Recently acquired the car and just finished replacing all fluids and squaring away a few maintenance things like new Denso coils and spark plugs, EGR valve cleaned, and made sure the car was healthy before beginning the build. Compression was perfect, 0 leaks, strong car so it’s go time.

Richtuned motorsports in Lakewood WA, known for insane Honda tuning is where I’m getting custom work done. They’ve told me that I might see much more than 300 to the crank but I’m being conservative and not getting my hopes up. I enjoy the car a lot and it’s a blast, I think a healthy little bump in power could really make the car awesome.

Here is my outline for my mods.

-Full custom high flow exhaust
-Custom 3.5 in intake directed to hole in front bumper
-3.7 intake manifold swap
-headers
-3.7 throttle body
-custom tune/remap (nothing crazy just want car
to properly respond to the mods)
-underdrive pulleys

Once I’m done with these mods, I’ll post a dyno, and I’ll be deciding if I want to go a little bit further. Not going overkill.

In all likelihood, I’ll stop once I finish these power mods to keep the car reliable. I’m also lowering the car and getting a set of wheels. I’m willing to put good money into the car but not sure if FI will ever make sense.

Also interested in weight reduction tips. Looking to shave 50-100 LB for the hell of it because I enjoy tinkering like this. I was willing to do weight reduction on a manual German import E32 7 series land yacht so you better believe I’ll do some to a Honda. Might just get rid of the spare and do an AC delete (never use AC because I’m weird and delusional and refuse to “lose power”), washer fluid delete, and I’m also getting a lightweight racing seat, only because my stock seat is broken (can’t recline)

These mods might seem overkill but I paid a good chunk of change for the car to have it as a reliable daily-ish car for a long time. Want to do the car justice and get a well rounded and quality build out there representing CLs.

 

- What diameter are you going on your exhaust?
- Why 3.5 inch on the intake instead of 4 inch?
- What are you doing for a tune?

I'm always excited to see some one's build on a CL. I've only ever seen 3G TLs modified around here where I live, never CLs. It's rare I even see CLs to be honest, much more so for the Type S.
Good luck with your build though.

 

This is going to be good

 

3” on the exhaust most likely. 3.5” on the intake mainly just because that’s what the shop is saying. I said 4” and they just said how about a 3.5”, I’ll have to ask them why.

the tune will likely start vtec at 4-5k and just be altered to maximize the potential of the new exhaust, intake, and other parts. I’m a former BMW tuner so not sure what it’ll look like exactly for the J series till I’m at the shop planning with them.

 

Just curious, what 'standalone' ECU is the shop recommending for your tuning?

 

I've read that changing the VTEC range isn't going to make you any gains. It's supposedly good where it's at.
I've got a custom made 4 inch intake that I've made, but I have no proof that it made any gains, especially since I modified the entire intake at once. But moving the intake to the front bumper definitely did make a difference.
This was what I was wanting to know. Tuning is the biggest obstacle in my way after the engine swap.

 

Your Type-S ECU and AV6 tranny ought to handle all the 'beans' the J35-S throws at them just fine.

 

It's the M90 supercharger I plan on adding that I'm not sure of what to do.

 

Best guess is AEM EMS SERIES 2 30-6051, I know the answer is on the forum; however, I'm being lazy.
You'd just have to figure out if you need a 'harness' and where to procure it from?
Pretty sure Karanx7 would know what would be needed, or even if the 30-6051 would work, for the automatic CL-S ECU.

 

From what I understand from everything I've researched, to use the AEM ECU you need a manual transmission paired with auto crank gear on the motor.
There's also the FI/C I could try using, but I've also been curious about trying to wire up a mega squirt ECU. Either way, I'm curious as to which path OP is going with, because there's no real instructions out there when it comes to this subject, just what works.

If I go MS3, I'll definitely post a guide, but realistically, I'll be going AEM.

 

Headers give huge gains on these cars. You'll definitely see 300hp at the crank with a cold air intake, headers, exhaust, and lightweight pulleys. You can get a high flow catalytic converter if you want too. I wouldn't recommend an underdrive pulley, as I would prefer a stock diameter lightweight pulley. The best intake manifold option for your setup is to port out your current J32A2 manifold. The J37 manifold will give you at most +3hp, whereas porting your current manifold can give +9hp. You can't use a dbw J37 tb with your current setup anyways. For the intake, there's no reason to cut a hole in your bumper, as there's plenty of air flow behind the driver's side fog light already. All of these mods together still don't need any tuning, and you won't be able to easily tune your OEM ecu anyways.

I wouldn't recommend removing the AC but there's definitely a lot of weight that can be removed. Simply draining the washer fluid reservoir would be good, as the rest of the washer fluid system doesn't weigh much. There's some extreme weight loss builds if you search on this forum.

