Project Acura TSX Part 2

The exhaust note is aggressive and progressive. The beautifully fabricated exhaust features N1 canisters, so the aural products of combustion are fairly unfettered by the straight-through design. This exhaust system will probably best be appreciated by the younger set or by those who relish a sporty tone.

The exhaust note features prominently under any amount of acceleration or deceleration, but is well-behaved when cruising at freeway speeds. Take full advantage of the 7500-rpm redline, and all 2400cc of displacement occupies your eardrums; this will happen often, as Project TSX delivers a big wallop of grunt after the 6000-rpm cam changeover. One of our largest complaints with the stock TSX is the engine sounds thrashy, even agrarian at high rpm; now it sounds neither.

Skunk2 fitted a prototype intake system of fairly orthodox "short ram" style design, with a filter at the end of the aluminum tube. The intake lets itself be heard, especially when the engine is in VTEC. Skunk2 also installed a prototype grounding kit, which it found to be worth a couple of horsepower. Ground wire kits are one of the few very "miracle power" products that can actually work, especially on turbocharged cars or vehicles with large electrical demands.

Click to Enlarge Graph

With the combination of a custom-tune Hondata K-Pro ECU, Skunk2 intake, header, exhaust and grounding system-all bolt-ons that install in a couple of hours-Project TSX produced a peak horsepower figure of 184 at 6100 rpm and 162 lb-ft of torque at 5800 rpm on our Dynojet.

This extra 11 hp and 19 lb-ft of torque produced a 15.1-second quarter mile at 93.8 mph-.8 seconds and 5.2 mph better than stock.

There are three runs on the dyno chart. The blue lines represent the baseline numbers put down by the preproduction Skunk2 car. The black lines are from a stock TSX from Acura's press fleet we tested early after the car's release, which may also have been a preproduction car. The red lines denote the Skunk2 car with the parts listed here.

Skunk2's prototype intake moves the filter as far as possible from the engine's hot bits.

There is a disparity between the baseline on the Skunk2 car and the press fleet car we tested. It is not unheard of for "hot" cars to be in press fleets. It is also not unheard of that former press cars like Project TSX have had the snot beaten out of them by cruel-hearted journalists like us, which can cause permanent deficits in power production. Our guess is that numbers from a production TSX lie somewhere between the two "stock" graphs.

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