MENUTuning the Honda R series
"Building the best modified Honda R series engine!"
Carref prides itself on providing the latest tips and guides to your modification project.
TorqueCars will examine R series tuning and provide tips on the greatest upgrades.
Honda R series make awesome project engines and with the right sports parts like remaps, turbo kits and camshafts you will maximize your driving enjoyment.
We rely on our visitors to pass on tips and tell us about their projects and what worked on their car, and this article is the culmination of the feedback we have received. First let us look at the history and specs of this engine and then consider which tuning modifications work best on it.
History of the Engine
- 2006 1.6 L R16A (Honda Civic) i-VTEC
(Singapore, Egypt, Turkey, Cyprus) - 2006 1.8 L R18A1 (Honda Civic) i-VTEC
- 2006 1.8 L R18A2 (Honda Civic) i-VTEC (EDM)
- 2006 2.0 L R20A1 (Honda Stream) i-VTEC
- 2013 2.0 L R20A1 (Acura ILX) i-VTEC
Tuning the Honda R series and best R series performance parts.
What are the most effective R series parts
When talking about the best greatest for your R series engine, we are going to focus on the upgrades that give the best power gain for you spend.
The camshaft profile plays a big part in the engines power output so camshaft upgrades make quite a large difference. The intake and exhaust durations will alter depending on the chosen camshaft profile, so large engines power gains are on offer for camshaft upgrades.
Fast road cams tend to boost the performance across the rpm band, you could drop a little low end bhp but your high end rpm power will be better.
Motorsport cams, boost the high end rpm power band but as a result the car will not idle smoothly and low end power nearly always suffers.
A Competition camshaft won't do well if on the daily commute.
You should ideally match your bhp range to your usage of the car so for a car driven daily stick with a mild fast road R series camshaft
Some R series engines respond better to mild camshaft durations so view each engine as unique.
The map and fuelling also will make differences on the power gains you'll achieve.
Altering valve durations can alter the power band and on most engines the exhaust and intake durations do not need to match, although most cams and tuners use matched pairs there are some advantages to extending the intake or exhaust durations.
Please watch our introduction Video tutorial to car tuning. Be sure to subscribe and support our new channel.
How to tune your car
- Improve the handling
Focus on Suspension improvements, such as coilovers and make sure the bushings are in good order and that the alignment is correct. Then focus on improving the brakes, with a big disk brake conversion kit and fast road brake pads.
- Remove restrictions
Focus on the intake and exhaust with filters being the common point of restriction in a tuned car. Intercoolers may also become restrictive on turbo engines so this may also need to be uprated.
- Burn more fuel & air
Increase the fuelling so it matches the air coming into the engine. The ratio is important so you need to improve the fuel pump and injectors, so the head mods, big valve conversions, fast road camshafts and forced induction upgrades extra supply of air is adequately met.
- Test and replace any weak parts
Weak areas are commonly the clutch, the turbocharger and pistons and crankshaft in a highly tuned engine. Makes sure these components will cope with your power aspirations.
- The Tune or Remap
A cars ECU controls the fuel, timing, spark and even the turbo in some cases, so to fully extract your gains you should remap the car last and this will fully release the power. Some cars are easy to map, and others require piggyback ECU's or aftermarket ECU's but this is the most vital step of your tuning project.
Modifying to Stage 1:
Fast road camshaft, Sports exhaust manifold, Panel air filters, Drilled & smoothed airbox, Remaps/piggy back ECU, Intake headers.
Modifying to Stage 2:
Ported and polished head, fuel pump upgrades, Fast road cam, induction kit, Sports catalyst & performance exhaust, high flow fuel injectors.
Modifying to Stage 3:
Internal engine upgrades (head flowing porting/bigger valves), Adding or Upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Engine balancing & blueprinting, Twin charging conversions, Crank and Piston upgrades to alter compression, Competition cam.
ECU mapping should help to release the full potential of all the mods you've done to your R series.
It will usually give around 30% more power on turbocharged vehicles and you can expect to see around 15% on NASP engines, but power output usually rely on the mods you've fitted and the condition of your engine.
Feeding air into your R series is the main goal to any engine upgrade task.
Intake take the air from the filter and allow it to be sucked into the engine cylinders with fuel for the squish phase.
The size of bore and shape and rate of flow of the Headers can make a large effect on to fuel mixing and power on the R series.
I usually find air intake manifolds are needing aftermarket tuning parts, although a few OEM provide reasonably well designed air intake manifolds.
Fitting big valve kits, carrying out R series port enlargement and head flowing will also boost power, & more importantly will raise potential for raising the power increase on other mods.
Which turbo upgrades are best?
NASP engines need quite a lot of work when you add a turbo, so we have a separate guide to help you take into account the pros and cons of going this route on your R series
The more air you can get into an engine, the more fuel it can burn and uprating the induction with a turbocharger upgrade makes impressive power gains.
When your car is turbo charged modifications are going to net you a larger power gain and you'll see that turbo charged engines are made with more solid components.
There are common areas of failure for every engine, with some being over specified and some just sufficiently able to handle stock power
Research these limits and fit better pistons and crank to survive the power.
It's not unheard of people spending a lot of money on turbocharger upgrades on the R series only to watch the car throw a rod just after it's been finished.
It is common that there is a limit in the air flow sensor MAF/MAP on these engines when considerably more air is being drawn into the engine.
You'll see that 4 bar air sensors coping with quite large power gains, whereas the OEM air sensor was restricting performance at a much lower level.
Adding a supercharger or additional turbo will make large torque gains, although harder to get working. We have this in depth look at twinchargers if you want to read more.
Fuelling
You will need to ensure that the engine is not starved of fuel so will need to increase the fuelling when you start extending past 20% of a performance increase.
It makes sense to be generous with your injectors flow rate.
The accepted safe increase is to add 20% to the flow rate when buying an injector, this takes into account injector deterioration and allows some spare capacity should the engine require more fuel.
We think this one is common sense, but you'll need to match your fuel injector to the type of fuel your car uses as well.
Choosing the right performance exhaust
One of the most common mistakes and problems we see in tuning projects is usually down to the exhaust, or rather a poorly chosen exhaust for your engine.
You only need to to increase your exhaust if your current exhaust is creating a restriction in flow.
On most factory exhausts you'll find the flow rate is ok even on modest power gains, but when you start pushing up the power levels you will need to get a better flowing exhaust.
Sports exhausts can help increase the flow of gases through the engine.
But if the exhaust is too large, ie: it's over 2.5 inches bore, you will lose a great deal of the exhaust flow rate and end up losing power and torque.
Typically exhaust restrictions are traced to the emissions filters installed, so adding a faster flowing performance alternative will help avoid this restriction.
Weak spots Issues & problem areas on the
The engines are generally reliable and solid as long as they are regularly serviced and maintained.
Regular oil changes are vital on the , especially when tuned and will help extend the life and reliability of the engine.
For more information on Tuning your engine please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss tuning options in more detail with our owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.
Please help us improve these tips by sending us your feedback in the comments box below.
We love to hear what our visitors have got up to and which upgrades work best for them on each model of car. Comments are used to improve the accuracy of these articles which are continually updated.
Please share this page with your friends on :
If you liked this page please share it with your friends, drop a link to it in your favourite forum or use the bookmarking options to save it to your social media profile.
Check out TorqueCars new YouTube channel, and see their awesome new content...
Feedback
Please use our forums if you wish to ask a tuning question, and please note we do not sell parts or services, we are just an online magazine.
Help us improve, leave a suggestion or tip