Why This Tiny Honda Engine Can Make 1000hp

This is a four-cylinder Honda

engine

that is capable of handling over a thousand horsepower. How could Honda, the same company that built

this

engine

,

make

an engine so good that people are trading it in for everything from Miatas to Ferraris? Well, today we have a completely disassembled Honda. The k20a engine is the best version of the k series type R, so let's rebuild

this

engine and examine it piece by piece to find out what

make

s it such a popular engine. Welcome to Donut, thanks for what we have here. It's an Acura Integra, this is a DC2 with a K20A swap making it as close to the DC5 as we can get here in the states, the K20A makes 250 horsepower and redlines at 8600 RVM.

I like that now most Redline cars a little close to 7000 RPM, they don't feel like being in those higher RPM ranges, but that's not the case with the K20. Hey thanks I love it and this one hits nine thousand now the popularity of the K series. The engine started to skyrocket as early as 2003 and 2004 when car enthusiasts and tuners started to realize how capable this is. engine. Fast forward 22 years, the K20 K24 are just as popular as they were back then and that is facilitated by a massive and robust aftermarket which is really a testament to the engine itself now, if you are thinking about doing a k-swap yourself, you should know that there are almost 20 variants of the K series engine, here are alarmed, but apparently there is something in this k20a variant that makes it much more. special than all the other variants and I think we should find out what it is.

I think you're right, yeah, let's go to the store, okay Joey, we have a lot of parts on the table. I'm excited they put this back up. together and look at this, this is the main building block of this construction, our aluminum block. Now the k20a is an inline four cylinder engine which makes it extremely small and compact. They have very good balance due to the mirrored movement of the piston, so pistons one and four are synchronized, as well as pistons two and three, and because of that you have an intrinsically very well balanced engine, so this is a square engine and there are also square tops and bottom squares when the bore is larger than the stroke and that's good for making a lot of RPM's inversely under squares when you have a smaller bore and longer stroke which is great for making torque and This is often how diesel engines are, so this is a happy medium between the two.

All you need to know about this is that it just wraps very high and that's where it generates its power, which I like. Okay, so we're ready to put our crankshaft in and this crankshaft is forged like many and of course. it's balanced with these big counterweights here when they build this engine, they balance the crankshaft with the connecting rods and pistons installed, that's something you typically see on complete aftermarket builds. It's great to see it on a little Honda four-cylinder, one of the hallmarks. The characteristics of the K series is that it uses this base plate that fulfills multiple functions.

Typical engines will have a single crank cap that sits over the crank to hold it in place now with the K series that is built into this base plate, this base plate also acts. like a girdle and that helps strengthen the bottom of this engine. Well this comes from the factory which is super unique and cool, what I do is I press them down. I'm guessing it's a torque plus angle, there's probably a procedure so I'm going to need your help, finger tight it, let it sit and then tighten it if our tool doesn't actually do that, the other thing we can do is make dots on the bolts and then do like a protractor at 56 degrees, that's a lot of work.

I know 60 degrees is fine here we go boom boom okay so the first thing we're going to do in terms of putting this engine back together is put on some new piston rings these are for the engine so with Luckily we won't have to. Make any file, but we're going to measure to make sure and what we're going to measure is what's called the end gap, which is the gap between the two ends of the piston ring when it's installed in the cylinder, lower it a little bit with the hand, then we'll grab our piston and using the piston helps move the ring flat and safely down.

We are going to measure the final gap with a set of feeler gauges. Basically what we're looking for is to get our feeler gauge in that end Gap with a slight amount of resistance on The feeler gauges, that piston ring measures really well, so I'll do the rest, then we'll put the rings on the pistons and Then we will place the pistons in the block. I'm just going to push it to the top of the platform and then Jerry is going to nail it home, done, yeah, go ahead, oh, what's the problem, hey, put it back.

It's okay, it's just one. Fell Swoop, you're getting caught. What's going on? No. like the bottoms, I think it's gone, we're going good, that was one less, it wasn't as smooth as you'd like, but it worked well, let's turn it around, put that hat on, you're so strong, here we go, hey, squeeze it. Okay, now let's make sure it spins and spins really well. Now pistons have a couple of characteristics that we are going to talk about. The first are the four cuts and the top of the piston that correspond to the four valves per cylinder.

We have two intakes and two exhausts, we have a raised dome top here and that helps create our compression ratio of 11.5 to 1. Now the compression ratio is the ratio of the volume inside the cylinder when the piston is at the bottom dead center compared to when it's top dead center so you want a higher compression ratio because you're going to make more power and you're going to get better fuel efficiency because that's what we're all after you know more MPG when we build a good k20a 1000. horsepower inline four okay so we're reinstalling our oil pump.

This oil pump is a little different than many others. Many oil pumps are driven directly from the crankshaft through splines in the end of the crankshaft, but this one is driven. by one sprocket with a chain to another sprocket, so now we're installing the windshield pan, which is just a pan that basically covers the crankshaft and separates it from the oil sump and keeps a lot of splash and slosh out of the oil. down, which keeps the power on, so we're about to put the oil pan back on before we do that. I'm just cleaning up the old gasket material, clean, clean, yeah, yeah, I don't want to be right next to this belt you're on There's still a long way to go working in the garage is time consuming, that's why we have today's sponsor factor .

