Friday night rolled around, and I was faced with a sight that I hadn’t seen in a while. This was going to be the first weekend in a long time that I had absolutely no commitments, which allowed me to set my plans on getting Skunk2′s Intake Manifold finally installed in my car after sitting in my room for almost 2 months. I was looking forward on installing the manifold because a few weeks prior there was an article roaming around the Internet of a K-Series engine paired with the Skunk2 Intake Manifold and it showed great gains, and considering that I’m in the process of getting my car tuned, I figured that it would help me achieve the last few horsepower that the car was capable of.
I woke up Saturday morning, and after double checking to make sure I had all the necessary parts, I got to work. Words can’t describe how much of a pain removing the stock RBC intake manifold is. The Si engine bay is so small that everything is cramped in there and it’s placed in a way that you have to remove half of the engine bay before you can start thinking about removing any parts!
So after about 4 hours, the engine bay went from this:
To this:
Once I had the intake manifold removed, I noticed I was missing a few bolts that were not included with the manifold, so I decided to get cleaned up and head to the local Autozone to pick up the necessary parts. By the time I got home, it was getting dark outside, so I decided to call it a day and finish it up the following day. That night I did some research and I had a bad feeling about the charge pipe that attaches to the throttle body, so I ended up purchasing a Hondata Intake Manifold gasket just in case.
Sunday morning rolled around and I was looking forward on finishing the install. Although the research from the previous night had me a little worried, I decided to play it along and see what the outcome was going to be. After about 30 minutes, this was the outcome:
The intake manifold went in without a problem as well as the adapter plate. Bolted the throttle body to the adapter plate and finished installing the fuel rail and all the coolant and vacuum lines. Once that was done, I noticed that the throttle body was sitting lower than before, but I proceeded on getting the last few things done and went to install the charge pipe. I put the charge pipe in, and right away I noticed that the Skunk2 manifold sat lower than the stock one, and along with the adapter plate needed in order to bolt the throttle body, it shifted the whole thing lower and further out. This prevented the charge pipe from lining up, and after 2 hours of looking for every single possible way to make the charge pipe fit, I finally told myself that this manifold wasn’t made to work on a boosted setup.
I went back and removed the Skunk2 Intake Manifold, and now I’m just waiting on receiving the Hondata Intake Manifold Gasket so I can throw the stock RBC back on the car. I was told by Skunk2 that there was a little modification involved with installing their IM, but getting a new charge pipe done wasn’t one of them. If this would have happened a few months ago, I would have gotten the pipe done, but since I had a new pipe done once the Tial BOV was installed, I wasn’t in the mood to get a new one made.
So what’s my weekend recap? Well I spent 2 days working on the car and all I have to show for it is a car that doesn’t run, 2 intake manifolds sitting in my room, and becoming an expert on installing an intake manifold on the 06+ Honda Civic Si!
