Symphorced's EP3

[rps.13]

Awesome work Tim!

[vishes]

Hamster on roids. Keep updating bro, you've still got 14 months of updates to do .

[Symphorced]

A couple of months afterwards, I returned to Winton at a Tampered Motorsports event with no changes to the car. I was able to experience first-hand why so many people do not like entering into Tampered days. In my group there were many discourteous drivers who would deliberately go out of the way to block your path even though they are evidently slower through the straights and through the corners. The lowpoint of the day would have had to have been during the fourth session, on the warm up lap, I had a Ford Laser try to overtake me on the outside through one of the hairpins up the top of the course. AThe first straight we hit I backed off instantly and let a good gap be placed between myself and that other driver. Not sure what goes through the mind of some of the drivers that enter into these track days. Asides from that, the day wasn't all that bad - I was still able to beat my previous best and got a 1.50.99. The major issue of the day were my brakes and my tyres. I was losing traction in the rear very easily - most likely due to how worn the Bridgestones were. I was also experiencing a lot of brake fading where I would only have about 3 good laps per session before my brakes overheated. I suspected this was because of the brake fluid had boiled after seeing two track days and a year of daily driving. All in all, not too bad of a day asides from a few nuisances on the track.



After the track day I wanted a bit more power out of the car so what better way than a Hondata Kpro and tune? I saw that Benny from BYP was coming down to Melbourne for a tuning day and gladly jumped on board. The tune netted me 128.7 kws (or as the dyno sheet will have you believe, 1287kws). Although the number seemed low, I wasn't dissatisfied as I saw the difference between the before and after run and was also able to instantly a feel a difference on my very own butt-dyno. Mid range pull was so much more significant. No more need to downshift from 6th gear on the freeway to overtake!



After that I knew I needed some new brakes and new tyres. I ordered a set of Ferodo DS2500 in a group buy here thanks to Alex and also grabbed three bottles of Motul RBF600 (for $90 - if only Autosphere were around back then, I could have saved a bit of cash).



I also went on Tirerack to order a set of Hankook RS-3s in the sizes of 245/40/17 and 225/45/17. At first, I sent a general enquiry for a purchase through their email order form and was told that Tirerack no longer sell Hankooks to Australia - not discouraged, I directly emailed a Julian I had previously dealt with and he was more than happy to organise a set sent out to me. Received these bad boys in four working days. I knew these tyres would not be ideal for the TE37s, so I sold the TE37s and ordered a set of ENkei RPF1s - 17x9 +35 and 17x8.5 +30. The wheels were going to be 6-8 week wait and the next EXE track day happened to fall on the 7th week. I crossed my fingers and waited. One week out from the track day, I decided to give the supplied a call, and to my dismay, found out that the contained will be landing in Sydney the day after the EXE track day. So without any wheels to run, I was, to put it eqloquently, up shit creek without a paddle. I began frantically searching forums for cheap wheels for me to buy and run temporarily but none seemed to be for sale. I was saved when member Vishes allowed me to borrow his pair of 6ULRS which were 17x9 +48. Now I knew there was no chances of me at all fitting these wheels with no spacers, so with three days to go until track day, I went on the hunt for spacers. I hit up various tyre/wheel shops to see what they had but every one of them only had 20mm or 30. Luckily I was able to find a person on OzHonda who had a for sale thread that was year old who was still selling his 15mm bolt on spacer. With that sorted I borrowed another member's wheels for my rear. butter's 17x7.5 +43(?) CE28ns. Time for wheel alignment! With this setup, I knew I would need to run a lot of camber, so I took it to Tyrepower Niddrie and asked for -3.5 degrees camber up front and -2 degrees on the rear. They also suggested that I go for 2mm of total toe out on the front

With that saga over, I was ready for track day! Oh and also some time in between I also acquired facelift headlights and a Mugen wing.



As dawn approached, we met up with member's M@lew and eskimo_firefighter for the trek up to Winton. After barely survivng the suicidal bombing kangaroos, we stopped at Maccas to get some breakfast to refill our stomachs before heading over to the track. As always, EXE was a perfectly run day and I was extremely glad I was able to get in. As always, EXE track days attract a lot of entrants and I believe there were a whopping 40 people on the waiting list. In my first warm up session I was already able to pull a 1.51 without pushing the car too hard. Amazed at how well the tyres and brake pads felt, I was able to push the car to net me a PB of 1.47.66! As always, I was exhausted by the end of the day and called it quits after my fourth session as my gearbox seemed to be overheating and I had issues upshifting to fourth and downshifting to second during some stages of the day. Probably didnt help that it was a sweltering hot day.









Still a couple of months to update and I'll be heading up to Winton on Monday for a Tampered trackday, so after that I should have another update to bring the build thread up to date. Very regretful that I did not document more of the build.

[Symphorced]

nice..........

Awesome work Tim!

Thanks guys!

Mike, my car would not be what it is today without so much of your handy advice.

Haha holy crap, didn't know you had a build thread. Good stuff man. Needs more updates!

