maximum safe boost for a b16a2 with JRSC?

[rmcdaniels]

How small a pulley can I put on the nose of my SC using stock internals on a b16a2 without significant risk of throwing a rod or some other undesirable outcome?

Currently I have a '99 Civic Si with the following engine mods:
Ferrea valves, springs, retainers
Jackson Racing supercharger kit with 4.2" pulley (about 6 lbs. of boost)
Jackson Racing MAP controller
Jackson Racing Boost Timing Controller
Jackson Racing VPAC VTEC/fuel controller
NGK spark plugs one temperature range cooler than stock
lower temperature thermostat
cold air intake
Greddy Header
Jackson Racing catalytic converter
Tanabe cat-back exhaust
MSD SCI ignition controller


The guy I bought the kit from (used from ebay) also sent a 3.4" pulley that he said made a lot more power, but I put the 4.2" on it just to be safe. I had the engine checked out at my local Honda Shop before the upgrade and they said my rings and bearings were in good shape. I've been using synthetic oil (Castrol Syntec 5w-30) and changing it every 5000 miles ( I tried changing it at 3000, but it looked exactly like it did when I put it in the motor, so I lengthened the interval). I currently have 77K miles on the motor, the last 7K with the JRSC kit. I love the low-end power gain, but would like to get some more power if I can do it reliably.

[STIBungy]

You didnt mention any upgrade of the fuel pump. What does the JR fuel controller do? If it doesnt bump up the fuel pressure, get an fpr.

What times are you running with the current setup?

[2000SiVTEC]

I was runnig 10 psi on my Si when I had it supercharged. I never had any problems with it other than it running too rich, but that was really my fault.

[HONDA GHANDI]

I run 10 psi on mine too. Actually its really only 9 psi here but 11 at sea level. Ihave had no problems with it. I use a AEm 1:1 FPR and not the JR FMU. I also use Hondata engine management and make 217 at the wheels with a smooth A/F curve of 12.5:1.

[rmcdaniels]

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You didnt mention any upgrade of the fuel pump. What does the JR fuel controller do? If it doesnt bump up the fuel pressure, get an fpr.

What times are you running with the current setup?
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I think the Si comes with an upgraded fuel pump vice the one that comes in a non-Si 99 Civic. I know that the JR boost upgrade kit for a Si doesn't come with a fuel pump for that reason. I tried asking the JR people about it, but they are pretty cagey about that stuff if you don't buy all the stuff new from them, and I got all my stuff used off of ebay. The JRSC kit came with a fuel pressure regulator that adjusts pressure based on intake manifold pressure. The VPAC fuel controller is used to apply the VTEC fuel map when I set my VTEC engagement to around 3000 RPM. The biggest fuel system improvement actually came from the MAP controller, which relocates the MAP sensor from the throttle body to the intake manifold where it can read boost. There is also an electronic component that intercepts the MAP sensor signal and tells the ECU what to do with it. After I got that thing installed, my MPG went way up and my mixture (per my A/F ratio gauge) got a lot more stable. With the A/F gauge I can make sure that the mixture doesn't get lean under boost and the Boost Timing Controller allows me to dial in up to two degrees of timing retard per pound of boost, so hopefully I can avoid detonation. Maybe I'm just a perfectionist about this stuff, but the JRSC kit without the MAP, BTC, and VPAC isn't that great. You have to retard the base timing so much that I went to pick up a friend of mine for lunch after I got the kit in, was sitting at the bottom of a slight incline at a red light with the AC on, let out the clutch and floored it when the light turned green, and the car proceeded to accelerate slowly to about 10MPH, then not go any faster. I left it floored for a while just because I couldn't believe it. Even after it got to the top of the hill it wouldn't go any faster. I finally had to slip the clutch and wind it up just to get going. My friend was very impressed with my mad supercharged Civic. It does work pretty well with all the electronics installed, they should include all the electronics with the kit. I've heard that a tuned Hondata controller makes it even better, but am still waiting to see one on ebay that fits my budget.

