For the CRX I wanted to make a crapload of power :) Who doesn’t right? I did allot of research on the parts I put into this build. The dimensioning was a critical subject for me.
Like the age-old adage “There is no replacement for displacement” I wanted to make the engine going into the CRX as big as possible, while maintaining a good rod/stroke ratio. The golden R/S ratio is supposed to be 1.75/1. I believe the stock B18C has a R/S of 1.55/1 (I’ll update this when I find my notes).
A stock B18C has a stock stroke of 87.2mm and a stock piston diameter of 81mm with a total displacement of ~1798cc or 1.8l if you want to round it out.
What I was aiming for was a 2l+ setup, so I wanted to go with a stroke of 92mm (4.8mm longer) and a piston of 84mm (3mm larger) to give me a total displacement of 2040cc’s. The only problem I could see was my R/S ratio….
Enter the DART Tall Deck block. It has an extra 14mm of deck height. If you do the math, you will see that I was able to stroke my motor and get a better R/S ratio. The final R/S ended up being 1.72/1. J
The Parts List:
DART Tall Deck Block www.dartheads.com
Crower Crank @ 92mm www.crower.com
Crower Rods www.crower.com
CP Pistons www.cppistons.com
ACL Bearings www.acl.com.au
Type R Oil Pump
Moroso Oil Pan www.moroso.com
As far as the final machining and assembly of the block I left that up a good friends and professional engine builders Earl and Mike Laskey of Laskey Racing.
www.laskeyracing.com
I actually met Earl a while back when I took an EFI-101 class. He is good friends with Ben Strader, the founder of EFI101.com . Earl is a very cool old school guy with a background in domestic car racing and has adopted the Honda community as part of his every day life. I don’t think you will ever find a more “stand up” guy in the business.
Here is the write-up of the engine build that Earl wrote on my block.
The original post on Honda-Tech can be found here : Click Here
The block was full of shavings from the factory. We had to clean the oil and coolant passages several times to insure the block was clean internally.
GE plugs were installed to seal the oil squirter holes. Squirters not necessary for forged pistons.
The block came with a 83.75mm unfinished bore diameter. Block was sent to Bensons for an 84mm bore. An interesting thing happened there. After boring, the sleeves had RAISED .006". (They came flat from the factory.) Benson pressed the sleeves back down to zero and then surfaced .003" off of the deck. If he had surfaced the block before pressing the sleeves down, we would have had dropped sleeves. Note the installed oil squirter plugs.
A 92mm Crower crank was chosen for the build. I had Benson spin it just in case but it was in perfect balance. Note the Crower counterweights are slightly thinner than the stock gsr crank behind it. Long rods were chosen for the build. The final rod/stroke ratio was a cool 1.69-1.
The crank was cross drilled by Crower for better oil control. Note the pipe cleaners going in 2 different directions from the same hole.
The main caps are torqued to 65lbs. Main bearing clearance came out at .0016" across the board. Nice QC on the block and crank made that easy.
CP Pistons were used in the build. The top ring was kept low on the piston for heat control with turbo usage. The rings were packed close together as the oil ring was in the pin hole already. Note the use of a button to support the lower oil rail and keep the pin in place.
A view of the long Crower rod to compensate for the 3/4" extra deck height.
Rod side clearance came out perfect at .012". Rod bearing clearance also came out at .0016", just like the mains.
Short-short is complete. Note the thinner counterweights.
Windage tray, typeR oil pump, Moroso pick-up and longer studs installed. You must use a Dart dip stick with the block.
Moroso pan fit nice. I was pleasantly surprised with its quality.
CP Piston dish was designed to help with the quench and allow an extra large SuperTech valve to be installed in the custom PortFlow head we did.
Birds eye view of the block. The size came out to be 2040cc's.
Block is sealed for shippment. Note the Fluidine dampner. Timing mark on the balancer was dead on.
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UPDATE!!
Some time in November of 05', I hurt the motor due to some bad cam/crank signals that caused my motor to detonate, cracking my #3 & 4 pistons. Due to the scaring that happened to cylinder walls I had to go even bigger with my pistons.
The new pistons are still made by CP but this time they are 84.5mm in diameter. That is going to bring the motor to a total of 2064cc. I’ve made some changes to my overall set that you can read about in the Engine Management/Electrical section of this site.
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