Boosted 1st Gen L15A1 Lifespan
 

Hey guys! I used to be pretty active on these forums, but a while ago school kept getting in the way of my modding and tuning time and I had to pick one or the other, so I unfortunately had to take a leave of absence from the whole modding scene.

I'm happy to say that I've graduated with my BS! So I thought I'd come take a look-see at what's been going on in the fit forums and make a comment on the fit's reliability over the long term when boosted.

A little background on my car:
2007 GD3, MR 5MT
T1R turbo kit with 2.5" TBE, AEM FIC engine management (E-Manage didn't allow for closed-loop control, so I ditched it) tuned by me
All the "stock" T1R piping, intercooler, and injector setup
Innovative solid engine mounts - the blue ones between "street" and "race"
A LOT of tires.. This b!tch eats through front tires like a fat kid eats cake.
Dynoed at 155whp, 157wtq. Never did get around to upping the boost beyond 6 pounds :(


and... my newest featrure.. 100,000 miles!

I've been boosted since around 34,000 or so, been through learning to tune two different piggyback units and their associated "oops" moments, and generally me driving like an a$$ to and from school and work. I live in Michigan so there's the daily sub-zero starts in the winter of course, and although I did move to Mobil 1 5w-30 and increase the oil change frequency a bit (change it when it's ~40% on the oil life monitor), I've done no extra maintainence besides tracking down wiring gremlins in the ECU area (my fault).

I think the most shocking part is that I'm still on the stock clutch. It hasn't slipped at all! Best of all, I still get in the mid to high 30mpg range in mixed driving.

I've been absolutely shocked at the reliability of this car. If you get the tune right, she truly will stick with you for a long time. It really doesn't get old hopping into my Fit and burning through 1st AND 2nd gears, while STILL getting the gas mileage to make well over 300 miles before the gas light turns on.

How many others have high-mileage boosted fits? I wanna see what you guys have been up to while I've been gone. Post em up!

Glade to have you back here and congrats on Graduating. Thats pretty impressive to have gone 70,000 miles boosted with no abnormal maintenance. I only ended up putting 20,000 miles on my car before pulling the SC off

What happened?

Marko!

im at 75k miles now with the greddy kit. i put it in with 34k on it. still runs strong. still only runing the 4.5 lbs. need to get rid of e manage like u did and im gonna get the aem fic too.

it ate two belts again. I dont know what is going on, could be the bearing in the SC but this is my only car and the past month it has been very unreliable and well I need a reliable car so I had it removed, kind of sucks.

ouch. ya i would def get that looked at.

^^It sucks but what ever I have decided to take my Fit to a whole new level

Looking forward to it! :wavey:

Really interested in hearing what KW has to say about your situation too.

Welcome back! Ive been boosted the longest out of everyone in north america, Put about 50k on the SC. Car is still running strong, and I beat the piss out of my car. As long as you maintain your car regularly then at 6psi it will run another 100k no problem.

MN, I think its that shop u take ur car to. I recently changed my first belt since on highboost.... and its been on there at highboost for about 20k miles. The bearing in the SC isnt going to cause pre-mature belt wear... If everything is put on correctly and properly tensioned then the belt should last just as long as mine.

too bad ur not in Cali man. Look forward with what u do with ur fit next tho!

That is very encouraging.

Is there a chance you could share what makes your kit custom? :)

I am guessing you have a slightly smaller pulley than the 10psi guys.. but you are still on the same Hondata unit and compressor right?

The belt tension was the first thing I asked him about, MN didn't think so and he seems to be pretty keen on these matters.

Maybe hes got an oddball bearing in his Rotrex or something in his environment like excessive dust/dirt/sand or salt was working away at it?

The belt on my base 5psi KW kit for the A/T was worn ragged after around 20,000 miles. I drive pretty aggressively though. I think I'll probably be changing belts every 15k-20k

Going almost 30k miles with the SC on and no big issues so far... only a few wiring mishaps due to shoddy installation by the mechanic

well glad to see that your back, while I'm boosted I'm not high mileage yet, but I hope to be later down the line.

my HKS kit seems to be holding up just fine at 9 psi of boost, self-tuned with the AEM FIC, even though I want more. Just for the hell of it and potentially more boost, I've gone through g35 290cc injectors (which ran great), dsm450cc injectors with a resistor box (idle not so great, cruise and boost was good), EvoX 550 injectors with resistor box removed (could only idle rich or else i couldn't get it to idle and would stall, but would cruise/boost alright) and now just installed about 30 minutes ago RDX 410cc injectors. hopefully no more fuel injector changes for me ever...

