The Civic 25XT

[ChargeR]

Cheers Shak! Hopefully no problems pop up leading up to the track day, unfortunately the new Hawk HPS brake pads I ordered won't turn up in time, but the unknown pads that are in there seem to perform just fine.

[ChargeR]

I did a couple of small jobs done on the EF2 today when I had a spare hour or two. I tidied up some ghetto wiring in the bay, a remnant from when the original JDM D15B was replaced with the D15B4 before I owned the car. Then I fitted up a 25mm-ish steering wheel spacer graciously donated to me some time ago by tRipitaka, this should make it much nicer to drive the car on track since I have long legs and short arms:



I also removed the contacts from the ignition barrel and cleaned them, which fixed my starting issues. Before this I had to hot wire the car every time I started it.

[felixR]

lol hot wire..

love the seats and door trim!

[ChargeR]

lol hot wire..

love the seats and door trim!

Yep, I was getting a little sick of having to pop the bonnet and jump the starter direct to the battery .

More pressing of stuff into other stuff this morning. I fitted up some ARP extended studs (pilfered from the CR-X stash) to the new OEM hubs. I went with the extended studs to ensure I'll have plenty of thread engagement with my new wheels with the spacers.



I started off doing them one at a time, and then got sick of that and mashed them all in at once on the second hub I did.

[ChargeR]

I received my parts back from the powdercoater today, all shiny and ready for reassembly, though I should probably do my own masking up next time. Over the weekend I also cut up some spare damper upper mounts to make some extended versions to gain a bit more bump travel at my planned ride height.





After hacking them up on the drop saw I put each one in the lathe and opened up the holes in the base part a bit. I'll buy some suitable sized tubing adjust the size of the hole to suit and then weld it in. Bam, more bump travel with a stealthy stock look.

[DaRKNT]

Would you happen to need an unpaid apprentice? :P

Enjoying these build threads!

[felixR]

Planned ride height = really low?

[ChargeR]

Would you happen to need an unpaid apprentice? :P

Enjoying these build threads!

Thanks mate, I'll let you know when applications open for my internship program .

Planned ride height = really low?

Yeah I'm aiming to be pretty low, I think it's essential to make the most of my new 14" wheels.

The picture below pretty much sums up my Anzac Day long weekend. All the new OEM parts for the front knuckles are there, along with a set of rotors, some Hawk HPS pads for all four corners, 10kg/mm and 14kg/mm 6" Swift springs, and a pair of Koni yellows freshly serviced from Toperformance.



First up I removed the other two dampers from the car and pulled them apart to fit the Swift springs, 10kg/mm at the front and 14kg/mm at the rear. I decided to fit the stiffer rear biased springs to attempt to compensate for the car's lack of rear swaybar. Unfortunately the car doesn't even have the reinforced mounting holes on the rear chassis for a swaybar, so I'll have to come up with something else.



I wound the front spring perches up 45mm and the rears up 15mm to compensate for the shorter spring length and the higher rate. I was aiming to get a little higher rear ride height. My suspension is now an even more ridiculous combination of hues:



With the shocks all back together I fitted them up to the car, first the rear along with the new Hawk pads and RDA rotors. After that I took a break from the car to assemble all the new bits on to the front knuckles, firstly after a bit of stuffing around with the bench vice and a bit of pipe the lower ball joints were fitted:



I then pressed the new bearings into the knuckles, fitted up the new dust shields and the hubs that I'd previously installed the ARP extended studs into. Minty fresh.







With all that done I fitted the front knuckles back into the car, along fresh RDA rotors and HPS pads. All done:



After this I took a short unscheduled break to run a tap through half my wheel nuts, all the rust in them meant they wouldn't thread all the way on to my fancy new extended studs.



Here's a pic of how the car ended up. Ride heights are around 305mm at the front, and 310mm at the rear, measured hub centre to guard. I neglected to note down my old heights, but it looks about the same. Maybe a handful of mm higher. I put the car up on the hoist and re-torqued all the accessible suspension bolts at the new ride height.





After all the changes the car seems pretty good, the pads aren't fully bedded in yet and the amount of bite they have is pretty bad, but hopefully they will improve with use. The ride comfort is okay with the stiffer rear springs, and with any luck it will negate some of the mid corner understeer that I experienced last time at the track. I set the shocks to about 1/2 a turn from full stiff, and the rear end seemed well controlled over uneven roads. Strangely the USDM folks suggest an upper limit of around 500lb/in spring rate for the standard Koni yellow shocks on an EF, I've exceeded that more than 50% and it feels okay honestly. It's certainly a lot better damped than the Micra ever was!

All that's left is to have a quick wheel alignment done, then I'll be all ready for the two days at Winton next weekend!

[Norm]

Tom, great to see the pride you take in your work! Where did you learn to do all this stuff? Just appears to be the next level from most DIY stuff.

[felixR]

Love it guy. Keep it up

[ChargeR]

Love it guy. Keep it up

Thanks boss man! I'll report back after the track day on whether all these changes have done anything.

