Civic Sedan Build - JTCC Inspired

[Grant@Honed]

Thanks Felix, 0.5mm toe out on the front and 0 toe at the rear.

[Grant@Honed]

ven though the car performed faultlessly at Sandown last weekend, I was a bit anxious about the car's condition

My last car was a BMW e30 and I had the worst run with that car, snapped timing belt, headgasket, water pump failure etc etc.

I think that experience has made me terminally suspicious of cars

Monday and Tuesday after work I put the car up on jack stands pulled all the wheels off and gave the car a thorough post event check over

- All the bolts were still tight
- Tie Rods looked fine
- LHS inner Cv boot was leaking slightly

I fixed the CV boot with a new band clamp, topped up the water and oil and parked it up ready to drive down to Haunted Hills on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning rolled around and I met up with ChargeR in his EF and we made our way down to the Haunted Hills track



I think the carpark we met up in had freshly painted lines on the pavement marking out the carparks. Somehow my tyres ended up covered in white paint, not the best start to the day.



Here's the car parked up in the pits next to Rhys's EK. I ended up following Rhys in the run order



Second run of the day was interrupted with a spin at the third corner. Cause of the spin was driver error, I down shifted pretty much in the corner and the arse end looped around on me.



I was relieved that the car spun to the inside of the bend, which is a relatively flat bit of grass. The outside of that bend in notorious for turning cars on their lids!

On the drive down, ChargeR's EF suddenly "got a bit louder". As it turns out one of the surplus plugs in his header had vibrated loose. We attempted to plug the hole with
what we had lying around but we couldn't get a fix to stay in place.

You'd think this would have slowed him down but he still went faster than me with 50kw less, to quote MacGillz "he has no fear"



Couple of action shots thanks to ChargeR's nice camera





I think my best time was a 63.3 or something like that.

I found the car handled the course better than the first time I was at HH but we we're running a different configuration for this event so I can't directly compare the times.

Next event is Winton raceway on the 12th of October

[Grant@Honed]

Hi All,

I took the back to Winton on the 12th and managed a 1.48.7 which is a 2 second improvement over the time I achieved back in June.

The car has been running strong and I felt reasonably confident driving it the 3 hours to Benella, the closest town to Winton, the night before. I was very grateful to have a couch to sleep on!

Since we drove up the night before we got to the track before the gates opened.



The day started out with near ideal conditions but as the sun rose the ambient and track temp soared.



I set my fastest time in my second session for the day and it seemed that most people were the same.



In my third session I found myself "over driving" the car trying to ekk every little bit out of the tyres, it felt faster in the cabin but didn't show in the times.

I went for a passenger ride in an ED with Hankook RS3s and was very impressed with the level of grip! I think new tyres will be the next upgrade.

[Grant@Honed]

This weekends progress..

All winter the car has been filling the spare wheel well with water, I thought it was a blocked sunroof drain tube but even after I removed the sunroof and all the drain tubes it kept happening.

Then I noticed the tail lights had minor condensation inside the lenses, so I ordered a set of OEM tail light seals and procedure'd a new set of bulbs

Today i got around to replacing the seals and bulbs. I gave the seams a good clean all around the back of the car





I'm still undecided what the future holds in terms of the power plant but regardless of what I end up doing I want to run an electric power steering pump.

I went to the local wreckers and picked up an Astra hydroelectric powersteering unit. I prefer this unit to the mr2 because it has an integrated reservoir.



I'm going to relocated the standard battery to the boot for now but i'll eventually mount a nice dry cell above the fuel tank.



You can see the astra pump is a nice fit in the battery's original position.

I have worked out my hydraulic line routing and will get the lines made up this week; I've got the adapter fittings on the way out from summit.

Another small project but it should make things easier in the future.

[Grant@Honed]

Hi All,

This week I completed the electric power steering pump installation.

I went back to the pick-a-part and collected a second DC2 battery tray, this was then modified to mount the battery in the boot.



This worked out well as it allowed me to re-use the original clamp and the battery is very secure. I will revisit the box sometime in the future, i ended up cutting most of the bottom out of it, so much so that it's not really "Sealed"

Pump in it's final resting place. The pump has it's own mounting bracket which I wanted to re-use so the pump is isolated on its oem rubber mounts. All we did was notch the battery tray to suit the astra bracket and then weld the two together.



Here you can see the relay and circuit breaker mounted off the modified battery tray.



All the auxiliary's have now been removed or replaced off the front of the engine. Regardless of what I end up doing with the engine, not having to worry about power steering is a bonus



The parts that were removed, my driveway is covered in power steering fluid! a warning to anyone thinking of doing this in the future, prepare to get covered in power steering fluid! This would have been much easier with the engine removed.



I didn't weigh every thing but i'm sure there has been a net weight reduction

[plAythiNG]

Nice progress thus far and good meeting you at WTAC a few week ago!

[Apu]

Grant, can you detail the process of replacing the power steering please? I'm going through a weight reduction process and would be keen on this...plus the benefit of reduced parasitic drag on the engine!

[Grant@Honed]

Hi Apu,

I essentially followed this excellent write up:

http://www.enginebasics.com/Advanced...0Steering.html

It's a bigger job than you'd expect and I wouldn't recommend it unless you can plan it out for yourself.

[Apu]

I was just about to say, "Sounds simple enough!". Essentially, it's replace mechanical pump with eletro-hydraulic pump, and complete the wiring...right? I assume hydraulic hoses pretty much plug in (assuming fittings are same size)?

Do you mind if I ask what the all-up cost was for you?

I'm also assuming apart from the power gain (albeit only 5bhp as claimed on the above site), that there is a gain in engine responsiveness...which is just as important in my mind.

[Grant@Honed]

Sounds simple but consider everything between the pump and the car has to be made to suit

This requires:

- Sourcing a pump
- Relocating the battery
- A fabricated mount for the pump
- Custom made hydraulic lines ( just finding someone who will do this is hard enough!)
- Sourcing adapter fittings for the hydraulics
- Sourcing the high current side electrical components and make up a "loom" for the pump (no soldering)
- Removing all the original power steering lines (a major issue)

This project has probably cost me around $300 but then I didn't have to pay for the cable to relocate my battery and i'm very fortunate
to have a flatmate who can weld and make wiring looms.

Don't let the above put you off through, all i'm saying is that you need to be prepared for a bit of work!

I found the engine felt a bit freer and faster revving, it's not a massive difference through.

The change in weight distribution is noticeable as well.

[Apu]

Excellent! Thanks for that - that's what I'm looking for.

[felixR]

Never thought about doing that before. Nice work.

There is a K20 EG here that has an EPS installed from an MR2/S.

[eskimo_firefighter]

Keep up the great work Grant, very detailed and interesting updates to read here.

[Grant@Honed]

Keep up the great work Grant, very detailed and interesting updates to read here.

Thanks Peter, good to hear you're following the updates

[Grant@Honed]

Here's a teaser!