VitTuned, one of the premier tuner for late-model Honda’s, has introduced a compressor wheel upgrade for any Honda with the new 1.5L turbo engine.
Take a look at any stock dyno graph for Honda’s new 1.5L turbo engine and most likely you’ll notice a sharp drop off in horsepower and torque past 5,000 RPM. That power loss can be annoying if you’re taking your Civic out on the track or just during a simple overtaking maneuver. But according to VitTuned on their announcement on CivicX.com earlier last week (Dec. 7, 2017) they’ve successfully made a drop-in turbo upgrade of sorts. By making a compressor wheel upgrade on the stock TD03 turbo, customers can swap in a more capable turbo with little headache. The results speak for themselves.
The stock 1.5L turbo Civic makes a decent 174 HP and 162 lb-ft although that’s been proven to be severely underrated by Honda with some dyno numbers at the wheels showing the Civic making 177 WHP and up to 190 lb-ft. But an inspection of the dyno graphs, like this one from Hondata, shows that there’s a big drop in power past 5,000 RPM. Thanks to a turbo that’s not only tuned for power, but for fuel economy, the power drop is the result of a small sized turbo “running out of steam.”
But with VitTuned’s compressor wheel upgrade, the turbo size remains the same, but now Honda’s small TD03 turbo does a better job of making power in the upper rev range. A cursory glance at the compressor wheel upgrade shows more blades on the turbo.
From what their dyno graph shows, not only are their power gains throughout the curve but compared to a stock turbo without the compressor wheel upgrade, torque stays consistent throughout the rev range and horsepower does not drop as fast as before.
As this is a compressor wheel upgrade, you’ll either have to remove your stock turbo and ship it to them for the upgrade, choose to source a TD03 through VitTuned for $1,000 or you can source an approved used TD03 core to send to them for them to upgrade.
If you send in your stock turbo, already have KTuner, and get one of their tunes, you’re set back $1,200. Not bad considering VitTuned is claiming 50 WHP gains on some parts of the graph and consistent power throughout.
