Should i buy a vtec

VTEC is a drug. The latter offering continuously variable intake cam timing. The system allows Honda to offer the perfect engine. VTEC just kicked in, yo! So interrogate the history as closely as you can and, ideally, interrogate the owner too.

These cars are about function first, form second. The other key thing to bear in mind is that these cars will have been driven hard and, while the mechanicals are more than up to the punishment, you know what can result when cars are driven to the limit: accidents. Modify it — chassis Few manufacturers are as well served by the aftermarket as Honda, especially for the hot variants. During this process, the pistons move up and down in the cylinders. Quite a few variables control how an engine produces the power needed to make a car move.

The process of opening and closing the valves that we just described works well at low revolutions per minute rpm , but the valves open and close so quickly as the engine builds up speed that performance ultimately starts suffering.

We suggest you watch it before reading the rest, because it will help our explanation make a whole lot more sense. In a traditional engine, the camshaft opens and closes the valves, and its lobes are all the same size. At lower rpm, only the outer lobes are controlling the valves.

As the engine begins to spin more quickly, the center lobe takes over and the valves open sooner and closer later, which results in a sudden burst of speed and better performance. Yes and no; it depends on how you drive. Imagine that we are running an engine at just 10 or 15 RPM, to complete a cycle the piston will take seconds to do it. The camshaft would grind, when the piston begins moving downward in the intake stroke, the intake valve would open. Right as the piston bottoms are out, the intake valve would close.

Then the exhaust valve would open right as the piston bottoms out at the end of the combustion stroke, and would close as the piston completes the exhaust stroke. This is great as long as we can run the engine at a very low speed. The bad news is that when we increase the RPM, this configuration for the camshaft does not perform well.

If the engine is running at 4, RPM, the valves are opening and closing 2, times every minute. So when the intake valve opens right at the top of the intake stroke, the piston is not able to get the air moving into the cylinder in a fraction of time available. The result is that at higher RPM ranges, what you need is the intake valve to open before the intake stroke, this way the piston starts moving down in the intake stroke, and the valve is open, moving the air freely into the cylinder during a complete intake stroke.