Civic Sedan Build - JTCC Inspired

[Shakeel]

Awesome tyres Grant!

[felixR]

Nice one Grant!

[eskimo_firefighter]

Nice! PB's to be had with your new AD08's for sure!

[ChargeR]

Nice tyres, looking forward to seeing the side view!

[Grant@Honed]

If you were wondering why this thread had gone a bit quiet the last two months its because:

1) It's Summer and it's too hot for track events (and driving a car with no air con during the day)
2) I've been waiting for these new wheels to turn up

During the last track day I got pretty frustrated with the tyres that were on the car, during laps 1-3 they were pretty good but by lap 4 I found the car struggling for grip.

I knew the tyres I had on the car were not on the same level as RS3's or AD08Rs etc but I didn't appreciate the difference until I went for a passenger ride in an EF fitted with a set of Hankook RS3s,

I was amazed at how hard the tyres could be pushed. I decided I was going to have to change my set up

I evaluated the various set ups I have seen other people running then decided on a 17/16 staggered set up.

The main reason for this is so I can get a readily available 245 tyre for the front.

So the specs on the wheels are:

WEDS Sports TC-005 17 x 9 +34 PCD 5x114.3
WEDS Sports TC-005 16 x 7 +33 PCD 4x100

Tyres:

Front: Advan AD08R 245/40R17
Rear Advan AD08R 205/45R16

The wheels were sourced from Japan through Jesse Streeter. I would recommend his service to anyone, he is quick to respond to emails and charges a reasonable fee for all the running around he has to do on your behalf.

When i first picked up the wheels from the tyre shop I was a bit shocked at how big the 245 tyre looked.

Here's a comparison between the 195/45R15 that I was running on the front and the new wheel





It's a tight fit up front. I'd say the offset is just about perfect. Anything from a +34 to a +38 will fit as long as you a willing to make some compromises in the wheel arch.





You can see the clearance from the back side of the rim to the tie rod and LCA is good. If you remember back to when I installed my tie rod parts you will recall the lock limiting spacer I slipped on between the inner rack end and the rack shaft.
That little modification is paying off now. I can go lock to lock without worrying about the wheels fouling on something solid.





My friend took some nice side on photos with his good camera. Once he shoots those across to me i'll post them up.

Now that the wheels are on I will work on refining the set up. I will be looking into new height adjustable suspension in the near future to help level the car out

[Grant@Honed]

[Jayden95]

Looks awesome guy!

[Lonewolf]

thats a lot of rubber!
Interesting with the staggered setup, i'd do it but i like to rotate tyres.

AD08R's are awesome though, love mine

[Vvvtec]

AD08R... Best! I have a set of 225/45/16 on my DC2 now, so good

[Grant@Honed]

Ok so it's been a few months since my last update but progress on the car has been pretty steady
in preparation for this years events

In my last post I showed the 17/16 stagger WEDS sports set up on the car, well bolting the wheels on and tootling around was cool but actually getting the set up ready for track work has taken
quite a lot of work beyond that

One of the first modifications i did to the car was to install a bargin set of Tanabe Dc2r fitment shocks.

These were fine at the time, they lowered the car a little bit and were suitable for the v555 tyres however I felt this spring/shock combo would be too soft and under damped to run with the AD08r's

One Saturday I stripped the old shocks out of the car and bolted on the WEDS and with the help of a a few jacks mocked up the car at full bump, ride height and full droop positions

This was a valuable exercise as I was able to see what modifications would be needed to the front inner arches and take dimensions for new shocks

I contacted MCA in Queensland and ordered a set of Red Series coilovers.

For those that arn't familiar with MCA's product the red series are valved to suit your specific spring rate and feature a single adjustment knob for dampening (hard/soft)

While waiting for the shocks to be built I replaced the front and rear anti-roll bar bushes and modified the front inner arches

When I mocked up the car at ride height I found that even with the stock guards flared as much as possible the front tyres were still touching the guard at the very top.

I looked at fitting bolt on flares but since i had pulled the guards out so far already I really only needed another 10mm of clearance not 40mm+

I decided to space the back of the guard out where it mounts to the sill

I made up a bracket that bolts to the original guard mounting hole and comes up inside the guard then i have 2 different sized spacers (long/short) from that plate out to the backside of the guard.

This way I can use the long spacers to space the guard out when the big wheels are on and then if i want to make the car a little more discreet, i can put the short spacers in and the guard will sit flush with the door like normal

So as you can imagine it takes weeks for all of the above to come together,

Today was the first day I've had it all on the car and from my quick test drive everything feels solid and the tyres don't rub. Win







In February my flatmate and I wired a Link G4 extreme into the car. Martyn re-made the engine loom and replaced all the plugs and connectors.

As we stripped the old engine loom we found the majority of the old connectors were hard and brittle, most of them broke as we un-clipped them. Although it's not the primary benefit of re-wiring the engine, i think it was pretty good to replace all these parts before they caused an issue at the track.

You can see we've replaced the distributor with an AEM cam trigger and gone to an individual coil set up.



The car was then tuned and made 106kw at the wheels. Yep nothing earth shattering but the engine certainly felt better to drive after the tune.



So i'm expecting the car to corner a fair bit harder with the new tyres and new suspension so it seemed like replacing the standard drivers seat with something more suitable would be a good idea

I picked up this sparco circuit seat for a good deal and then sourced a 3" Sabelt harness to go with it.



I've got a PCI seat mount to adapt the seat into the car

I'll be running the car at Sandown race way on the 9th of May and then at Winton on the 24th.

I'm hoping all this work will pay off and the car and I will set some new PBs!

[Jayden95]

That seat looks awesome! Guards spacers are great.

[eskimo_firefighter]

Very nice progress. I have no doubt you'll PB with this new setup. Good luck with the upcoming track days. Please update us on how you go!

[Grant@Honed]

Thanks gents,

I hope so Pete, I've put a fair bit of time and effort into the car since the last event. Are you heading up to Winton on the 24th?

[eskimo_firefighter]

I'll be coming up to spectate, but won't be tracking as I need to save funds . I'll see you there mate!

[Grant@Honed]

Today I ran the car at an Alfa club track day at Sandown Raceway,

The day was well organised with sign in and scrutineering completed well before 8:30

All week I had been checking the various weather forecasts sites and most predicted rain at around 10am, thankfully the weatherman was off the mark and we saw no rain all day.

There was a whole mix of cars entered including an R35, 991 GT3, few Skylines, couple of Exiges and almost a entire run group of mx5s.

In the first session I ran at the front of run group 4 and managed to get some clear laps in resulting in a new PB of 1:34.39 (1 second improvement)



In the second session I changed run groups and found myself in the middle of a pack of mx5s!

This is a snapshot from the results table, pretty much every lap was spent trying to get past these cars and get a clean run. The flag marshalls were waving the blue flag for the cars in front but there were still a few moments going side by side into the braking zone of T1 when the car in front didn't let off.



After the session, I found my front right brake rotor cracked. I knew the rotor was suspect and had new rotors and pads ready to go on, unfortunately i left them at home! (brought everything else through!) Tom was kind enough to run me home to get them and then it was just a case of installing the rotors and pads at the track



Lunch break brake install!







With the modifications i've done to the car over the summer I expected to drop more like 3-4 seconds so although it was a good day i've left a few seconds on the table. Next time!