Why is it that every week or every time we get a new guy on the board the same damn threads get posted to re-hash things that have been covered a dozen times.

You don't need to dedicate a thread to pictures of your stock Fit, tell us your new and then ask about wheels and fart cans.

Just use the fucking search feature!

Seriously, some of you guys spend an ungodly amount of money on plastic bits, stickers and bolt ons that you will see likely no gain from outside of the placebo effect. Especially you GE owners.

If you are new, and cannot be bothered to research your own ride or attempt invest wisely, and let me do it for you. I want a new job anyways, and it looks like this is a crowd that desperately needs help.

Stop buying the password jdm, weapon-r, volk and buddy club bullshit.
You are throwing your money away.

Instead, if you really want an all around fast and track capable Fit, PM me.

I can find and order what you need for your goals at a fraction of what you would pay these guys.

I would post a list but nobody would read it or I would get a bunch of brandwhores pissing and moaning that I didn't include their favorite JDM trinkets and garbage. So I would rather exchange that information via PM.

These groups are relying on you to not know any better and since they are often right about that, they know they can price gouge. For some reason you guys will shell out serious cash for useless crap, but amazingly we can never get the guys who will drop $2k on rims to pony up for something like a GE supercharger when the time comes.

That is why KraftWerks and others have abandoned you.

Drop your car off with me for a week and for a bad ass build, prepare to write a check for around $5k if you want a reliable 225whp+ that can also take corners. More power is possible depending on your goals. But that will cost more money, namely for fuel pumps injectors, injector drivers and more expensive engine management. And beyond a certain threshold you will need internals. But you can build a forged bottom end in an L15A for less than $2k.

Not outrageous in the least considering at just shy of $7k for a big build on an L15A you are only about as deep in as you would be for just a basic unmodded K-swap, and that is before even considering suspension work on the K-swap.

Once all your parts are in, build time only takes a few days, and then about 3-4 days of break in, shakedown, and tuning.

I will keep $1k for my time, and you will get $4k in modifications and a custom tune. With all receipts, progress pictures and daily correspondence.

With that $4k you will have engine, drivetrain, brake and suspension work done.

I can turbo your car for about $1500-1800, Suspension/Chassis mods for ~$1k, $650 for a new clutch setup, and I might even re-shim the transmission for you 5MT guys.

Then I will have the guys at NAPA make you some SS brake lines. On top of that you will get a flush and fill on DOT4 fluid, Brembo cross drilled rotors and some Hawk, ATE, or EBC pads. The whole brake set up can be done for about $500.

If you have a pulse, and are not paraplegic you can do your own wheels and tires. So that part will be entirely up to you I have sciatica, so few of you guys have any excuse when it comes to not being able to wrench away on the lug nuts.

Then afterwards do whatever cosmetic plastic crap and all the stickers you want. Just don't post about your JDM plastic pieces and Hello Kitty stickers.

But FFS we don't need to have the same damn discussions every week, it's like you all have the memory of gold fish!

Why do we encourage people to not research for themselves by going along with it?

I will get more out of putting a spartan $1k ghetto turbo kit on your bone stock fit with no I/H/E then any of you will with $2-2.5k in stickers, throttle controllers, intake and exhaust pieces. Which is about what most of you guys end up spending, and that is absurd.

Then you go and throw $2k in heavy ass 17" wheels and retarded stretched tires that completely negate what little (if any) gains you made with your bolt ons.


All of what I describe above is what I already do for friends, family, co-workers and myself.

If I can pound out >100whp/cylinder on a 20year old stock engine on a 20 year old ECU, I can make you a mean Fit.

Please spare us photos of your new stock Fit. Stop asking what wheel specs work best, those answers have been posted dozens of times!

Besides, what is best when it comes to wheels for cosmetic purposes is entirely personal opinion, we can't help you with what you like.

You are just cluttering the forum with useless bullshit and making it harder for the intellectually curious who do the footwork for themselves.

We all own the same fucking car. WE KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE STOCK!

Seriously guys, stop being dumb lazy ignorant fucks.

PS.. Obviously I am not talking about everyone, there is a healthy and slowly growing population of people who are actively researching and wrenching on their own, you know who you are and none of the above applies to you.

Unless you want help, in which case I would love to and I will work for beer in that case

 

Haha well I guess now we know what grinds your gears...

But I agree with all of it. The problem is that no one is going to write you a check for $5,000. Especially to build a Fit.

All the Fit really needs to be competitive in an autocross or time attack event is a decent suspension set up and new brakes. Check out the latest issue of Siper Street and the results of the CR-Z's which were almost bone stock except for suspension, brakes and exhaust. They were at the bottom of the time chart but they were only a few seconds off from some fully built street cars. Pretty impressive IMO.

