Honda Civic Type-R

Investing in an intercooler shows some similarities to going to college. Hear me out. When that acceptance letter arrives, it's understood that there's a lot of money about to be spent as a down payment on the future. Some of us might have held a job or two while in school, but the general idea is complete your degree, and get your dream job, or at least something that is enough to pay off those loans.

A bigger intercooler is an investment in your Civic Type R's future, especially for those who are doing builds and expect big numbers from the K20C1. Depending on the car and the design, adding more fins and surface area to the intercooling system usually gives you some power right off the bat. Our new design does squeeze a few extra drops of power from the CTR, but the main objective

It goes without saying that the intercooling system is an integral part of any turbocharged vehicle. What's the sense of trying to cram more air into the cylinders if it can't be compressed that easily. In fact, that almost defeats the entire point of having a turbo installed on your engine. For those of you who have a craving to crank up the heat on your hot-Honda by lowering your intake temps, we already devised a solution for you. However, much like how your CTR transports you from A to B, your chilled charged air still requires a delivery method.

Until we can somehow devise a pipe-less intercooler system, ensuring that

When it comes to shopping for an upgraded intercooler, the first thing any of us look for is the temperature drop figure. For our new design, that information has still yet to come. For now, we'll focus on the next most interesting specification, which, naturally, is the size of the core. In the case of our new core, that number is 1003mm³. That might just look like a number, but compared to the stock unit, it's a 169% increase in size. One-hundred and sixty nine percent. Crushed it.

How does the number compare, though? What does a 169% increase in size look like in relation to the FK8? Well, lucky for you, the difference in size is quite notable, as it should be when we're more than doubling the size of the stock unit. The stock unit appears as if it fills that entire lower

Honda might have changed the game in the world of hot-hatches with the latest generation of the Civic Type R, but if you recall from the stock review, the FK8's intercooling system barely met the classification of "gamechanger." We're already well on our way to elevating the Type R's charged air heat exchanger to that level, as we covered in our last post, but what about the piping? After all, the car is an ecosystem and can only be as strong as its weakest component.

Discussing the new piping requires a brief recap of our design plans for the intercooler itself. Specifically, we'll start with the revised end tank design. In the Type R's stock form, the piping was a combination of a rubber hose

The car is like an ecosystem. All the components under the hood of your Type R depend on each other to create the lovely symbiotic relationship resulting in speed. When one component falls behind in comparison to the others, the ecosystem as a whole lags. Our goal, as stated where we last left off, was to strengthen all the weak points and keep that turbocharged, aero-dripping, torque-vectoring machine carving corners and exceeding the expectations of FWD vehicles.

Extreme heat exposes a subtle weakness in your Type R. The excess heat will rob your CTR of its full potential on the track and the street, especially when we're talking about the intercooling system. Not only is the hotter air much harder to compress for effective forced induction, it can become a detriment to the

The weeks surrounding the new year are always a time for both reflection and a look ahead. If we look back on how Honda did in 2017, one could say that they made a splash. The previous year was the release of their spiced-up models, such as the Sport Hatch, aka the pseudo-Si, and the real Si as well. How could we forget the hatchback to rule them all, the Type R? Not only did Honda's ramped up hatchback rival the likes of the seasoned veterans of this field, specifically the AWD Focus RS, but it also took the crown for FWD cars at the revered Nürburgring. Even with these accolades, the CTR is still a mass-produced car. This means that it's inherently going to have some drawbacks due to budgets and production deadlines. We're spending 2018 to strengthen the chinks in the Type R's armor.

At some point early on in our car obsessed years, we've all dropped in a cone filter, with a shiny tube, possibly with some flimsy heat shielding and called it an intake. We've also claimed we could feel the unharnessed power now bellowing out from under the hood. We've all been guilty of it. Really, it was just louder, and maybe with the right combination a few extra horses were added to the pack. Here at Mishimoto, we've moved way past that, as you can see from the amount of fabrication going into developing our initial intake prototype, not to mention the sheer amount of testing that has lead us to our first production sample.

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Engine blow-by is something that affects just about every engine on the road. Though plenty of manufacturers have made leaps and bounds in filtering blow-by from the intake, finding clever ways to keep the carbon deposits from building up on intake valves, blow-by remains an issue. This should come as no surprise if you've spent any time on our blog. Just about every type of car and truck that has made its way into our R&D facility, ranging from BMWs to F-150s, and even the 1.5T found in the base Civics, have all produced varying levels of the murky stuff. The K20C1 is likely to be no exception to this trend. That leaves it up to us at Mishimoto to make sure none of the contaminates in the crankcase gasses make it to your valves.

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