Budget DC2 VTi-R Track Car

[RC_dc2]

Yeah it's interesting, and it was just something to consider. If you run it like it is and you're happy with the handling I wouldn't bother changing it to be honest, even oriented as they are they're probably stiffer fore/aft than the OEM ones. I've never used urethane trailing arm bushes myself, but there's lots of internet hearsay suggesting that they can bind and make for odd handling if care isn't taken.

Also that pic is gross.

Does that mean I can blame the bushes for my spin coming towards Dandy corner at Sandown last time!!!???

I suppose it COULD have been driver error....

What bushes have you used for the RTA?

[tinkerbell]

i run the solid ES suspension RTA bushes in my VTiR since 2006... they are still in one piece...

[RC_dc2]

Budget DC2 VTi-R Track Car

So I got these in the mail.....



It turns out I won a couple of rounds of VSSC last year in J2 non logbooked class (yay me!) but they had some delay in sending these out. I didn't know I'd won anything, maybe I was the only one in that class. Maybe I have to start a trophee wall in the garage, it wouldn't have to be a big wall in any case.

I've been checking my pads again after 2 trackdays. The rears are like new, the HC800's are extremely dusty but aren't getting any signs of heat stress which is to be expected in the rear of a fwd. I do notice a screeching noise coming from the rear only on drives home after a track session, the noise is when driving normally and looks to be caused by the pads just rubbing/vibrating when disengaged. The noise isn't overly loud and goes away with a slight application of the handbrake or brake pedal and returns shortly after disengaging.

The fronts aren't doing well, cracks are forming through the friction material with crumbling due to heat. There is some slight taper wear from the outer edge of the pad to the inner of about 0.3mm (noticed on the first use earlier in the thread with the wear pattern on the rotor face which eventually bedded in on the second time out). This is most likely due to the caliper brackets not being milled perfectly square.

Overall at their thickest point they still haven't worn down from new 17mm thickness so if you had an application that wasn't putting so much heat into them they may actually last, it is becoming clear they don't work well for my setup/driving style. If you search the net you will find a few reports of a similar nature (if you wade through all the Pmu fan talk and heresay), good brake feel but start crumbling to bits shortly after. I deglazed the pads but the surface looks like it will just crumble, I may see if they bed in again on the streets and check again but I've got some Hawk DTC-60 on their way to replace them.



After "de-glazing", the surface is fairly pitted and brittle - the photo's don't show it very well.



I also spent some time checking the runout at the rotor face and indexing the rotors to get the least deviation possible. The drivers side was 0.10mm, managed to index and get 0.05mm. I also checked the hub face without the rotor installed and measured ~0.05mm, it wasn't easy to get the dial gauge exactly perpendicular with the studs in the way. Depending on what you read DBA recommend max 0.10 runout and RDA say 0.15, others say less. Whatever it is I didn't measure mine when it wasn't a problem so I'm not sure if it is worse now.

The magnet bases aren't very good on these cheap indicator mounts, I had to cable tie it to the upright to stop in falling off.

[RC_dc2]

Panel beating time...

I tried my hand at straightening my dinged up rear quarter and bumper bar from the last Sandown outing. I'd been putting this off for a long time, I had a plan of getting it done before Christmas and it's now mid March and I finally got some spare time to get it done.

I picked up a facelift rear bar from pick a part for $20 which was basically straight with a few gouges and key scratches. My original rear bar could have been used, it popped back into shape fairly well but it had too many previous shitty repairs by someone even more amateur than me. I picked up a compressor and spray gun from SCA for the job, this was my first attempt with a gun and I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out especially considering how it was done in the sunshine under trees etc. I had to redo the front lip once after trying to fix a cloudy spot and getting a massive run, the rear bar was semi decent at the first attempt.

All the pics are straight off the gun, no cutting or polishing done at all, once the paint has had some time to settle I'll give it a quick rub down and cut to give it a bit of shine. Anyway here are the pics...





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glad I had enough spare basecoat to fix this up....











As you can see in the pics the colour match of the rear bar is spot on but the front lip doesn't match at all. I don't think the front bar has been resprayed before, it is a bit darker compared to the front guards and the fresh paint on the lip makes it super obvious. I've got enough paint left over if I wan't to paint the front bar, i'm not sure if I could be bothered right now as there's a fair bit of work to fix all the scrapes in it. I'll try a cut and polish to see if it makes it less noticeable.

I decided not to bog and spray the filler or quarter panels, they ended up with only a slight crinkle after tapping it back into shape. I don't think my blending skills with metallic paint will be any better than how it is now and it really isn't that bad.

