Air filter help?

[lowrider]

Hey guys, I live in Australia, and have a 99 2 door HRV with no vtech engine. I have a few questions, 1...
what is the actualy engine number for my engine, as far as i know its a 1.6 liter civic engine? :?:

and secondly, I am considering fiting a K&N pod filter, but in the top mount air box there are a number of other pipes going out of the box???

Will the pod mount straight onto the intake pipe, and if so, will it need a heat shild because it will be siting prity much on the top of the engine.

any help please, thanx alot. :D

[PatrickDorrian]

One is for the hot water to run through from theater unit to warm the air in the pipe i think, not sure but either way you need to maintain the circuit. The other is i think a vaccum advance or something, either way it needs to be in the air intake in the original position if you can.

That water pipe one can be joined with simple pipe as green do with their induction kit. If you have a look on the green filters site for the honda hrv it has a downloadable pdf you can look at.

Patrick

[freelance1000]

I have a few questions, 1...
what is the actualy engine number for my engine, as far as i know its a 1.6 liter civic engine? :?:
D16W1 SOHC

There is lots of good info in the FAQ thread.
http://www.hondasuv.com/stg/viewtopic.php?t=785

and, welcome to the board. :D

[lowrider]

thanx guys, been hard finding info on the HRV but this site is great, I have enjoyed and learnt alot about this great car...thanx.

[Team GOOOSH]

hi lowrider. I made a stainless steel pipe and K&N air pod to custom fit my HRV. Unfortunalty the brackets snapped off due to vibrations and Dukes of Hazzard style jumping (yeh ...i know now!).

I too had to fabricate pipes for those hoses. I will try and get a photo of the pipe for you soon. But to tell you the truth i no longer use that pipe. I prefer to keep the factory box with just a sports filter to fit. Soon i will be doing some mods on the motor and if i dont need it then i will let you know.

All HRV owner should note. Companies like Honda spend Millions on design and testing on their cars for performance & efficiency by highly qualified engineers. Its supprising how many of us think that our efforts in the garage are making vast improvements on their products. Sometimes we should think hard about what effects our "back-yard" modifications have on the cars that we would not know about.

Just because it has made the exhaust louder doesnt mean its improved anything.

[etc]

Just because it has made the exhaust louder doesnt mean its improved anything.
yeah i also think so :lol:
roaring exhaust is like shouting in an argument
makes you look childish and stupid :wink:

[Dick_Dastardly]

Companies like Honda spend Millions on design and testing on their cars for performance & efficiency by highly qualified engineers. Its supprising how many of us think that our efforts in the garage are making vast improvements on their products. Sometimes we should think hard about what effects our "back-yard" modifications have on the cars that we would not know about.

Just because it has made the exhaust louder doesnt mean its improved anything.



Finally Some sense..

The trick is in knowing what they did for economy, emissions, and performance, and how changing one thing will effect another.

We can tell that the standard non VTEC D16W in the HR-V is tuned for performance as it's fuel consumption is not good, its CO2 emissions are quite high and it is nearly the same power as the VTEC D16 in the civic sport. it also has a much lower point of max torque. the civic is up at about 5,000, where the HR-V is in the mid 3,000s.

Changing one part may improve the performance in one area whilst lowering it in another. and may have an effect on how the ECU behaves when presented with a diferent reading (putting in a diferent exhaust may cause the ECU to run the engine over rich)

I'm not saying dont bother with the tweeks, but before deciding to add somthing it is worth taking all this into consideration.

The best bet is to speak to somebody who really knows about these engines.

