It’s time again to dive into the OEM parts found in your 2022+ Honda Civic Si and other 1.5L Turbo Civics.

In this episode of what cool aftermarket performance part 27WON is going to build next, we look at the OEM Turbo Inlet Pipe equipped on your Earth Dreams 1.5T engine. Let’s discuss what it is and what it does below ↓↓↓

The Turbo Inlet Pipe, or TIP as you will often see it abbreviated, is a piece of the intake tract on your 11th-generation Honda Civic. It’s a flat one-piece plastic tube that is the connection between your air intake system and your turbocharger. Outside air flows through the grill to the air filter before passing through the MAF housing where a sensor reads the volume of air entering the engine. That air then enters the TIP. It flows through this relatively simple piece of plastic before it enters your turbocharger to be compressed. Check out the diagram below to identify key components. The blue arrows demonstrate the path the air takes through the TIP.

The TIP itself doesn't do much besides act as a conduit for the air. Inside the molded plastic there are no baffles, no heat sinks, no airfoils, etc. Really it’s just a very small plastic tube. 

Now, this tube does have a few things attached to it that serve a purpose. The main one is at the leading edge of the pipe. This diamond-shaped piece of plastic with hoses coming out of it is an EVAP Nozzle. It’s part of the emissions system on your Civic and it recirculates fuel vapors that evaporated from your gas tank back into the engine to be burned. The name of the game is emissions and we don’t want anything to go to waste.

The other thing sticking out of it is closer to the other end. Nothing fancy here either, just a round tube for a breather hose. This connects to your valve cover and helps relieve crankcase pressure in the lower part of your engine. Again we can’t just dump that pressure into the atmosphere so OEM engineers make sure it gets recirculated.

Besides that, we have a few threaded inserts to bolt some wires and vacuum hoses to and that’s it.

The 11th gen design is actually way simpler when compared to the 10th Gen inlet pipe which had both the factory Bypass Valve and Turbo compressor outlet integrated to it. As a matter of fact, this pipe is pretty similar to the outgoing Civic Type R FK8.

This makes us happy because it will allow us more freedom in design. 

The first step is to model the OEM inlet pipe and identify all the critical points. We do this to make sure that we keep all the mounting points and holes in the same location. This is how we make sure you get a real “drop-in” and piece.

Now that we understand the OEM TIP, it’s time to move on to the design of our future upgraded and larger inlet pipe. And for that, look out for part 2 as we share our goals and what's to come soon.

Till next time

-Vincent