[manim]

Originally Posted by rr_zen

I have never had the chance to ride in the back seat of my car as its me at the wheel all the time. I have a phobia of allowing someone to drive my car and sit at the back.

Same here!
Out of 87K I did in four years, I was a passenger for only around 400 kms.

[mdsaab]

Originally Posted by danlalan

Just happened to be browsing through civic threads and saw DOT. Iam going through a similar transformation from a Ford Ikon 1.6 to a Civic 1.8 Mt. Am on the look out. Sp please anyone have some leads let me know.

did you check out the T-BHP classifieds? a good place to start your search. As is Mahindra First Choice. I think if i remember correctly a fellow bhpian from Mumbai was going abroad and wanted to sell his civic.

[dot]

Originally Posted by mdsaab

I can tell you the times when i sat in the back counting on my fingers.

Originally Posted by arvi86

Not once have I got a chance to sit and being chaffeured around in the Civic.

Originally Posted by sushrutha

Back seat is fantastic.

Originally Posted by iTNerd

About the seating comfort, I can vow from my recent 2400 kms trip from Delhi to Bangalore in 2 and half days!

Originally Posted by spadix

I've had the opportunity to ride in the Civic's rear seat for at least 300 kms on highways and I think it's more comfortable than the front seat!

Originally Posted by patron

Completely agree that on long drives the seats and the leg room make the Civic one of the better cars in the market now.

Originally Posted by rr_zen

I have never had the chance to ride in the back seat of my car as its me at the wheel all the time.

Originally Posted by manim

Out of 87K I did in four years, I was a passenger for only around 400 kms.

The last few posts were most interesting. Looks like the Civic Club members have an unmet need of sitting on the backseat. For me the unmet need will remain unmet as I am not willing to trade the driver's seat for anything. I have a suspicious feeling it is true for most of you out there.

Originally Posted by danlalan

Just happened to be browsing through civic threads and saw DOT. Iam going through a similar transformation from a Ford Ikon 1.6 to a Civic 1.8 Mt. Am on the look out. Sp please anyone have some leads let me know.

I can bet my money that after the Ikon 1.6, you will not like any car other than Civic in this price range. The best part is, the Civic can be modded to a fair bit, unlike Ford engines which are not the most mod friendly engines around.

[danlalan]

Originally Posted by mdsaab

did you check out the T-BHP classifieds? a good place to start your search. As is Mahindra First Choice. I think if i remember correctly a fellow bhpian from Mumbai was going abroad and wanted to sell his civic.

T-bhp classifieds are the worst when it come to prices. People quote the sky. The zigwheels classifieds in the papers are good. And i have found a civic. If all goes well shall have her by tommorow. 15k on the odo. Lets hope all goes well.

[dot]

Originally Posted by danlalan

And i have found a civic. If all goes well shall have her by tommorow. 15k on the odo. Lets hope all goes well.

Hope the car you have found is THE ONE. Do let us know about it.


On the seat comfort, today a friend took a TD on the Scorponok. It started out as a test of his C7 FM transmitter, then it became a TD of the car. He drove well, I was fidgeting and scared, but had a smile nevertheless. Anyways after the TD, his commented that the seat hugged him like a baby.

I find the head rests to be very effective on the Civic's front seats. They project out well enough to support the base of the head without the need of tilting the head. Most cars have the head rests too far inside to be effective. Only once I have seen a Camry which had adjustable head rest on the front seats that made long journeys very comfortable.

[arvi86]

Originally Posted by dot

Looks like the Civic Club members have an unmet need of sitting on the backseat. For me the unmet need will remain unmet as I am not willing to trade the driver's seat for anything. I have a suspicious feeling it is true for most of you out there.

Even I was surprised to see so many of us wishing to sit at the back seat of the Civic without being ready to relinquish the driver's seat. As you said dot, I am also not ready to trade the driver's seat for anything.

[mdsaab]

I will trade for the back side just to experience it for a few times. After i get bored of it, it will be back to gripping that lovely steering wheel again.
So anyone willing to drive me around?

Danlalan hope you get your civic soon. Good luck!

[spadix]

For me, it's out of necessity. When we're out on the highway, there's a point beyond which whoever's driving just needs some rest and doesn't have to concentrate so hard every second of the way. Those were the only times I've traded my place in the driver's seat to one either in the co-driver's or one of the rear seats.

Regards,
spadix

[dot]

Vtec indicator installed.

First a little history of my misconception.

I used to think that vtec is a point where the cam geometry changes. It occurs when a hydraulic unit connects two different lobes of the cam shaft when is triggered by a solenoid. There is lot more to this, I am not trying to write a exposition on vtec, it has been very well documented on the net. Simply put, this results in the engine producing more power when vtec is activated. The vtec point is usually around 5000 RPM. Perhaps all this is true for older Honda vtec engines, but not so for the i-vtec or our R18A. This great piece of information never dawned on me till recently when I saw it in action, live. More on this later.

