Honda B16 - What makes it GREAT? ICONIC ENGINES #7

what is a people it's time for iconic engines once again and today we're talking about a really really special engine an engine that changed the game an engine that managed to eliminate one of the major design constraints of engine design of course we're talking about Honda's or a generic b16 engine and we will cover the b16a as well as the B 16 B and all the million little variations of the b16a that are pretty much the same engine but we will talk about all of them also as always AEM is still bored with the iconic engine series AM is still awesome they're still supporting this and they're helping me make these videos better and better and if you're listening carefully you might notice that today's audio quality is a lot better then in the episodes before this one and that's because with help of am I was able to invest in some high quality audio recording equipment so from this point onward we can have better audio in the iconic engine series how awesome is that when it comes to a EMU already known performance electronics is the game AM is the name and they make the stuff that can take your build to the next level so whatever it is that you need there is some digital display - or some amazing ECU's or every kind of gauge imaginable or maybe some Highfill fuel pumps whatever you need a Liam's got it and off it is top-notch stuff as always links to their amazing products are in the description check them out get some stuff take your bill to the next level you will not be disappointed now before we dive deep into the history of the beach 16 engine I want to make a confession my confession is that today I'm afraid for the first time in the iconic engine series I am actually afraid I have shot six episodes of the iconic engine series and the all the episodes before this one was really fun and I wasn't afraid but today I'm afraid and I'm afraid of a certain segment of the Honda fan base you have probably met these people a few times in your life if you're a car enthusiast and you probably discovered that they are let's say very difficult to talk to these people really don't want to talk about any other engines than Honda engines such as the B Series or the K series and they have a very firm conviction that everything else is absolutely inferior reaching these people is pretty much impossible now you have your two Jay Z fans and your rotary fans and you have your four AG fans and your sr20 people but all of them still have a little part of their brain that is open minded and you can reach these people and they are willing to at times talk about other engines you know and other cars when it comes to the zealous part of the Honda fan base their brain has been completely taken over and talking to these dudes is also dudettes is now not gonna happen so today in response to that I have decided to shoot two versions of this video the first version which I'm going to show to you in a few seconds is only for the Honda fan base now I strongly advise the fanatic fanboys to stop watching the video after their version is over your version will be first please watch it and enjoy it and do not watch any further the second version is for everybody else encoding the normal people in the Honda fanbase thank you and enjoy after working hard for six days creating the sea and the land and the plants and the animals and man on the seventh day God rested but God didn't just rest on the seventh day he also decided to make some engines on the seventh day God made the beach series and the case seems of Honda engines God gave these vendors to man and man was happy because these engines were perfect nothing will ever come close these are the best engines ever thank you God long live the b-series and the casings JDM AF VTEC kicked in [Music] [Music] okay now that the crazy people are gone we can resume with the rest of our video so the b16 the beast 16 engine hit the market in 1989 in the form of the first generation of the b16a the first car that had be 68 in it was the Japanese market honda integra it's s soon after the beast 16 found its way into the engine base of other Honda's and with minor revisions it also hit the European Australian American and other global markets now when it hit the market the b16a had a power output of 160 horsepower having a displacement of 1.6 liters this meant that it hit the magical figure of 100 horsepower per liter of engine displacement now the 1.6 liter four-cylinder mass-produced engines of pretty much all other car manufacturers at that time weren't even close to this figure they were usually in the 100 to 120 or 140 the b16a was superior because it had a trick up its sleeve the trick up its sleeve was what is today probably one of the most famous terms in car culture the trick up its sleeve was VTEC [Music] too soon Julia [Music] as you probably know VTech stands for variable valve timing and lift electronic control and in the simplest of terms what it does is that it gives the engine to camshaft profiles instead of one on a dual overhead camshaft design engine such as the