Sorry to hear of your loss. Do you have any external features to help us recognise your car, i.e., aftermarket sport rims, bodykit, stickers etc?

Yow, it looks like a mash up between the Prius and current City. Hope I'm wrong Then again I hope I'm right so the current Civic will still hold its value well heh heh heh.

You can get a a set of 4 NGK Iridium plugs in this forum or from most spare parts shops for less than RM200.

You can try Ceramic NAO (funny name haha) from one of the forummers here. Just type Ceramic NAO and search for him. Whole set for Civic FD1 is around RM170. Better than OEM and won't score your rotors. I skimmed my front rotors before changing to the ceramic pads and it's been 3 months now, my discs are still smooth I got them also because they don't give off much brake dust, unlike conventional asbestos pads. Downside? They wear out faster than OEM. But for me, not having to wash my precious rims every few days is a good tradeoff.

High temp racing pads are great, but because Honda brake rotors are softer than other makes, these pads tend to dig into the rotors, necessitating a skim at every pad change. Also, high temp pads are usually not very grippy when cold, so if you're a regular nine-to-fiver who gets stuck in morning traffic, expect to step harder on your brakes

Nope, that's just the facelift of their US spec Civic. Notice the absence of the Hoffmeister kink at the headlights? Dunno why they took it out of the US version. I prefer our local Civic's lights but love the US spec front bumper

If it's an old model Corolla, and it can tapau your friend at 190km/h, it's prolly a 4A-GE black top 1.6 twin cam with 20 valves.

Did you also experience the slight loss in low end torque?

It's actually more to do with two things, heat in the engine bay and (usually) larger diameter of the intake pipe of an open pod leading into the intake manifold. The stock pipes are usually more restrictive (smaller diameter), promoting higher air velocity that aids low end torque.

On my previous ride, a City iDSI, I experimented with various configurations, two of which were open pods. I found that open pods were good at higher revs but tended to be sluggish low down. The first one was a stainless steel mesh open pod without heat shield, the other one was an Apexi power intake with a custom built aluminum heat shield. The Apexi config was one of the best I ever had, but still couldn't compare to the stock intake system when it comes to instant throttle response in start-stop traffic situations and for climbing hills with lower revs. The open pod intakes gave me more power, but only if I cared to rev the engine past 3k rpm.

I don't think you got my meaning bro. At the low end of the revs, an engine needs a restricted intake pipe to increase air velocity (not density, cos density is more of an environmental issue, i.e., hot air or cold air). Once the engine has generated enough vacuum above a certain rpm it is then able to pull in a larger volume of air. That is why if your intake piping is larger than stock, you will find it troublesome to drive in regular traffic, as if the car has no power below a certain rpm, but once you go above it, you'll find that suddenly your car becomes more powerful than stock. But I do understand what you said about air density, which I already explained as being one of the two main reasons *not* to go for open pod. However, if you shield your pod properly and run a CAI system, the density argument would no longer hold water.

OTOH, the reason that the R18 engine of the FD1 uses a variable length intake manifold system; longer runners for low rpm and then at higher output switches over to shorter ones, is to try and get the best of both worlds. A more technical explanation can be found here: http://asia.vtec.net/Engines/R18A/index.html where the author talks about the different resonant frequency pulses generated by the engine's intake valves and how a variable length intake manifold helps to achieve optimum volumetric efficiency throughout the power band.

Many years ago on my old Mazda 626 Cronos V6 a type of variable intake system was already used, called VRIS or variable resonance induction system, which is probably similar to the one employed in the Honda R18 engine. A small bore, short stroke 2.0 V6 suffers from lack of low end torque, so the use of VRIS helped to alleviate that shortcoming to a certain extent for better driveability. Here's something I found on good ol' wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_K_engine

Some crickets live in my Civic. Other than that no major complaints, just blast the music louder lol

The FD1 uses HB4 (9006) halogens, while FD2 uses D2R HIDs. They are mutually exclusive in that you won't be able to swap just the headlamps without modding the wiring. I went through the conversion and now have an extra set of bulbs, wiring and harness. If you're keen let me know, I might switch back to FD1 lights

As long as you stick to 4200K bulbs, you won't get into trouble with the law.

Well, if you want a totally stock-looking HID set you won't go wrong with an FD2 retrofit, cos that headlight is designed for HID, with proper cutoff lines to avoid blinding oncoming traffic. However, due to D2R being the defacto standard bulbs for reflector based housings, Honda too opted to go with D2R for the Civic and I believe the Accord as well. The reason that I feel like changing back to the FD1 lights is because I have a perfectly good working set of Philips HB4 bulbs and ballasts, with great color and brightness which I bought new for RM1500++ and used for only 2 months. If I sell them I'll lose a lot, so no point.

Although the cutoff line for the FD1's HB4 can never compare to the FD2's D2R (due to the inherent design of the FD1 housing being made for halogens), IMO my Philips HB4 set is brighter than the D2R set that I'm on currently. The HB4 that I have are also warmer in color tone, making for a much brighter driving experience. In terms of raw brightness, HB4 wins, but if you want an elegant solution, then you'll be better off with D2R. The FD1 lights on HID (even from Philips) tend to have quite a bit of light bleeding, but not that bad, just not so nice This is due to the fact that in order to extract maximum brightness from halogens, the designers of such housings would try and reflect as much light as possible. Light bleeding is there, but not that noticeable on halogens, but once you switch over to HIDs, the bleeding is more obvious.

FD2 headlamp housings are costlier than FD1's. Not that FD2 headlamps are technologically very different, it's just because they're made for a more premium car lol. You can get a pair of used FD1 headlamps for around 500 or less, while a used set of FD2 headlamps may fetch between 600-800. If you decide to buy the original ballast and bulbs from Honda, prepare to pay at least 2k or more. Not to mention, the connectors for HB4 and D2R are different, so for me, I bought a pair of used OEM D2R ballasts (I think they're from Matsushita or Bosch, not sure) that come with the D2R/D2S bulb connectors. The wiring that goes into the OEM ballasts from the car's headlight wiring needed to be frankensteined, so I spliced a pair of HB4 connectors from an old set of ballasts rather than mess up my original connectors.

If you really want FD2 lights, I have a pair (using them now), and if you want the original Honda OEM ballasts and bulbs, I got jalan oso The only good thing about the ori ballasts is that they fit nicely under the headlamp housing (there's a round, hollow indent under the headlamps where the ballasts are secured in place via screws).

If you're keen to experiment let me know, I'll work something out for you

This post has been edited by gregy: Sep 28 2010, 12:47 AM

I think to make it clear, they should quote the number of yrs of loan taken. IIRC, the shorter the loan period the lesser the interest.

Ya lor, and how are we to know if it's not some rogue employee who's been tracking the cars and feeding the info to thieves? You never know who to trust these days.

So what car did you end up buying?

So you didn't answer my question. What car did you buy after this one?

Looks like 17"s to me. The Civic's wheel arch is impossibly huge and would dwarf anything smaller than 17".

I think a better gauge would be the driver himself. If the major part of his daily commute involves getting stuck in jams, best to change the oil every 5k km, since the distance traveled is short while the engine has been working the whole time.

Lol

Try googling it. Spy shots r available all over cyberspace