Well it was a cold but sunny day today so I decided to do my valve adjustment as i’ve heard it’s suppose to snow for the next few days. I pulled out the spark plugs, wires and the distributor cap first, then pulled the valve cover off and finally pulled off the timing belt cover. I set the engine to TOP DEAD CENTER (TDC) on #1 cylinder and adjusted both the intake and exhaust valves. While the cylinder was at TDC, I inserted a plastic rod down the spark plug hole and marked it. Then I rotated the cam 90 degree’s and inserted the plastic rod down the #3 cylinder plug whole to make sure I was at TDC and adjusted the intake and exhaust valves. Then I rotated the cam another 90 degree’s and did cyclinder #4 and finally did the same thing for #2. Once it was all done I double checked all valves for each cyclinder at the proper cam position. One thing I forgot to mention is that while turning the cam 90 degree’s I checked to make sure I was on the right cylinder by looking at the distributor rotor postion with the distributor cap. Doing the valve adjustment today was the perfect day as I did not run the engine today so it was totally cold. Below are pictures of the valve adjustment.

Picture 1 shows finding TDC on my Crank, and picture 2 shows my marked plastic rod

Checking valve lash with a feeler gauge, and using a flat screw driver to set the adjustment

Picture of middle VTEC cam lobe between the 2 valves, and my plugs after 800km’s after swap.

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I was bouncing around the net today for paintjobs and found these two candy apple red civic’s.

93 Civic Hatch Candy Apple Red

95 Civic Hatch Candy Apple Red

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I installed a B&M fuel pressure gauge last night and now I have a better understanding how my fuel pump and fuel pressure regulator are working together. When the vacuum hose is connected between my fuel pressure regulator and my intake manifold I get 31PSI at idle and 40PSI at full throttle and when I disconnect the vacuum hose it jumps to about 40PSI. From what I have read on the honda forums this seems to be a normal reading for a stock system like mine. Once I add bigger injectors and and turbo I will have to get an adjustable fuel pressure regulator and bump that up to 45-50 PSI with out the vaccuum line connected. Below is a picture with my gauge showing 31PSI at idle.

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The car has been running good since this morning so I decided to wireup the VTEC tonight. I soldered all the wires to make sure I was getting good connections and used some zapstraps to keep the wires tidy. Overall it was an easy thing to do and now I don’t have the engine light any more. I took it for a couple rips down the street and man when that VTEC  engages it pulls hard. The D16A with my intake, header and exhaust should be putting out about 145HP so getting up to 200-220HP with a turbo should be a realistic goal with some additional addons.

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The engine still had issues running rough the last few days and I didn’t have time to do the valve adjustment to see if that would help so I messed around with the sensors last night and added some fuel injector cleaner into the tank and this morning it seems to be good. I also had a fuel odour coming out of the engine compartment but couldn’t see anything leaking badly but with a closer inpection and a sniff test I narrowed it down to an injector. I pull that injector out and I guess when I swapped the injectors last week i must of kinky the seal on this one, so in the future I will spray some WD-40 on the seal so it goes easier into the fuel rail. This morning there was no more fuel odour and engine ran better after adding the fuel injector cleaner and messing around with the sensors.

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If your gonna build a full race engine and want to start with brand new parts to get the job done I found a great site that sells blocks, cams, rods and pistons to suit your B and D series engines. RS Machine

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Ever wanted to do the mini-me on your D15 engine well I found this great post on Honda-Tech forums. Here take a look MiniMe Swap

Below are other Mini-Me Head & block combinations and compression ratios

Head | Block

Z6 | Z6 Block - 9.13:1
Z6 | y8 Block - 9.21:1
Z6 | A6 Block - 9.95:1
Z6 | ZC Block - 12.03:1
Z6 | D15 - 10.10:1
Z6 | Y7 - 9.62:1

Head | Block

Y8 | Z6 - 9.45:1
Y8 | Y8 - 9.61:1
Y8 | A6 - 10.33:1
Y8 | ZC - 12.61:1
Y8 | D15 - 10.52:1
Y8 | Y7 - 9.96:1

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