Announcement

**RC_dc2** · 26-09-15, 10:09 PM

First thing on the list was to restrain that engine a bit better. I decided on a full set of Hardrace engine mounts. Everyone that has replaced these on a dc2 before knows the pain in the arse that is changine the rear mount! Mine was totally in pieces, the centre rubber part was not joined to the shell at all. The left & right mounts weren’t too bad, the two torque mounts were falling apart as well.

One of the front torque mounts....

With these in I took it for a shake down around the hills surrounding Melbourne. I was pretty impressed with the car overall, even with stock 20 year old suspension the car handled everything I threw at it without much fuss. The engine, although a bit worn out, still put out pretty well and handling felt pretty good on the bumpy hilly roads except that it could do with some overall stiffening. One thing I did find was a knocking and bit of looseness in the rear, pulled over and had a quick check over the rear suspension, found the rear left toe arm was loose and flopping around!! Tightened up and headed out, much better.

This bolt here was not done up, wonder how long it had been long that??

**RC_dc2** · 26-09-15, 10:31 PM

I started working on the suspension with the bushes. I bought an Energy Suspension full bush kit and went to work on replacing all the worn bushes. Some of them were pretty reluctant to come out, I was using a friends’ 6 tonne manual shop press which helped but some of the control arm bushes still just didn’t want to come out. They had to have the centre rubber parts torn out then the shell hack sawed so they loosened up enough to punch out. It wasn’t the most fun job but worth it in the end. The kit came with some bushes that I couldn’t see any benefit in, like the ball joint rubbers. Really, if anyone can actually tell me how these benefit anything except looking shiny then jump in.

EDIT!!!!: I realised after a later post that I put this suspension in after the first trackday at Sandown...

Around the same time a set of Hardrace front and rear adjustable camber arms came up very cheap so I jumped on them. They were brand new and about half price so I couldn’t resist. Also someone was selling a second hand set of Bilstein shocks and king springs so I put these in too, but before fitting I got a set of Tein s-tech springs. I couldn’t find any specs on the king springs except they were “super low” designed for a EF civic. Given the added weight of the DC2 and I didn’t want to be too low I opted for the Teins. The specs of these basically match up to the stock Type R setup (6kg F and 4kg R, progressive). For reference these are still fairly soft and about as low as I want to go, they will be upgraded later on when finances permit.

I didn't end up using the top mount energy suspension bush (red one in pic) because I couldn't get them to fit properly. I put the stock ones back in, feels ok for now. Anyone else used these bushes on stock upper mounts and got them to fit properly?

Got a wheel alignment after this was all installed:

Front
Toe FL -0.8mm FR -0.7mm
Camber FL 3deg 32’ FR -3deg08’ (camber was left as I set it, not bad for a ‘by eye’ setting at home in the garage!!)
Rear
Toe RL +1.6mm RR +1.5mm
Camber RL -0 Deg47’ RR -1deg42’ ???? (no way this was right, I measured at home -2.5 deg Left / -2.6 deg Right with my phone using spirit level app and confirmed with a friends camber gauge).

**RC_dc2** · 26-09-15, 11:15 PM

Next on the list was a brake upgrade. I found a set of calipers from a CRV at the wreckers for $50 in pretty good condition, had a set of bendix pads almost new included. I fit these with a set of Goodridge braided lines and using the 280mm diameter R56 Mini Cooper discs to retain the 4x100 stud pattern. Ran into a slight issue trying to bleed one of them, found the problem…

The bleed hole in the nipple was fully rusted over, once replaced bleeding went as normal.

Luckily this setup still fits under the stock fat 5 15" rims...

Tested them out on the street and was surprised to be pretty disappointed. The “upgrade” didn’t really give anything noticeable. I decided that the bendix pads were the main reason and put in a set of EBC Yellowstuff front and rear. These were supposed to be more track oriented and the price was pretty decent (ebay UK). Now after bedding in these brakes were really showing an improvement, but would have to wait for a track test to really know given that the stock 262mm brakes were fine on the street.

Rotors are just cheap RDA slotted. They lasted a fair while, more on that on a later update.

**kn_19_ht** · 26-09-15, 11:45 PM

Nice DC2 Man! I like where the thread is going! It won't take much for it to be a decent track car, suspension and brakes are a good start. Looking forward to updates.

**eskimo_firefighter** · 27-09-15, 01:13 AM

Good stuff there, what track will you be taking this car to most of the time?

Also regarding the brake upgrade, although improvements are unnoticeable on the street, theoretically on the track it should be better than the stock setup, given the larger pad size and rotor size.

**Apu** · 27-09-15, 06:56 AM

Nice to see! Love reading about builds that are "for use".

**RC_dc2** · 27-09-15, 08:56 AM

Budget DC2 VTi-R Track Car

Originally posted by eskimo_firefighter View Post

Good stuff there, what track will you be taking this car to most of the time?

Also regarding the brake upgrade, although improvements are unnoticeable on the street, theoretically on the track it should be better than the stock setup, given the larger pad size and rotor size.

Thanks for the comments guys. All the updates so far are retrospective, I'm trying to remember the order I did everything and wishing I took more photos along the way.

