William Black DC2R

[willabong]

Hi, I am William and as you tell from my date joined stamped on my username I am pretty new to the car scene, but here goes. Late last year, my mate came to me and said he was going to place an order for a brand new Toyota 86 GTS, at that time I have to say, I was also keen on placing one myself. I had the money and the permission from the wife to go ahead with it, but something was tugging at my heart strings and in my head, the 86 is a great car no doubt, but I felt like I needed to explore something else. Something different.

So I went on-line and did some research, I Google 'greatest handling cars ever' and some of the results were pointing to a car called a Honda Integra type R. The article was from some magazine called EVO - a UK based car magazine. The article tested this Honda Type R against some of the greatest front wheel cars in history, cars like the VW golf GTi, Mini cooper S etc. and to my surprise, it won.
I more I read, the more I knew I wanted to see where this was going.....so the next thing was to go to carsales.com.au and have a look at what cars were selling for. At this time, all I wanted to do was maybe test drive a few and see what the type R was like.
The aim was to find one that was in reasonable condition, have little to no mods and had to have a service history. I was not going to touch a type R without knowing its history. I don't know a lot about cars, but common sense was telling me, if these cars were highly tuned and engineered from the factory, and then letting some Joe blow with a spanner set from Kmart he got for Christmas tinkering with these car, maybe wasn't a good idea.

The first one that came up, was a championship white Type R with red Recaros, I called the owner and set up an appointment on the following sunny Sunday afternoon to inspect the car. He lived close by and the price seemed fair, $13,500 was the advertised price. When the time came to view the car, I asked my friend who brought the Toyota 86 to come along. I wanted to see his smudged face when he saw what a beast the type R was. When we arrived the car was parked outside the front of the seller house, and I noticed he had P plates on the car, now I don’t have anything against P-Platers but from personal experience, P-platers generally do stupid things with their cars and have little money to spend properly servicing their cars. I am totally generalising here, but in my experience, there’s some truth to this notion. I was once a P-Plater too and I did some stupid things too.

The exterior of the car was rough, when I opened the bonnet, clearly along the welding joints along one side of the engine bay looked like was put together by a 5 year old with some super glue. I asked the seller if the car had been in an accident and he said, he didn’t know. When I pointed out the strange looking welding, he dismissed it, quoting that he had owned a lot of Hondas, and that sort of welding was normal.

The sirens and warning lights were going off in my head, so I asked the seller, if he didn’t mind if I got a qualified mechanic to inspect the car? He totally changed his tune, and mentioned something about the car being a write off, but it was only a small front end accident. I nodded my head in awe of the shear lack for having nothing to say. Next I asked to see the service books, as the ad said, the car had a complete service history. He said they were in the glove box. I reached in and pulled out a pile of receipts and what appeared to be the service book. There were just so many receipts, all in no particular order. Sorting this lot out was going to take some time. I rifled thru what was in my hand and I came across a receipt that showed a tyre service, in South Australia. Further receipts showed the car had been living in Sydney NSW as well. If things couldn’t get worst, I noticed on one of the latest receipt, the odometer reading showed 145,000km. I looked at the ODO in the car and it clearly read 135,000kms. I immediately got out of the car, closed the wade of receipts and thanked the seller for his time and left promptly.

I gave up hope. The other type Rs listed on the website was quite high in Kilometres and with even higher asking prices. I looked at my other opinions. I was seriously thinking then, maybe I should just buy a Mitsubishi EVO 6, TME edition. $26,000 dollars and be done with it. Performance car with 4 doors and enough street creeds to marry whoever it wanted. I even made appointments to go see some imported evo 6s but there was something about the Integra type R that I liked, whether it was that generous N/A engine or that sleek 2 door coupe look, I knew I had to get one. Mind you at this stage, I have neither heard of VTEC or what a B18C is....This was the reputation that the type R had from the internet.

4 weeks later, while at work, my mate called me up and said that he one of work colleagues has a Black Type R that he was considering selling. My heart jumped out of my chest like it was my first time with a girl in high school. Actually I wasn’t so lucky in high school, but that’s another story. No Way, could this be fate? I asked for more details. He was the second owner of the car, it was extremely clean, little mods and he haven’t used in as daily driver for the last 5 years. It was living under a tree for the last few years, collecting dust. I asked for the mobile number and immediately called and arranged a time to see the car that evening.