b16a it actually gives the engine four camshaft profiles instead of two basically two for the intake and two for the exhaust why is that such an amazing thing it's an amazing thing because choosing a camshaft profile for an engine before variable valve timing used to be a major design constraint basically you want a more aggressive camshaft profile with more duration and left in the higher rpm ranges because you want performance there but a too aggressive profile with too much left and too much duration is going to negatively impact all and mid rpm ranges is going to reduce the torque there and it's also gonna make the idle quality pretty poor so for decades manufacturers were forced to choose the middle road they would compromise between performance and drivability and idle quality now VTEC totally eliminates this design constraint because you can use a high lift high duration aggressive cam profile for the higher rpm ranges and you can use a more Tang camshaft profile for the wall rpm ranges which is going to improve fuel efficiency and idle quality and it's also going to prove at the same time performance because it affects the ending cues between the different camshaft profiles depending on the RPMs where it's at many people think it was actually Honda who invented variable valve timing technology with the lift actually this is not true the idea of variable valve timing is as old as the engine itself it was actually even present in the age of the steam engine and when it comes to the internal combustion engine engineers started throwing ideas around about variable valve time as early as the 1920s and 1930s when the RP and the limits of internal combustion engines started increasing now GM was one of the first manufacturers to experiment with variable valve timing but it abandoned these efforts pretty soon without any major result the first working prototype of variable valve timing work left was created by Fiat and designed by their engineers Giovanni Carranza sometimes in the late 60s now Fiat didn't do with its prototype but Honda managed to do the prototype never really made it into a large-scale mass production thing and Honda did that which was extremely admirable and that which changed the game it made a variable valve technology with lift there was global ultra large scale with actual performance and economy benefits it made a system that was reliable and capable of totally changing the game if you dig deep through history through Honda's past and if you go all the way to Honda's beginning you won't find a car there you'll find a motorcycle and this is interesting because if you dig deep into the history of Honda's perhaps greatest invention VTEC again you won't find a car you will find a motorcycle you will find the 1983 honda CBR 400 on that motorcycle you are going to find something called rev which stands for revolution modulated valve control also known as hyper VTech and this was the first mass-produced version of hardest variable valve technology this was different to the VTEC we know today and it operated two or four valves within a four valve combustion chamber the only 9000 are only two valves are operated to enable a better idle as well as more torque above 9,000 rpm all four valves are operated to enable better performance for the CBR 400 now this concept proved that variable valve timing was very possible and it could be done and it had actual benefits the engineer behind VTEC in car engines is a man named equal country tani he together with a team of Honda engineers was given a goal to create a 100 horsepower per liter engine by then-president of Honda's research and development department mr. nobuhiko Kawamoto equal catch italian recalls that at that time this seemed like a dream almost all the engines at that time were producing around 70 to 80 horsepower per liter but this didn't stop kajitani and his team of engineers they worked incredibly hard with incredible dedication they turned themselves into a team of engineering masochists and tested and tried components until they failed until they were sure that their design worked and was reliable the goal wasn't only to create an engine that did 100 horsepower per liter but to create an engine that could do this consistently an engine that was reliable the goal was to make these engines reliable for 15 years or 250 thousand kilometers this is serious when you consider that a lot of the technology in the beasts 16 and out of these series engines was only seen in racing engines at that time this incredible engineering dedication resulted in a major breakthrough it created an engine that was small displacement capable of high peak horsepower without sacrificing drivability this was a game changer it allowed small displacement engines to stand toe-to-toe with much larger engines the resolve of mr. kajitani and his engineering team is why honda engines are a synonym for incredibly reliable performance the b-series engines and many other Honda engines are famous for the amount of abuse they can take so it's no wonder these engines started a tuning grace it's no