so i have the 2019 rdx ive been looking into some upgrades. one being the intercooler and the other is the reflash. im just torn between hondata and k pro. which one is the better and safer and gets more for the money. any input would be appreciated.

 

Better is a relative term. Are you looking for more HP/TQ? They both have pretty good reputation. It appears the K tuner gets more HP and costs less. The question is I haven't seen what either of them are running for boost levels. I did some more testing on my RDX which is totally stock and I had 15#'s of boost pretty steady in the lower gears. When I had room to keep the throttle down I was seeing 18#'s in 7th gear. It was holding pretty steady at that.

While I would love to tune the heck out of this motor, I am really reluctant to do anything since it will be my daily driver and I can't afford to have it down for any repairs. Not to mention the whole warranty aspect of this.

If I were to go the mod route I'd probably start with just a reflash and see how far that gets me. Usually that is the best bang for the buck. I'd drive it for awhile and do a lot of logging and see what m AFRs where, EGTs, and see if I am encountering any knock and what kind of timing it was running. I would also be concerned how the fuel injectors are handling everything before going on to much more.

 

thats the dilemma i have. its my daily driver. im not really trying to go full blown asshole power with it. just wanna make it more fun to drive and keep the reliability of it. my idea was to get a reflash and put in the plr intercooler. and eventually when they come out with a intake that is to my liking throw that in there also. thanx for the reply brother its much appreciated.

 

The problem with mods is where do you stop? ;-)

At least for this motor we can copy the Accord and Civic R mods. Hopefully they will have found the "low hanging fruit" of best bang for the buck or going totally wild. I haven't done enough research to see where the weak links are so to speak. It would seem like if you were going to do the intercooler and downpipe you'd probably want to do exhaust too. Then how much limitation is the stock turbo and can the stock injectors keep up. I really don't have the time to explore all these things.

At the end of the day if you are doing all these mods, maybe it was better to start with a faster car to begin with such as the Alfa. I seriously thought about going with the Alfa Stelvio Q4 but my wife would have killed me as I have a C8 Vette on order. So the RDX was the best blend of performance, reliability and features for the money she wouldn't kill me for spending. I drove a bunch of other CUVs and there are some I clearly liked better but the reliability concerns ruled them out.

If I were you, I would probably just get a reflash and call it a day. Easy to put back stock. Should be a significant performance improvement and reliability should still be pretty good with either of the tunes. I am not sure you are going to get that much more with an intercooler and downpipe. It is always the point of diminishing returns and finding the next weakest link to fix.

I went deep down the tuning rabbit hole on some street cars in the past. It is different it is on a purpose built racecar. I probably spent again what I had for the original car in mods. At the end of the day, I had a cheaper car that ran maybe a little faster than more expensive car that was stock. At the end of the day when I went to sell my car I got pennies on the dollar for all the mods and I still had a "cheap car". So while I had the satisfaction of building it into something pretty fast given its roots, economically it was a waste. I took a WRX wagon and turned it into a 10 sec car on the 1/4. On that car I should have just stuck with a tune and an exhaust and called it a day. At the end of the day I should have invested in a Porsche or Vette but my rationale at the time was I needed more seats to haul my kids around. :-)

I have to say I'd love another 30-50 hp in the RDX though. Thankfully I haven't found anyone with a tune nearby to drive theirs or I would probably end up going that route.

 

Very well said but once you get your Vette, lets hope you don't go crazy and make it go faster .

 

the good ole rabbit hole. yeah im definately not trying to go deep into the hole. ive been down that rd once with my 99 civic when i boosted it. i have the same rational thinking too i needed a family car. specially with parts not being to expensive to repair and easy to work on. i used to be a acura honda tech for 13yrs. now im a landrover jag tech. european cars are pricey to fix. i just want to get the most bang for the buck between the 2 programs

 

You have experience with cars so whatever you choose, you should be fine. Just like you, every car I have owned, I have touched something. Currently owned a 2019 Miata ND as my fun car.

TT

 

I have no experience with K-tuner so can only comment on Hondata. They have been in business forever, and their tune is extremely high quality on K24 - very smooth and better throttle response. I have full confidence on them, and can easily justify the extra cost from my experience.

I would say if you can afford it, go with FlashPro for worryfree support. This is not to say K-tuner is not as good, just I don't have personal experience with the setup to comment.

 

thanx for replying back. thats the other thing hondata i know has been around for a long time and they are reputable.

 

Do the hondata. And put an intake on it when someone starts offering one. Or buy the gruppe M for the type R and make it fit.

 

Just out of curiosity, do you have a particular goal in mind like sub 6 second 0-60 or high 13's in the 1/4. Or is it more of just bolt something on and hope it makes it better?

For example if I were to mod my RDX, I would like to be in the high 13's and sub 6 second 0-60. It is unlikely I'll mod it but that would be my goal. I would then run some baseline tests and see where I am at. Then I'd compute how much more power I'd need to make and then take a holistic approach to getting the power I needed. I could choose what parts made the most sense with my goal in and select the parts that would work best together to achieve it.

