Victorofhavoc
Senior Member
- First Name
- Gordan
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2024
- Threads
- 11
- Messages
- 1,285
- Reaction score
- 868
- Location
- Kansas City
- Car(s)
- Integra type s
- Thread starter
- #286
Thanks. I will miss the Z a lot. It was a platform on another level and the pace it could do put a lot of cars with twice the power to shame. I want another one at some point... Or a fully built cayman with the H6.Sucks about your Z ?
Curious re: choosing Cobb over Hondata, considering the former is newer to the space and seems to be more limited (although, I'll confess, most of the feedback is from folks running the OTS tune, not a custom one, so ?). Are you familiar with Cobb?
Oh boy, I think 99% of the civic community and 90% of this community would hate me for my reasons to go Cobb. Chief among them is the fact they sell a carb certified and 50 state legal 93oct tune. I do care about the environment and motorsports. They're often treated as orthogonal things, but really as a car community I believe we should strive to make the world a better/cleaner place and still push the boundaries of capability for motorsports performance.
From all the reading I've done around the forums, the marketing pages, the youtubers, and some speed shops, the biggest reason the civic/Integra community is anti Cobb is because they got caught by the epa disabling the second O2 sensor and had to revert that option in their offering. This left a lot of people feeling "stranded" because their cars relied on disabling or altering that O2 sensor reading to bypass certain emission checks and run a "dirtier" tune. Hondata still touches the secondary o2 sensor and I'm sure you've heard many people ask the question of "can I run this downpipe and not get a cel"... That's related to the o2 sensor and how certain catalytic converters don't provide enough "cleaning" of the exhaust gas before it hits that sensor. Yes some are capable, but that doesn't mean they're appropriately sized to pass a sniff test when people start tuning and going further with power so the secondary sensor gets touched.
The epa said they don't care about company size and they want to stop all the dirty tuning, so they've cracked down on a lot of companies. Hondata is just tiny compared to others so they haven't been primary targets. With the new administration we have, they've already stated they don't care about the epa or the environment, they've revoked the need for scrubbers on coal power plants, and they've allowed again for companies like Dupont to dump more waste into water systems and the ground. Will this mean the epa will stop going after tuners as well? No idea, that's above my pay grade. It doesn't change my opinion around environmental concerns.
When you're on track, a turbo car pushed to 100% will typically get 4mpg, so the tuning aspect and how dirty it is plays less of a role. That's where I feel custom tuning still has a purpose with the goal of maximizing performance and engine cooling. A cooler running engine (often done with richer fuel mixture) will pull less timing and surprisingly burn cleaner at those high stress limits. There's a lot of value in having a "track tune", especially when it comes to managing torque and the power curve on a turbo car. Too much torque down low in rpm and you just understeer on corner out. On the power end, peak power is less of a concern than managing a smooth power curve and overall bump in power. The Cobb ots tune is identical to stock down low and provides a more NA V6 type of curve at the top, and I believe that aligns well with general track use. For more, I would custom tune and flash to that when getting to the track and flash back when leaving.
... On that note, where I feel hondata really struggles is offering a modern quick flash option. The Cobb ap let's you just plug in and flash, swap, data log, and actively monitor without the need to drag around a laptop. If you're a track goer, you know that the guy fiddling with a laptop and dragging power cords around is the guy that spends all day troubleshooting his tech/tune and no time focusing on driving. I had a guy pay me to instruct him and pay for a closed course and then proceeded to waste my time for 5 hrs as he fiddled with laptop connectivity and lack of power (at that track no plug-ins were close by) before finally getting 1hr of instruction.
The Cobb platform needs more support for honda/acura. There's no getting around that. Unless people like me take the plunge and give it a go, that just won't happen.
Hondata is a fine option for most people, but it wasn't for my goals.
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