It could be the shop but I have trust in these guys. They have built some really badass Hondas. They mostly work with Turbos and have built many high HP civics and integras. They even built this B-series Kia Sephia.

YouTube - 325hp Kia with B-series turbo motor

Wow you've been all over the map with those injectors! I'm still on my RC 310cc injectors (no resistor box req'd) and I only see ~60% duty cycle at redline with a 12.0:1 AFR. I could probably turn it up to 9 and still have some DC to spare. I'd probably be pushing my aging clutch at that point though.. Hmmm... Damn you guys you're making me want to go order a boost controller just to add 3 more pounds! This is why I had to stop modding my car back in college!

I'm kidding I love this place. :D

Yeh the g35's were pushing it ~80% i think at WOT at 9 psi

The DSM injectors were really only for testing the possibility of wiring up the resistor box, so I used it as an exercise for finding where to splice into the wires. Running those injectors were not to my liking, maybe if i had low impedance injector drivers, the idle could have been smoother. I dunno.

and the EvoX injectors were a pain in my ass haha. flowed too damn much for me to control at idle, that is if I wanted the idle to be around 14.7...although it worked fine at around 13 and below though, but idling there doesn't jive for me.

and now running the RDX injectors, with my ghetto fabness and zipties. I run pretty damn well

But even though the DSM units had a choppy idle and the EvoX's were running pig rich, you basically opened the door for us to use anything from ID or FIC from the 750cc/min units all the way up to the 2150's with relatively little modification.

Good stuff! Are you still running stock base fuel pressure?

Yessiree, beaudes the injectors I'm still on the stock fuel system and thus stock fuel pressure. I might consider adding a returnline to the system to be able to have an adjustable fpr

There is more quality info in this thread than the rest of fitfeak.net! Explosivepotato have you bypassed your clutch delay valve? TuDaMan you are the first to actually post that you've run RDX injectors, a lot of people on this site say they will work but no one has actually done it. Clips are different right? Did you have to space the fuel rail to run them? your at 9psi on them right? whats the duty cycle? Are there any larger (than OEM fit) Honda injectors that use the same clips as the fit that you know of(some say RSX)?

I'm running KW 5psi kit with 50mm exhaust right now. I've got a 4-2-1 cat-less header to install once I do injectors. I don't want to do the KW RC injector kit as I plan to set the car up for 10+ psi later.

Well, here is a pic of all the injectors which have been on my fit.
From left to right: 2008 Stock Honda Fit Injectors, 2006 Infinity G35 Injectors, RDX (not sure what year), 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS-T Injectors, and Mitsubishi Evo X injectors.
as you can see all the injectors are about the same size except for the eclipse injectors, which needs spacers, the RDX are actually a little taller than the stock injectors, so you may want to put in a washer or two inbetween the fuel rail and stock spacer.
Attachment 38262
Attachment 38263
Just for comparison purposes the g35 and evoX
Attachment 38264
stock vs RDX plug length, supposedly you can use stock scion TC injector clips...
Attachment 38265
...the pins aren't exactly in the same spot either, the stock is slightly higher...
Attachment 38266
My modded RDX injector with the extra length cut off and the tabs filed down vs an unmolested injector
Attachment 38267
All i can say is, I'm running RDX injectors with stock clips that are held securely on with zip-ties (otherwise I don't think they would stay on very long or at all).

I've been too lazy after the install to go boosting and checking my IDC, maybe later next month i'll log some runs, but don't count on it.

Also remember all boost is not created equal, even if we were both boosting 5 psi, the amount of air we move might not be the same.

True but seeing as the 10psi kit runs RC 310's I think these will give me the head room I'll be looking for down the road. Thanks for the detailed info on what was done to run RDX injectors on your fit too. I'll be picking up a set of these along with a wide band so I can install the header.

Nawp. The only thing I've touched related to the transmission is a short shift adapter, hard mount bushings for the shifter mount and a new shift boot. I never really noticed much delay on the clutch to begin with, especially after the hard motor mounts. If I let the clutch out fast, it engages fast enough to break traction, not sure why you'd want it to engage any faster unless your only goal was to bust gears or to clean those pesky splines off of the output shafts.