[mrtn]

[roaring exhaust is like shouting in an argument
makes you look childish and stupid :wink:

EXCEPT on a motorcycle: it's a survival device - the farther you are heard the more chance of survival :)

[etc]

i think all kinds of tweaking are hopelessly pointless
why?
because to reach production
the average car becomes an extreme compromise between quality and price
anyone involved in any production process would understand that
and for those who dont its all very simple -
any car maker involved in racing
has an incredible research team that designs top notch gizmos
thats where the car innovations are born
if it was up to these teams - these miracles would be in every car

the thing is noone could afford to buy such miracles
so there comes the sales team who punishes the designing team
with the task to build great engines the cheapest way
anyone would agree thats even harder than making the perfect engine

it all ends when the two teams reach some agreement in which
both sides are equaly displeased with the result :roll: :lol:
yet dont forget the last saying has the sales
so there you go
the default package [and maybe some :!: of the extras] is a result of hundreds of sleepeless nights
and thousands of reasons spoken defending the best ideas

do you really think there is any room for improvement?
because that would mean youre a genious :lol:
or litearlly hundreds of the best professionals
involved in car making made a mistake and noone saw it :roll:

well of course - there are exceptions
mostly because the sales team pushes the price/quality too low and
mistakes pass through the production route sometimes... i mean look what happened to mercedes :lol:

the thing is... if theres a room for improvement
- you chose a trashy car altogether
- the cost for the improvement would level the total price of your car
with the next level car that you didnt buy becasue you thought its expensive
- the improvement is only in your mind, not on the dials

[Dick_Dastardly]

Interesting points

I work in a high performance part of my industry, and constantly have to trash my own specifications, because the bean counters think thats the way to go. (quite often it isn't)

But you miss a whole chunk of the equation.

Regulations.

Not only is the vehicle restricted by price, and mass production constraints, but, to make things even more dificult, it must comply to all regulations.

Restrictions on emissions, and safety features play a major roll in shaping the end product. allong with needing to get it into a certain insurance group.

Example;

The presence of Catalytic converters eats a whole chunk out of your performance. the engine has to run over rich in order to be able to burn off the toxic gasses in the cat. this means that it is no longer running at optimum.
In order to claw back some of this, the engineers make changes elsewhere, such as the intake, valve timing, injector settings and mixture variations. By the time they have finished with all these small changes they will probably have clawed back the lost performance, and efficiency.
However, were it not for the cat they would not set up the engine this way.

What you have before you is a finely balanced system, and yes the cat is having an overall effect on performance, but to remove it at this stage would leave you with an un-balanced system the intake would now be wrong, the valve timing would need adjusting, as would ignition timing and fuel air mixture.

So to just remove the cat without correcting all other compensations made for the presence of the cat, would most probably not give you the overall gains you would expect, and at best you would get a rather rough result. At worse you could even loose performance.


In short, you need to see the whole picture, and understand why everything is there.

Only then do you have the correct knowledge to make any changes.


Be The Enlightened One !!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8) 8) 8) 8)

[Team GOOOSH]

So i guess everyone agrees with me that ..if it aint broke dont fix it! that intake and exhaust are only for personal benifit (unless its a serious engine).

The reality is if you bought the HRV with intent to pull out big horsepower then you should of bought a serious performer. Like an Aussie Ford GT V8!!!!!!

Cheers everyone from Down Under.

[etc]

The reality is if you bought the HRV with intent to pull out big horsepower then you should of bought a serious performer. Like an Aussie Ford GT V8!!!!!!
my thoughts exactly :)

In short, you need to see the whole picture, and understand why everything is there.
Only then do you have the correct knowledge to make any changes.Be The Enlightened One !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yes but if you do really know all the details
youd know how gentle the balance is to touch it...
of course you have the benefit to know how to fix
everything you broke tweaking :lol:

if it aint broke dont fix it indeed

But you miss a whole chunk of the equation.

Regulations.
yes of course - thank you
i forgot indeed
the insurance companies :evil:
they are actually the ones that raise the price of the car on purpose
by adding stuff nobody wants like speed locks and so
they all pose as if they are protecting our lives and promise heaven
but do you really know anyone satisfied by his insurance? :roll: :lol:

insurance companies create all the regulations and pass them as laws
if we have to put the three teams from positive to negative
engineers would be the saints,
sales would be the common [yet sometimes greedy] sense
and the devil is the insurance companies :?

[N_Jay]

Example;

The presence of Catalytic converters eats a whole chunk out of your performance. the engine has to run over rich in order to be able to burn off the toxic gasses in the cat. this means that it is no longer running at optimum.

Not true!

The engines are running darn near optimum due to the use of closed loop FI and O2 sensors.

