MAPerformance Civic X 1.5T Turbo Kit - R&D Update

It’s been some time since we last updated the community on the progress of our MAP Turbo Kit for 1.5t powered Honda Civic X. During the course of the 2018 racing season, we had focused a lot of effort on getting to the track with enough airflow potential to achieve some record passes. With such a narrow field of focus, it can be easy to work yourself into corners, when you take a step back and look at the product as something that will eventually make it’s way into the hands of customers.

Ultimately, the intent of a product intended for customers has to be well thought out, easily installed, manufactured with premium materials, great performing and aesthetically pleasing. With all of that in mind, we took all of the best of what we learned last year, and have been applying it to the design of our turbo kit for the 1.5t Honda platforms.

Civic X 1.5T Turbo Kit

What were our design objectives for this product?

Performance - this is subjective for some, but for us it is simple. We want to extract the most power available, balanced against the best possible responsiveness and with the most potential for reliability.

Ease of installation - what good is any part that is too complex or requires specialty tools to install?

Compactness - there are advantages to keep things small and compact… firstly, less stuff usually requires less space and comes with less cost… but also, less complexity can also translate to less things to break.

Price - what good is any product that is too expensive to purchase? MAPerformance is a company with a long history of and tradition of true motorsports enthusiasts. We make parts for enthusiasts that can be afforded by enthusiasts because, at the end of the day, we are enthusiasts.

What was our original turbo kit comprised of?

Our original prototype turbo kit was designed around Borg Warner EFR turbos. The EFR series of turbos have been providing great power delivery and responsiveness/control since their debut only a few years ago, and they've been a wise choice for many turbocharger upgrades.  That being said, the primary challenge with the small frame EFR turbos is pairing them to engines that can ingest enough air (mass flow rate) at the high-pressure ratios the turbos are being pushed.  The recipe of very high boost pressures combined with the 1.5L Honda engine demands a turbo that can sustain very high-pressure ratios at relatively low flow rates whilst avoiding surge, which is category of turbo with very few options.  Unfortunately, we found the 62mm and 67mm EFR turbos were simply not an ideal fit for this specific recipe as they were going into compressor surge at the higher pressure ratios.

What changes have we made?

We still want to keep the overall turbo package as small as possible. We still want to have an internally gated turbine housing, but we had to research compressor maps to find a series of turbos that could potentially function better with the exhaust energy afforded. This is a relatively niche category of turbochargers with few options,  but we're optimistic that the Garrett GTX series will fit the bill.  To further avoid the turbocharger being a limiting factor in the future, MAP is going to test a reverse orientation of the turbo with an optimized turbo inlet tract, providing a more homogenous flow to the entire compressor face and especially reducing local areas of compressor inlet depression caused by the 180* compound-bend of the original inlet tract.  There's even a potential of utilizing the OEM electric wastegate actuator in the future, so we're excited to get testing!

What’s on the horizon?

I know it’s not much of an update… but the decision to steer away from the Borg Warner EFR was, for us, a pretty major milestone and while the turbo kit is certainly not complete, we are “all hands on board” while we work out all of the details. We won’t rest until we have developed a potent, reliable, cost effective turbo kit solution for this platform!