[Mark R]

I subscribed to watch this build. +1 on the Honda.

My son just bought a Toyota CHR daily driver. 20K miles on the clock for $19,000 and it gets 38 MPG. It's a performance car in its own right.

[RobZL1]

Originally Posted by 2023_ZL1-AUTO

RobZL1 - That sounds like great new mods and a build build! I'm sure one day, I'll crack this LT4 of mine openand go a similar route. Congrats on the new mods and you've done great on your build over the years! But, I can't Resist <---- THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID !

Thanks! Yours is one of the threads that inspired me to write all of this up with good pics as I go. Good catch on the TWSS... kinda left myself open to that one.

Originally Posted by Mark R

I subscribed to watch this build. +1 on the Honda.

My son just bought a Toyota CHR daily driver. 20K miles on the clock for $19,000 and it gets 38 MPG. It's a performance car in its own right.

I'm really enjoying this civic so far. Completely different animal, but fun in it's own way, for sure!

[RobZL1]

Ok, so off to Harbor Freight now to get the hoist and stand (and probably other stuff that jumps into my cart all by itself...)

Big thanks to GMS / Gabe for letting me join his Katech buy and get a little better deal on the Katech stuff I needed. Man, I love the forum. Such a great group.

So the parts orders are starting to get entered. Here's a question for the group. I was watching the BTR/Justin White video, and I swear they both said or at least heavily implied the new BTR pds stg 1 cam made more power than the stage 2 and 3, even for the build Justin was comparing that made around d 1150rwhp.

Is this real? If that's the case in general, why even sell a stage 2 and 3 cam?

I was looking at the actual specs in the stg 3 I was going to go with, and it's a BIG cam. 14deg overlap and BIG lift. Seeing that, I'm thinking the stg 2 is the way to go at 8 deg overlap and less extreme lift. EDIT: I don't know what I was looking at when i first posted this, but I see the stage 2 and stage 3 have similar lift on the BTR site

Then I saw the Justin White interview with Brian and it blew my mind.

So, thoughts on the matter? I have no issue pushing the power band up to 7k. This car will be sunny day "daily" drives to work and around town, and I will take it to the strip and half mile. I have high tolerance for driveability issues compared to most it seems.

But will it really not make any more power (or less) than a stage 1 in my build?

[swisstyphoon]

Originally Posted by RobZL1

Ok, so off to Harbor Freight now to get the hoist and stand (and probably other stuff that jumps into my cart all by itself...)

Big thanks to GMS / Gabe for letting me join his Katech buy and get a little better deal on the Katech stuff I needed. Man, I love the forum. Such a great group.

So the parts orders are starting to get entered. Here's a question for the group. I was watching the BTR/Justin White video, and I swear they both said or at least heavily implied the new BTR pds stg 1 cam made more power than the stage 2 and 3, even for the build Justin was comparing that made around d 1150rwhp.

Is this real? If that's the case in general, why even sell a stage 2 and 3 cam?

I was looking at the actual specs in the stg 3 I was going to go with, and it's a BIG cam. 14deg overlap and BIG lift. Seeing that, I'm thinking the stg 2 is the way to go at 8 deg overlap and less extreme lift.

Then I saw the Justin White interview with Brian and it blew my mind.

So, thoughts on the matter? I have no issue pushing the power band up to 7k. This car will be sunny day "daily" drives to work and around town, and I will take it to the strip and half mile. I have high tolerance for driveability issues compared to most it seems.

But will it really not make any more power (or less) than a stage 1 in my build?

I know exactly what you mean about Harbor Freight. Somehow, I always end up leaving with way more than I planned too!
Justin strongly believes in the BTR Stage 1 cam, but Ryan from GPI explains it well in this video. He emphasizes that the best cam choice depends on the overall setup, but he also sees a common trend of people overcamming their engines. Check out their discussion on cams starting at 1:06:30

https://youtu.be/-OyUDjVmH6I?si=xDrVpd76aWp_GRBm

[RobZL1]

Originally Posted by swisstyphoon

I know exactly what you mean about Harbor Freight. Somehow, I always end up leaving with way more than I planned too!
Justin strongly believes in the BTR Stage 1 cam, but Ryan from GPI explains it well in this video. He emphasizes that the best cam choice depends on the overall setup, but he also sees a common trend of people overcamming their engines. Check out their discussion on cams starting at 1:06:30

https://youtu.be/-OyUDjVmH6I?si=xDrVpd76aWp_GRBm

Ok. That sounds more like what i would have expected from the BTR discussion. Thanks for that link.