I haven't been to the track yet, I'm waiting until it's finished. I finally found a decent clutch on ebay and some time in the next month should be installing a new clutch, pressure plate, LSD (actually a Phantom Grip kit), Lightened flywheel, and I figured I'd upgrade the boost while I have it apart. After that I want to take it to a local track and see what I can do, but I still want to keep it reliable as a daily driver.

I also had to do a lot of work to unscrew the "mods" of the previous owner, but I did get a good deal on it because it was so screwed up.

I'll try to make future replies shorter.

[rmcdaniels]

Thanks for the info. Does anyone know what 10lbs of boost translates into in pulley size? I'll put the 3.4" on and see what it does, but it's a pain to change it because there is so little clearance that I have to remove the blower to change pulleys. I'd hate to get the 3.4" on and find out that it makes 15lbs and my fuel system can't handle it. How long did you run 10lbs(how many miles)? Were your lower unit internals (crank, rods, pistons) stock?

Thanks

[HONDA GHANDI]

My previous setup was:
JRSC 10psi pulley
JR map controller
APEXi VAFC fuel controller
stock injectors
JR fuel pump
MSD 6BTM ignition.

Current setup:
JRSC 10 psi
Walbro fuel pump
AEM1:1 FPR
DSm 440cc injectors
Hondata S200 with boost, datalog, launch and shift rev limits
AEM adj cam gears
MSD 6BTM ignition with Blaster HVC coil.

Current times at altitude: 13.88@100mph
at sea level: 13.14@112mph
Note: your car wont run this, unless you put it on the jenny craig diet of the century. My car is a stripped 00 Si that does nothing but go fast.

[HONDA GHANDI]

You dont have to remove theblower to change the pulleys. Its a pain in the ass but it can be done without removing anything but the belts.

[rmcdaniels]

__________________________________________________ ___________

You dont have to remove theblower to change the pulleys. Its a pain in the ass but it can be done without removing anything but the belts.

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Thanks, it looked so tight in there I just assumed it wouldn't clear the blower shaft without hitting the side of the engine compartment. I'll give it a try in a few days when I get some tinker time.

What size is your 10lb pulley? Mine have numbers that I assume are inches, one says 4.2 and the other says 3.4. Does yours have a number on it?

[rmcdaniels]

Thanks for all the info, I called JR, told them I wanted to upgrade to 10 lbs of boost, and asked what size pulley to use, but they only sell the crank pulley now and didn't want to tell me a size for a pulley that goes on the blower. Apparently a lot of people destroy the seals when removing and installing the blower pulleys, so they have elected to deny the existence of smaller JR blower pulleys. I told the guy I had one in front of me with their logo on it and he finally broke down and told me that a 3.4" pulley on a '99 Si kit makes 10 lbs. It looks like I'm ready to go.

[STIBungy]

Seems like they're a bunch of dicks. You get more useful info. from internet forums.

[rmcdaniels]

Yeah, I think they get too many people who buy incomplete used kits off of ebay and then install them improperly on the wrong car and want JR tech support to make it all better. I know whenever I call them they seem to assume that I am an idiot. Of course the easy explanation for that may be that I am an idiot, but in my inestimable estimation I am the single most brilliant genius the world has ever known, so they must just be a bunch of jerks.

I will say that the kit was not as easy to install as they say it is (or I am an idiot, but I think I've explained well enough why we can rule that out). I had to do it twice, the first time with the paid help of a professional mechanic. It seems like if you get any part of the kit installed and it is not perfectly aligned with all the other parts, you get belt slippage and bearing wear issues. The first time I installed it, it worked, but was a pain in the neck. I ended up having to use a few washers as spacers on the upper alternator bracket before I got it to line up right, after the JR people told me that all their components always fit together perfectly (no kidding, the guy said it just like that) and because I bought it used off ebay it must have a bunch of incorrect parts in it, despite the fact that I verified the parts against the parts list on their Web site. After I figured out why it was slipping (after completely removing and reinstalling the kit) it became obvious from the wear patterns on the components that the previous owner had never had it on right, which is probably why he sold it to me cheap. I also noticed a Magnusson sticker on the blower that looks kind of like an RMA sticker that I sometimes see on computer parts, so I wonder if it hasn't been rebuilt, or maybe they all come with that sticker.