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We finally got the head back from the machine shop and they did a great job so obviously they machined it to create a nice surface soft contact with our block, we have new intake valves, they also cleaned the exhaust valves, this looks pretty good, like new, it should be better than you, actually, better than new and if you're wondering, Hey, what? where is Jopey? Well, he got it. stuck with another case of massive diarrhea so Adam and I are going to have to push this out to the end mmm crunchy now the head's ability to flow air is crucial to the performance of an engine and the K20 can suck in some air now basically the diameter of the intake valves, as well as the angle of the intake runners, determines the amount of air that flows through the head.

Typically when a head like this is released, some machining needs to be done from the factory. One type will match the ports to the intake ports. and the exhaust ports making sure there is good air flow into the cylinder and the exhaust gases out. Now this engine has four valves per cylinder, we have two intake valves, two exhaust valves, the intake valve diameter is 35 millimeters and the exhaust diameter is now 30 millimeters. One thing that's really cool about this valvetrain is that from the factory we've upgraded the valve springs, because when this engine has intake close to 9000 RPM, we don't want any valve float and they addressed that when they built this strange and cool thing. about this engine is that it has IV technology, you've probably heard of VTEC, but have you heard of Ivy Tech?

It means smart, okay, so if you look here we have our camshaft and on our camshaft below we have our rocker arms and the cool thing. The thing about these rockers is that they give us essentially two different cam profiles, so when you're at a lower RPM, this cam rotates and actually hits these two outer lobes, but after reaching a certain RPM, the pressure of the oil connects these three pieces here. on the center cam lobe, which has a more aggressive profile, pushes down, giving you longer lift and a little extra timing, allowing for more power, but when you're just cruising around town and not you need that aggressiveness.

You're using the smaller profile, so you have a fuel-efficient, fuel-efficient inline-four. What makes Ivy Tech so special is this guy right here, this camshaft is adjustable because of this sprocket, when it's filled with oil pressure, it will advance or advance. timing and because of that it gives us the ability to have power at both the bottom end and the top end getting the best of both worlds foreign good job good pull good hit okay so we line up our timing marks on the three points of the chain tensioner We've got new guides which is good they go at an angle really well something really satisfying about it because we've rotated this before putting it on to confirm that's all good no make sure there's no bindings or anything everything it will be OK.

Jerry, we've been following the instructions, look, well, I don't know, but it goes with slack right there. I don't think it should ever work with that Slack, man, we're still very far away, yeah, okay, so we got a little scared. but we realized that the timing chain tensioner is pressurized with engine oil, which was causing this chain to loosen a little and then tighten, but part of that was that we didn't maintain the tension because we don't have oil. pressure, okay, okay, we learned we better check now that when we go to turn this thing on, oh, don't go down that hole, oh yeah, okay, the water pump on is that right, it goes before the intake manifold to shut down.

So Adam is installing our intake manifold, which is made from cast aluminum, which is nice because it's lightweight and dissipates heat well, but it's really nothing that special, however, the special thing attached to it is this throttle body. You can think of an engine. It's really just a big air pump and the more air you can get into those combustion cylinders, the more power you can make and that's where the K20 really excels. This throttle body is 66 millimeters in diameter. Now there will probably be more economy cars in the 50's to 60's, so you get a lot more air volume and that's important because you can make more power, more torque and have better throttle response coming directly from behind.

Now if you look at these Runners, these setups are thick, look how thick they are. They are and are quite long, which helps us get good laminar airflow into the cylinders so that we can make as much power as possible and be efficient in making that power. that says, hey, we're almost done with this red Honda valve cover, this should slide on nice and easy, just like that, if I had to invest money in the Jay-Z, the last thing I would have left for this, I think where from doubt comes. It's because it's me and not Joe, to be honest, although I would trust you over Joby, Joby has blown up a lot, the guy is going to wait.

One thing I don't trust is Adam's leash. Antics. I don't want to be right next to this strap. I have no faith in that, oh 266 266. Okay Adam, so it turns out this thing is pretty hard to start while he's on a stand, yeah, IvyTech had to talk to a lot of different sensors for it to even fire. and to be honest, that's a good final point, this engine is what cemented Ivy Tech in Honda's lineup. You know you have a very small, high-power, high-revving compact engine that you can add to anything. This thing is really a cool piece of engineering.

One of the best engines Honda has ever made. It's really cool and we're just going to skip all the lighting on a stand and go straight to throwing it into a car. What car is it? I don't know, but you do. If you have any ideas, leave a comment below Of those things, all I have is a bunch of random surfaces, but we've got that covered too. A new sticker pack. Go to donutmedia.com. Thank you all very much for watching this episode. We have to thank many people who helped us install this engine. Back together the d-sport Club did all the machining so if you need some work on the engine go get them too my boy Jose who brought us his Type R let us rip that sucker apart oh Adam in the Connecticut races.follow me on Jeremiah Burton follow donut on donut media follow Joby even though he's not here it's all a joke that's that joke bye thank you