Tom, great to see the pride you take in your work! Where did you learn to do all this stuff? Just appears to be the next level from most DIY stuff.

Thanks Norm, appreciate your comments. This was only the second time I'd replaced hubs and bearings (I last did one on the DC5 half a decade ago), and I mostly work out how by reading the workshop manual and considering very carefully before I begin whether I'm likely to stuff it up. The right tools make a difference too, I've always been of the opinion that if you're working on a Honda and it's difficult, you're doing it wrong or have the wrong tool, as I've found that the cars and components are designed to be easily serviceable.

This was just a trial run for when I do the CR-X suspension parts, and I wasn't completely happy with a some aspects. I'll be looking at applying zinc plate or similar to the arms before I powdercoat, because I just don't think the powdercoat by itself is durable enough to maintain good appearance over a long service life.

I'll post up a DIY for the hub and wheel bearing replacement soon .

[ChargeR]

This morning I had a wheel alignment done, zero toe all around as usual. It looks like by some happy accident I ended up with the forward rake I was after. As a result I've gained a touch more negative camber up front, and a bit less at the rear. Combined with the stiffer springs hopefully the thing will turn a bit better now.

[M@lew]

Not used to seeing you with a car and such little camber.

[ChargeR]

Not used to seeing you with a car and such little camber.

You're just jealous because all my new cars actually gain negative camber with suspension bump travel .

EXE DD 2014 Winton

So the most important weekend of the year has been run and won, the EXE track weekend. Here's my rundown. The track was wet but drying on the Saturday morning, so I approached the first session out cautiously since I didn't want to bend any of my freshy refurbished suspension bits and also needed to bed in the brakes properly.

After that the track dried rapidly and was nearly completely dry by the second session. Going out in that session the effect of the spring change was obvious, with better mid corner balance and corner exits. After that for some unknown reason I decided to partially disassemble parts of the car before lunch and as a result missed a session or so, and after lunch did a few passenger runs, so the 52.25 was the best for the day, a comfortable 4 tenths off my previous time with plenty more in it.

Conditions were even better on Sunday, cool and sometimes sunny. After a slightly frustrating first session (A result of my overly aggressive driving mostly), things picked up with a 1:50.6 in the second session. This would end up being my PB for the day, but I managed a good handful of low 1:51 laps, so there is definitely consistent improvement since the last outing. Comparing the laps on racechrono, the main difference between my approach on the Sunday and the previous day was better entries into a couple of the corners (old T1, S and off the back straight) resulting in much better mid corner speed and a little more speed on the preceding straight, and a bit more bravery and consistency under brakes and getting back on the throttle at the exits.

Here are my times for the days:

Saturday:

S1
2:20.5910
2:12.3030
2:10.1520
2:08.5330
2:11.0430

S2
2:00.3220
1:56.5080
1:52.8510
1:58.8370
1:52.2540
1:53.3140

S3
2:01.3240
2:02.0600
1:52.3100
1:54.6300
1:52.6140

S4
1:58.3290
1:53.8280
1:56.0660
1:54.6930
1:54.5480
1:55.1890

S5
1:59.6770
1:59.7770
1:56.2150
1:57.5050
1:54.3220

Sunday:

S1
2:13.6480
2:34.8330
1:56.1130
1:54.8170

S2
2:08.8240
1:52.2340
1:55.4940
1:51.4130
1:51.9390
1:50.6490
1:54.1320

S3
2:07.1910
1:51.5960
1:51.7630
1:50.9670
2:03.4800
1:51.3270

S4
2:25.6670
1:52.0590
1:54.0270
2:00.2960
1:51.7100

S5
1:56.7560
1:52.8990
1:51.9830
1:51.3520
1:51.3780
1:59.0180

Here's a couple of pictures from the Saturday, thanks to EXE forum member kalt!





Overall I cut just less than 2 seconds off my PB, here's a comparison below of my PB from this event, and the November event last year:



I'm up pretty much everywhere in mid corner speed, though there's obviously time to be made up in a couple of areas, most likely at the S by tidying up my line and carrying more speed up the hill and at the last boob and the following straight. Optimal lap time from Racechrono is a high 1:49 so I'd like to get there before any further changes to the car. Below is a graph of the full speed traces for both laps (click for full size):



The Hawk HPS brakes were great the whole weekend, much more consistent and confidence inspiring than before, and though I would have liked a bit more initial bite I'd rather accept less and not have a lot of dust and noise as this is just my daily after all. After the whole weekend the front wheels were hardly dusty and the rears looked like they hadn't been used. The pads still look new, so with any luck I can expect Micra-like life out of them (8-10 track days to a set). As mentioned above the spring change really improved mid corner balance, the only negative is that with the higher rear rate and no rear bar the inside rear spring would sometimes unseat and then pop back onto it's seat with a bang. Scared my passengers a couple of times.

That's all for now, updates soon with tyres on the MK2s.

[eskimo_firefighter]

Congrats on the PB. Nice curb jumping out there on the S bend.