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The First AWD V6 Torque Vectoring Civic Type RL!

The last installment before big BOOST is added

Contributed By: Enginebasics.com

If you haven’t read all of the previous articles you might as well just go back now and click through it all to understand what this project is, what is in it, and why it is called the Civic type RL instead of just Civic type R.  With that said let’s wrap up the build to this point before we start throwing some crazy power at it. 

The Drive Shaft Shop came through for us and was able to make a half carbon fiber half steel drive shaft.  They basically took the factory carbon shaft and took half of it apart and machined it so that they could weld just a standard steel tube on it and shorten and balance it to what we needed.  I got the shaft back and then had to fabricate a center driveshaft mount since this would be a two-piece driveshaft.  It took some time, but I believe I got all the critical angles just right and was able to apply a little bit of forward tension on the center bearing as described in the factory service manual.  Currently the car has been up to 110 MPH with zero vibration so it appears everything was calculated and fabricated pretty good.

Now that the driveshaft was in it was time to finally engage the rear clutches and make this thing actually AWD.  As you may have seen from other photo’s a fully running 2006 Acura RL was purchased to get data on to fully understand how the factory ECU was controlling the rear differential in a straight line, when breaking, and when turning to torque vector the car.  As you can guess this took a TON of time and was a TON of work.  Once a good idea of what was going on and many, many notes and tables were taken with data it was time to have the AEM Infinity system replicate that functionality.

I was able to build 2 separate matrix tables in the AEM Infinity to control the output to the rear differentials.  The front “acceleratory device” mounted on the front of the RL specific diff has not been implemented at this time, but currently the car is working perfectly and engaging its AWD at the right time in a straight line and torque vectoring the correct wheel when taking corners.  For a demonstration the AWD was disabled and the car did a front wheel burn out all the way through first gear.  The AWD was then engaged and the car does a quick little “churp” and then just LUNGES forward.  It’s great.  The same was tested in a corner.  The AWD was disengaged and with throttle on in the corner the civic under steered terribly.  The AWD was once again enabled and the same corner taken and this time when full throttle was applied mid corner and the car seemed to just gain more grip as it drove hard through the corner. 

So in summary this thing is awesome.  It drives amazing.  Zero hiccups or problems.  It has been doing daily driver duty now for the past 4 months and the car is just so much fun to drive it gets driven everywhere.  Recently it was taken on a 994 mile road trip and the car performed great. 

So is there any bad news to all this?

Sure is.  Let’s list what this civic now has:

• Huge Acura RL big brakes all the way around
• Power Steering
• Fully functioning A/C
• Big 17” wheels with 245 rubber all the way around
• Acura sub frame front and rear, which has really stiffened up the body of the car.  No more squeaks or twisting of the frame.
• AWD Rear Diff
• AWD transfer case
• Drive shaft
• Full Sound System with subwoofer and two amps
• 14 gal fuel cell (yup I know its huge but I love it)
• Full interior with nothing removed including floor mats

So how is all this a negative you ask?  The weight came in at 3,140 lbs with me in the car.  So actual vehicle weight is going to be around 2,955.  That has to be the heaviest EG civic hatchback ever in the history of the hatch.  I am going to be adding another 100 pounds easy when I finish the turbo set-up with the super heavy air/water intercooler so I would suspect when all is said and done it could weight 3055. 

Now as bad as this sounds I think it would be fair to compare it to most EG civics out there to get a realistic weight.  All of the local civics near me have no A/C, no power steering, usually just a basic set of speakers with small stock brakes and wheels.   I would bet that would shave around 200-250 pounds so realistically the weight could be around 2,700 #’s.  For me though, I enjoy street cars.  And while we all have certain definitions of what a “street car” is from the guys on the show “Street Outlaws” with there gutted out, tub chassis, outlaw cars being called street cars, to others who have a stripped and gutted interior as a street car.  My definition of a street car is one that you would drive daily on the street and be happy to do it.  If your car belongs more on a track than a public street…..odds are, it’s not a street car.

The next step for this car is going to be getting a turbo installed this winter and shooting for 600+ on the stock motor.  Hopefully that will survive one year of driving and then I will do a built motor next year and go for 800 wheel.  At that point I really don’t think the 2,950 pound weight will be much of a factor and instead the idea of having TONS of traction on just regular street tires will be so much ear to ear grinning fun I won’t even think about it. 

Hopefully you enjoyed reading about the project.  Total time of completion to this point has been 3 years.  If you count the planning of the project that was almost another year gathering the information to be sure it could even be done, so I guess you could say 4 years.  It’s been a long road, but if you take anything away from this just know that these projects are often very long.  Too many project cars are sold because owners lose interest.  This is sad.  So just know that anything worth owning and doing is going to take time.  Don’t be a quitter.  Make a plan, design your project, and then stick with it till you have executed everything you set out to do.