[PatrickDorrian]

Now i may be wrong here, but with an engine management system that adjusts to whatever the engine is doing, surely if you pulled the cat out and changed the exhaust etc .. most of the systems would reconfigure themselves to that?

[N_Jay]

Now i may be wrong here, but with an engine management system that adjusts to whatever the engine is doing, surely if you pulled the cat out and changed the exhaust etc .. most of the systems would reconfigure themselves to that?

Most exhaust system flow just fine with the cat.
You MAY gain a tad of HP at the top end when at full throttle (less than 1% of your driving), but I bet you will loose HP under 3000 RPM, at every setting under 75% throttle (99% of your driving).

Not a good trade off.

[PatrickDorrian]

Ahh depends how you drive then, for Dick Dastardly and myself .. we probably spend proporionately more time at heavy throttle - i know I do which is why i regularly get 160 miles out of a full tank of petrol ... i NEED to move to somewhere that has cheaper petrol prices :)

[Dick_Dastardly]

I'm not going to get drawn into a long discussion on catalytic converters, but all cats require energy to function. ( judging from the heat generated I would estimate somewhere in the region of 3-5kw(8 hp))

This energy is taken from exhaust gasses by way of un-burned fuel. in the cat this energy heats the catalyst to a very high temprature, which then converts harmful emissions into less harmful ones.

In order to fuel the cat the engine has to pass un-burned fuel.

An engine set-up for a cat is less eficient than one set up for no cat.

The engineers have however managed to tweak back most of this loss, by compensating in different areas, but in reality what they have done is increased the performance of the engine,

So yes the engine IS running at it's optimum, but it also has the overhead of powering the cat.

The reason that simply removing the cat wont give you this 3 - 5 kw back is that the ECU is programmed to expect to pass a certain mixture to the cat, which is monitored before the cat.

If you remove the cat and everything after it, how does the ECU know there is any diference? It will still keep pumping a fuel rich mixture down the exhaust to feed the cat.

So the only real change will be increased emissions

What you will need is an ECU program for a D16W with no cat. which will burn the fuel more efficiently in the engine.

However if all you want is the sound of a sports exhaust and dont care about the emissions I guess you got it. you may even get an advantage from the more efficient flow of the new exhaust. but a further step could be gained from an ECU re-program.

This way you are exploiting a performance gain by removing the emissions restrictions that the manufacturer was under, which is one of the first things a race mechanic will do, if presented with a road car.

[Racoon]

In order to fuel the cat the engine has to pass un-burned fuel.
Maybe I'm missing something, but that's not what this explanation of how catalytic convers work says:

How Catalytic Converters Work (http://auto.howstuffworks.com/catalytic-converter2.htm)

[Dick_Dastardly]

In the refered explanation the Unburned hydrocarbons are your fuel.

The Oxidization Catalyst
The oxidation catalyst is the second stage of the catalytic converter. It reduces the unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide by burning (oxidizing) them over a platinum and palladium catalyst. This catalyst aids the reaction of the CO and hydrocarbons with the remaining oxygen in the exhaust gas. For example:


2CO + O2 => 2CO2

From this we can see that Catalytic converters are a cause of greenhouse gases (co2)

If you really want to know Cats require a 14.7:1 mixture of air to fuel to work optimally

In the 1980’s on-board computers were added to help optimize the efficiency of the catalytic converter. Their oxygen sensor positioned in the exhaust pipe helps to maintain the 14.7:1 mixture of air to fuel for optimum combustion. A zirconia-type oxygen sensor will produce a 0.5 volt signal to the engine computer when a 14.7:1 ratio is present. Higher ratios will decrease the voltage signal to 0.2 volts while lower ratios will increase the voltage to one volt. Catalysts typically reduce CO emissions by 80 percent.

[hondacbr]

After fitting the custom catback with N1 muffler, it eats a lot of fuel (15-16 litres/100km with my driving style) if I drive it without the silencer, also I hear missfires in the rear almost every time I lift the foot from the pedal. I think it runs damn rich, I am planing to install a VTEC controller to fool the ECU to run more lean, which will also make some power.

[CRX]

You mean a VAFC?

:?

[hondacbr]

yes, VAFC-2

[CRX]

:wink: :)