if it takes that long to start the fueling is possibly way out my old mfi rst would start literally as i touched the key being mfi it is not waiting for any crank sensor signals or the like so the second it sees a spark it should fire, there is no way you should be getting beat by a stock civic in a stock rst. my old rst was running 188bhp it had a noisy gearbox when i bought it and i abused it daily for 3 years without a problem and my mate did a further 2 years on that gearbox again without a problem as far as i know that gearbox is still good to go haha