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Project Honda EJ Civic: Building the B18C1 Part IV
By Chuck Johnson
Photos by Joe Lu
Admittedly, Project Honda Civic EJ has taken the proverbial backseat to our project land speed racer 240SX in the last year. With Speed Week over, the crew and I have been playing catch up on our Project Honda Civic EJ. In particular, with the long rod, high compression engine build.
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| We selected a combination of OEM Honda and Skunk2 hardware for our B18C1 valvetrain. |
In our last installment of Project Honda Civic EJ, we had just begun the assembly of the bottom end of our B18C1 engine. With the bottom end complete, we could now shift our attention towards the assembly of our B18C1’s cylinder head and the completion of Project Honda Civic EJ’s engine build.
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| When it comes to cylinder heads Tom Fujita of Port Flow Designs is truly a master at work. |
What now seems like eons ago, we had Tom Fujita of Port Flow Design rebuild and port our cylinder head. Read up here for more details on Port Flow Design’s head work.
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| The valves inside of Project Civic EJ's B18C1 were recut to keep the cost down. |
Since our valves were in relatively good shape still, Tom Fujita was able to regrind each of the valves which thankfully prevented us from sliding down the costly slope of purchasing new valves. I say “costly” because we surely would not have been able to resist the temptation of purchasing a set of stainless steel and or Inconel oversized valves albeit given a reasonable excuse.
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Knowing that we were going to turn some serious RPM on our B18C1 in an attempt to reap the rewards of our long rod combination, we ditched any last temptations of oversize valves and instead, invested into insuring adequate valvetrain stability. A set of valve springs properly designed for the camshafts profile and intended RPM is a critical component in insuring proper valve motion as well as timely opening and closing events at high RPM. Or put simply, a valve spring’s job is to ensure that a valve’s motion follows that which is intended by the camshaft's lobe profiles.