I installed a js direct clutch hose and noticed a little difference of better shifting. But the delay valve is still there.

Apparently, stock Toyota 1NZ-FE (1.5l Yaris!) injectors are rated at 200cc @ 43.5Psi and 1ZZ-FE (1.8l Corolla!) injectors are rated somewhere near 240-260cc at 43.5Psi!

....i have to wait until a blown Echo or Yaris appears at the shop now! It could be the perfect match for my near stock engine when i put a manifold and cat delete on! ahah!

Marko!!

Guess not everyone's clutch has the same lag then... mine surly slips bad compared to any car that has a direct connection. It is defiantly the delay valve as the clutch doesn't slip once engaged so its not the clutch itself. If you look around the site you will see that a lot of other fit owners have this clutch feel as well.

On GD3? You have deleted the clutch delay valve with the new line then, GE8's have it in the master cylinder. If your clutch still feels like that you should try bleeding the system again, I suspect air in the system.

I'm not sure if it is the clutch delay valve so much as it is the combination of it and the throttle lag that is causing the problem.. The ECU changes the throttle response by pulling ignition timing when you consistently drive at low RPM and adds it when you are keeping the revs higher.. After adjusting myself to one or the other ways of driving is when I find that I am either coordinating the clutch and throttle too slow or too quickly to match the other...@explosivepotato.. I'm still here and installed the KWSC high boost package 8 months ago... It did a number on my fuel mileage, the exhaust fumes are very noticeable while sitting at signal lights, and I had to install an exhaust control valve to quiet it down when driving in city traffic... since putting the base kit on 21 months ago the only additional maintenance has been 2 belt adjustments and many tire rotations.. You need to correspond with DiamondStarMonsters, you two speak the same language...:wavey:

Texas Coyote, and others, please understand that while we all drive the same kind of car they can be quite different. I totally agree that you can match your driving to the car and drive around the problem as you have stated. However I would rather have the car drive as it should. As far as the throttle lag you are again right, it is due to the way the car does not read voltage in a true liner one to one fashion. All throttle controllers do is amplify the voltage signal to mask the problem. I have extensively modded cars in the past although never had to deal with these electronic controlled problems. The only way I can see to make the throttle work as it should would be to go to a stand alone EMS system and program the voltage points to pedal input.
I respect what you have done to your car and feel you are one of the top tier high HP supercharged fits. Very curious if you have had your car dynoed? I choose to go a different route than what is provided by KW's high boost kit. I feel there is room for improvement with a front mount and water meth, IMO the reflash will be the limiting factor compared to a stand alone unit.

I believe a lot of it has to do with how much you adjust to the way your car drives... I know I'm quite "adjusted" to my car at this point. As for the throttle response, I found that it improved by a HUGE margin with the hard engine mounts. Everything seems stiffer (and louder!) on the car with those mounts. When I tip sharply into the gas I can feel the kick of the motor followed by boost a fraction of a second later. I think I've almost been "trained" by my car to not notice or drive around throttle or clutch delays haha!

The reflash has improved the throttle response as far as I can tell by using the normal setting on the ETC so I use it mostly in the slowest opening EC5 mode to keep the noise level and wheel spin to a minimum as well as reducing fuel consumption and drive train stress.. I think my hood louvers that worked well before I installed the high boost kit is pulling hot air from the radiator and A/C condenser up through the bottom of the I/C and raising my IAT.. I have purchased materials to build a duct around the I/C that will prevent that from happening and more with an electric fan to pull air through when needed... methanol/water injection is something I plan to order before the weekend... I haven't done a dyno run but maybe I should get a baseline and do a before and after on the upcoming changes but I'm old school and get what info I need to satisfy myself using a pull between a neighbors fence line and another neighbors fence line to determine weather what I am doing is working or not.. Doing it the way I do allows me to avoid driving over 200 miles round trip to the big city and related stresses incurred by that, and allows me to have more money to spend on other stuff... If I was to do a run I don't think the numbers would be a disappointment to me.. I do have an AEM F/IC sitting on a shelf to install in the future if I feel like I need to lean out the mixture some to allow the use of a higher methanol/water to fuel ratio... The one thing that is a bother to me about the reflash is the rich A/F ratio but it does make for a safer tune than one that is on the lean side.. It just smells kind of bad to some people.:wavey: Thanks for the kind words.:o

I agree with you exactly, I switch cars frequently so I feel that is why it is more prominent for me. I seem to remember it wasn't really an issue when I only drove the fit. I plan to order ether the 85A or 95A motor mounts within the month.