wonder why many car enthusiasts tuners and even more Sport and racing things chose these engines they really are brilliant and this goes to show you how persistence and high goals and dedication to these high goals can create amazing achievements all of this allowed the B Series and the B 16 and even later in the US market especially the b18 to become for the import tuning seen what the Chevy small-block was basically for the muscle car tuning see when you look at the specs of the b16 engine and remember that this thing hit the market in 1989 things take a turn for the impressive really quickly and also the innovative technologies and materials used in the beast 16 review another important fact and that's that Honda was kicking ass with its engines in Formula one in doing 80s [Music] fortunately a good chunk of these Racing f1 technologies made it into the B 16 and this partially explains why it is such a good small engine that's capable of such high big horsepower outputs and also of such high rpm limits but we'll talk more about advanced races stuff later now let's start with the basics bore and Stroke every B 16 has a bore of 81 millimeters and a stroke of 77 point four millimeters this gives us an oversquare engine design but something that sets the b16 apart from most of the four cylinders of the time is that it had an all-aluminum design instead of a cast iron block as with many of the B's 16s competitors we have a aluminum open deck engine block open deck aluminum engine blocks aren't as indestructible as many of their cast iron counterparts are but they have the benefit of being much much lighter than cast-iron and this is why the B 16 was pretty much lighter than any of its engine competitors and this a lightweight engine design combined with a lightweight chassis of the Civic and the CRX and the Integra ensured some pretty impressive performance and handling of these cars and this is why most of the Honda's with the B's 16 engine are actually more rewarding to drive then you're a typical wrong wheel drive car inside the aluminum engine block we have a really well designed forged steel crankshaft and also as you would expect some pretty well designed rods and pistons the rods and pistons are also on the light side which helps to be sixteen engines Rev as high as they do when it comes to the Pistons and rods we have our first difference between the beech 16 b and b 16 a engine as you might know the b 16 b is the engine of the Japanese domestic market civic type-r and it is the highest performing version of a 1.6 liter b-series engine on the other hand the b16a was found in a bunch of different Honda's all around the world when it comes to the distance and rods the difference is that in the B 16 B these rods are even a lighter than in the b16a to enable a higher red line when it comes to the pistons they have a larger don't want to be 60 B to increase the compression to an impressive ten point eight to one on the other hand on the b16a we have a more flat piston top which gives us a compression between ten point two to ten point four depending on the particular version of the b16a and the market where it was exported but it's a cylinder head off to be sixteen engines where things get really exciting let's take for example the intake valve diameter it's 33 millimeters on the B 16 engines the good 1.6 liter engines of the late 80s and early 90s had like 29 to 230 maximum on the intake valve diameter the B 1633 the exhaust valves were given special treatment to they were made from a nickel based heat resistant steel and they had molybdenum titanium and tungsten mixed in and trust me if you get the ingredients of the exhaust valves of almost any four cylinder of the late 80s and much of the 90s you aren't gonna find most of these materials in their exhaust valves things are just as crazy when you start to look at the camshaft the lift of the VTEC profiles as you might know we have the mild and the wild cams in the VTEC and we don't care about the mild let's talk about the wild on the b16a on the intake wild cam we have ten point seven millimeters of lift almost all 1.6 liter engines even those performance oriented from other manufacturers around the world where we're doing like eight to nine millimeters of left even the S 14 BMW engine in the e30 m3 we did in our last iconic engines video which was basically a homologation engine had just ten millimeters of lift on its intake can the be sixteen eight had ten point seven the be sixteen B had eleven point five millimeters of lift when it comes to the Lloyd eighties and much of the 90s this was basically a race only camshaft left specification to ensure that the valve train could keep up with this extremely high lift all the B's 16 a and B 16 B engines have double valve springs this is something that you cannot find it almost any 1.6 liter engine at the time even the camshafts themselves were made from a special material to ensure they wouldn't fall apart when the boy racer approached 8,000 rpm the camshafts were made from him brand new at the time high carbon high chrome cast steel