Ok some thoughts after driving it around a while.

First the good and bad about the kit.

The Bad: I am not going to lie to you, its probably one of the most involved installs you are going to find for an SC kit. Some people want to know how easy it would be to go back to stock. Well you move some stuff around a little but to put it back to NA you don't neccessarily have to move everything back. If you ever want to go back to stock, relocate the battery to the trunk and just leave it there and then leave the fuse box, heater hose, power steering dohickey all where you moved them to. They fit there nicely. Going back to NA is pretty easy STOCK is more difficult. Out side of drilling a couple holes and cutting your battery cable there is really no modification done to the car.

I don't have to much experience tinkering with cars, (a couple brake jobs and swapping a turbo into a previous car) I have a lot of tools. If you have lots of tools and can follow instructions you can install the kit, but there are lots of steps and you work in tight spaces a lot. Some of the spaces that are tight get tighter. You certainly should have someone help when you mount the blower, but a person can do everything else by himself/herself. There are many many tasks that are small, but are time consuming. I did this during the work week and took the week off so I did almost all of it myself. If you have a friend help, nothing is that hard and you can work on either side of the engine knocking out tasks pretty fast.

The kit has been upgraded in a couple areas with different parts and that meant I had to make a few runs to the store for various bolts (about 6) and misc. To be truthful, any kit can have a missing bolt or two, and I kind of expected this. I read the directions twice before starting but it would have been best to lay all the parts out and do a dry run indoors to make sure all the bolts and nuts were there for each step and make only one run. The parts are segregated into different bags for each step which is great and would have made a dry run fairly easy.

The location of the intake is not the greatest, but thats a limitation of the car and how you have to mount this blower if you want a roots. There are always tradeoffs.

The Good: Its an EXTREMELY well engineered kit in my opinion. The is really nothing flimsy about it. Everything tthat comes with the kit is built for strength. Yeah some of the parts are heavy, but I don't see any failures of parts. The bracket assembly that mounts the blower is genius. When you go through the lengthy install, you really do appreciate how well thought out and well made the parts are.

The customer service. Mark has been great and extremely helpful. I already had the Emanage in my car, wideband and injectors in. Mark provided a map to scale the injectors when NA to test them out, the provided detail how to activate stuff for the blower. The car performed without a hiccup. The car still needs to work out the idle a little because it needs to get used to everything and relearn, but the basemap works really well and the lower VTEC transition is smooth and seemless.

Now when driving it I thought it would feel faster (and it feels much faster than stock) but then I realized I was not driving it like I did before. Sure you can still downshift and rev the snot outof it, but it moves so effortlessly at low rpm its not the same car anymore. When you fire it up the first time and blip the throttle you'll be startled a little because it feels like a V8 rumbling under the hood. But driving around town when you gave it 80% throttle to zip around, you need about half throttle now, more than that just brings speed RAPIDLY. I can't stress enough to get this thing moving around at a fairly decent pace is an effortless task with the roots blower and the immediate torque.

If you want to drive it like your NA car you will have to be very carefull with throttle in first gear. It takes off if you mash it. The torque is instantanious.

When I was researching which kit I wanted, I saw threads in the forced induction section titled "What RPM do you get usable torque with SC?" and people responding 4500 and so on. WIth this kit it is whenever you want it. It wants to go quicker driven sedately and shifting early than it did ringing it out before. If you step on it the speedo does a lousy job of keeping up.

I am tired but happy. Want to put some miles on it to see if any bugs show up but so far so good.

ANd one last thing, the sound. You will also be a little startled by that too. The first time you hear it it sounds like the blower is sitting in the passenger seat. (and if you search my posts I want to fly under the radar and like quiet exhausts) I thought my wife is going to HATE this. SHe was fine with the sound and it grows on you fast. It sounds so cool and you can controll it with light throttle if you don't want attention. It really is cool.

Thanks for all the help and responses to my posts, guys. Being kind of a newbie to Honda's and aftermarket kits with so much detail, it helps to have a community of owners who are helpful rather than uppity.

 

I suppose installing a throttle cable and EMS would work? No?

 

glad your liking it so much. the intake placement does suck, but honestly, on 6-8psi the intercooler keeps up and you hardly notice the poor intake placement. once you step up to 11psi, <come on, you know you want it!> water injection FTW.

pretty cool huh, tires melt in first gear. the blower sound is so bad ass. and down shift? not needed!

 

Well, my plans for now are to enjoy as is for a while and spend a few bucks on other things around the house, but when winter hits I will be setting aside some money for an exhaust and differential upgrades. Then we will see what happens.

It really is pretty awsome how it just moves out without trying now. I have a set of lighter wheels that have been in the garage waiting to be put on but I bought them when I had brand new tires on the stock wheels. Sounds like I will be in the need for tires sooner than I expected.

I would also like to go through the racing school at the local track and get some instruction before going to an insane power level that could get me into trouble. Its fast now but so controllable.

 

had not heard from you all day


figured you were out running through a couple tanks of gas.


The timing map you have right now ( safe base map) puts you down about 10-12wtq and 15-20whp ( depending on supporting mods)

So once you get some dyno time expect more power once your tuner adds some timing back in.

A/F should all ready be correct since you are also running/driving with the A/F feed back like me.

 

congrats! that kit with it's broad powerband makes the car deceptively quick. having that power everywhere the car just pulls every gear no matter what rpm you start at, pretty cool

the install is a little involved but no more than any other turbo kit that requires massaging of the AC lines and moving the battery. after helping with camuman's install if I were do install another kit it could be done in a day start to finish no problem.

 

Probably go to the tuner next month. Thanks again Mark. I will probably ressurect the thread with a dyno sheet.

You know when deciding all the different options for those who don't want the super power potential of a turbo with all the heat management issues and so forth, this kit is an absolute no brainer for the 2004-2005 model years. I can see how some like the flashable option with the KW kit on an 06 plus, but you still don't get the torque and the price is high. If you have to do a piggy back or standalone on an 04-05 for the same price or less you get a much better powerband and still have plenty of room to spin the blower faster than the stock pulley. If you want an SC on an 04-05 model there is no substitute IMHO.

 

Glad you are enjoying it!!! It's very fun and addicting with the blower. You are right, you have to drive the S totally different now.

What are you doing to the differential? I am hoping to maintain OEM diff for the span of ownership. Will it be safe? Dunno.....we'll see. I never heard your clutch setup. Did I miss it somewhere?

Hopefully mine will be done this week sometime. HAving a new clutch installed. I cant wait to be able to beat on it and not have any slippage.

 

My car was stock everything except for a Berk high flow cat. As for the differential, I just want to slap on some reinforced bearing caps. WIll that be a waste of money? Maybe. I don't do burnouts or anything, but if it is a few hundred bucks insurance against getting stranded somewhere, ok by me.

 

Now we just need some detailed pics, and maybe videos