Green EK4

[iwearmoccos]

Good morning,
This seems to be the only Australian Honda forum with any regular traffic on it these days, so figure I'd contribute.
I have a thread over on EXE, so I will do a quick summary for all who don't have access there.

I previously had a Focus XR5 that I bought because I wanted a 'quick and nice car that I could take to the track on the odd occasion'. I did the usual bolt ons, suspension, tune, Quaife LSD etc and got to a point where I either continue modifying it to overcome some of its inherent issues or sell up and choose something cheaper, easier to mode and more readily available.

A green EK4 was for sale around the corner from my house, so I went and had a look at it. Bit rough around the edges, EK1 interior and some flash wheels were to be found. I took it for a drive and everything seemed to work, so within 20 minutes I now owned a Honda.

I left it unregistered in my parents backyard for a few months and only brought it out to do a couple of hill climbs at the nearby Haunted Hills/Bryant Park. I was able to get reasonably close to my previous XR5 times, so could instantly see the benefits.

My XR5 sold in December 2014, so I had my Dad organise a RWC so I could get the car registered a couple of days before Christmas. It was great to put a few kilometres on the car over the holidays.

Since then, the modifying and track days have been coming in quite frequent!!
MCA Blues, ASR rear swaybar, Hardrace adjustable arms and LCAs.

K-Tuned shifter. You can also see my Cobra Suzuka seat and PCI seat rail.

EK9 wing and a short lived cut rear bumper.

Second hand exhaust. Legalis R muffler and J's Racing midpipe. It's got the nice Honda sound.

On track at the 6 Hour Relay held at Phillip Island each year.

Stepping up to an 8inch wide wheel helped drop a few seconds on all my lap times, also inspired a bit more confidence. Placebo or not, I'll take it!
Enkei RPF1 15*8 +28 with 225/45/15 RS3s.

Winton in September 2015.

In November I did a 1:59.56 at Phillip Island. This was a pretty big moment for me, I never thought I'd get under 2minutes and the times continue to drop slowly. Currently sitting at a 1:58.51

Turn 1 at Phillip Island.

I went to 205/50/15 NT01s. To be honest, I expected RIDICULOUS gains, but in reality it equated to about a 1second quicker at Winton and Phillip Island.
I have 15*8 6ULs for my RS3s now.

I've spent some time over with Honed, measuring and confirming the benefits of their adjustable tie rod ends and also brake air guides. Both are great products and work as expected. Grant and Tom have also been great in dealing with my sometimes ridiculous questions and timeline demands.

The 6ULs previously mentioned on a trip to Wakefield for the Yez Racing track days. Wakefield is fantastic.

The latest piece of the puzzle was a gearbox I bought with a 4.9FD, M Factory LSD and shorter gearset, along with carbon syncros.
I've done one track day with this gearbox while running RS3s at H Nationals two weeks ago, and the initial thoughts are positive. I was able to better my NT01/stock time from the month previous, so look forward to seeing what I can do when I run NT01s again next month.
Here is a brake air guide and a gearbox behind there somewhere.


Sorry for the photo heavy thread, my Youtube can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/user/iwearmoccos
If you have access to EXE, my thread is here - http://www.exe-crew.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5162

The future with the car will be very similar. Lots of track days, minimal modifications unless justified and a huge amount of time spent focusing on improving driving where possible.
I have some understeer I hope to resolve before EXE Winton next month and a NDF carbon sunroof plug I'll install when it is a bit warmer and other than that it's just maintenance.
I hope to contribute to this forum into the future, meet a few more of you along the way also.
Thank you.

Quick summary
EK4
B16a2
Icy cold air con
MCA Blues F18kg/R7Kg
Hardrace adjustable arms
Honed adjustable tie rod ends
ASR rear swaybar
Project Mu HC800 pads
Honed brake air guides
15*8 +28 Enkei RPF1 with 205/50/15 Nitto NT01
15*8 +36 949 6UL with 225/45/15 Hankook RS3


Phillip Island - 1:58.5127
Winton - 1:42.4470
Wakefield Park - 1:12.93 (Racechrono)

[ChargeR]

Hello, and welcome.

[Jayden95]

Good stuff! Welcome [emoji4]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[raseri]

Welcome to the forums!

[Toddxxx]

welcome rhys
turns out i am in fact going to miss exe wakefield day as well

[felixR]

Nice read.

Welcome to ClubITR

[Shakeel]

Yo Rhys!!

[eskimo_firefighter]

Very nice summary of your car and achievements Civjet warrior.

[butter]

Based on the quick lap times, i thought you'd owned this car for many years! 1:42 at Winton is crazy quick.

Look forward to seeing you track in a fortnights time

[ievaq8]

welcome and great summary of the time owned...
keep it up

[iwearmoccos]

Gents, thanks for the warm welcome.


Today was a round of the Winter Cup at Haunted Hills. As Gippsland CC is hosting the Australian Hill Climb Championship this year, they've been running the clockwise for all the events held there this year to ensure if any out of towners show up early, they are able to get familiar on the course they'll run for the Aussies.

I went down on Friday night to stay at my parents house and visit my grandparents, as my parents are currently in Europe living the good life.
On Saturday afternoon they run an open practice at the track, so I wanted to test out a couple of things.
- The new gearbox.
- NT01s in a hill climb setting.
- Not shuffling my hands as much, as I feel like sometimes catches me out with my hands in the wrong spot, particularly at HH.