I drove home from work that evening and immediately proceeded to get the wife to leave everything behind and drive me to see the car, if the car was good as the description over the phone; I was on intent on driving it home that evening.
The rest as they say is history......$9,200 dollars later, I owned a 2000 black DC2 Type R, mind you if you saw the condition of the car at the start, you would believed that the car had been living under a tree. For one thing, there was a layer of bird poo and dust and dirt so thick you could have scraped it off with a shovel. I couldn’t see thru the windows they were that covered in crap. So the first thing when I got the car home was give it a good wash. Surprise, surprise, under that entire firth was a black swan waiting to emerge. I was in love.

[willabong]

Thanks for the support guys. At the start, I didn't know if the long introduction was going to put people off reading, persistence pays. Now the story gets expensive and more interesting. For me, but it won't cost you anything to continue reading. Only your souls. Kidding.

So where does the next chapter begin?

Lets start at the start.

The car has done 192,000 Kms, but it does have a full service history, up to date from Eastern Honda, plus a very straight body. Hint - if you have a car with a service history, you can contact the dealership or workshop, provide a rego, and most places will happily email you a copy of the history of the car. But they do restrict the amount of details, for obvious reasons.

Even though from the photos, the paint does look incredible, up close, it is not. All Integras suffer from that curse of having the ability to naturally look good in any photos, taken at any angle or light. I wish I suffered from that curse.

My Mate got his Toyota 86 GTS, in Black. Guess he followed the notion, if you can't beat them, join them or pretend it's a Type R.



Like everyone here, my plans for the car are wide and numerous, and like the moral begins we are, I am too restricted by constraints like money, time and ability.

When I got the car home, there were a few small things that needed attention to. But before that, I want to make it clear and be brutally honest that when I am not going to simply, state 'this is broken, I got this instead'. That's as useful as bringing a hole puncher to a stapler party.

When I talk about buying some item or obtaining a second hand item, I am going to state where and how much I paid for it and what my personal experience with it.

Firstly, the Passenger side door trim was cracked and peeling. A short trip to the Deer Park Wreckers and $10 dollars later, I had a better one, taken from a GSI model but it had a small chip in it.

Peeled and crack door trim




Reasonably good condition door trim



Instructions: simply and carefully pull out the old and line up and bang in the new.

[willabong]

Next came those horribly expensive Red Honda badges. The old one on the car were stolen or were now being used as someone's personal necklace piece. I eBayed the required 'genuine Honda badges' into the search bar and to my surprise they were only $12 dollars for both the front and rear, shipped from China. Now that's a bargain, considering the cost, some poor Chinese worker was probably receiving about $1 dollar a day in labour cost.

and here they are, all 3M taped into place for that added genuine Honda engineering feel.



and the front.

[willabong]

I believe its time for another story.

So with the arrival of the Easter break, which has come and gone, a few of my friends suggested we take our pride and joys for a get away with the wives. When I say Pride and joys I am referring to our cars. Wives were second, although if any of them saw this tread, I have to say, there won’t be much ‘Joy’ left. Best news I’ve heard since they announced that they were there are going to make a fourth season of game of throne.

The cars lined up were my friend’s newly purchased Toyota 86 GTS, a stock Lotus Elise and my old Honda Integra Type R DC2.



The course – a brisk run up the princess highway, by-passing Geelong and straight thru to Colac via the newly built inland freeway, then into the twisty stuff, where we were going to really push the cars to a great country town call Lavers Hill.

The 86 was totally stock standard and having only done 1,500 kms in total, was tighter then a nun’s nasty bits on a cold winter morning. The Elise on the other hand was brought second hand a month before with 130,000 kms on the clock with the only modifications being a pair of Toyo R888 on the fronts.

The roads were great, lots of twist and turns and elevations with a mix of different speed limits ranging from 60 kms thru towns, to open 100 km stretches of bitumen bliss. The only downside was the rain which made the roads damp and as fun as having a paper cut on your left testicle. Having the privilege to test drive all three cars, I have to say the Honda was by far the easiest to drive fast in the wet stuff. The lotus with it low snug driving position made you feel like something special was going to happen, but it was very itchy and unsettled in the rain.





The 86 which was heavier and with the help of traction control on stock rims and tyres was easier to mange in the rain then the Lotus. With proper tyres, the 86 would have been quicker but on wet roads with skinny tyres with little traction, I felt like I was riding my single speed bike with thin tyres on railway lines in the wet. Just awful.

