Topic: "Might as well" is back.... (Read 255 times)

Corey872 · « **on:** March 12, 2010, 12:41:02 PM »

Well, sometime ago I was setting at a stop light – it turned green and I pushed in the clutch to go into gear. All of the sudden ‘bang’ the car lurches forward with my foot still planted on the floor. Stepping on the clutch no longer works! I had some time to go out in the recent warm weather and troubleshoot. It doesn’t look good. Nothing simple like a clutch master cylinder, slave cylinder, broken hydraulic line, etc. I’m guessing either the clutch spring pack fell apart like last time or something else on the friction disk broke and became jamed between the flywheel and pressure plate.

I wish I had some racing / E85 high performance story to go along with the breakage. But the thing seems to do fine standing on the gas @ 15psi boost…it’s the putting around town @ 30 mph where it breaks!

Soooo, it looks like once the weather warms and I have some time, the engine will be coming out – yet again. Another clutch is in the works, plus a few years ago when I had the engine out, the turbo bearings were definitely loose. I’m sure they’re not any better now, so this brings up a whole list of “might as well’s” I have a few go-fast goodies laying around, just waiting for such an event:

RBC intake – (the high performance later model one)
Magnaflow 3" exhaust resonators
Hondata insulating intake manifold gasket & new throttle body gaskets.

Need to machine a throttle body adapter and probably a block saver to keep the sleeves from squirming around too much. Also considering bolting on a GT30R or 35R turbo to replace the aging T3 now in place and possibly bumping the compression to ~12.5:1 to make a little better use of the E85 when it’s not on the squeeze. I’ll have to run some calculations to see what turbo matches best, but hoping to get ~400hp / 300tq down to the wheels. That would be about 2.3x the stock power considering driveline losses, so should make for a fun ride.

Now id I could just get global warming to kick back in after this brutal cold winter!

TinkerFreak · « **Reply #3 on:** March 13, 2010, 10:31:51 AM »

I'm doing my clutch and flywheel again shortly, as well. You're not alone!

Resisting the temptation to do this is keeping me from the "might as well"'s. The parts are all right there and I could do it in a weekend along with the clutch and flywheel.