My EK1 daily/track day warrior diary (for now).

[Shaun]

Sucks that it's gone.

Not many people out there can say they jumped their civic.

[eskimo_firefighter]

Glad you were ok, I was so scared as I ran over to the car. The fact that I saw the bottom of the EK shocked me. Reshell and daily!

Thanks mate, It was pretty scary for me too. Probably won't be doing that as It's too much effort just for a low mileage d16.

Very unfortunate

However I am so impressed with the lap times down at Winton

Hope you get back out there soon .

Thank you mate. I am looking to purchase a another car and get out there asap. Not going to let this deter me from tracking.

Fuark bro. Thats a shame. Lucky you're all good and the car wasn't worth much. Probably why you could get such fast times pushing it. Haha.

Will you be coming along to exe next month to spectate?

Thanks mate. Yeah I was pretty glad that I came out of that unscathed. That's true, if I had to crash at the track I was glad that it had to be the EK1 and not the EP3 I had for almost 3 years, haha.

Spectate? More like participate. . On a hunt for aother car. Not sure if it'll be another EK1 or something different. I feel that I have unfinished business with the EK1 as I know the EK1 can do better than 47's at Winton in my setup.

Sucks that it's gone.

Not many people out there can say they jumped their civic.

It does suck indeed, but glad I made the mistake in a relatively el cheapo car and not something else. Hopefully it stays that way, being in a flying/jumping Civic is not that fun, I prefer other people to avoid it for their own sake, haha.

[pho]

Oooh. Awesome. Ill see you there then. Wanna ride passenger in my car first session and help me out. Hehehe

[eskimo_firefighter]

Sure thing man. Whether I'm tracking or not I'll be there anyways.

[eskimo_firefighter]

Replacement EK1 daily/track day warrior. 15/10/2013

So about a week and a bit of not having a working car, I bought this silver EK1 for pretty cheap. It did not come with a RWC, so I will try to sort that out to get it on the road asap.

This car seems to be in OK condition, so it should be capable as the white EK1 was at the track.

So the hunt for 46's at Winton continues with the EK1. Will be transferring what little modifications I have from the dead EK1 over to the silver EK1, providing that the coilovers didn't crap them selves in the accident.

The silver EK1 will be setup exactly the same as the white EK1 and should be ready for the EXE track day that I have booked in for mid November, exciting times ahead!

[pho]

Two silver ek1's at exe, nice >

Oh wait, are you saturday or sunday?

[eskimo_firefighter]

I've got a spot for Saturday, if I get a spot for Sunday I'll go to that one too. Haha.

[pho]

Aww man. I'm on Sunday. Haha

[eskimo_firefighter]

Preparations for EXE Winton track day. 17/11/2013

Pretty sick of studying for exams right about now, so I thought I’d visit this thread again with a few minor updates.

Car is now track ready (barely) after frantically trying to get the car on the road and getting it ready for the track day on the 17/11/13. (thanks Butter for helping).

Car is setup exactly the same as the white EK1, thankfully the coilovers survived and was useable.

This time around the fluid was swapped to ATE super blue racing fluid. (courtesy of Autosphere). Hopefully this provides a more consistent brake feel at the track, as with OEM fluid it would feel like stepping on a sponge after half a day. One of my favourite things about this brake fluid is that it’s blue and makes the bleeding process much easier.

A minor addition to the interior, the Shift-I light. Simple install. Easy to use. And seems to be pretty effective, hopefully helps me at the track as the EK1 does not come with a Tachometer. (thanks to Symphorced for this part.)
Now that the car has a better brake setup, with the new racing fluid and QFM brake pads vs the old Bendix pads/OEM fluid combo, the EK might be able to get down to the 46’s.

[eskimo_firefighter]

16th/17th November EXE double track day at Winton

Awesome weekend but no PB was broken. The best I could manage with the car was a 1:49.0400 on day 2 and 1:49.0130 on day 1. Despite not getting a PB I was happy with the consistency hitting the 49's 12 times in total for the weekend, however there are a few issues that I have to sort out.

1. The cars tendency to oversteer. This maybe due to the rear trailing arm bushings or all bushings for that matter are worn out. The silver EK after all is sitting on 230,000km compared to the white ek which had less than 100,000km. Even though I said no more modifications will be done to this car, I want to do some small modifications as I really want this car to get into the 46's one day.

I may try to find front and rear sway bar combo from an EK4 or whatever. This will hopefully stabilize the rear end under turn in and under braking and improve handling overall.

And I will replace the rear trailing arm bushes as they are notorious for breaking apart and know for a fact that mine were trashed upon inspection when I installed the coilovers. This bushing is probably one of the main reasons why the rear is so tail happy,
as my old EK had no sway bars and I didn't have this problem.

2. The car seems slower on the straight than the old white EK. Not sure how true this is, as I might not be getting enough corner exit speed to hit my usual top speed in comparison to the white EK. Times like these is where I wish I had racechrono. I know for a fact the white EK would hit the limiter for a few seconds on 3rd on the main straight before the S bend, where as the silver EK does not come close to topping it out. Once again, not sure if the motors tired or if I was not carrying enough speed through the corner before the main straight.

