These days everyone is getting soft. They want the best of both worlds-horsepower and comfort. What happened to the days when you would easily sacrifice air conditioning to feel the spool of a turbo? It seems that nowadays all people talk about is not wanting to install a turbo kit on their car for fear it won't be "streetable." Since when do we care about that? Isn't it all about sheer power? I say hogwash you wimps!
Unfortunately I don't rule the world so Rev Hard ignored my pleas for old-school inconvenient turbo kits and instead listened to the masses and brought out the ever-so-civilized EP3 bolt-on turbo kit. This kit is so streetable that you can drive your grandma around without her knowing that a monster lies in wait under the hood; that is, unless you are throttle-happy or have a sadistic propensity to snap peoples necks with the g-force of your acceleration. sorry Grams.
The EP3 Civic Si is a great car but greatly underpowered. The 160-horsepower engine is a far cry from the fun and free-spirited driving the Si was designed to accomplish. Feeling a need for more power, Rev Hard utilized its years of experience building turbo kits to design and fabricate a bolt-on system for the EP3. Myles Bautista of Rev Hard, a founding father of the import scene, remembers the hot days in Palmdale back in the day without air conditioning and wanted a kit that delivered it all: thrust, a/c and a dose of civility.
The heart of the turbo kit is a T4/T3 Rev Hard turbocharger mated to a cast-iron Rev Hard manifold. Air filtration to the turbocharger is provided by a low-restriction cone filter. A 2.5-inch downpipe expedites spent gases from the turbocharger. The kit does require fabricating a downpipe to mate to the factory catalytic converter. Wastegate control is handle by a TiAL 35mm external wastegate regulated to seven psi of boost.
Compressed air from the turbocharger is routed through 2.5-inch aluminized mandrel-bent piping and into a front-mount intercooler (27x6.5x3). EP3 owners will be happy to know that the front-mount intercooler fits perfectly behind the factory mesh grille and does not require any trimming. Before making its way to the throttle plate, a Vortech blow-off valve keeps the compressor from surging between shifts.
The hardest part of the install by far was removing the factory oil pan to attach the drain tube. This requires removing the suspension cradle to gain access to all the bolts to remove the oil pan.
Since the factory injectors are too small to sustain boosted duty the factory injectors were swapped out for larger 550cc injectors from RC Engineering that also come with the kit. You do however have to cut and resolder new injector clips to accommodate the new injectors.
Fuel and ignition duty is handled by a "flash-tuned" ECU that Rev Hard supplies with the kit but we opted to go with an AEM EMS unit instead. The EMS allows complete control of fuel and ignition tuning of the K20 engine. Since the factory map sensor is capable of reading up to 10 psi of boost we did not need to swap out any sensors. This will also give us the option to raise boost pressure down the line if we choose to.
On the dyno the stock EP3 equipped with an intake and exhaust generated 152.9 horsepower and 127.6 lb-ft of torque to the wheels. With the Rev Hard turbo kit installed Greg Nakano of AEM twiddled his fingers on the laptop to a tune of 234.0 horsepower and 203.0 lb-ft of torque at 6.5 psi, an increase of nearly a 80 horsepower over the bolt-ons and nearly a 100 horsepower over a stock EP3.