alloy and then to further ensure durability they were given a bunch of heat and surface finish treatments even the cam gears were given special attention they were made from a high-strength sintered alloy which was new at the time and enabled engineers to design a thinner can gear profile this enabled the can used to have a roller moment of inertia by 10 percent now this doesn't sound like much but all this attention to detail adds up and explains why the B's 16 engines can take so much abuse as you would expect the combustion chambers are écoles ventral design with a spark plug in the middle of this was and still is the norm when it comes to performance oriented cylinder heads so tuning I don't know of many engines that have been tuned more than the beast 60 I mean it's a 30 year old engine now actually soon to be 31 years old and during this time everything you can imagine that can be done to this engine has been done and the amazing thing is that it's still being very much built today it's still alive it's still been tuned today a 30 year old engine and if that isn't a testament to how great of a design the beast 16 is then nothing is so pretty much anything you can think of has been done crazy naturally aspirated super high revving insane 11000 rpm builds done turbo charging done twin turbos done twin charging done super charging done crazy nitros than done everything has been done the only way to be creative with a b16 build is to somehow figure out how to strap a nuclear reactors to one of these and then you're gonna be original otherwise it's been done [Music] with enough money and skills and sources you can push this thing to levels of above 1500 horsepower from a four-cylinder yes it is a really good design [Music] and the aftermarket for this engine is still amazing most of the cool stuff is still being made today you can still buy it it's still alive so tuning it is easier and more fun than tuning some other engines we're finding parts can be difficult so let's go through our virtual tuning course or it started what we always start with with a naturally aspirated build what can you do well if you have a b16a you're gonna do what Honda did to the B 16b you're gonna try and replicate that basically get some Wilder cams do something to the exhaust to the intake mess around with the ECU or get a standalone one and you will reach be 16 B figures or even higher when it comes to your horsepower and torque output if you want to go crazy in the naturally aspirated way that's always going to come at the expense of all and end of drivability but you can do it people have built naturally aspirated b16 engines to output around 300 horsepower the best way and the first step is to increase the displacement and you do this by snatching the engine block from a higher displacement engine from the b-series engine family you didn't get some super wild cams you increase the compression as much as you can you get some crazy headers crazy intake mess around with the ECU and you hope for big naturally aspirated power figures but of course nowadays very few people go for crazy high-power naturally-aspirated builds because it's much easier to strap a turbo onto an engine and walk for pig power and this is what's really done most of the time nowadays - a beast 16 its turbo charging and when it comes to turbo charging of an engine you're probably gonna ask what we always ask when we talk about turbo charging an engine that isn't otherwise turbocharged and you're gonna ask what is the weakest link when it comes to the B 16 engine and I'm gonna tell you what's the weakest link the weakest link is the B 16 owner yeah if you spend 15 minutes online trying to walk up useful information when it comes to turbo charging a B 16 engine you have to be ready for an incredible amount of bull that's gonna come your way and I'm not joking you're gonna find things like notoriously weak con rods a block that can't handle any boost Pistons that fall apart when you look at them wrong and few rails that have been horribly designed by Honda so they can't fall enough fuel and all this is I repeat and it's an unfortunate consequence of the statistic the amount of people that are tuning and have tuned the beast 16 throughout the ages is incredible it's inevitable that a certain segment of those people didn't have the knowledge and didn't want to have the knowledge and didn't want to spend time researching and doing objective research into how to turbocharged an engine what they basically did is they wanted quick power easy so they just strapped on a turbo cranked up the boost and they didn't care about any sort of not monitoring or proper tuning and the engine of course went to hell and fell apart and then these people become incredibly loud and speak everywhere how the engine has a lot of things that were badly designed I assure you mr. Cattani did his job right there aren't any bad designs when it comes to the beast 16 there's just bad tuning so if you decide to turbo trying to be 16 you might run into a bunch of people telling you that you should never turbocharged the