I was complaining the whole weekend that the motor feels weaker, if I bring the car to the dyno and makes similar power to the white EK I will be mighty embarrassed, haha.


Another issue that popped up is that my exhaust is emitting a weird loud exhaust tone. Not sure if I have an exhaust leak or a catayltic/muffler failure of some sort. I overreacted and thought the D16 was giving up on me. This might be a reason why the motor feels a bit weak.

Awesome weekend and the EK should be back for more next year hopefully, unless I find my next car soon.

Day 1
S1 - 2:06.1630 1:57.3810 1:57.6690 1:54.5210 1:53.3800

S2 - 2:00.9370 1:51.4110 1:49.4190 1:49.2370 1:49.1190 2:00.2990

S3 - 1:57.5240 2:09.7850 1:49.3130 1:49.0440 1:49.0130

S4 - 1:55.5060 2:09.7900 2:08.0030 1:54.4240 1:52.8430 1:49.8260

S5 - 1:56.3450 1:52.0170 1:51.4700 1:57.9910

S6 - 1:59.3300 1:52.0500 1:51.0350 1:52.4720 1:56.3920


Day 2
S1 - 2:02.7680

S2 - 2:09.7020 1:57.8730 2:02.7880 1:50.7570 1:49.6740

S3 - 1:58.3940 1:50.7660 1:49.9700 1:49.0760 2:12.0780 1:49.5670

S4 - 2:04.4750 1:51.8130 1:50.9080 2:06.5110 1:49.0400

S5 - 1:58.1110 1:59.5390 2:04.9140 1:50.6970 1:50.4980

S6- 2:04.6890 1:52.7930 1:51.8900 1:51.4430 1:58.0190 1:52.2310


The EK entering the S bend.









Thanks to celicajim for the photos!

[butter]

Its the metallic paint. Its heavier than gloss.

[eskimo_firefighter]

So what's been happening with the EK's in the past few months?

Nothing much really.

Been pretty busy in the past few months and since that it's not track day season. I have just been neglecting the EK. Was contemplating fixing the exhaust and replacing the rear trailing arm bushes but being the procrastinator I am, I usually leave everything to the last minute before the track day.

The white EK1 literally stayed in the garage for 3 months sitting there doing nothing since I had no motivation to work on it. Until a friend was in need of a garage to store his car to fix, of which I offered mine for him to use. This in turn motivated me to finally get rid of the white EK1. Took me about 3 days of labour (pretty slow I know, I like to take a lot of breaks) to get it down to the bare shell.

The motor was quite a pain in the ass to remove due to the front damage being so severe that the front end was hugging the engine bay. So when lifting the motor out it would also lift the chassis too. So this is where my favourite tool comes into play. My trusty angle grinder. Cut the front rad support and other things which made lifting out the motor a lot easier.

Here is the EK in its stanced glory. The last I'll ever see of it.







The end of the daily/track day EK1 warrior.

So I'll cut to the chase, I'll be retiring the EK1 from track day duties indefinitely. As I finally found one of my dream cars, the Honda S2000. Saw the advertisement on carsales at work, called the guy up, flew up at 7am the next day, bought the car and drove back 9 hours straight back to Melbourne running on 2 hours sleep. Was a pretty amazing day. It was everything I could have ever hoped for it was reasonably priced, immaculate condition, low kilometers, clean history and came with full service history from honda with a brand new OEM clutch done at Honda at the major service.

The S2000 will be used a weekend/track day warrior, I have big plans for this car and plan on keeping this car for a veryveryvery long time. It's main purpose is to go fast as possible at Winton while being as cheap as I can, being the standard cheapskate I am. So don't expect too many modifications from me. I will also take this car to other tracks. But I forbade myself from going to haunted hills hill climb with this car.

Some crappy pictures of the 99 S2000. Yes the seller (awesome bloke) bought a brand new 991 Porsche Boxster S cabriolet with the PDK transmission. Amazing car!





I'll open another thread for the S2000 when I start tracking and modifying the thing.

I'll probably won't miss tracking the EK1. But one thing is for sure I thoroughly enjoyed it. It has taught me a lot more about driving than I thought it would. Cheap, dependable, handles awesome but slow as hell. Pretty good traits for a fun track car.

And that's the end of that chapter.

Detective Homer Simpson

[jdm.itr]

Congrats on the purchase mate! I know the feeling of finally finding the car you've always wanted! Haha, can't wait to see what you do with it

[eskimo_firefighter]

Congrats on the purchase mate! I know the feeling of finally finding the car you've always wanted! Haha, can't wait to see what you do with it

Cheers Huy. Haha seriously a great feeling when finding the right car. Took me forever to find one, a lot are in terrible condition and written off. But was worth the wait.

[Jayden95]

Awesome man, good luck with the s2000!