i have a 2006 acura rl sh-awd A-Spec edition. I have a short ram intake and deleted all 3 cats already with flowmaster 40s on my dual exhaust... i also just ordered an AFE throttle body spacer and it's on the way. What are some other upgrades i could do? I've seen some talk about the j37 intake manifold?
I am new to the forum. Any help would be great. Thanks.

Michael

 

nitrous , light weight pulley, P2R intake manifold spacer,

 

throttle body spacers dont do jack shit!!!

any air tuning is done in the intake manifold and NOT before it.
so, increasing volume by a intake manifold spacer WILL give you gains...throttle body spacers are junk.

might want to get rid of the short ram intake, as it's just breathing the hot air from the engine.
and the J-series engine that has been in production since 1996 is known for heat soak.

 

the best free mod is to take that piggy to the gym and lean her out.
she'll accelerate better, brake better, corner better just by taking a few hundred pounds off the car

 

I have a carbon fiber heat shield around the air filter to help any heat soak that may come through filter. I have taken the spare tire and jack out to help reduce weight. Aso i am looking into fabricating a functional hood scoop to ram air in and possibly a cowl at the back of the hood to help hot air escape. I also want to get the intake manifold spacer and thermal gaskets.

Thanks guys

 

nice plans for cutting up the hood!!
my buddy did M3 hood vents to let out hot air. the m3 hood vents are positioned over the fuse box, so I wouldnt do that...but Mercedes Benz models have LARGE cowls that go across the rear of the hood. thats the route I want to take

another buddy played with the idea of the Jaguar XF "supercharged" hood vents but they ALSO tend to look good only over the fuse box

 

Do you have a link to the light weight pulley?

 

Shop Online | Excelerate Performance

 

If you look at the RL intake, it eventually ends up at the front edge of the hood just behind the driver's headlight assembly. Unfortunately, it goes underneath the battery to get there. I had always dreamed of finding a way to get it around the top of the battery in a straigh line so that it would create a ram effect.

 

i have removed the spare tire and jack to reduce weight. As this is my daily driver, what else could i remove
without affecting functionality? I have a 2 year old son so I can't remove the backseat due to his car seat.
Seriously thinking about a light weight crank pulley. What j-pipe would be good?

thanks

 

So I presume your maintenance is up to date and timing belt work done.

I swapped the crank pulley when I had TB done and tech was amazed at the diff in pull. I didnt see it but he did. Whats your ultimate goal? Do you want show vs go or show and go?

You could reduce weight by swapping out those wheels with lighter weight ones? You can pull all trunk trim out (which is minimal change) but your not gonna get much more reduction than all thats mentioned in your thread.

 

There maybe a few steel/rubber anchors hidden in places to damper noise and vibration.

Changing out OEM parts for lighter after market parts, like exhaust and wheels. 2 piece rotors which decreases rotating mass

Move to a light weight battery with the same or more cranking amps

RV6 Performance Fabrication, Engineering, R&D, Manufacturing for jpipe

 

just do nitrous. easy bang for the buck

 

Remove all your speakers. Then the A/C. Then the windows, trunk lid, hood, etc.



But seriously, unsprung weight has the biggest effect on performance. Get your tire and wheel weight down.

 

Thanks guys. I have already replaced stock mufflers with flownaster 40s and i have removed all 3 cats and replaced with straight pipe. (I live in South Carolina, no smog or emissions testing) i have replaced brake rotors with cross drilled and slotted performance rotors. I am doing my timing belt and water pump this week( using light weight aluminum water pump) also going to switch out the crank pulley with a light weight RALCO RZ pulley and going to replace the tension pulley with a light weight UNORTHODOX tension pulley in the process. And while I'm in there going to add the p2r intake manifold spacer with thermal gaskets. And looking at some light weight aluminum wheels. I have the ASPEC kit on my RL and it come with heavy chrome wheels. So should be some weight reducing going in there along with the pulleys. Thanks for all the input.

Michael


Even my 2 year old son wants to remove the heavy aspec wheels lol

 

good start Maybe a 3.7L imtake manifold with matching TB? Custom 4 in CAI instead of that short ram

 

Wow, an RRP A-Spec with the adaptive cruise!! Talk about a combo you don't see much!!!!!

 

yeah this car has all the features possible for the 06. Tech package with navigation and adaptive cruise, collision mitigation and the a-spec kit and wheels. This is the only RL I have seen in my small city of Gaffney South Carolina (population 12-13,000) lol
i get many compliments on it. It's in need of a paint job to touch up the little chips over the years. Going to keep the redondo red pearl though

 

That is a rare combo. I've seen one RRP on the street and it was rocking only a rear ASpec underbody spoiler of all things.

Nice car!

 

justinspace

you are slightly wrong about htat

the intake tube is an extension of manifold and does have an effect on

but you are right in that spacers wont do jack on this intake manifold design

it sits on top of the motor and heatsoaks from being on top of the motor regardless of what gasket you use

4 banger intake manifold is on the side and having a gasket helps just slightly mostly due to IAT sensor being less heatsoaked and dumping more fuel into it...

porting the manifold and head would actually work great but will need tuning

heatsoak from the engine bay is negligible in the real world its only a few degree difference
plus the intake filter on RL is inside the fender. nowhere near the engine or any heat source

ram air intake would definitely help on the freeway
and I belive RL has a dual chamber muffler as well so it is pretty good for a stock exhaust system

 

meh. there are dyno's showing the intake manifold spacer gaining 3-5hp
also, the MDX comes stock with an intake manifold spacer....

why would honda/acura provide the MDX with an intake manifold spacer!?!? because it improves mid-range torque.

the spacer acts like an extension of the intake manifold...
NOT the intake tubing..