I took it out for a quick spin this afternoon and after months of not starting it cranked and fired first go and drove without any hiccups at all, sometimes it's nice to have a pretty much stock engine setup! Now I might have time for some more performance oriented mods.

[RC_dc2]

I drove the car down to PI recently for it's first outing of the year (sad). The car held up pretty well on the day with no major disasters except for the slow slow lap times not even worth mentioning. I have only been to this track once in this car on a wet day a fair while ago so I spent the day trying to set my speeds and lines through the corners which are not so obvious at this track.

Unfortunately after all the recent work the front brakes were still pulsating, so I am confident it has nothing to do with rotor runout based on my last measurements and is purely due to pad deposits on the rotor faces once they heat up. I had brought some new DTC-60's with me and swapped them out after the second session, I did a quick light bedding off the track and went out for more bedding in and checking on the next session. These pads were pretty grabby at first especially at low speeds, I had a bit of pull to one side initially. The best part is the shudder was reduced after this session and after the next virtually gone. The Hawk pads seem to have done a good job of cleaning up the rotors, they will need more testing and hopefully will stand up to more abuse at brake heavy tracks like Sandown. For anyone wondering, based on my experience I wouldn't bother with the Pmu RC09's. If you can get them to work they feel good but they don't last long and seem to be very temperamental on the bedding procedure (none actually supplied by Pmu), either that or they just can't handle high temps. I still wonder how most track guys running project mu HC800 in civics and integras can last given what I've found, it could be just my setup/driving style or spending more time at Sandown as apposed to PI and Winton.





I've recently got around to some more weight reduction I had wanted to do for a long time and removed my sunroof (inspiration from iwearmoccos recent update). I used 1.2mm Aluminium sheet and cut it to suit following basically the same method as tinkerbell from this thread. For fixing the rear edge I bent the lip down to make a flatter surface area to mount the tabs to instead of resting it the screws as per tinkerbell's method. The rear lip had the beginning of rust forming with paint bubbling in a few spots, I cleaned it up a bit and brushed on some primer to prevent it spreading, it should stay dry now so I hope this does the trick. I'm still deciding on sealing the gap with sikaflex or vinyl wrapping the whole roof, more leaning towards the vinyl wrap at the moment.

Pics

[felixR]

Nice work. Vinyl wrap the roof!

[RC_dc2]

Nice work. Vinyl wrap the roof!

Thanks. I've got some vinyl (carbon fibre type because I heard its lighter [emoji12]) I may get some Matt black and see which looks better.

[iwearmoccos]

I like the plug.
If you're going to seal it, make sure you practice first. Learn from my mistakes, as mine looks pretty rough!

[RC_dc2]

I like the plug.
If you're going to seal it, make sure you practice first. Learn from my mistakes, as mine looks pretty rough!

Cheers.

That was one if the reasons I was thinking of vinyl since it should look neater overall. That and there is no lip in my plug so it can only seal against the 1.2mm edge of the aluminium itself.

[RC_dc2]

I had a go at wrapping the roof. I had a mate help, it was both our first attempt at wrapping anything. Overall it turned out ok if you don't look too closely. There are a few creases that formed and were impossible to smooth out. The edges of the plug aren't completely flush with the roof which made the film lift a little in places.

On the plus side it seals well so it'll stay as is for now.

[RC_dc2]

Queens Birthday Preparation

I decided that I'd stuck long enough with my current setup and it was time for improvement. Although I wanted to get under 1:30 at Sandown in its current form, the fact that I wasn't getting out to as many track days as I'd like and general impatience led me to make some changes.

So I came home recently and this turned up....

\

I decided on purple with 15kg/mm F 7kg/mm R spring rates, basically their "Tarmac" spec but with slightly increased rear rates. They looked great out of the box and were installed that night.

Installed:




MCA don't include mounting points for the brake lines on the front, I modified some factory ones I got from a wrecker using a rubber insulator and stainless hose clamp. They feel pretty solid, better than the cable ties on a the few forum threads I came across.



So far I've left them at the MCA recommended ride height of 327F and 322R COW2G. My bilstein/Tein setup was 305F / 320R, I was happy with the old rear height but the front was too low for my liking, it would scrape the front lip and exhaust going in and out of my driveway and the hardrace camber arms hit the suspension towers over any decent bump. Depending on how it feels on the track I may lower it a bit more, for now it feels great to be able to cruise around on the street and go over speed bumps and into driveways with relative ease compared to before.

