civic

It's autumn and, more importantly, it's the start of prime boosting season.  The cool, dense air that's characteristic of the changing seasons is much easier to compress and cram into the cylinders, while the lower ambient temperatures help the intercooler. Even with the stock set up, your tenth generation Civic has a little extra pep in its step. But there's no reason to settle for just a little pep when you can get more.

Our new intercooler design brought to life, and fresh out of the box from our factory.

Intakes are typically the first modification that any automotive enthusiast would recommend in the name of quick power gains. It's really no surprise either. If you take a look at any modern vehicle on the road today, including the Civic Type R, stock intakes are full of silencers, restriction points, and accordion-style hoses. Those are three things that I know every gearhead doesn't want, and in fact it's quite the opposite when looking to add some power, so we've been researching solutions to get rid of them.

To start, let's briefly revisit our stock air intake

Bigger is better. This is the American ideal that has been the foundation of many in the automotive world. However, in modern times, it's all about consolidation; next-level vehicle technology comes in smaller packages, but broadens the ranges of performance potential. Our engineers shared the modern vision when designing an intercooler for the 2016 Honda Civic 1.5L Turbo. You can't just throw a huge core on this car and call it a day. With a cramped engine bay and the factory intercooler, radiator, and air conditioning condenser tightly bundled together, it's vital we get crafty. It's time to take the road less traveled with the core design to properly surge the maximum amount of cooled air into your Earth Dreams motor.

Turbocharger compressors like denser air, which is why us car enthusiasts joke about how, although the winter is the motorsports off-season, it's peak "boost" season. Cars with forced induction love the colder, denser climates because by driving in colder weather, the turbocharger or supercharger gets fed a bit more air than in warmer weather. That's why you might feel a harder punch from the gas pedal in the middle of a freezing Chicago December compared to a Daytona Beach July.

Since we don't all boost happily in the Siberian Tundra, the way to replicate this effect is by finding a way to supply more air to your method of forced induction. One way to do so is by making your intercooler piping or charge pipes larger. Larger pipes allow more airflow, which translates to more power. Our lead engineer for this entire intercooler project is very familiar with this idea, before creating larger pipes, we must first evaluate the stock pipes - hot side and cold side - to know exactly what we

I've been labeled a Nissan guy for a long time now. My 1995 Nissan 240SX has served me well during the six years I've owned it, sticking with me through the second half of college, nine states on the east coast and more drift events than I can honestly count. Being a Nissan guy (specifically a 240 guy) has really been the one thing I could easily identify with, other than usually being able to see over crowds and get the "Did you play college ball?" question. While I'm familiar with what is known as the S-Chassis, I'm a car guy through and through, and I can appreciate the builds and the individual styles that come from all sorts of different personalities and backgrounds. This is exactly why when I saw this new 2016 Honda Civic 1.5L Turbo Hatchback pull into our parking lot last week, I got excited.

We finally have all our prototype 2016 Honda Civic parts together for this kit. Let's briefly examine everything we have so far, starting with the airbox.

Prototype 2016 Honda Civic parts

Prototype 2016 Honda Civic parts

As we discussed in the last post, we wanted to utilize the stock air inlet as much as possible, which is why we kept an opening at the top of the airbox. The remainder of the filter enclosure is protected within the physical box, to help keep

Here we have another update for our 2016 Civic intake project. This Civic has finally been put on our dyno to see how our intake performs - and we have some results to share with our Civic community! This car was tricky to dyno properly because of the continuously variable transmission (CVT), but no corners were cut during our testing. Let's jump right in!

2016 Honda Civic parts dyno testing

The CVT

2016 Honda Civic parts dyno testing