 

I'm using aem ems v2 on my manual j32a2.

I got a plug and play harness adapter from boomslang.

I had to open up the ems and change 2 jumpers from mag to hall. Jpt 1 and 2 (crank and cam)

Before



After




I have an m62 ct supercharger. Just got my wideband installed so it should start

 

welcome to the forum. weight loss def helps. the front bumper reinforcement, seats and carpet alone are about 150-200lbs. washer bottle maybe a 1lb or 2. ac maybe 15lbs if you pull the whole system. traction is the biggest issue in fwd, so def get some wide wheels and tires. my swapped 6ga is running j32a2 with ct sc, p2r big tube headers to 3" single. but i'm still going for more. just ordered p2r ported heads. keep us posted on the mods.

 

I was gonna go with whatever dyno tune the place does, might not need it anymore based on my mods (decided to not mess with vtec for starters). Anyways I get the exhaust Tuesday, 3 inch single pipe, I’ll run 1-2 glass packs and a muffler. Cats are gone of course. I just told them get me the biggest gains possible, and these guys definitely know what they’re doing. I usually wait in their lobby instead of leaving while they work because you get to watch them dyno shit like this all day.

900 WHP k24 MR2


plus they had 3 NSXs for me to stare at haha

 

just a heads up the factory ecu for the 2g is not tunable. so you either need a standalone or a flashable ecu and custom harness for a later gen like 07-08 tl. piggybacks like vafc & fic give you some ability to modify the af but you're gonna be fighting against a ecu that will try to counter your adjustments. aem is the goto for these gen, but mt is not plug and play. i run a vafc2 just to drop the vtec and a module from the ct sc kit to clamp map voltage for boost but nothing else yet.

 

So the tune I would be doing will be through the AEM stand alone if I get the balls to do it. Might not have to run a tune though for my mods.

just did the custom exhaust, sounds pretty good a little drony. It’s full 3” straight pipe with a big glass pack, a defouler to prevent a CEL from lack of cats. Also some cheap high flow muffler (it’s not even polished stainless steel just black lol)

I unfortunately forgot to do a baseline dyno pull to see where I’m starting but I definitely gained a healthy bump in power. Im not sure if I can feel it myself much but I can tell because the car spins tires significantly more in 2nd gear. I’ll do a dyno pull before I do anything else, but the final gains wont be as much since I’m doing my first pull after getting the full exhaust.



single exit… this is as straight as they could get it, the slight curve shouldn’t hinder flow

 

looks like crush bends instead of mandrel. i guess as long as you're happy that's what matters.

 

Yeah they’re crush bends, asked about them and they said that because I have full 3” and they’re so minor that I’m still gonna get max flow

 

Update: Got the car lowered on BC coilovers. Ended up being much lower than I expected but they’re adjustable so if I change my mind I might go up a bit.

Bad news: I believe the aging clutch is gone, when I bought the car I thought it had maybe 6 good months left but after 4000 hard miles and lots of practice launching, it’s done. Shudders sometimes, wonk engagement, gets stuck and super stiff occasionally, worst part is the car has a moderate power loss, which I suspect it’s the clutch not putting down all the power. Can’t tell if it’s slipping or not. but if the new clutch doesn’t it fix it, that’ll delay the fun mods trying to square the car away.

That being said, if anyone knows what could cause power loss without throwing a code or being easy to notice (such as a blown head gasket), let me know

 

Bro has a creeper vibe look on his face just like me. We could get along fine. Even wears similar looking loafers.

I live in washington too, we should go for a drive sometime.

Props on the Clean build my friend. You seem to be well on your way to a great build.

 

You wanna add an M90 supercharger you say?

 

That's the plan. Need to source a 6 speed so I can convert my car, then AEM ECU, then the adapter plate to fit on top of the J32 IM.
Also plan on turning the J35 I rebuilt, then destroyed, into a J37. So a J37 with an M90. Won't be any time soon, but I'll see to it that it happens. Already have the M90 lying around my garage.

 

3G or 5G M90? Got a pic?

 

PM me so we don't hijack OPs thread. Won't let me message you.

 

Sorry OP!

Start a thread about it so others can learn as well

 

I will be, but it'll be awhile.

 

 

some say stoic, some say creeper lol, regardless maybe we can meet up with small YouTuber “The Acura Guy” who lives in my town in Wa and has a dark blue CLS6

 

Nah, Im just joking man, Handsome guy(no homo).

I'll drive up there from PDX when it starts getting warmer out! Any news on your minty CL?

 

Maybe get a little CL meet going…

In regards to news, I ordered a Luk clutch kit, flywheel, and slave Cylander (possibly overkill) but I do know my clutch is wack so might as well get everything fresh while I’m in there.

