The CR-X

[felixR]

Sounds like it will be a special race in October

[stienerv2]

Was the lip around $400 from yahoo auctions? I was thinking of getting one too lol

[Toddxxx]

Thanks for reading. It was pretty boring for a while there, but stuff is happening now! See you in October, I actually just got offered a garage which will be a nice upgrade from the car ports down the back at SMSP, so come past and say hello.

maybe i waited till the right time to read it then haha
ill definitely come along and say hi. my car will only be in the show and shine area not looking very showy or shiny :P

[ChargeR]

Sounds like it will be a special race in October

It will be special to me if I manage to turn up .

Was the lip around $400 from yahoo auctions? I was thinking of getting one too lol

I got it through Jesse Streeter, and I guess he just dealt directly with Js. The lip itself was only 24k JPY or so, I wouldn't pay $400 for one!

maybe i waited till the right time to read it then haha
ill definitely come along and say hi. my car will only be in the show and shine area not looking very showy or shiny :P

That's cool, my car will be on the track not being all that fast or time attack-ey I expect .

I stopped by the paint shop to drop off the J's front lip yesterday and the paint guys have made some good progress. The majority of the bodywork has been done, all the exterior panels are primed and it's getting close to paint time.



Today I got a couple of small jobs done, firstly I polished my tail lights, centre garnish and head lights. I still need to buff the RHS corner light (once I find it), to make it match up to a fresh new OEM LHS corner light that I bought a while ago from a local CR-X enthusiast. The lights came out nicely with just a polish, but will need a bit more work and sanding to remove the deeper scratches.





Then I started stripping down my front and rear calipers ready for a rebuild. I'll just be using the standard calipers with Hawk DTC60 and DTC30 pads initially and will see how they perform on track before making any changes. With the B16A they were excellent, but with nearly twice as much power now I expect I'll need a bit more heat capacity in the future. I do have some titanium pad shims for the front to try to keep the heat under control though.



New seals and dust boots for the calipers are on their way and I'm considering putting a fresh set of braided lines and at least front pads in it too.

[eskimo_firefighter]

Exciting stuff. Hoping this will make it to at least one shakedown event before WTAC?

[Shakeel]

Exciting stuff. Hoping this will make it to at least one shakedown event before WTAC?

Peter how could you mention the four letter word that should not be mentioned

[ChargeR]

Exciting stuff. Hoping this will make it to at least one shakedown event before WTAC?

Peter how could you mention the four letter word that should not be mentioned

Whoa whoa whoa Peter, as Shak says no-one said anything about WTAC. Hypothetically speaking though I would be aiming for two shakedown events, one at Winton to make sure nothing falls off, and another at Sandown or PI to make sure it's not a deathtrap at high speed .

[ChargeR]

So I'm making a little progress here and there. I picked up the laser cut parts for the front cross-member/traction bar and the tube sections this week. After some advice from itsu-san I changed the design of the areas that bolt to the chassis slightly to make it easier to manufacture, and added some gussets. Here's the revised design:



Tonight I cut the tube to length and mocked up all the parts together to check everything fitted as I wanted, and everything looks pretty good. Will tack it together this weekend, but will wait to fit it to the car before final welding .





Here you can see the how the plates that make up each end section interlock, which should make it nearly impossible for me to stuff it up when I weld it together.



Yesterday I attempted to fit my gearbox to the engine ready to drop in, but got to this point and realised that I didn't have any bolts for the clutch pressure plate. Thankfully a mate has some spares from one of his Honda projects, so I'll pick them up and put it together over the weekend.



Spent a bit of time organising all my parts last weekend, there's a surprising amount of parts in a CR-X when they're all spread out on the floor. Sorted everything out and found nearly everything I'm going to need in the near future, except some of the bolts to attach the gearbox to the engine, so I've ordered those:



Thanks to itsu-san for helping co-ordinate the laser cut parts and for design advice, and Dan for emergency spare parts supply.

[ChargeR]

Got a bit more done over the weekend, and on Friday I finally picked up all my parts from the powdercoater:





Had the following parts done: Front and rear bumper supports, front subframe (that I had previously modified for clearance to the ASP header), front and rear lower control arms, suspension forks, trailing arms with brackets and dust shields, front swaybar, front bumper mounts, dash support bar, engine mount brackets (since I'd also modified these slightly), and PCI side mount brackets. Making progress on getting all the suspension parts together, more updates soon.

[Vvvtec]

juicy as hell, keep it up

[felixR]

That's beautiful

[ChargeR]

That's beautiful

juicy as hell, keep it up

Cheers guys, I mostly do all this cleaning, blasting and powder-coating because I hate getting my hands dirty when working on cars. The under-body of the car will be getting a very thorough scrub before I start re-assembly.

Making more slow progress, preparing for when I get the shell back. I've pressed all the new OEM bushes in to the front and rear lower control arms, which was a lot easier than getting the old ones out. At some point I'll go spherical in these parts, at which point I'll just fit these to the EF2. I didn't bother with new bushes for the upper control arms as I'll be replacing them with adjustable items soon enough.



Have also put my ARP extended studs into the rear hubs, and started re-assembling the rear trailing arms. The goal is to have everything ready to have the engine in and car rolling within a day or two once I get it back.



At the paint shop things are happening, all the removable panels are done (except for the matte parts of the bumpers, and the mouldings) and the guys are moving on to the interior and engine bay.

[Toddxxx]

I'm getting excited to see it all back together

[ievaq8]

awesome man...

[ChargeR]

I'm getting excited to see it all back together

awesome man...

Thanks guys!

Received this picture from my mate at the panel shop, so I should get the car back soon all fresh and shiny. For those curious the engine bay and interior colour is slightly tweaked DC5 Satin Silver Metallic.



Today I had a set of AD08Rs fitted to some of my 6ULs at Traction Tyres. The wheels are mismatched because each pair are from staggered sets that I bought to use with various width Hoosiers. That will have to wait though as I need these AD08Rs for that fancy track day up in Sydney in a couple of months. The bronze wheels will be on the left, as I decided that colour is more photogenic.



The bolts to mate the engine to the gearbox finally turned up, so I manhandled the box into place and bolted it up, along with the half shaft:



Then I moved on to getting my rear suspension all together. Firstly re-fitted the spindles and splash shields. Then fitted the new hubs, PCI spherical trailing arm bushes, and SPC toe links after setting them to the same length as the OEM arms. The PCI bushes have the spherical offset to correct the rear toe curve back toward stock behaviour at lower ride heights. I'll measure the bump steer when I get a chance and compare it to the EF2 to see how much of an effect it has had.





I can't tolerate the red on the SPC arms so I think I'll get them stripped and re-anodized black next time I pull the car apart, and the rod ends look a bit cheap so will probably replace them with something nicer from Aurora.

More updates soon.