mazdeuce - Seth said:Recon1342 said:In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
$400 for custom brake shoes? You sir, are a hero to the downtrodden...
*runs off to google carbotech brakes*
Completely idiotic, and I know that. Carbotech is awesome though.
Actually, no; I think it’s phenomenal. You are maximizing performance within class rules while still adhering to said rules. How many people would have thought to have custom shoes made for drum brakes because race car?
To the track!
Spent the weekend at Motorsports Ranch Cresson outside Dallas. I drove up from Houston on Friday afternoon and took a bit of a rambling tour through College Station and Waco and mostly stayed away from the big freeways. I think the seat needs a bit more lumbar support for long drives, but overall the car was quiet and comfortable for the four and a half hour trip.
Saturday was spend shaking down the One Lap Civic and getting used to track driving again. It was a good time. We had fun and finished off the tires and brakes from last years One Lap. The Civic is much better on the new suspension though it badly needs more tire. I ran in the beginner group so that we could both get full 20 minute sessions in the car and still have time for a drivers change between. We did 8 20 minute sessions which is more track time than we will get on all of One Lap.
Sunday was all about the Accord. I moved to a faster group and went out with the intention of just feeling out the car. It turns out it's pretty damn good. It needs shocks and I'd like to up the spring rate, but the brakes were great, at least on this track. Top speeds on this track aren't terribly high, we saw almost 100 in the Civic and a bit over 90 in the Accord. The car rolls but the elements are far enough apart on track that you can let the car take it's time getting set. It's still just a bit pushy but the tail will come out nicely with trail braking. With just the 225's under the car I was keeping up with almost all of the sane cars in the twisty bits including hanging with a new Cayman GT4 through the biggest sweeper. The NASA prototype sort of obliterated me, but considering I'm in a stock 15 year old Honda, I was very happy with my ability to keep up. I think the difference in speeds between the Civic and the Accord mostly came down to the 50hp difference. The Civic pulls noticeably harder. I did all four 20 minute sessions on Sunday without a hitch. I packed up, turned on the radio and enjoyed a pleasant drive home not even needing to change wheels.
And with that, I'm ready to call the initial phase of the project a success. The car is comfortable and reliable for the first 3k miles. I've been driving the kids around, getting groceries and doing the bulk of my miles with this car. I've autocrossed it, slept in it and done a track day by adding just proper brake pads and wheels/tires. It's not a fast car on track but I'm betting it would keep close to a stock Miata if one of those ever showed up. I forced the corner workers to throw a passing flag on a Mustang in the first session on Sunday by keeping right up on him for a solid lap. After following me for a lap he seemed to get it and thundered off, but it was enough to indicate that in slower run groups the car is good enough to keep up.
It will take a couple more track weekends for me to decide if it's reliable on track. I need to drive it hard for a while and someplace that has longer straights. We have another test at NOLA coming up in two weeks but that will be with the Civic too so the Accord will just be backup. I don't think I'll get back on track until fall to be honest, but that's ok. More work to do, shocks and such, some autocrossing, and Deucekid#2 is super geeked to get is permit and go rallycross with me in the fall. I think this is going to work out.
Did you get a chance to install the aluminum stuff yet?
mazdeuce - Seth said:To the track!
Sunday was all about the Accord. I moved to a faster group and went out with the intention of just feeling out the car. It turns out it's pretty damn good. It needs shocks and I'd like to up the spring rate, but the brakes were great, at least on this track. Top speeds on this track aren't terribly high, we saw almost 100 in the Civic and a bit over 90 in the Accord. The car rolls but the elements are far enough apart on track that you can let the car take it's time getting set. It's still just a bit pushy but the tail will come out nicely with trail braking. With just the 225's under the car I was keeping up with almost all of the sane cars in the twisty bits including hanging with a new Cayman GT4 through the biggest sweeper. The NASA prototype sort of obliterated me, but considering I'm in a stock 15 year old Honda, I was very happy with my ability to keep up. I think the difference in speeds between the Civic and the Accord mostly came down to the 50hp difference. The Civic pulls noticeably harder. I did all four 20 minute sessions on Sunday without a hitch. I packed up, turned on the radio and enjoyed a pleasant drive home not even needing to change wheels.
And with that, I'm ready to call the initial phase of the project a success. The car is comfortable and reliable for the first 3k miles. I've been driving the kids around, getting groceries and doing the bulk of my miles with this car. I've autocrossed it, slept in it and done a track day by adding just proper brake pads and wheels/tires. It's not a fast car on track but I'm betting it would keep close to a stock Miata if one of those ever showed up. I forced the corner workers to throw a passing flag on a Mustang in the first session on Sunday by keeping right up on him for a solid lap. After following me for a lap he seemed to get it and thundered off, but it was enough to indicate that in slower run groups the car is good enough to keep up.