Thanks man! Sell me your Js Racing antenna already... otherwise you risk the chance of me coming to your house one night with a spatula and prying it off your roof.

Great work Tim!

Was fun battling it out with you and Mike (green civic sedan) at the EXE day.

Thanks Anthony! Yeah was a very memorable day. You've evened out the playing field with the DC2R now though. Can no longer just chase you down on the straights haha!

Hamster on roids. Keep updating bro, you've still got 14 months of updates to do .

You know me... too lazy. Would rather sit on Instagram, looking at cat photos all day.

On that note, I'll leave you guys with some photos of my favourite cat in the world.

[tRipitaka]

Thanks Anthony! Yeah was a very memorable day. You've evened out the playing field with the DC2R now though. Can no longer just chase you down on the straights haha!

I'll be chasing you
Dw, next track day, we'll chase each other to the 45/46s..

[wongy]

ITS 1287 KW, dyno sheet doesn't lie

[rookie]

The importance of a decimal point haha.

[mugsee]

Nice updates Tim. I'm liking the direction that you're taking the car and the thought you're putting into your mods.

[Symphorced]

So the week after the track day my wheels arrived. Here they are fitted to the tyres:





A very close fit - but the -3.5mm camber front and -2.5mm rear help. I'm currently running a 5mm slip-on spacer on the fronts as the wheels scrub on the inside of the wheel arch on full lock - even with the spacer there is still scrubbing every now and then on full lock. The tyres are also scrubbing on the guards on the rear. More negative camber will fix this.

Next up was to spend (waste) some more money on unneccessary modifications to the car. First up, Spoon monobloc calipers:





Had a few issues fitting these. Firstly, when I went to install them I noticed that only two out of the four brake pad clips were provided by the previous owner of the calipers. After a few text messages back and forth with the seller, I resigned to the fact that I'll just have to suck it up and make some clips up of my own. So I went down to Bunnings to grab a few scraps of metal, cut it down to size and used some copper sealant to hold them in place. Worked like a charm. Secondly, I noticed that the calipers were not lining up to the bolt holes of the caliper bracket. It was only through some quick Googling that I found out we had to cut down some of the heat shield to fit the calipers. Few quick snips with the tin snip and it was good to go.

Next up, another impulse buy - a Cusco 6 point chromoly bolt in roll cage. What a pain this thing was to fit. Took me and a friend a solid 6 hours to figure out and assemble this into the car. Rear plastics next to the rear seats had to be cut and carpets drilled through.

All in:







No more use of front interior lights, glovebox and sunvisors. Also unable to fold down rear seats now. Undecided about this for the mean time... not a very practical mod when you need to daily your car. Though I have been looking at buying a daily so it shouldn't be too big of a concern once I buy one.

Next up - J's Racing GT Wing. I was also unsure about this for a time as I love the look of the Mugen wing. However, while I was thinking over it, I saw an EP3 for sale up in NSW which had one of these wings! Never even knew an EP3 in Australia had one of these. I quickly got on the phone to the owner to see if he would part it out. At first, the owner seemed hesitant but after enough pestering, I was able to convince him to sell it to me - not cheap either lol.









AFter that, it was time to hit the track again. This time we knew enough people entering to forma group of our own which was fantastic. I pretty much had a free-run for the entire day. My goal entering into the day was to crack into the 1.45s. First session came up and I was having so much fun out there being out on the track with friends. I had four laps before coming back in as I knew my tyre pressures were way too high. Came back in - checked tyre pressures and was about to sit down to take a rest when my friend came up to me to tell me I had already cracked into 1.45s! As a matter of fact, I had two consecutive laps in the first session where I dipped into the 45s. By the end of the day I was able to shave my PB down to a 1.45.1.













And here's a video of a friend in his V35 chasing me in the second session. My best of this session was a 1.45.7:

http://www.facebook.com/video/embed?...51410699285605

[Symphorced]

I'll be chasing you
Dw, next track day, we'll chase each other to the 45/46s..

Too late. Already there!

I'm sure you're not far off though!

Nice updates Tim. I'm liking the direction that you're taking the car and the thought you're putting into your mods.

Thanks Mugsee. But as I said the other night, my choice of mods are mainly impulsive purchases lol.

[M@lew]

Impressive, caught up already.

Did you buy the cage new? Time to start entering some serious events now that you have one of those. But then again I'm not sure if Cusco cages are approved, may need someone to confirm this.

The wing looks pretty cool at the track, I think you need a splitter now to balance it out. (Aesthetics wise though unless you don't plan on running it on the street. Then again a splitter would be nice in general)

[Stephen_AUS]

Man great work!

I'd like to see a splitter on the car, as Matt said ... it would definately balance out the downforce!

Keep it up, I like your style

[felixR]

Whoa I didn't realise how hardcore this EP3 was going to be!

Nice!

[benson]

Good to see another EP3R being track inspired! Keep up the good work

Is there any EP3's doing sub 1:40's yet?

[stienerv2]

Hey Tim,

Have you tried 225 tyres? I'm running 215 which is too stretch for the track and i have no scrubbing issues with less camber.