So for the heck of it I ran a quick baseline run today to see where my RDX lands. I had 3/4 tank of fuel, 350 pounds of gear, 91 octane and density altitude of over 2300' above sea level. I put it in sport + mode, and S for the gear box. Here is my raw 1/4 mile data (uncorrected for density altitude. One thing to note is I did not brake torque the motor, I just nailed the throttle from a stop. I also had to letup a bit just before the end of the 1/4 mile as I came up on some traffic. So likely times would have been a bit better as well as trap speed.

Uncorrected
14.99@93.55 mph

Corrected
14.59@96.19 mph

My 60' time was a terrible 2.47 (because I didn't spool up the turbo before launch)

Corrected 0-60 time was 6.6 which is ok I guess under the circumstances. Raw data was 6.8. Compared to the Everyman Driver video on Youtube my car was running better than his test vehicle at about the equivalent density altitude best I can determine. His runs were 7.25 to 7.97.

What is encouraging for me is the trap speed is pretty solid. Based on the speed, I could the low 14's with a better launch. I also did some logging but haven't had a chance to look through it in much detail. Unfortunately the logger I used only captured once per second. It didn't look like the motor was pulling any timing. I don't know the PID for the gears and that would be helpful. There is a shift, I think the 2-3, that is very slow. I pulled peak boost of 19#'s.

Anyway hope some of this will be useful reference for anyone else tuning their car. A K-tuner stage 2, with a good lunch and correcting for density altitude would probably put me in the high 13's and trap speed of over 100 mph. That would put me in range of the Alfa Stelvio Sport Ti.

 

this car wont see a track ever. not trying to dive through the rabbite hole of excessive mods. im just want to get some of the water out of this motor cause i know its watered down. and has alot of potential. as far as between hondata or k tune. i want to buy once and cry once without disappointment. and get the most for my money.

 

Well hopefully you find what you are looking for. They both seem to offer similar performance. You can always try and wring out more but at what cost to reliability is always the question. It doesn't look like either of these tunes go really close to the bleeding edge but without knowing exactly what they are tweaking it is hard to say. Hopefully they aren't just upping the boost and not doing anything else to help the motor survive.

If I planned on really tweaking the motor I'd likely spend some time in the Civic forum and Accord forum to see what they've broken so far. :-) That is one good thing about this motor being shared with other platforms.

 

thanks man. i did find a video or a guy who had a civic sport that did a side by side comparison of both hondata and k tune. and the ktune software was actually faster more responsive. ive been trying to find the video. cant seem to find.
does anyone know what the stock psi of boost is on the rdx?

 

Normally I've seen 15 psi max. During the logging of my one run I saw 19 psi 2 times during that run. It was just momentary when it shifted and then dropped back fairly quickly to 15 psi steady state.

 

My question is - this vehicle has been on the market for a year and there's NO data I can find on the internet about 0-60 times after a Stage 2 Ktuner? REALLY? People are using this thing and then not posting their times? That's insane. Someone do us a favor and PLEASE post some 0-60 times, altitude, what mode you were in, etc.

PRL has an intercooler and a downpipe, I'm interested in piecing this stuff together with the tune if I can get some actual information on what my horsepower gains and 0-60 times will look like after it all

I also reached out to Graham Rahal Performance, they had the SEMA RDX last year that was making 345HP - they responded:

I'm trying to give X3 m40i's a run for their money. Someone post some data on their post-tune times!

 

A X3 m40i is a very aggressive target but I like it. My past experience with the BMWs I've owned is often they are pretty conservative in their HP/TQ ratings. The M40i is a 3 liter turbo motor and doesn't weigh that much more than the RDX. There is a long way to go just to reach parity with the M40i.

Last specs I read was 0-60 in 4.4, 1/4 in about 13.0 @ 107. These are some pretty solid numbers. I would say to get anywhere near the BMW's performance you'll likely need a tune, down pipe, exhaust, intercooler and possibly a turbo upgrade. You are going to be pushing that little 2.0 l motor pretty hard to keep up with a motor that is 50% bigger just to start.

Then again with the M40i stickering at about 65k with options similar to an RDX, you can afford to dump some coin into to try and match the performance.

It is unfortunate that there is a lack of tuned times to draw from. At least I put my stock ones out there for a reference point. For reference I used Dragy which is a very precise GPS measuring tool. It normally is within a few hundredths of a second compared to my times at an actual track. Great tool and a decent app to use all for about $150 or so. Makes it an absolute bargain.

I am in N. Florida for the winter and wants to meet up we can slap it in your RDX and see how it runs to compile some more baseline numbers.

 

For reference, can you give some details on your best stock 0-60 times and how you got there? I'm new to the car so what mode you were driving in, was it manual or were you allowing the car to auto shift? And does it still auto shift on it's own at certain points regardless of manual mode or can you actually redline the vehicle in every gear? I haven't tried myself yet.

 

And as far as the BMW goes I was looking at an X4 with low miles but I test drove it and even though it was much faster, everything else about the car was just BLAH to me compared to my Blue RDX with red interior. The RDX just has so much personality whereas the BMW has next to none. And maybe I'm just weird but as far as I can tell from inside the cabin, the RDX exhaust note sounds better. I might be driving a slower vehicle but you wouldn't think it once you drive it.

 

I think the best way to handle posting of times is to start a new thread. I'll do that later when I have more time to write the relevant info such as temp, density altitude, run parameters, etc. I posted some info in one of the other threads. I think it would be much easier if we all just do it in one place.