The Fit is almost the exact same car as the CR-Z. "Sport" mode is absolute bullshit. That little spark of torque from the electric motor still can't get it to 60 faster than a GE8 5MT. It's just too bad that all the aftermarket companies dropped the GE8 from their radar.

 

Good post. Wanted to add a few things though (of course.)

For one, there will always be less accountable people floating in and out with questions, who don't care about anything but their one question, and they will probably never see this post, or any other like it. They might not even know how/have the faith in themselves to use the search feature.

Second off, I think a large part of a forum, generally, is just the everyday flow of topics and info (with hand-holding and stock pics threads) which fills the days, and keeps bored people busy. Don't loose sight of the pride that goes along with car ownership, and like Facebook, a little bit of self-serving vanity that people get out of those threads. I'm okay with that. I've brought up the terse point about forums being part community, and part archive. Some want more of the former, and some the latter.

A pretty large part of the deal on fitfreak though, is here is a board that really and truly attracts a healthy dose of people from all age groups and backgrounds. My 16 year old self would be ridiculous on here, and I would probably flame them occasionally.

Sometimes I sit back and realize that when the older members are arguing with other forum members who are trolling and whatnot, they probably don't realize it's some kid on the other end. There can be a HUGE gap in the way those two people want to treat this community, and act in general. Think about it. If it were "real life", some of all this would be absolutely ridiculous. I really can't imagine a grown man arguing with a teenager without it sounding like some father/son "you're grounded" talk. Because some folks are unreasonable - don't lose faith in humanity - just be clear on who you might be dealing with.

Finally - the forum is unorganized. I don't know if it is too big, or too split up, or what, but I don't find that it's working, and others have said the same thing. Many will disagree, and I'm sorry, I don't have better answers - I'm not a UI expert. Just lots of experience with other forums, which seemed to work better.

DSM - I'd take you up on that offer to make good power with the Fit, but I'm broke for that kind of thing right now. I'm not sure how many newer vehicles you've owned, but communities full of them are also a bit more leery of mucking with their warranty, and are stuck with a car payment instead of money to mod. I mean, the world of DSMs is all about what you do to it after you get it, which is a lot of the time about wrenching. New car = normal folks who want easy bolt ons to take on and off, and wheels/suspension to make it look nice to them, which they can then sell (fancy big-name car parts seem to retain their value on forums pretty good.)

Side note - I like meaningless exhausts on slow cars because of the way they glorify the internal combustion engine's fiery notes. Is that so wrong? Even if I pay for a high quality, predictable sounding piece that I can just swap in, and costs a few hundred bucks?

Okay, I'm done for now.

 

LOL a man can dream! Believe it or not, some people pay me to work on their cars. Including the occasional winter service on some exotics around the area.

My girlfriends boss has a couple Ferraris (308 and 512) that I work on, usually winter service and tune up in the spring/early summer, in addition to an uncle's GT2, M6 and Ducati 999R to name a few that I am particularly proud of.. as well as random folks on the north shore I bumped into on the highway that ended up pulling off with me to chat.

For the most part you are right though.

The GE in mostly stock form at Thunderhill is proof of what you say!

I want to start with some new ideas for modifying our cars, like fitting the electric motors/energy regenerating brakes from a toyota hybrid to the back wheels of the Fit. But with the electric motors mounted in board to reduce unsprung weight, stuff like that.

Then we would have some comparable to Porsche's wild new electric flywheel/power boost and regen system in the Hybrid GT3 they've been testing!

I think if we show enough of a DIY crowd, that will eventually garner interest from the big boys of the aftermarket world looking to make a buck and put their name into a new market.. Even better if we attract the eye of the domestic firms!

 

I should take a break myself it seems!

 

I'm your calm half. lol

I think the people who will buy the people who are currently on here's cars, will be the people who want to make power. Say that 3 times fast. Regardless, a few on here should pave the way, while the rest of us justify petty arguments to make up for our jealousy.

 

Well stated, and yes you do seem to find a way to show me I am being over the top sometimes

I am just used to different crowds I guess.

Where saying stuff like "that's JDM, bro" is sarcastic and condescending, as opposed to a compliment

It's days like today that I wish I had $100k in start up capital to try and establish something like an AMS, MAP or Magnus Motorsports just for Honda Fits. GE or GD I don't discriminate, the GE chassis is objectively "better" on a couple points anyways.

 

Nice man, I could tell from your other posts that you know what you are talking about when it comes to building cars. That is definitely an impressive resume of projects. I would love to see some pics if you have any.

