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I have a 2005 Civic with a D17a2. I wanna dip my toe into this whole thing and see if it's something I wanna do, since I've read bolt ones don't do anything with this motor my plan is to put a turbo on with 5-8lbs of boost, do I need a manual transmission to make this work? If it's automatic will it need some kind of new ECU or tune?

And before anyone tells me to do a K swap, NO. like I said I'm just trying to dip my toe in for now, if it's something I like and wanna keep pursuing them I will eventually do a swap after I have fun blowing this motor up

 
Rep Power: 511

I mean, you can. There were people back in the day running boost on an auto D17. Quick search told me there were people usually running 5-6psi, a couple people got ballsy and went to the 9-11psi range with an auto. Now, is it recommended? Not really, since the tranny would be a limiting factor and additional fail point. You'd need a custom tune regardless, and the tune will be a make or break point. Find a really good tuner that'll dyno tune that bad boy reliably, and you can potentially have a fun setup

At least you're only saying 5-8psi, and not some "I WANNA MAKE 300WHP AND I'M NOT GONNA TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER." If I were you, I'd stick closer to the 5psi range for safety. If you're lucky with that setup, I'd venture a guess of 150-175 safely, which is still plenty fun on a D17. Maybe even up to 200 if you have a really good tuner, but I wouldn't get my hopes up too much about the upper 100s range. You'll also want to look into tranny coolers.

 
Rep Power: 511

If you're feeling extra ballsy, grab a MT off of some junked 7thgen and do a swap. @mac25 will tell you not to do it, if he's still lingering on the forums, but he had a hell of a project D17 a while back

 
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Great, yea I mean like a said, just dipping my toe in so I mean, screw it, if the automatic tranny is gonna be the weak point, run that till it quits then I have my next project lol. And yeah I have done a little reading about the D17 and I'm not gonna sink the money into upgrading the internals and yea all I was shooting for is another 50hp with 200 total being the dream, just give it some zip, and if I like that enough, next up will probably be suspension parts

 
Rep Power: 511

not gonna lie, the D17 is a fun engine to dick around with, and it's easy to work on, but it just doesn't respond to power mods very much. I boosted my D17A2 (granted, manual tranny), but there was a problem with the wastegate actuator, so it only boosted 2.5psi (155whp is what it dyno'd at from stock 110). Thing was still stupid fun, pretty damn peppy, and still made 30+mpg when I didn't abuse the boost. Sure, it chugged a quarter tank in 50 miles of pure boost abuse, but it was worth it. All of that tuning was with a piggyback unit, too, not a standalone. Sure, I wanted 8psi, but I was more than happy with the small 2.5psi I got when it was boosted.

if you're looking to run that d17 into the ground, have fun with it. Keep us posted, too. Would love to see how it fares, good or bad

 
Rep Power: 224

Oh just K swap it already