Help building a turbo f22a1

[Accrdwgnguy]

I see this always mentioned too. Maybe someday I'll slam together a turbo F22A with stock internals and see what the weak points are. I don't believe you need forged rods to have a reliable turbo engine. Whats the weak point of the stock rods? What about the pistons, is it the ringlands that are weak or the fact that when you turbo something, the increased heat causes the rings to expand and butt together. Gapping the top ring would help that.

All I need is like a $200 Honda.

[deevergote]

I totally agree. I went through having a defective eBay header, that was frustrating, I wouldn't buy another one.

I just see some people saying, you can't turbo your car unless you go buy a 2-3 thousand dollar kit! Idk, it just annoys me.
But like you said, most of the time you get what you pay for.

Treadstone's kits start at about $1600. If you were to piece together a decent quality kit yourself, you'd easily hit that amount. You could probably get away with some of the components of a cheap kit without putting your engine at risk, but the big dollar items (turbo and wastegate especially) are where much of the money lies. If you buy a $600 "ebay" turbo kit, replace the turbo with a quality unit for another $600, and drop $200 on a good wastegate (made up number... I have no idea what good ones go for at the moment), you're near the price of a Treadstone kit... only you have a cheapo manifold, intercooler, piping, etc...

Do you know anybody who has experience with doing those things?

Fortunately, no! But you see the parallel I'm drawing there, right? You wouldn't even consider doing those things because you know the consequences would be... unpleasant. That's pretty much how it is with the cheapie turbo kits. Turbo bits in your combustion chambers would also be rather unpleasant (though perhaps not as much in comparison...)

I once thought of slapping an ebay turbo kit on my first accord but herd the stories and stayed away, 10 years later and Im happy I didnt make that mistake , But if you're gonna build your motor why not get the good quality stuff all around?



Deev, your last sentence made me cringe lol

I actually bought a beater CB7 that had been sideswiped with the intention of slapping a cheap turbo setup on it. I bought a homemade "kit" for about $500, and I was one oil line away from making it happened when I crashed the car (dumbass me replaced the front tires, but left the "not too bad" tires in the rear... forgot which CB7 I was in, and took a turn too fast. Since it wasn't my good CB7 with good tires, the rear lost grip and I spun. Right into a wall on route 295. Still drove it home, though!)
I FULLY intended to blow that F22A up. I had no delusions about it surviving the little t25 I had in store for it.

I see this always mentioned too. Maybe someday I'll slam together a turbo F22A with stock internals and see what the weak points are. I don't believe you need forged rods to have a reliable turbo engine. Whats the weak point of the stock rods? What about the pistons, is it the ringlands that are weak or the fact that when you turbo something, the increased heat causes the rings to expand and butt together. Gapping the top ring would help that.

All I need is like a $200 Honda.

Stock rods are actually fine for a mild boost setup, as the compressive stress of boost isn't nearly has hard on the rods as the tensile stress of high RPMs. However, stock rods won't work with any forged pistons unless modifications are done. Stock stuff uses a pressed wrist pin, whereas the aftermarket stuff uses a floating wrist pin. It CAN be done, but for the work necessary to do it (and the added potential for failure as a result), it's usually preferable to just get compatible rods.
Stock ring lands are what break. They will almost always break, even if the pistons are brand new. I've seen turbo CB7s run for a year, maybe even two, with stock internals. Sometimes even built by a total noob. I attribute that to luck more than anything else, though (even though the people that accomplis such a feat generally claim their godly tuning skills are responsible.) Our own evil_demon_01 used OEM Honda parts to build a fresh F22A. He boosted it, and I believe it lasted 3 months before the ring lands gave. Colin (evil_demon_01) is an award-winning Honda technician in New Zealand, so he definitely knows what he's doing!

I'm curious about your ring gapping suggestion, though. I'd assume gapping the ring significantly enough to allow expansion without damage would allow a fair amount of blow-by, though. Still, the ring expansion may very well be to blame for the ring land breakage.
Honestly, that would be a stock-block turbo build worth doing, just to learn that!