I'm in Melbourne, mostly will be Sandown, Philip Island and occasionally Winton.

With the brakes, I never tracked the stock setup to compare but the 280mm upgrade performs pretty well. I had an R33 a few years back which I tracked a handful of times and compared to that I am much more confident braking in the Integra. The better pads and slower acceleration in the Honda might have something to do with it though!

**RC_dc2** · 27-09-15, 11:15 AM

Next Update...

I picked up a set of Sprint Hart CP-F 15x6.5 lightweight forged rims. These guys weigh in at around 4.7kg each, were straight and had some 9 year old Toyo t1R tyres. You already saw them in the first post but here it is again being dummied up. I kept the stock fat fives for driving to/from the track and general transporting around.

Put in a bride copy recliner seat and a 4 point 2" harness, the stock seat would be pretty useless on the track and it feels pretty high.

A friends son helping to check the new seat and harness:

About August 2013 I took it to its first track day at Sandown....

I wasn’t expecting any blistering times. I am by no means a race car driver and had been quite a few years since I was last out on the track. After a few laps getting the confidence up and nothing feeling too bad on the car I started pushing a bit harder. Soon after I had a spin braking hard into turn 2 and the rear end came around. I parked it nicely on the inside of the corner and collected myself, at this point I was started to think maybe having a FWD track car wasn’t going to be so much fun….but I got over it and decided that with a new set of tyres and some modification to the driving style it would all work out.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, times as expected were nothing special somewhere in the low 1:40’s. One thing was for sure this engine was not going to take this kind of abuse for too long. In between each session I was checking the oil and it was going from full to below empty each time. Spectators commented that they could see plumes of smoke coming out my exhaust when I accelerated onto the front straight. I couldn't see anything much in the rear vision mirror, but in this pic you can see what they were talking about.

All in all I would call the day a success, the car drove home fine after another oil top up, water temperature was stable and nothing falling off.

**RC_dc2** · 27-09-15, 03:27 PM

I got a few ideas from the first trackday, but many would have to wait. First off I needed some gauges to make sure oil temps and pressure were ok.

I had seen some pretty good setups for mounting, one guy on Honda Tech had some mounted in the gauge cluster and I decided on this approach. I wanted them in direct viewing without looking across the dash or down to the slot beneath the stereo. Given that this isn't a show car, I decided to have a go at making some mounts myself. I bought some speco electronic gauges and set about moulding in some cups to the gauge cluster.

Progress pics

Checking final installed position

Finshed...

Turned out ok, except the fibreglass cracked where it moulds onto the plastic on the right hand side when I installed it. I was thinking about making another version to get it a bit better finish but still haven't got around to it. Sorry for the crappy pic, going through the PC this was the best one I found!

**RC_dc2** · 27-09-15, 03:43 PM

Quite a few things changed before the next track day. After some convincing from a friend I decided to ditch the power steering and air conditioning setup. This was done for a few reasons, I found on the first track day the steering was waaayyyy to light, robbed a fair bit of feeling. The reduction in weight and parasitic drag on the engine was another bonus. The last reason was that the power steering fluid was cooked at the track, I drained it and it was completely black and stunk badly. I didn't want to bother trying to increase stock power steering 'cooler' (ie the stock loop the pipe does in front of the A/C condensor). The A/C was just dead weight, although I did like having it I couldn't justify keeping it.

All this was stripped out....

The bottle in front is the old P/S fluid.

**RC_dc2** · 30-09-15, 09:58 PM

I'd been eying up this space for fitting an oil cooler.....

the pic above is with the reinforcement bar removed, it cuts pretty much through the middle.

Sizing up I decided to use a 19 row Mocal cooler with AN10 fittings/lines. 19 row was about the biggest that can fit if keeping the vtir front reinforcement bar. I ordered everything from Merlin Motorsport in UK, pricing was good even with shipping and communication good too, parts arrived not too long after.

I've seen coolers in DC2's routed over the gearbox side of the engine bay, but I decided to run around the timing belt side to keep the lines slightly shorter and it was easier to fit. After I removed the A/C and P/S lines, I could pretty much follow the factory positions that these used to be in to the front of the radiator. It was starting to get a bit cramped at the factory oil filter location with the extra sandwich plate (I kept the stock oil/water heat exchanger to help oil warm up times) so I relocated the oil filter to where the P/S pump originally was.

Dummy fit to check clearance to the engine mount, I didn't have a spare filter handy....

Lines routed...

All tucked up behind the bumper.

Again I forgot to take a good pic without the front bumper on, next time I take it off I'll update here.

Results are good, on the street oil temps get a bit cool usually staying about 80deg C or so. I have a blocking piece of foam to stick in there if i'm going to be driving around the street, keeping the stock heat exchanger helps here. Track temps are kept somewhere between 110-120 if its not too hot. It can creep up on extended sessions with hot ambient temps if you're not keeping an eye on it and doing a cool down lap when needed. I'm taking pressure readings from the filter relocation, I was taking temp from the blanked off port but later moved it to the sump.

**RC_dc2** · 07-10-15, 08:30 PM

Budget DC2 VTi-R Track Car

Fast forward again to November headed out to Sandown again to test out the new setup.

