The new motor LIVES!
April 9th, 2006 – The built motor finally hits the road.
Thanks in no small part to all of the hard work of my friends, the Accord finally ran under its own power with the new motor. This was a really exciting day, and a breakthrough for my project.
The bottom line at this point:
I had a radically different motor than what my ECU was meant to handle. This motor has headwork, a long duration Delta 282 camshaft with adjustable cam gear, an intake manifold meant for a completely different car, a throttle body that dwarfs the original.
Consequentially the car pretty rough. It took a good amount of effort to get the car starting up and running more or less properly. Between the new throttle body, and the camshaft – and idle was out of the question. If I let my foot off the accelerator, the engine would immediately die. There is only so much a SAFC can do. Nevertheless, we got the beast on the road for a quick 50 mile break in. With the hood still off and the car barely back together, we hit the road.
What I first noticed was the radical power with the new motor. Even with low compression 8.4:1 pistons, the new motor felt very snappy and responsive compared to the high mileage A20 that had been serving faithfully for years. The new motor ran a bit rough up until 4000 rpm, but after 4000 rpm it sounded amazing, and was absolutely smooth with no thrashing at all. This did not sound like an A20 anymore. It was had a new found sense of urgency and intensity. At the same time it sounded smooth and accommodating.
By the time we had returned, my brakes had caught fire, I had luckily dodged a run-in with a state trooper, and I had decidedly blown my head gasket.
It was the first of many issues with the head gasket not sealing, ultimately I just needed to be more thorough and careful in the assembly and preparation of the head, and we managed to seal it up sufficiently. However this was a trial and error process, and ended up with me being a self-proclaimed expert at timing belt removal.
Overall this day was an overwhelming success, and marks one of the last days that my car resembled anything close to a ‘street car’.
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