Thanks, it's a crappy $60 ebay header I impulse bought. Added a ton over 5K, but I only rev it out to about 6K since power falls of really fast past about 5500-5800- I could take it to 6500. Fitment is terrible and an utter bitch to get it lined up. I tried to keep my greasy paws off of it until I installed it to keep down the oily surface weird heat coloration that occurs.
1st place in STC today, but barely. 
Good stuff!
beans wrote: 1st place in STC today, but barely.
I didn't beat them by a large margin, but then again, I didn't need to... I still beat them.
Never made it up there today. Over-slept, then went to Frickers for a "team-meeting" regarding the rx7.
""
Win, ftw.
Results! You can see how good of racing it was http://www.nworscca.com/attachments/results/2014/2014_e1_results.htm
Gave the ol' girl it's first real wash and wax since last year the other weekend, event with the nasty scrape it still looks pretty ok. Had an Accord group on Instagram post m photo and it got over 300 likes so far!
Sadly, I didn't make the last autocross event due to allergies kicking my ass. Next one I'll be able to make will be June 15th. Got a line on a fresh set of NOS Z1SS's in the same size which should make a world of difference. Car is a little skittish and squirrely right now, especially in the rain, when it's downright dangerous.
Finally got around to fixing the nasty scrape on the driver side quarter panel. Looks decent in pictures and from about 20 ft away, but it's a bit wavy from all the filler and needs blended better. I'll get to that stuff later. Good enough for now. Overall, not bad for my first time and using rattle cans.
Last one, just before I started with my roommates 351 'notch in the background. Can't get the stupid alternator to line up and stop throwing the belt off the crank. Gonna try to space out the crank pulley tomorrow and see if that fixes it. Using a March spacer/bracket kit for the alternator. No A/C or P/S bracketry. Been a major headache.
Well, not much is going on lately. Last autoX event was a total bust since I corded my Z1 Star Specs a day before, so I had to run the event on all-seasons. Did terribly, and was 4 seconds off pace. Even so, looking at my Z1's, they were probably toast before my first event of the season. No tread left, so probably not a ton of grip. Considering my skill level, I'm surprised I was able to keep pace/win at the first event. In their place will be some BFG G-force Sport Comp-2's, and since I'm giving up potential grip, I've decided to see if I can stuff on a 225/50/16. Been hearing good things about the Comp-2's, and word on the streets is they're the same compound as the old Michelin Pilot Sport PS2's. Should be here on Wednesday. We'll see how I do on the new tires at the next event.
So while all that was going on, I managed to squirrel up a set of 205/50/15 Nitto NT01's that are RIGHT in their prime in terms of overall grip. They're pretty much at the 'shaved' level, and they're regarded as being sticky to the cords like their Toyo RA1 cousins. Going to Chicago tomorrow to land a set of old-school 5-spoke Fittipaldi OZ's in 15x6.5 +38. Pretty excited as they're the EXACT wheel my dad put on our '91 Accord when he bought it new. Haven't told him yet, but I plan to kind of surprise him once they're mounted up.
Unsure on which tires to run on, probably do a few more events in STC with the new BFG's, see how they fare(I should still be competitive), and switch to FSP late in the year once I have enough points on lockdown to secure a regional season title. Don't want to jump ship just yet when there's been some pretty good action in STC. I'll post pictures on the new roundy's tomorrow once I get back. In the meantime, enjoy pictures of my roommates 351/TKO500 '90 Notch we picked up from the tuner's earlier today. Made 360whp/380wtq, very mild setup. Looks waaay better on the street tires and Enkei 92's that we put on after we got back. Crazy clean car, he bought it as a clapped out 2.3L car 7 years ago and has been slowly chipping away at it.
And since I had my helmet in the car:
Turned out to be a +30 offset! Kinda excited about that, can't wait to see what the car looks like in 'race mode' with these, the Nittos, and lowered a little bit more. Snagged them for $100. Now, how/which color to refinish them? You can see the nasty orange/splatter painted one beneath the top one.
Ended up getting 35+mpg, but also paid $40 in tolls taking I80 and 294. :(550 miles on under a tank and a quarter, at 80mph. The car needs a bunch of little maintenance things and an alignment, so it's not prime to get a million MPG, but I'm pleasantly surprised. Drove there and back without a single hitch!
Those are sweet! Can't wait to see them on the car!