I'll just call BTR and tell them what I'm putting together and my end goal and see what they say.

[RobZL1]

Not much of an update, but next step in the getting ready process: a good cleaning before pulling it apart.

I'll start the teardown this weekend and share a progress update.

[RobZL1]

That's better!

[RobZL1]

Well, I didn't make a ton of progress this weekend, but it was progress nonetheless. I know I'm in it for the long haul with this one, with family and work commitments right now.

The first thing I did was to appease my wife. She has this silly notion that she wants to be able to use the garage while I'm in the middle of this project.

So, I bought some dollies to allow me to move the car around now that it's out of commission. Assembly took longer than expected... it didn't help that I ran out of blue loctite after putting 1 of 4 together. 64 screws later, they were together. They are sturdy and move the car well, but man it's a lot of effort to slide it across the garage! Should be better once the motor is out.











The next photo was the starting point. Keen observers will notice the gorilla tape around my venturi port for the Elite catch can. My beautiful Permatex black sealing job, while nice looking, developed a leak a month ago. Since I knew I would be tearing it down, I threw some tape on that SOB.



I made it as far as pulling the intake, TB, catch can setup and yanked the lid off of the supercharger. Let's say I am less than impressed with the Elite Ultra's performance. It's not terrible- it looks worse in pictures than it is, but you can see the spray pattern on the lid, and the minor drops in the webbing and around the gaskets surfaces. It looks like pools in the webbing in the photo but it's really not that bad. It's just not as amazing as I thought it would be given how cool the design of that can is.







All of the oil was coming from the main vacuum port into the maggie. The venturi port and the factory clean side port going into the rotofab were bone dry. Oh well. MM Wild will be added to my list of things to buy for the build. I'll put the full Ultra can setup with custom bracket I made and hoses up for sale. It's not terrible, it's just not awesome.

That's all for this week. This weekend, I hope to get the blower off and start pulling peripheral stuff like plugs, headers, coolant reservoir, etc.

.

[SOCAL.M6.ZLE]

Rob, super happy to be apart of this build! Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help! LOVE the photos and details so far, keep it up! With your attention to detail, it's clear this is going to be a killer build thread! The Cam question is a good one. I think it would be hard to dispute JWT's cam test especially considering he put the Stage.I cam back in at the end and got all the power back. I also agree with you / GPI / BTR that it is very build specific... and you might be better off with a Stage.II. With our PD blowers, it's clear we need alot more exhaust duration than intake. Happy to hear you reached out to BTR, they have great customer service. Can't wait to hear what you decide on. Let's get this party started!

[RobZL1]

Thanks, Gabe. It's going to be fun!

Ok, team- next question. After discussing with BTR I'm confident I'd be good with the Stage 3 cam over the Stage 2. But I've always been curious about the Katech track day LT4 cam. They just posted a build on FB that pulled 900hp on 93 and over 1k on E. Basically the build is exactly the parts I'd wind up with eventually.

Soooo... Katech cam or BTR. The duration is in the same ballpark, though the LSA is tighter on the BTR. Thus the BTR has about 13-14 degrees of overlap while the Katech is about 3 or 4. That has some benefit in and of itself, but i don't know where I land. Talk amongst yo'selves! Any thoughts? (That's a Caawfee Tawk SNL reference for anyone who remembers)

[2023_ZL1-AUTO]

Rob, that sounds great and that would be killer, 900+ !!!! Hmmm.... sounds like I need to be giving Mike a call and just take mine to the limit! On second thought, maybe I should have one summer of driving and not moding! I'll keep an eye your build progress!

[RobZL1]

Some progress last weekend but zero progress this weekend.

Made one interesting discovery last weekend, though. I found out why the Elite Ultra catch can was catching a lot of oil but I still had oil getting to the supercharger. The o-ring on the PCV bypass wasn't fully sealing. The instructions suggested to reuse the factory o-rings, but it came with o-rings installed, so I installed it before I saw the instructions. I figured it couldn't be that bad. Yeah well. LOL.

Here you can see that it was not sealing.

I've already got a MM Wild on the way, so I'll still be selling the Elite setup.

.

[RobZL1]

I also got the bumper cover off and fender liners out:

I pulled the supercharger off as well and was reminded I dislike the back bolts.

[Joshinator99]

Originally Posted by RobZL1

I also got the bumper cover off and fender liners out:

I pulled the supercharger off as well and was reminded I dislike the back bolts.

Agreed that all the stuff in the back of the engine bay under the cowl is miserable to access with these honking superchargers these days! Looks like you’re off to a good start though.