First off let me say hello, nice forum, and very knowledgable member’s here. My background is based in American muscle, where beefing auto’s is as time honored as powershifting. But now I own my first Integra, a 91 LS inherited from my girlfriend. I find it a very nice car to drive to work everyday, and enjoyable, quick enough, with some potential. But it does have it’s issues.
The shift’s are soft, and could be firmed up considerably. The timing suck’s as well, and the stall speed is pitifully low for a motor that probably makes peak power at 5500 rpm. I’d like to rectify that, and a manual swap is not an option. I live in ornage county, and I already have a Cobra with a six speed for banging gears when I want. The Integra is for traffic, and a little fun while doing it. I know about level ten, but their work in the Mustang world hasn’t exactly impressed me. Is anyone else making converter’s, shift kit’s or any real performance parts for these auto tranny’s? And is anyone doing anything with computer tuning on these? It would be easy enough to do either, I just haven’t found much, except a three year old thread in the archives that went nowhere.
First off, welcome to G2IC.
You’ll find that there isn’t much loving for the auto. It’s kind of considered a black sheep. They’re believed to be weak to start with so any kind of performance modification is supposedly not good for it. Level ten to date is pretty much your only option as far as anyone knows. I thought I read or heard somwehre that B&M makes a torque convertor for the Integra, but to date have not found anything about it (undoubtedly, I think I am mistaken). For the price of a levelten, you might as well pay and get the auto to manual transmission swap. I just did this swap myself and don’t think it would be too diffficult if you’re mechanically inclined. There is a write up on here on how to do it.
I’m gonna pick up a used one this weekend and pull it apart. The mod’s should be fairly straightforward, a couple washers here, a drilled out passage there, and boom! Shift kit. I also plan to look into the TCM and the S3 function a little deeper, since it seems to act as a computer shift kit of sort’s.
Anyway, I’m sure I could easily swap a 5 speed in, but this car is my work car, my driver. Holding a clutch and slipping it down the 91 for 2 or 3 hours at a time is not very fun…
Anyhow, thanks for the info, I’ll give B&M a call this weekend about the converter.
Looking at the valve body, it seems to be a regular old auto valve body, so I am working with Orange County Transmissions to see what kind of valve body and clutch pack mods can be done, should be pretty straightforward. I’m dropping the spare off there tomarrow.
You’ve got my attention, my co-worker owns a performance shop and has been apt to typically build his own shift kit as opposed to off the shelf kits.
I’m going to pose a hypothetical the next time i see him (tuesday).
Yes, he’s actually found Red Alto clutches that fit it, and I will be machining the pack to fit 5 as oppossed to 3. We are currently looking for a band that is wider, and I’m going down to pick up a newer model trans to see if the servo is bigger, or any other goodies we can use.
There was an article a little while ago about how they swapped in a DA Integra automatic transmission into a Civic, and, when dyno’d, the power loss was surprisingly small in comparison to other transmissions. It also handled increases in engine power very well. So don’t discount the DA automatic just yet.
Auto’s have numerous benfit’s also though. Like their dead on consistency, ability to build boost better, ability to leave the line quicker, and ease of day to day driving.
My Cobra is a manual, and I wouldn’t have that any other way, since I auto X it, but for drag racing autos are very close, and for daily grinding, they can’t be beat out here in SoCal.
autos all the way:auto:
keep up the good work.
hehe