stock block without some block guards or receiving it that isn't true people who know what they're doing have pushed the stock block to around 450 or 500 horsepower reliably the only thing they have changed were the Pistons and if you're interested in a serious turbo build you will need to change the pistons and a minimum number one because they're cast and number two because you will want to reduce that pretty high ten point two to ten points for compression of the b16a if you are chasing higher boost levels [Music] so while a cast-iron block is definitely more durable than a woman um one don't be fooled into thinking that this is an extremely weak block a cast iron a good cast iron block will take more boost but this is a well-designed block and even in stock form it can take a fair bit of boost now if you're interested in big boost and massive power levels that is definitely possible with the beast 16 and you just got to do what we just mentioned and that's block guards receiving and utter block preparation metates and then you can expect insane boost levels from these engines and people have built these blocks and other blocks in the b-series family of engines which are very similar to the B 16 block the favorite one is the be 18 block which is especially strong that combined with big boost and block guards and receiving has created engines of insane power limits sort of out supercharging of course that has been done too and it's a great thing to do if you enjoy the instant response of a supercharger along with the improved torque it gives you and if you don't like turbo lag you should go for a supercharger although honestly today with modern turbos the turbo lag really isn't an issue anymore and this is why turbos are more popular than superchargers in most cases modern turbos are incomparable to turbos of the 80s and 90s that usually had massive lags modern turbos spool really fast and the lag is pretty much non-existent and turbos do have the benefit of giving you more flexibility and more room to increase the power later on so superchargers aren't and nearly as popular with the b16 as our turbos but still there are kids out there not as many as there used to be there are still some out there bolt all stuff you can get you can bolt it on and you're looking at around three hundred and thirty the horsepower at the wheels which is a nice increase for what's basically just replacing a bunch of parts in your engine bay the US drag racing scene has managed to popularize nitros builds as well with the be 16 and the beast 16 has proven itself had been really good at handling nitrous as well at some basic levels a 75 or even an 150 horsepower setup is possible on stock internals when the nitrous is installed correctly and managed correctly so that is additional 150 horsepower when the nitrous is on if you want a more serious drag racing only setup people have managed to build nitro builds that do around 450 horsepower when the Nitro stays engaged of course here we are talking about very complex ECU controlled multistage setups are that are expensive and that do require you to have forged internals but they are of course massive massive fun when the nitrous kicks in [Music] [Music] so that's the basic stuff when it comes to tuning the b16 engines honestly there's a lot more we could cover we could talk ours when it comes to tuning this thing because there are so many options the aftermarket is still alive this a great engine design a great tuning platform the only limit really is your budget so if you also if you are a fanatic on the fan boy I do want to apologize for it quite a bit of teasing if this video it really is all good-natured and I hope you can take a joke uh so yeah questions for you what do you think about the b16 do you love it do you hate it where your experiences with it which engines should we be covering next that's my sticky question it's always there and I'm always looking for new suggestions we will be doing more iconic engine videos of course there's some really fun engines coming up that I'm really looking forward to do so yeah that's pretty much it for today thanks for watching and as always the last thing to do is the wrap i'm the b 16 from Soichiro Honda and I'm deadly just like an anaconda n/a or turbo it doesn't really matter because my competition I always do shatter push me hard watch my headers go get ready to scream because VTEC just kick in [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: driving 4 answers

Views: 194,319

Keywords: Honda, Honda civic, honda b16, honda b16a, honda b16b, type r, b16a vs b16b, honda b18, b18c, b16 engine, b16 turbo, b16a engine, b16b engine, b16 tuning guide, b16 engine build, b16 nitrous, honda type r, integra type r, integra gsr, integra gsr turbo, civic turbo, civic type r, b16 vs k20, b16 vs b20, b16 vs b18, b16 sound, b16 itb, honda civic vtec, vtec, vtec turbo, vtec kicked in yo, dohc vtec, vtec sound, iconic engines, civic del sol, Honda crx, ef, eg, ek

Id: irBT2TOdAig

Length: 32min 45sec (1965 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 09 2020