Tire fun! the 225/50/16 BFG's arrived today, so I decided to take some pictures in comparison to my current and worn out 205/50/16 Dunlop Direzza Sport Z1 Star Specs, the 205/50/15 Nitto Nt01's, as well as a bonus 205 Nt01 vs 205/50/15 Hoosier SM6. Hoosiers are notoriously wide. I'll let the pics do the talking. Hoho, NT01, and BFG's are unmounted, the Z1SS's are on a 16x7, to which the BFG's will be mounted. I like the 'fat' tire look, and these 225 BFG's should fit that just perfectly considering their width and extra 1" of overall diameter/height. These 225 BFG's run wiiiiiiiiiiiiide. In a week or so I'll post a review. Big thanks to Tirerack for their awesome deal and kick ass quick shipping.... although I only live 2 hours away from Tirerack haha!
When they first arrived
Nt01(left) vs Hoho's(right)
NT01(left) vs Z1SS(right)
225 BFG Comp-2's(left) vs 205 NT01(right)
225 BFG Comp-2's(left) vs 205 Z1SS's(right)
Stack of 225 BFG Comp-2's(left) vs stack of 205 Z1SS's(right)
Playing around with wheel finishes. From top left, clockwise: Raw aluminum(150grit sanded) with black spoke inserts, silver painted/machined(stock), 'clownshoe'(barf), and satin/semi-gloss black. I think I may do a satin black face/polished lip to see how it looks, too. These are going to my autocross wheels, so they won't be perfect, but I'd like to add a little style to them, too. Any raw aluminum will be polished down to a dull finish, don't want a mirror polish.
Doubt those will go to a mirror finish anyway, the aluminum is pretty low grade and gums up while You try to polish it.
chandlerGTi wrote: Doubt those will go to a mirror finish anyway, the aluminum is pretty low grade and gums up while You try to polish it.
Seems like it... but I've found the winner!
Test fitting. Clears 11" rotors and ITR/V6 calipers, tight on the caliper bracket to the back of the spoke(3-5mm of clearance), +30 offset on the 6.5" width will look pretty aggressive with the NT01's. About 3.5-4" from the rotor to the outside lip. About the same clearance with my 16" TSW's as well, just sticks out a bit farther, maybe another 1/2" out.
The more I look at the raw face/lip and black inserts, the more I like it.
TSW's and the 225/50/16 BFG Comp-2's are on.... they're BEEFY and look very mean. Have about a finger clearance between the tire sidewall and the suspension- perfect fit. Very quiet tires. Super grippy, too. Ride is much, much, much nicer than it was with any previous wheel/tire combo. Even though I've lost a bit of sharpness and turn in, the car is still very responsive. The old worn out Z1SS's were lightning quick in response, but they also followed every rut in the road and were downright harsh at times. I'm giving up a lot of grip compared to the Dunlop ZII's or Hankook RS3's, but it's still a VERY high amount of grip, especially with the extra width I went with, and the trade offs are worth it for my DD.
It's super hard to get the width captured on camera, but they're about as wide as will fit under the fender and still clear on the inside without stancing the car out and ruining geometry. Pictures!
How much camber are you running up front?
Well this morning was fun. When dropping off the (newest) quasi-girlfriend this morning, the driver side window regulator decided to give up the ghost. Hit a small bump in the road, driver window dropped down with a pretty loud thunk. Three junkyard scrounges later, I came up with a newer looking regulator out of the ONLY freakin' 94-97 Accord coupe I could find within decent driving distance. A 97-99 Acura CL uses the same window regulator, but both of the CL's I found in the yards already had trashed/dead regulators. I guess it was time to replace the thing anyway seeing as it had 212K on it at this point.
This was a tangled, nasty mess.
New one doesn't work quite as good, is a bunch louder, and seems to struggle a little bit on the up-motion. Lost my one-touch down feature, too. Time to keep hunting for an OEM unit in good shape. This was a last-minute, $35 quick fix. Add in the cost of other junkyard scrounges and gas, and I'm out about $50.
Fr3AkAzOiD wrote: How much camber are you running up front?
No idea. Never had it on an alignment rack, yet. That'll come.... eventually. Probably a little under -2 degrees.
beans wrote: This was a last-minute, $35 quick fix. Add in the cost of other junkyard scrounges and gas, and I'm out about $50.
You know a new regulator with motor is $53.79 from rock auto right? I've been bitten in the past by not checking before hitting the junkyard.