The Honda, donning four new Bridgestone Potenza RE02s on stock 15inch rims was just easier to go into a corner harder and even puddles of water on the apex didn’t upset the little car at all. By the end of it, I knew the Type R was a keeper.

The only downside with the Type R was the excessively loud exhaust; it was like sitting inside a wind tunnel while they were testing Boeing 747 engines with no ear muffs. The previous owner had installed a straight thru exhaust with an Apexi Muffler. I am a fan, like every one else of a nicely tuned exhaust system, but when you step on the go pedal and you struggle to hold onto your urinary tract, it was time for a change.

[willabong]

An update finally....

Sorry I have not be doing any write ups recently. I have been busy with work and also working on the Integra. I’ll try and write more but I think just posting photos with no background is not my style. Thank you for all the people who’ve bothered reading and encouraging me on the stories. You guys give me the encouragement to continue updating.

I’ve been on the Internet reading up on the debate about DBA rotors versus the cheaper RDA rotors and the pros and cons of each brand, and I have to say, it’s the old argument of bang for your bucks.

The rotors on the Honda DC2R are the original ones installed on the car, and although mechanically their fine, this is a build thread and that means replacing parts which don’t need replacing and spending money that could have been donated to feed a family in Africa for 2 years. Before people start trolling at me for that, I do sponsor an African family and besides the old rotors were rusty anyways, and what better excuse to tell the wife that things need to be replace on the Honda that rust got to them…..



The DBAs are nice, and I am sure that the materials used in the DBA might very well justify the extra money being asked for, but the question I have to ask and I am sure a lot of tuners here ask themselves before they fork out that sort of money is, what’s the purpose of this car build?

I mean if I wanted a full blown track ready car with all the parts that make you go fast, should I have just saved my pennies and brought a dedicated car like my friend’s Ford Focus RS? In the appropriate Kermit the frog meets blender green of course. Seriously why do car manufactures produce an all out nuts car then feel complied to give it the same colour schemes as something they found in their own vomit after one too many tacos and beers on a Friday night?





There’s also the other debate between new vs. old, buying overseas vs. buying locally. So with these in mind, I brought myself some RDAs, slotted and dimple from eBay for a Jew loving price of $240 delivered for both fronts and rears. William! Why not get the best money can buy? Well here’s why. I used to race 1/10th scale off road electric radio control buggies, both at local club level and so far as entered into the Australian national championships. The cars were smaller, but the concept was the same. We spent stupid amounts of money on upgrade parts and endless hours tuning and retuning these little cars to try and gain those precious few seconds on the track. There were guys like myself, who won’t good enough be sponsored but competed for the love of the sport, and there were guys in the game because they wanted to win at any cost. They normally were the ones who got sponsored.



What’s this got to do with a 14 year old Honda Integra Type R you ask? There was one friend of mine, who although possessed a large personal fortune. He brought a Ford GT40 as a daily driver, which will give you an idea of the amount of money he had but he came up with an idea and the idea was to beat the sponsored guys by spending the bare minimal outlay in terms of parts or cash. When we did, the feeling was like nothing else. We called it budget racing because anyone can just dish out money (if they had it) and boast about how great they were. But to be truly great, you have to do great things against great odds.

The RDA for the price fitted this concept, so the choice was easy. The fitment process was an easy direct swap as well but then I noticed the old rotors rusted around the base of the rotors, so I masked the new ones up and hit them with a coat of black heat resist paint to give them that little more protection from looking like the bottom of a toilet bowl in an Russian prison. If you want to know how to replace your rotors, you can simply Google ‘replace Honda Integra rotors’.







So this goes out to all those who work and sweat and toil away in their garages without all the required tools and equipment and still manage to create something special, I salute you. We all salute you. You could have gone the easy way and just taken it down to some shop. But no, you suck it up and DIY and saved yourself the money not because you’re poor, but because you can......

[Symphorced]

Interesting read. How long have you had the car for now?

Look forward to hearing more of what you've done to your car.

[jv-st]

Dat copy and paste haha, nah all g. I remember reading your posts on the OzHonda forums, loved the story!

[Shakeel]

Very interesting write up!

I'm also looking forward to reading more about your experiences/thoughts with the DC2R