I'm personally not overly interested in the incorporation of electric motors into the performance market. I think they are undoubtedly becoming a part of the natural progression of automotive tuning, but I could care less how fast an electric car goes if it sounds like a golf cart. (As ignorant as that might make me sound.)

But to go back to what you said before, I think the problem with the Fit is that the retail cost of the car is still too high for most to do extensive builds on. Just consider the build trends in the Honda community over the past 10 years. It's about starting with a car that cost no more than $2500 and putting another $8-10,000 into it over the course of ownership to make it something great. Buying and building a brand new Honda straight from the dealer was a pretty foreign concept until recently.

The guys that are buying cars for $20,000 and throwing another $8-10,000 at them are the fanboys you and I can't stand that are rolling around on Volks with retarded amounts of camber and negative offsets. (And no, they're not building Fits.)

Unfortunately, I think we are going to have to wait another 5 years or so until the Fit is down under the $8,000 retail mark for any serious builds to take place. As much as I love the Honda community, we are definitely the broke ass folk of the tuning world.

That's fine with me though, because I know that for the price of one semi-built Euro, I can have 3 fully built Honda's ready for the track. That's why I personally love these cars so much.

In my case, my GE8 is only getting wheels, tires, brakes and suspension because that's the biggest gain in performance I know I can expect unless I go FI with a full tune. Realistacally, I'm just enjoying the car for what it is at the moment; a fun daily driver that turns heads and saves me money at the pump.

I would definitely love to do a fully built GD3 with a KWSC and other goodies someday, and I'm sure I will at some point. But unlike the other people on this site that already have that set up, I'm going to wait until I can buy a GD3 for $5000 with over 100k miles on it before tearing into the L15 and replacing internals. That Kraftwerks/Skunk2 Fit is one of the most bad ass Honda builds I've ever seen. So in a few years that's what I'm going to aim for in my build.

Sidenote: Not that it matters, but I'm very surprised that I haven't seen more EP3's being built lately. I mean, you can pick one of those up in decent shape for around $6000 now and with a little work that car will haul ass. Plus they look really sharp when done right.

 

Maybe as you suggest earlier, they are still priced above what the folks looking at them can afford.

All in all a bunch of good points and I will do what I can to get you some photos. I imagine my uncle will have photos on hand, but I will have to check with these guys and see if they are cool with me posting pictures of their cars and property on line first.

There are a couple shots in my mind that I definitely want to share.. like the turbo swap on the GT2.

We were playing with the stock VNT turbines and got them to spool instantly... which made the traction control freak the fuck out because of all the torque.

He decided its a RWD, and a circuit car so he won't be drag racing or launching and we put some GT3076Rs on it with fuel to support it and he has a MOTEC EMS to dial it in!

So he no longer needs the VNTs because he can just use a two-step rev limiter for launch, and an anti-lag system to keep those snails spoolin between gears!

Traction control still freaks out, but in a GT2 it is worth leaving on.

They are very... "lively" to drive being RWD with the engine hanging out over the ass end of car.

 

 

I didn't know any non-diesels used VNTs. I always wondered about what that would be like.

 

They are a lot of fun. The trick is finding a reliable way to manipulate the vanes, Borg Warner apparently managed to do this, but it is pricey. This is why you only see it on well.. a GT2 lol

On the stock turbos they made for a table top shaped powerband.

He never dyno'd it but when they come from the factory on stock boost they make 505lb-ft @ 2200rpm-4500rpm because of the VNT system.

But really, GT2's 3.6l 6cyl has 1.8L for each turbo so they spooled even the GT3076R's pretty well without it. But loads more top end on the 3076s at the same boost!

 

I think the actuator line could unlinked from the vacuum-based actuator, and then have it be servo controlled. Then link that movement to a parameter in the tuning map somehow. Far out idea, I know. Does the GT2 use a vacuum actuator like the rest of the ones I've seen? What I'm talking about sounds like F1 shit, or something. haha

 

Well believe it or not but I actually use that exact concept an ingersoll rand solenoid and I have modified the parameters for the EGR solenoid (which no longer exists on my 1G) to control boost by gear.

I can use the FPS solenoid as well as a seperate tab to operate nitrous and meth injection, so what you are talking about is right on the money and already in use in street cars!

The GT2's stock turbos however use Borg Warner's VTG system which you can check out here:
http://www.massfloe.com/productinfo/...bochargers.pdf

 

Sweet! Solenoids make more sense for that kind of a thing. I had to look up ingersoll rand - looks like they make heavy duty machinery. I should have assumed people were doing something like this.

Wow, 13 vanes. Must be big.