Now back to vtec indicator installation.

So my naive mind was fixated on a vtec point discovery when the engine is supposed to generate more power. I wanted to know when this occurs. So searched the net till I found two solutions. Both involved attaching a LED that can tell when vtec is activated or not.

1. Take the vtec pin from the ECU and attach a LED to that line.
2. Find the vtec solenoid, attach the LED to the electrical line connecting the ECU to the solenoid.

For R18A, finding the ECU pinout information turned out to be a impossible task. Found a few diagrams on the net, but was not sure if it was for the 2.0L Si or 1.8L R18A.

Finally found a link where a good hearted soul found the way to tap the solenoid line. I had to simply replicate his efforts. Here is the link

i-vtec solenoid wiring help - 8th Generation Honda Civic Forum

Now for some pictures.


The solenoid behind the valve cover. You can see the harness with two wires, the black wire with white stripe is the positive line. The line was used to take the leads.




Initially we took the lead through the door and connected it to a multimeter to check if indeed we are getting on or off type signals. A TD was undertaken. There we found out that the line gets a signal of 12-13V during low load conditions. With aggressive driving, the voltage becomes zero.





The dummy switch was used to house the LED. In these pictures the dummy switch is being prepared by burning a hole through the center and inserting the LED holder. The LED had a 1K resistor attached to it.



Final pictures from the engine bay. The solenoid harness looks like this now.


The wire was taken to through the firewall using an existing port which had a rubber cap.


The wire under the driver's footwell.


LED wire and solenoid's parallel connection being mated.


Final look of the dashboard.


A picture of the LED glowing during driving.



Driving impressions

The LED glows when vtec is activated. Found out that vtec comes on only during low load conditions. That is, irrespective of which gear is engaged, vtec is activated if only,

1. RPM is over 1500 and less than about 3000.
2. Very light throttle position.

So if you redline from idle, vtec is never activated. Thats why, if you rip the Civic, you never seem to trace that old vtec kick. Because there wasn't any kick in the first place. The R18A is designed to have vtec as a fuel saver, not power booster. The R18A is always in high power mode, when vtec is engaged it goes to low power/better economy mode. This is very different from other Honda engines, where the base level of the engine is in low power mode, after vtec it goes to high power mode. The same was always written on the "temple of vtec" article on R188A (the link has been posted a few times on the forum by several folks) and wikipedia. Never realized it till now.

So the indicator serves as a economy indicator. I am planning to test this on long term basis, specially during highway driving and check FE results with Vtec on or off.




P.S.: I also need to thank mdsaab for introducing me to this person who is pretty good with electricals and electronics. And Laluks and Sushrutha for encouragement.

[Akshay1234]

Wow I didn't believe your theory at first. But then I did a bit of research and turns out its true. So in the r18 when the Vtec is on the car is on FE mode.

Quite odd considering Honda has reversed the role of vtec.

[mdsaab]

Hey Dot.
So you finally did get it installed.
Fantastic and what a discovery that the I-vtec on the r18a works in a totally different manner than what we expect it too. Looking forward to taking a test drive of Scorpo soon.

[dot]

Originally Posted by akshay1234

Wow I didn't believe your theory at first.

Quite odd considering Honda has reversed the role of vtec.

Thanks, I would not have believed it myself. The good thing is that the engine is on high power mode from the word go. So we dont have to wait for the vtec to give any additional boost.

Originally Posted by mdsaab

Fantastic and what a discovery that the I-vtec on the r18a works in a totally different manner than what we expect it too. Looking forward to taking a test drive of Scorpo soon.

Thanks. Yes, I will sit on the back seat this time; only to film the LED and the speedo + tacho in the same frame.

[mdsaab]

Originally Posted by dot

Thanks, I would not have believed it myself. The good thing is that the engine is on high power mode from the word go. So we dont have to wait for the vtec to give any additional boost.

Thanks. Yes, I will sit on the back seat this time; only to film the LED and the speedo + tacho in the same frame.

Chalo here is the excuse which is going to get you in the back seat of Scorpo.
Let me know and we shall plan it sometime soon

[dot]

This has been a good weekend. First the installation of the vtec indicator (see above), next the understanding of how i-vtec works in our Civics. Now we could connect Jealousdiamond's ELM 327 bluetooth OBD device to the car and the phone and check out a few cool features.

We had downloaded a Symbian based software OBDscope on my X6. This time the connection was established and we could monitor some nice stuff like power, torque, throttle position apart for instantaneous FE, RPM, speed, GPS speed. The software has a few limitations like it only shows one gauge at a time. However it also picks up DTS codes and performs diagnostics. The device could connect to Jealousdiamond's Safari and Indica too. Now I need to procure a ELM device.

[arvi86]

That's brilliant dot. Thanks for the info, it acted as an eye-opener for me. Not sure about others, but I was thinking that the V-Tec works in exactly the opposite way to what you posted. Do let us know the difference in mileage in the V-Tec On and Off modes.