Hi all,
Quite new here and found this site by accident it's good to see the 4A spirit alive and kicking in New Zealand.
What interest me was the talk regarding silvertop vs blacktop especially regarding intake air velocity,the cams,the throttle bodies etc etc .. in fact i started my car off with the silvertop but felt the throttle response was not what I expected and plus the fact of wanting to hear the sound of the 4 throttle open induction started me on my quest to convert my enginet to a blacktop .. or in it's current stage a semi blacktop .. here's what done to my engine so far
1. started off with a late model silvertop (the one with the teardrop shaped inlet manifold) and c56 g/box
2. got hold of a complete blacktop head and throttle bodies and plenum
3. got hold of a complete 6 speed ecu and wiring
4. installed the head together with the wiring and ecu
5. engine was eating black oil like mad
6. stripped the engine and changed piston rings and at the same time overhaul the head ie change valve seals etc etc
7. fix everything back and so far the engine is running fine with visits to 8krpm on a daily basis
8. because my ambient temperature is around 34-35C degree installed an oil cooler as well
9. full set apexi N1 exhaust with the stock 20v extractor
The car that is being compared to is a silvertop with has been freshly rebuilt as well with hks/fgk 4-2-1 extractor along with apexi n1 exhaust system as well as a tom's carbon fiber induction box. The only difference is he is running the stock airbox with K&N drop in filter where else I'm running HKS open pod filter with no heat shield. We are also quite suprised with the results and has left us stumped. Both the engines are in the same body ae101 sedan (ae102 in US i think). Forgot to mention that my car is the one in orange and my friends silvertop is the one in blue. We thought my car would do badly because I'm still running silvertop pistons and now since I'm running open combustion chamber the power should be even worst not forgetting with the larger throttle bodies and also larger plenum.
Now pls do go and start asking why would I want to change to blacktop wiring instead of just installing a full management and get much better power gains. There are not many people who are playing around with the 20v around here and most of them are into V-TEC's and that leaves us poor 20v owners with empty promises by tuners and some even dared to take on their offer and install a haltech on their 20v and the results are not that promising so some us had resorted to making the full use of OEM ecu's but I will be installing a full management setup in the near future and hopefully will learn to start tuning the car myself. Anyway let's get back to the matter at hand which is the blacktop vs the silvertop vs my hybrid 20v