 

It increase the runner length at the cost of top end, but since the RL doesn't high rev who cares. The RL need the TQ.

 

^agreed

 

theres also dynos showing increase in intake length has same effect to a certain point

the intake tube TB and intake manifold all the way down to the valve opening is one system

I personally tested 5 different intakes and an adjustable length intake tube to find the sweet spot for my motor.
mid range at the expense of top end depending on where you want the power curve to peak.

 

^but arent you the one ALWAYS asking for information?? lmao.

thisaznboi is turbo'd
and Ive been at it for 7 years
I'm pretty much bolted on and know the engine like the back of my hand.
I've changed the heads to my engine myself, to 3.7l MDX heads.

 

also, 4 inch intakes is where it's at.
there's power to be had with 4 inch diameter intakes

 

I am asking things I don't know. whats your point?

 

you should come hangout with the 3rd gen TL people :p

 

point is, you have LOTS to learn my friend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it wasnt a dig at you.
simply, we have DONE everything imaginable to the J32/J35/J37.
WE know what makes power! so you dont have to experiment


Come hangout in the 3G TL section!!!! you will learn A LOT!!!!!!!

 

this aznboi is hitting 350-400HP!!!!!!!!!!!!


that's SUCH AN AWESOME accomplishment!!! with such a hard motor to make gains....


Learn and COPY from us!!!!

 

AccordFlex is making ~450whp/~400wtq on the same dyno with a j35a8 stock block.
https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-tl-p...-887133/page5/

I am only on a 3.0L so nothing special

 

I get that this is an old post, but for the folks on a similar journey, including myself. This is what I’ve learned over the course of the last 15 months since grabbing a TL Type S w/6MT. The RL and TL Type S are different cars with a similar yet different J35A8. So I feel as though they are in the same hemisphere.

For starters, I don’t see any way anyone could shave off enough weight of these cars to improve performance without sacrificing the practicality of the car. Lets be honest, it’s a luxury sedan not built by BMW, Audi, Mercedes, and etc. Additionally, it’s pointless to remove your backseat, spare tire and the tools used with the spare tire. If anything, it decreases performance because you’ve now messed with weight distribution. If it were me, I’d just relocate the battery from the front of the car to the trunk. This evens out weight distribution and gives you some room under the hood.

With room under the hood, specifically in the area where the battery used to be, you can now incorporate an air intake that does not include unnecessary curves just to get air outside of the engine bay. Just think long ram cold air intake. You’d have to fabricate this yourself, of course.

I wouldn’t worry about heat soak, contrary to what others say. For that to happen, you would need to be dogging the shit out of the car for an extended period of time. Unless you plan to run it on a road course, doing then occasional dig or rolling race wouldn’t make much of a difference in terms of heat soak to the point of messing with performance.

But you could still do things to reduce overall temps in the engine bay. If you have a white RL, that’s a good start since your engine bay would be white. White reflects heat as opposed to absorbs like black. You could wrap your intake in a heat barrier/reflective product. Another thing is to minimize the heat from your exhaust by using exhaust wrap. The pre-cats would be a good start since they are right there in your face when you open your hood. There are also better tubes to use coming out of your radiator. They contain the heat better than the factory ones.

Those are simple housecleaning type of things you could do to give the car some more pep. A thing that folks seem to ignore is the importance of the suspension. Your car is only as fast as your suspension. If it is shit, torque alone will make it difficult to go straight or make aggressive turns. Same with brakes. Make sure they are on point. I wouldn’t worry about all of the bells and whistles products you see out there. Stick with OEM suspension parts and brakes. The one area you could slide outside of that is with your struts if you’re willing to spend the cash. I wouldn’t worry about slamming the vehicle. Dropping it slightly but not noticeably lowered. And get the motor mounts squared away. A lot of banging or roll in the car is often because of shit mounts.

Other upgrades you could do is with air flow. More is not better. It’s a combustible engine. Too much air and things are off. Too much fuel and it runs rich, throwing things off. In other words, you don’t need to do any boring or spacers of any kind. But you could do some smoothing of surfaces and port matching. Matching lower intake ports to the cylinder
head, the lower intake to the upper intake ports, and the upper intake to the throttle body. Your intake should also match the size of your throttle body. You are shooting for a consistent and smooth path for your airflow. I wouldn’t worry about polishing. Mirror finish is not ideal, contrary to what folks say. Go look at a P2R lower intake as an example. It still have some ridgity to it. Too smooth and the air is like running on a freshly oiled bowling alley. The air just slams into shit when it needs to consistently flow. Finally, a tune won’t hurt.

in short, most of your money should be spent on your suspension. The engine mods plus a tuner shouldn’t cost you more than $1500. Everything else is just buttoning things up. Hope this helps others and helps anyone avoid trying buzz word type mods that do nothing for a daily driver.