First place again yesterday! Was tough getting used to these tires, but eventually beat out a slightly more modified 5th gen Prelude(on the same tires as me haha) by just over a second to take the win. Car needs more camber, stiffen all the bushings and crap in the front end and more experience, but I'm pretty much at its limit. Very good tires, they LOVE pressure, so much so that 45lbs hot up front still wasn't enough. Could use a ton more camber. Can't wait to get more serious with it over the winter for FSP prep. Fastest(clean) time was a 43.291, of which was the last run, and I was REALLY wild that lap, had two really big slides. If I wouldn't have done those two big slides, I probably would've been in the high 41 second range. Geeked out a little bit since the infamous STR Carrera pit next to me. http://strcarrera.blogspot.com/ Good video of the course from him on his blog. Very nice guy.
http://www.nworscca.com/attachments/results/2014/2014_e5_results.htm
Junkyard_Dog wrote:beans wrote: This was a last-minute, $35 quick fix. Add in the cost of other junkyard scrounges and gas, and I'm out about $50.You know a new regulator with motor is $53.79 from rock auto right? I've been bitten in the past by not checking before hitting the junkyard.
Yeah, I didn't want to wait though. This will be OK for the time being.
Lessons learned:
-More camber up front.
-More air pressure up front.
-Fix the front suspension that's making some noise.
-Need alignment. Slightly off center wheel is annoying when DD'ing, but makes it hell when the wheel's 180 degrees and trying to straighten out.
-225's are a bit too wide for a 7" wide wheel. 205's would respond better and wouldn't roll as much on the sidewall. Too late now. Still impressed with the grip of these tires. At NO point did the car want to spin the inside tire mid-corner at full throttle once they got up to temp. Very grippy. Highly recommend.
-Brakes have some travel before they engage. Might be necessary to upgrade to an EX master cylinder. Could be the unknown brake pads as well.
-I can beat the power steering pump pretty easily. On quick transitions, I could feel it just 'quit' where power assist would drop off.
-I'm still over-driving. Very much an inertia car, need to brake less and be on the gas more, with smoother inputs on steering.
-Car would benefit from stiffer springs, especially out back. Thinking 500F/600R could be the ticket.
Well, another win today at the autocross. #3 for the season, only need two more out of the four or so events left to lock it up. Point and shoot course with a LOT of low-speed exits, which I'll explain in a bit.
http://www.nworscca.com/attachments/results/2014/2014_e6_results.htm
Things learned today:
-These tires require a TOTALLY different driving style. They don't bite as hard, they roll over a LOT more, and they take a pass or two to heat up, even though mid-corner grip is easily just as good as the Z1SS's.
-Still haven't fixed my camber/alignment issues. Probably a decent amount of time just from that. It'd help fix the tire roll issue and some feathering going on on the inside treadblocks. Noise is becoming a bit loud now because of this
-Front sway bar needs to go permanently. Bangs like a SOB. I've disconnected it before, but it needs to go badly since a bolt broke off in the front subframe.
-Brakes. Need to put a larger master on it, the pedal is WAY too soft in the initial stroke before it firms up. Pads are looking OK, but at this power level, overall braking force doesn't matter too much.
-With the new tires, I'm finding this car just doesn't have the overall ultimate grip to compete very well. I'm racking up first place finishes, but it's more to do with my skill vs the other competitors rather than the car. After my initial run, my times plateau'd off quickly. Just couldn't get the car to go faster.
-Because of the grip, on a course like today's where there's a few 90's and offset slaloms, I'm falling out of the powerband, landing around 3000-3500RPM, WAY below torque peak. It's killing corner exits, the gearing wouldn't allow me to get anywhere close at the end of a strraight to where I could pull back through the corner at a decent RPM.
-My entry and lines were good today, but I had to get a little creative on the last two runs with power application and it didn't make a single difference as the car just couldn't pull out of the corners fast enough. Overall grip, power to weight, and gearing are killing me in this class.
-Absolutely no way this platform is even close to being nationally competitive with the Civic's in STC; locally, not it's not too bad when not going against extremely experienced drivers/setups. In FSP(which I'm going to shoot for next year), it will have a much better chance since same-model-line engine swaps are legal as well as race tires: I'm done berkeleying around with street tires. They just don't have the stiffness or grip to really go fast. An EX might be better suited, but the rules are against Accords in this class. The 98-02's being legal in STF should fare MUCH better, competition-wise.
Engine may be wrecked. Sucks because the head looks sooooo fresh. Was pulling into the lot at work, going through a puddle from the torrential downpour that was falling from the sky, and it hydro locked. Pushed it in the lot and went into work. Just went out on lunch, tried pulling the plugs and turned it over, may have killed the battery. Roommate's picking me up from work and bringing cables to try to jump it.
Fingers crossed. I REALLY can't afford a new engine right now.
I think you sucked up water on purpose so you can justify getting a more competitive car. 
J/K, I hope it's okay!
You'll need to log in to post.