I noted I have a power loss, something to know about me is I overreact and get in my head constantly with cars lol. Driving yesterday I concluded there is NO power loss, and all my buddies said they didn’t feel it either. I have to refrain from spamming forums every time I imagine a non existent issue, but at least this instance pushed me to order a clutch before I do headers.

Hoping to wrap up the original build goals by July

 

Wouldn't worry too much about getting in your head. I get ahead of myself and make posts, then I make another one after finding out what the issue really is. It's part of why I have a 6 page thread, on top of me being an idiot, lmao.

And I wish I could come to the meet. Hardly see any CLs here, and I've never seen a modified one besides mine and my girl's. Only ever seen 3 modified 3g TLs, and one modified CL. CL had a terrible sounding exhaust, one TL also had a straight piped terrible sounding exhaust, and another TL and a lot of aero stuff all over it, and one 4G TL with hood spacers and lowered at slammedenuff.
There is a neighbor right down the road with a CL-S.. been thinking of meeting them and letting them know about this site and helping them out with any issues, or getting a second opinion.

 

Just ordered P2R big tube j swap headers for the CL, and scheduled with Richtuned to get a custom 4” intake on the the 13th.

the build is going a bit slower than expected given I diverted some time and resources to my 4x4 recently.

from my research, these headers should be the biggest performance gain I will see unless I go FI in the future which is possible. Also looking into the ported lower intake manifold runners from power rev


https://www.powerrevracing.com/P2R-J...der-p/p376.htm

 

Nice!
If possible, take pictures of any necessary front 'sub-frame' notching and adjustments to the rear 6MT engine mount bracket for proper fitment.

 

will do, according to the website they should fit perfectly with no extra work IF my motor mounts are good, but given all it takes is an old motor mount to make them not fit, it’s probably gonna be real tight. Fingers crossed these work without custom fab

 

I hope you don't have the same problem my girl has with her big tube headers on her CL. There's an exhaust leak at the V band clamp where the front headers connects to the J pipe. I've tried fixing it multiple times, and this time, I threw copper gasket maker in-between where the two pipes touch, spreading it around the edge of the pipe, putting a bunch in-between the V portion of the clamp, putting it on, then even spreading a little bit around the edge of the clamp. It's still leaking.

I'm thinking the muffler shop who installed it messed up the whole exhaust. There's a lot of tension at the 2 header to J pipes V band clamps. So even if I get everything seated all nicely, all that tension causes the pipes to move and cause a gap for a leak.

I can post some pics of what the shop did to my girl's car. Kind of made us mad. They had to cut a notch in the subframe, then asked if we wanted to pay to weld a plate around it for extra reinforcement. At least they painted it. It's hard to tell what they did, so they did do a good job.

Can't take pics at the moment, though. Traded my girl's CL temporarily to my friend because his Del Sol's ECU blew a cap and destroyed the board, and he lives an hour away. She can't drive right now due to personal injuries, so she was okay with it. So if I do post pics, it'll have to be when we get it back.

 

You have to notch the front crossmember, its not a bolt on. Hope you got a good shop doing the fitment. I did the fitting and welding of p2r headers to cls6 frame and it took me several cuts, test fit, recut, refit, even with new innovative 85A mounts.

 

good to know, I thought I’d just need it welded to my exhaust. Luckily the shop is top notch. I’m sure they’ll know exactly what needs to be done but I’ll mention that the front crossmember has to be notched

 

Don't sweat it, it took me over 2yrs to somewhat be where I want to be with my build. Can't say how much ported runners would do alone. But, I have p2r ported heads, runners, headers, and few other parts. They outsource the machine work, but its quality workmanship.


p2r ported heads


p2r lwr runners

 

IIRC'ly, 619rcr posted up a couple of his finished product in a past thread somewhere; however, I could not locate them for reference. So, yeah the more data available to examine would be great. This 'notching' aspect is the very reason I passed on getting these headers and stuck with the CT-E ones, & being old.

 

Wow, and I thought I’d call it quits with my original list of bolt ons. How’d it go installing these? Recently with the CL I’ve moved away from doing work myself as I’m being hounded by my apartment complex managers (you’re not allowed to work on cars in the complex) and I’m also very hesitant to do my own work given I paid 12K for a pristine example of my car, and that’s a lot of money and risk for me, don’t want to mess anything up given my level of skill. I also have PTSD from a spun rod/blown head gasket combo on an E46 M3 which forced me to sell the car because I couldn’t afford the repair.

Id love to go all out on the build but I am slightly hesitant throwing expensive internal parts on the engine. My compression was great and my shop said the car was in perfect shape, but the way I abuse this thing, I just worry about destroying the engine and taking a massive loss if I blow an engine with 162k miles full of expensive parts.