The MCA fronts were set perfectly out of the box and I haven't adjusted them at all. The rear was very high, maybe a combination of the higher spring rate than off the shelf and the reduced weight in the rear of my car, but they were about 340mm COW2G as received. It took a bit of messing around to get them even but they are now set at 322mm. Interestingly the adjustment on the rear is not even with the drivers rear spring perch being 6mm higher to achieve an even COW2G height, this matched up with the corner weight measurements I had taken a while ago with the drivers rear higher by 18kg. I can't get my hands on any corner weight scales at the moment so this will have to do for now.

Rear as received and after adjustment:


String alignment check. It's a bit cramped in my garage to get around all sides, I kicked the jack stands a couple of times during adjustment and had to reset each time. Luckily there was very little adjustment needed.


The final spec is Front Toe -3.0mm Total (Toe Out), Rear Toe -0.5mm each side. I have to do a final camber adjustment before Sunday but otherwise it is good to go.

As it sits now


I also installed some new pedals I got for my birthday and while I was at it I fixed up the accelerator pedal stop. It's now adjustable with a rubber stop, I've set it so it is just achieving 100% WOT before hitting. It feels better than before with a nice solid feel, the pedals are much closer together which will help my downshifts.





I didn't realise but the clutch pedal stop had fallen off. While at the wrecker I had a look at a few other manual hondas and it seems pretty common, the clutch pedal just cuts them in half over time and they fall out, a leaky CMC like mine makes them fall appart even quicker! One day I'll have to fix all the damaged paintwork from the old leak.



I'm not sure I'll be setting any PB's on the weekend yet, I'm sure it will take me a while to get comfortable with the changes but I'll give it a crack anyway!

If anyone is heading in to Sandown on Sunday drop by and say hello.

Cheers.

[iwearmoccos]

Excellent, good to see some updates!
I may be around on Sunday, so will come and say hello.

[RC_dc2]

VSSC Round 3 Queens Birthday

The car went pretty well on Sunday with mostly trouble free racing.

Firstly the new coilovers were obviously a major change, the car has an immediacy and control at high speed that was severely lacking before. Gone is the diving and wallowing under brakes as well as the lean around high speed corners. The rear is a bit livelier than before, I had to be a bit more careful when breaking hard and throwing the car into corners and I can't ride the ripple strips as hard as I could before. After a great save in the first session coming through turn 8 at Dandenong where the rear stepped out and almost spun me into the kitty litter (this was either awesome skill or driver error depending on how you look at it) I was a little more cautious. That was maybe the most exciting for the day, unfortunately I didn't get my camera setup in time to catch it.

My lap times are copied here, there was a fair bit of traffic with 60 entries and 4 groups as you can see there weren't many laps in a row of low times. I did manage a PB in the second session, which at the time I was sure I would beat later in the day but of course things just didn't work out as I hoped.



Here's my racechrono data from the fastest lap. I was both happy and frustrated when I saw the 130:06 showing on racechrono (natsoft 1:30.13), so close to the 1:29's but still not there yet. My optimum is 1:29.44 so I know the car can do it if I get everything right.



Video (credit to Rhys for inpsiration on the fist pump - I might be a bit more excited when I break the 1:30 barrier)

There were major delays in the afternoon, red flags called the next 2 sessions off early and the last 2 sessions were merged with whichever 20 cars lined up first. It seemed a little early to me to start merging groups, I was the 22nd car in the first call up after most of the cars in the garages jumped out into the already formed queue and ended up sitting in the pit lane until we could go out again. Being mixed with a lot faster cars is a bit unnerving, even though the drivers briefing called for passing on the straights (they were a bit ambiguous - it would be better if they just said "only pass on the straights") mostly the faster cars wouldn't wait for the straights and I ended up side by side in the last 2 turns a couple of times exactly where I was hit at my last outing at Sandown. This meant I wasn't following my normal lines here and my lap times suffered.

In the last session I was getting quite a bit of fuel surge/starvation coming out of corners. My fuel gauge was showing just below half, having never had this issue I'm not sure if there is a fuel delivery problem or I am just pulling more G's. Usually I can drive down to Sandown, run a full day of sessions and drive home with fuel to spare and never have any signs of starvation. This might need some more looking into before the next track day, either try topping up the tank for the afternoon sessions or just preemptively replace the pump. Other than that my 4th gear is grinding a bit more and traction out of corners is definitely slowing me down (so lazy not installing the LSD I have sitting in the garage, I was semi-planning to build up a B16 short ratio box but it's probably not going to happen), there are a few things to think about for the next attempt!

That's enough reading, I didn't get any pics at the track so nothing else to show for now.

Cheers.

[RC_dc2]

A few photos from VSSC Round 3 courtesy of Trackside Action Photography

[Alex_Walker]

Car looks great!
Sorted the brake problems you were having?


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