New things were:

Removed P/S & A/C
Bilsteins / Tein springs (EDIT - I realised after checking the dates on the pics that I didn't have these in until the second time out at sandown)!!!
Oil Cooler & Gauges

And these....

Researched a fair bit online before purchasing, but basically it came down to price. Ideally I wanted to get a set of yoko A050's since everyone I spoke to regarded them very highly. The Nitto NT01 from what I can work out are essentially the same tyre as the Toyo R888 or at least very very similar (this was inferred from reading their websites and the fact that Toyo owns Nitto, it was not explicitly stated anywhere). The descriptions about the construction and compound down to the cutaway diagrams they have are both identical.

I chose 205/50R15 all round, this was the widest that can safely fit on 6.5" rims and I didn't think I would be pushing the limits of them anyway. Price was about $160ea delivered, yoko's were going to be nearly double for the same size.

Review...

Nitto tyres are fantastic, but coming from the crappy street tyres I had anything was going to be a lot better. Even so, I had a lot more confidence braking and cornering, they just held on the more I pushed them. Occasionally when I got extremely enthusiastic I could still push into understeer (turn 4 seemed to be easy to push wide on) and I could still feel ABS coming on a couple of times in deep braking. I have used some old dunlop semi's on a previous car but it was so long ago and bought them used so cannot really compare. All I can say is that I did not feel like the tyres were holding me back now.

Temperatures seemed to peak around low 120's, it was fairly hot out on the track so I was ok with where they were sitting. After a cool down lap temps were coming down 110 ish but don't take too long to get back up to 120 again. At this point temp and pressure were taken from the remote filter mount in the previous post.

Removing power steering was another positive. I found I had much better feel around the track, also the reduced drag of the pump let the engine rev a bit freer, definitely worth a few kW's. Only time I missed it was getting back into the garage but definitely worth it.

I still have a lot of area's to improve on this track, the back straight going down to turn 6 & 7 I was backing off a bit early and not committing, so I'm sure there a a second or 2 in there to shave. Meanwhile someone else put there car into the outside wall there so that slowed down the afternoon a bit.

Oil consumption was still a big problem....a plan was forming for this, but that is for another update.

The pic below is from the first track day I did, I realised after I my first post that I did this day on the stock suspension. Check out the ride height compared to above!!! Looks like I was setup for rally. I'll go back and edit my earlier posts to fix up the timeline.

Felt better with the lowered and slightly stiffer springs, but still way to much pitch and roll for good times. It would be interesting to get a ride in a stock type R to see if it feels similar.

And the result....

No spins or going off the track. Best time of 1:36 flat, a very big improvement on the 1:4X's that I was getting last time.

**RC_dc2** · 08-10-15, 07:39 PM

It was about time now to look into fixing up the oil consumption. What started as a simple engine strip down and bearings/rings refresh turned into a full build. I checked compression prior to strip down, readings were:

205, 200, 200, 205. Not too bad for 280,000km. Spark plug gaps had opened up to 1.2-1.3mm.

Some pics of the engine when dissassembled...

Nice build up on the valves, only one ended up having to be replaced.

Spark plugs had gotten pretty hot and were degrading with obvious signs of oil burning.

All stripped out on the bench. Pistons were ok, oil rings were a bit worn but no major failures.

Over the next few months gradually had everything back from machining and new parts in.

The build spec was:

- 81.5mm Bore
- P73 AO cast pistons (US P73)
- New bearings and rings
- Full head recondition factory specs inc light deck approx 10 thou
- Full balancing crank, rods, pulley
- Exedy lightweight chromoly flywheel 4.3kg
- Exedy Heavy Duty Organic Clutch
- CITR N1 crank pulley

Calculated compression ratio is 11.71:1 based on zealautoworks calculator, unfortunately my engine builder who did all the machining did not give me the final measurements apart from telling me that there was 10 thou off the block and 8 thou of the head and did not cc the chambers. The pistons are 10.6:1 when used in a B18c5, but with the P72 head smaller chamber volume the compression ratio comes up a bit.

Calculator used is here http://www.zealautowerks.com/bseries.html

Couple of random shots of parts...

Decided to clean up and paint the block and gearbox while it was appart.

Assembled...

**RC_dc2** · 08-10-15, 08:09 PM

While I had the sump off I welded on a temp measurement port...

I'm glad I decided to leak test it overnight before fitting, had a pin hole leak.

The install went off without too much of a hitch, restarted first shot and smooth idle, bled coolant and set base timing.

Run in over the next couple of months where I could find time. Engine response was much better, probably most contributed to by the lightweight flywheel and pulley. Take off on the clutch wasn't as bad as people make out with this flywheel, it may be a bit trickier with a non-sprung clutch but I don't see the need for one with stock torque output.

I was pretty happy with how everything went, there was no bad noises and after a few hundred km's not a leak seen and not a drop of oil had been burnt! Success.

I must have lost track of the months because the next track day I got out to was Philip Island in July 2014.

Announcement

Budget DC2 VTi-R Track Car

Budget DC2 VTi-R Track Car

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment