Articles » Basic Mods Part 1

This article is intended to inform any and all newbies to the import scene about the basic things available to be done to their civic. Many, if not all of these modifications can be applied to all imports. In a later article we will move on to more advanced modifications and what benefits they provide.

We’ll start off with the intake. This subject can be very broad to include even forced induction…which will be covered in a later article. But let’s keep it simple right now. The intake is usually made up of aluminum and is cylindrical in shape. It replaces that black intake box in your car and has a cone shaped filter on the end. What this does is free up airflow to your engine and makes it so that your engine doesn’t have to work as hard to suck the air in. This results in a slight increase in horsepower in the higher RPMs, a slight increase in fuel economy and also lets the engine run slightly cooler. After you install the intake, you may be surprised to find that your car sounds a lot different. It will sound about the same in the low RPMs but once you really get on it, your engine will be two to three times louder than before because you don’t have all that restrictive piping and box dampening the noise. But don’t worry, this sound is good.

Now, moving into more detail about intakes we discover that there is more than one type. You have your short ram intake, your cold-air induction intake and your ram air intake. Each of these has their benefits and their drawbacks. Let’s start with the short ram. This is your standard aftermarket intake and consists of a 2 to 3 foot piece of piping with a cone shaped filter on the end that replaces your stock intake box. The benefits of it are that it increases airflow to the engine and is very safe because it can’t suck up any water being that it’s located inside the engine compartment. This makes it a good choice for any location that gets a lot of rain. The major drawback of it is that it is inside the engine compartment. This may sound confusing because I just said that this is a benefit. Well, it’s both. Where is most of the engine heat? It’s in the engine compartment where the intake is. This causes your intake to suck up warm air just like the stock one which sure doesn’t gain any horsepower. Maybe I should clarify things a little more here. The laws of thermodynamics basically state that the colder the intake air temperature is, the more horsepower the engine will make (about 1 hp per every 7deg. decrease in temp).

This law brings us to our next two types of intakes: cold air and ram air. Cold air intakes are very similar to the short ram in that they use piping with a cone filter on the end. The difference is that the cold air has a lot longer pipe and usually extends all the way down into the bumper or near the wheel well. Since cold air falls and hot air rises, this is where the coldest air is going to be. This intake provides quite a bit more horsepower than the short ram, but is susceptible to sucking up water from large puddles. Water is a liquid, and liquids do not compress. So if your engine sucks up more water than there is volume in the cylinder at Top Dead Center, you will experience water lock. This is where your motor seizes up instantly because it cannot compress the water. AEM makes a bypass valve that attaches to the cold air intake that prevents the intake from sucking up too much water. This is a good choice for a serious racer, but not for someone who lives where it rains a lot.

Finally, we have ram air. Ram air is similar to cold air in that it goes for the coldest air possible. The difference is that instead of a cone filter at the end, you have a funnel or hood scoop that ‘scoops’ air into the engine. With increased speed the colder air is actually forced into the motor giving considerable gains in horsepower over the short ram and possibly a little more than the cold air. However, ram air intakes only ‘ram’ air in to the motor when the car is moving at a reasonable speed, and are also susceptible to sucking up water unless proper countermeasures are taken to prevent that.

This summarizes the various types of intakes available for your civic and what the benefits and drawbacks are of each one. In the next section we will discuss exhaust headers and what they can do for your car.