As per usual, there were about 3 cars there and more time was spent talking shop than driving the car, but I was able to make some very good observations.
- My fears of not getting enough heat into the NT01s were a bit over the top. A cheeky burnout up the start hill and then instant grip the rest of the circuit. Compared to slippery Winton on RS3s 2 weeks ago, it was like chalk and cheese. I've done a HEAP of laps here, and I've never had grip like this, and when the car did want to step out from the rear, it was easy to control. It's been nice to drive NT01/RS3/NT01 back to back to back and compare the differences. These tyres are great.
- LSD is fantastic, a few times I caught myself waiting to get through a corner before powering on and then realising I didn't even need to. Bulk amounts of accelerator and the car puts power down so well when working with the NT01.
- Keeping my hands at 9 and 3 on the wheel like a F1 driver would instead of shuffling was a bit awkward at first, but showed its benefits after oh shit in the right/left/right section where I've been caught out trying to steer the car while also counteracts some oversteer.
- Going off Racechrono, the NT01 and new gearbox combo gave me at least a second up on my previous runs on the same course.
- My Nanna cooks a good roast.

Sunday morning I woke before my alarm and could see it had rained overnight.
It was the same on Saturday morning, so I went back to sleep and hoped that it would dry reasonably quick and we'd have no other rain throughout the day.
I was up at the track by 8am to go through scrutineering and try to find someone to view and sign my log book form so I can compete in the Vic (and maybe Australian in October) Hill climb championship next year, but the one lady who can do it was not doing sign in today. Ah well, next month.
A guy who has hit me up a few times on Facebook about events also attend in another EK4, so I passengered with him his first practice run to try and show him the ropes.
I got one practice run in on a damp track, which didn't really cause any issues with the NT01s.
After drivers briefing, timed runs began. I was car number 12, so was early in the running order.
Just once of those crazy Hayabusa engined cars you get at hill climbs!



Times for the day.
59.97 59.31 59.19 60.20 58.79 59.37 59.19 59.22

As per usual, my consistency was pretty spot on, with half of the above being quicker than what I've done previously.
A couple of starts I felt I was spinning the wheels too much, and evidently the quickest run for the day I had the least dramatic start!
You can see in my video that I've bouncing off the limiter down OH SHIT in third. I did try going to 4th in the last run, and it didn't save me any time.

So I ended up with a 58.79 which is .10 quicker than the previous/current class record for the clockwise layout. This has been one of my goals with the car since I bought it, and I really didn't think I'd get there until late last year. The gearbox and NT01s are a pretty big combo for 'minimal' reduction in lap, though considering how many times I've been around this track it's a pretty huge improvement. I'm very happy with it and plan to never run 'street' tyres at any future hill climbs. NT01 or better from now on!
Two EK4s

Cheeky trophy, which is now on the mantle piece. It'll last about a month there until my girlfriend moves it to the spare room.


And my quickest lap. You can see my hybrid 9 and 3 plus shuffle steering throughout the lap.
Also a bit of limiter bashing over oh shit!!

I will be back at my parents next weekend for a round of Sale Sprints on Sunday.
Thanks for reading my ramblings again.

[Toddxxx]

Good work man.

You sure get out a lot with the car as well! Proves its reliability as well as its performance I guess

[iwearmoccos]

Thanks Todd.
Reliability has always been the main factor with this car. If I can't do back to back events in it, then it isn't really serving its intended purpose.

[iwearmoccos]

This weekend was Sale Sprints at the RAAF base in East Sale.
Following H Nats at Winton a few weeks back, I wanted the car to rotate more and produce less understeer.
I had previously maxed out the rear toe at about +3mm total thanks/no thanks to my current ride height, so as soon as I arrived home on Sunday after H Nats I ordered some Hardrace rear toe arms.
Once again I took the car to Ray at Raceline for an alignment, the only changing being the toe now at 0 total.
Everyone knows Hardrace blue and also what toe arms look like.

After aborting my plan to drive down to my parents on Friday night and then the disaster of Australia v Serbia, I made my trek down to Newborough and waited for JCHUC and #1 Nguyen to arrive.

I gave them a tour of where electricity comes from and we ate square pizza, usual Newborough stuff!

Sunday morning, we met Johnny at Traralgon McDonalds and then continued to Sale for sprints. The weather on Saturday was pretty terrible, so it was good to see some sunshine on Sunday morning.
I once saw a car reverse into another at about 45kmh in this carpark one Friday night!


The first few laps I was on the fence as to whether using 2nd or 3rd through some of the tighter corners was quicker, dealing with a bit of traffic and also trying to remember the course again.
I also clipped a course marker, which luckily did not stay with the car.

My only main concern other than deciding on gears, was that I was experiencing some pad fade into the 'bus stop' and the right hander after the main straight. Sale is REALLY hard on brakes, though I don't remember having near as much fade as I had this time. I am running another set of HC+/HC800 since earlier in the year, though the rest is the same in terms of hardware.
I'll see if I experience similar at Winton. I don't expect to.
After lunch the rain came in HARD, and I'd already been warned about my lack of tread on this surface when wet, so I swapped over to my RS3s and followed my rwd friends getting sideways for a couple of sessions.
You can also see the new impact wrench I bought when I went into Bunnings for some screw drivers.


This was my quickest lap for the day.
You can see I went through the right/left/right after the long straight in 2nd first up and then 3rd the second time around. Seems to be similar speed if we compare 4th gear change after that section.
Otherwise its all pretty good, bit scrappy if I'm being picky.

Next event is Winton EXE double day. A few weekends out of the car will be good for a little rest, though I'm really excited to get back to Winton with the gearbox and NT01s after my failed sandbagging exercise at H Nats!

Just a quick update. Today was really casual and very fun, more people should attend these events.

[eskimo_firefighter]

Can confirm, sale is indeed hard brakes.

That was a fun day. Would attend again.

Anyways here are some pictures of the Civjet for ya.