The reflash should be able to manage the meth all but at the same A/F ratio you probably have right now. I'm sure its in the tune for safety. Are you monitoring with a wideband? I wonder were you on high boost before swapping to a cat delete header? If yes what was your A/F? And now A/F with race header?



Sorry for off topic... to contribute to the OP's topic I've got 66K on the car 10K of those boosted with nothing other than valve adj. and maintenance. I did have a cushion clamp snap that held the ac line away from accessory belt. I believe it was from soft motor mounts.

No gauges other than Scangauge and OEM... I didn't have the cat delete on until after I got high boost. I had to put ther cat back on for state inspection and put it back on afterward... DSM said the same as you about ECU and A/F ratios... I forgot about having my A/C line clamp busting and the rat that ate the vacuum line to the super card.. I'll bet explosivepotato remembers that.:rotfl:

Scangauge shows A/F's?

The lambda voltage the O2's will give out for methanol and gas are very different so it may skew things dependent upon how much meth you use :wavey:

Stoich for meth is 6.4:1AFR. Lambda 1.0v is stoich.

Methanol is going to want to run lambda (AF actual/AF stoich) .65v under boost and aggressive timing, about 4.0-4.2:1AFR or .65v lambda.

Gas has a different stoich ratio vs. lambda volts.

Pure gas stoich is 14.64:1AFR (1.0v), with 10% ethanol it is 14.13:AFR (1.0v)

Gas will usually want to run anywhere between 12.5-10.5:1AFR (0.72-0.85) depending on setup (compression, timing, airflow, etc).

Methanol's sweet spot .65v on gas scale AFRs is ~9.5-9.6:1 which is super rich. So you may need to lean things out... I wonder how the Fit ECU is going handle that. :confused:

I want to use pump gas and a healthy dose of meth and toluene to cram 30-35lbs/min through an L15A eventually. :vtec:

Haha somehow I missed that! was that back on the 5psi kit?

Congratz!
 

wow man! first off congratz for ur grad :D...I am also a person who used to log in alot on fitfreaks and that was bout 3-4 years ago when my fit was stock...which i got it on july 16, 2007 gd3 ftw! i stopped coming in here cuz of college, work and building my fit. Now I also have a custom setup with scion tc 370cc injectors but with an emanage blue @5psi (with the trial and error tuning) she's been boosted since 11K miles and is now currently at 63.5K (need oil change asap!), i was offered an fic for $200 like 30 minutes ago which made me want to snoop around for info so i remembered i remade this other account on here (cuz i dont remember my first one) and wanted to know how u pulling off with the fic? (I tuned the blue myself nailing a good 12-12.2 AFR on a cold night and 11.7 on a hot day at full boost) with cruising non boosted at 14's..oh and if possible, could u explain to me how this thing works now? i cant even upload a profile pic :'( nor upload pics to a threat to post my 3 year build XD

It would be nice if it did but it doesn't... The exhaust odor smells like that of the 472 Cadillac V8 in a hearse I owned just after starting it up on a still 15 degree morning so it is obviously running rich.....@ DSM.... Yes sir, it was the morning after I had it all together and ready to go...I had to make a 90 mile round trip to a hobby shop in Tyler for the silicone hose... I keep the engine bay liberally sprayed with rodent repellent and I don't let anyone kill snakes that eat rats. As for methanol? water mix ratio, I think it would be best to do 50/50% mix or even a little more water during the warm months... I doubt that I will see any more power than I would on a cool day that brings my IAT down to the same as the water and methanol does unless it is due to more ignition timing advance by way of the ECU from the methanol

nope delay valve still there. Its a steel braded hose that goes from delay valve to slave cylinder. My clutch feels fine though. No problems or complaints. When i release it goes.....

then you should have put the line to the master cylinder...

not long enough.... but yes i would have to make something custom. but my clutch feels good and no "delay" felt. so im not too worried.