At any rate I think it's a good kit, IF you get it installed perfectly, and if you NEVER use that cheesy relay/resistor arrangement they ship with it and instead at least use the JR MAP controller or some similar component to get the fuel settings right. At any rate I believe I now have the minimum necessary to run it at 10 lbs, and soon I will have a new clutch/LSD/flywheel combo in it and will post some track times.

[HONDA GHANDI]

THe magnussen sticker is on all of them. It shte manufacturer of the blower assy. The relay system is a joke. Toss it. I use mine to hold my shop door open in high winds. It works great for that.
There is no doubt in my mind that you are an Uber Genius but that doesnt make you a mechanical genius either. ;) I get guys in the shop with Masters degeres in mechanical engineering that still cant change a set of belts in less than 12 hours. Its very amusing to watch them work however. :rofl:

[rmcdaniels]

True, I'm pretty good with routers and switches, but it did take me 17 straight hours (with a mechanic, albeit an Alfa/Fiat/BMW/Porsche mechanic who dislikes Japanese cars in general and hates mine in particular) to install the kit incorrectly, so perhaps my mechanical prowess is a work in progess. At any rate I'll keep banging away at it until this car is more fun than my M3 was.

[TedR719]

Why the switch?

Originally posted by rmcdaniels
True, I'm pretty good with routers and switches, but it did take me 17 straight hours (with a mechanic, albeit an Alfa/Fiat/BMW/Porsche mechanic who dislikes Japanese cars in general and hates mine in particular) to install the kit incorrectly, so perhaps my mechanical prowess is a work in progess. At any rate I'll keep banging away at it until this car is more fun than my M3 was.

[rmcdaniels]

The technology bust devastated the Raleigh/Durham/RTP area. The company I worked for tanked, and I had to take a job that pays a little over half what I was making before. I had to sell my M3, my nice watch, and my big fancy house and was about 30 days from bankruptcy. I'm working again, but for much less money. The Civic is definitely not a step up from a M3, but it's a lot of fun, and there are an unbelievable number of performance mods for it that are relatively cheap. I was looking at FI for my M3 before I became unemployed, and it was going to cost about four times as much as the FI cost for the Civic. Additionally there was nowhere near the selection of mods for the M3. I looked at a few cars before I bought the Civic, but one of the deciding factors was the available selection of performance mods. Now that I have the Civic, I'm also finding that I can do a lot of the work on it myself, which is turning out to be a lot of fun. The M3 was a lot more complicated and I was afraid to do too much to it myself because the motor alone cost more than I paid for my entire Civic and there are nowhere near as many clean used M3 motors laying around as there are B16 motors if I grenade one (and yes, I did grenade the M3 motor once, and it cost me many thousands of dollars to get it fixed).

[HONDA GHANDI]

damn. Starting over sucks.

[rmcdaniels]

It's finally all together, and boy does it suck. When I accelerate, It initially goes lean and starts detonating, then when VTEC kicks in around 3000 RPM it gets rich and makes lots of power, then when the revs get around 4-5K it leans out and detonates constantly. I adjusted the FPR, but it had very little effect and if I try to set the base pressure up around 60PSI, it gets real flaky. I'm thinking the stock fuel pump can't make enough pressure, which is something that was mentioned earlier in this thread. I found a Walbro 255 unit for a good price and have ordered it. Until it gets here I'll just keep my foot out of it so the boost doesn't come on.