enough for application up to 200whp.  That should be enough for the engine that I am building now.  Nevertheless, I have replaced the stock fuel pump with one from the EP3 Civic Type R, since the later is relatively newer than the stock fuel pump that might have been there in the tank since 1996.  So hopefully it'll perform better and will last longer.  Some said that its flow rate is somewhat higher than the stock pump, but I can't find a written data to support that claim.  The pump looks exactly like the stock fuel pump, so there's no need for its photo .

Next is the fuel filter.  I went for the AEM unit.  The manufacturer claimed that it flows better than OEM filter.  But honestly, I picked it because it look nicer than then stock unit, and add colors to the engine bay.

Exiting from the filter, I have replaced the stock fuel hose with a stainless steel braided unit by Russell.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it, but it's a complete kit that looks like this:

The hose is then attached to the Skunk2 Composite Fuel Rail, that is lighter and stronger (as well as nicer) that the stock rail, and claimed by the manufacturer to cause the fuel to flow at a much colder temperature than the stock metal unit.

Finally, the task of spraying the fuel directly into the combustion chamber is given to a set of 370cc RC Engineering saturated fuel injectors.  This should give sufficient fuel for my current application, as well as future modification if I decide to go with higher requirement (if the injectors last that long!).