Any of you have experience with the Honda F20B?

Yes the F20B the precursor but not really to the F20C found in the S2000. Even though the F20c in the S2000 relates more to the K20 than anything....back on topic.

Anyways we decided to run an H22 in our ChumpCar Accord this year. It was a super easy swap. Going from the F22B2 to the H22; but, were the F22 was dead nuts reliable, the H22 has been nothing but a pain in the ass. It made the car stupid fast when we finally got the right ECU paired up to it; but, this last chump race at Sebring we had a piston fall apart and destroyed the whole bottom end. Before that we were battling oil consumption and oil spewing issues that were no fun.

I've come across to F20Bs offered for sale. They were used in Japanese Accord SiRs and range from 180-200hp. Iron sleeves instead of the fiber reinforced metal (even though I don't think it's that big of a deal). Just curious if anyones had experience with them. Are they the best of both worlds from an F and H perspective? You get a twin cam head with a solid bottom end? I've read a lot of the H22 parts work on this engine and the only hard part is finding the right timing belt.

Based on experience, you got a bum h22. Which is hard to believe. Probably an overspun motor. I wouldn't shy away from that engine man, it was the Honda big block of the day. That engine has more world records than any other engine Honda makes.

This guy Does a pretty good job at explaining the f20b. The video's a bit long and the engine in question is also turbo, but the long and short of it is that the f20b is light, pretty powerful relative to its size, and spins to the stratosphere. That being said, I'm not sure I would choose one over an h22. The f20b was built for the Japanese market due to taxes on engines that were over 2 liters, making the h22 prohibitively expensive for a lot of buyers.

The car ran great with the H22, this is the co-owner at the start of the last race (yes he knows he still has a lot to learn). https://www.youtube.com/embed/-_YTevE5r20

This engine in particular was rebuilt by a machine shop (my old neighbor, thankfully it's old neighbor now) did the headwork, FRM honing, and threw new rings in for us. This was the end result after about 19 solid hours of racing logged on it.

We have an extra JDM H22 laying around, but it's low on compression in one cylinder, would probably be worth just running it until it dies as the cost to rebuild is the same as buying a couple more junkyard engines (we try to stick to true crap can racing fashion for the most part).

Two F20Bs cost me the same as one H22. Weren't the Gutty guys boosting the piss out of F blocks at the challenge years back with impressive results? I know Bisimoto loves the F too.

The point being we are looking for the reliability we had with the F with the power we had of the H and it just appeared this power plant checked those boxes without doing a K swap.

Is that cylinder wall cracked up near the top of the sleeve? If not, unless they do a ton of FRM blocks, I'd wager that machine shop botched the bore/hone. They are tricky to get right, need special pistons, and the reason why many people just go ahead and sleeve the blocks if a bore or hone is needed.

Bisimoto is a big fan of the single-cam F22's de-stroked to spin to the moon.

I think you need a waiver to run a non north American engine in chump.

I have no info on hondas.

wvumtnbkr wrote: I think you need a waiver to run a non north American engine in chump. I have no info on hondas.

with the amount of cheating that goes on, not going to do extra paperwork for that nonsense. Especially since we aren't competitive at all. If we were challenging for podiums, maybe. We are out there to have fun and try to beat out friends and get away from our wives, thats it.

Plus there are cars in our class that walk us on the straits like a Corvette passing a Yugo.

sobe_death wrote: Is that cylinder wall cracked up near the top of the sleeve? If not, unless they do a ton of FRM blocks, I'd wager that machine shop botched the bore/hone. They are tricky to get right, need special pistons, and the reason why many people just go ahead and sleeve the blocks if a bore or hone is needed. Bisimoto is a big fan of the single-cam F22's de-stroked to spin to the moon.

I'm willing to bet the honing was not done correctly. Like I said an old neighbor of mine owns a machine shop, he'd done a ton of work for me before; but, for some reason put us on the back burner for this build. Gave it to him in October of last year, with a need by date of mid Feb and got it a week before the April chump race at Daytona and I feel like he waited until the last minute to do everything and disregarded the service bulletin from Honda I gave him detailing the honing procedure for FRM sleeves in H22s and F20Cs

Well I picked one up today. It came with lots of goodies like an LSD trans, Mugen headers (which I'll sell, worth like $300 used lol), an ECU, engine harness, etc. We are going to slap in a new clutch, timing belt, water pump, US spec intake manifold and fuel rail with the connectors on the proper side, and a different header and throw it in the car to see how well it works.

It's been observed that a lot of times rebuilding a motor for crap can racing makes it less reliable. Throw in that motor and I bet you have all kinds of success! I don't know how much I would bet, but...

I thinks so too. Our GRM Challenge Civic that had a stock D15 took years and years of boost without ever letting go. We never cracked open that engine except to change valve cover and spark plug gaskets.

I'd expand the "rebuild is a bad idea" to cover every Honda motor, whether raced or not. I've not seen very many machined cranks go as long as a used one.

dculberson wrote: It's been observed that a lot of times rebuilding a motor for crap can racing makes it less reliable. Throw in that motor and I bet you have all kinds of success! I don't know how much I would bet, but...

I dont think that just applys to crap can racing. I think it pretty much always applys. I would rather have a healthy high milage oem motor than a rebuild, i only have a couple of builders i trust. While i do trust myself to build something i also understand there is a high chance i mess something up