{via sleepyhead's announcer voice}
This "I passed a Mustang thanks to my Trailbraking" moment is brought to you by CarboTech:XP8... making drum brakes awesome for the first time in at least 25 years. Get your custom drums at ctbrakes.com.
And now, we return to a regular Mazdeuce...
Woody said:Did you get a chance to install the aluminum stuff yet?
I have not. Two reasons. The first is that I want to remain a bit legal in AX for at least one more event. At least I think I do. The second is that I haven't thought of a good way to make the hood look ok. In pictures the car is black. In real life it's black with a fairly heavy blue flake. I'm probably going to go with a big sheet of carbon fiber wrap like I did on the Civic but I'm still searching for inspiration.
I will say something about the possibility of taking weight off the car. I drove the car in three configurations this weekend. Two sessions with me on board. One with a 150lb passenger, and one with a 250lb passenger. Both people affected acceleration as you'd expect, but they also dramatically affected handling, more than in any previous car aside from the Mazda2. I think the Cadillac was too heavy to notice the weight of a mere human and the black Civic was too stiff, but this car is..... well.....it's not light, but 250lbs is still something like an 8% increase in total weight and I'm wondering if that front right corner is light anyway. I need scales. But the car is currently still squishy enough that weight really affects how the car moves.
The point of that is I absolutely noticed extra weight and that makes me want to pull weight off the car. The aluminum bits and a light battery are the low hanging fruit at this point with more to come.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
This makes me wonder if Civic Hybrids are also hiding some secret weight savings parts...
In reply to Woody :
We did some searching. It looks like they incorporated the aluminum crash structure and aluminum rear knuckles into all of the civics and honestly the hood is too short to matter. I think they got better aero with wheels and some different front facia stuff, but it looks like they just put the weight savings in all the cars and called it good. Unless they did some light interior stuff that I can't find, and that would be interesting.
Great update! I was just wondering yesterday what was going on with this car.
Sounds like good driving- I imagine it's fun to hassle a Mustang in an Accord!
I love the re-lined shoes; I never would have thought of that-
Drive safely-
damen
In reply to badwaytolive :
Thanks! Yes it was fun. Even more fun the previous day when I bothered a C4 Gran Sport Corvette with a roll bar and race seat until he had to let me by when driving the Civic. By my last session in the 1-2 group I was passing WAY more than being passed. The downside of moving to a faster group is that you suddenly get an ego check. Oh well, just need to drive faster I suppose.
With that in mind I'm going to leave this picture here. The place I stole it from said that it's the bottom of a 2018 Mustang with the Track Pack. Word is that the brake cooling tunnels in the undertray work quite well. There is also a small plastic deflector on the front of the lower A-arm that does the last little bit of blowing air right at the disk. I'm pretty sure I need to copy this to some extent.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Well, I guess it's clear that it's designed to handle 1G Laterally.
Don't forget to replicate the tire deflectors too... those are important for drag.
We'll be talking a lot about drag soon. My gut feeling is that reducing drag is like reducing weight, it helps you everywhere.
Carbon wrap? I think you should show off that aluminum hood by stripping it down and polishing it out (or more realistically doing a brushed finish).
Adam
In reply to adam525i :
I think that's generally frowned on for hoods... creates glare for the driver
mazdeuce - Seth said:We'll be talking a lot about drag soon. My gut feeling is that reducing drag is like reducing weight, it helps you everywhere.
sorta... it helps in two regimes mainly:
there's something to be said for having more drag while decelerating at speeds over ~70mph
edit: although, I think it's generally accepted that more downforce at the expense of drag is generally advised... but i think there hasn't been a lot of study of that trade-off on "oem suspended" track cars
Track day this Sunday at NOLA. Decided to rotate the tires and inspect/bleed the brakes. Everything looks good. The rears still had a TON of pickup rubber from the track stuck all over them even after 500 miles of street driving. Hopefully it will wear off faster on the front. I'm still loving the car. Kids are pretty much over the whole coupe thing.
Good luck!
The pick-up rubber will be gone in the first turn. No stress.
Track day! NOLA Motorsports park just outside of New Orleans is on the schedule for One Lap this year so we decided to be all race car like and go pre-run it. Signed up for the whole weekend initially but some scheduling conflicts had me reducing that to just Sunday. The only hitch in the day was tech. I showed up in the tech line right when it opened, form in hand, and they said that all cars had to have been inspected at a shop. What? When? I did this two weeks ago in Texas and tech actually did tech, like tech does everywhere that there is tech. We had a discussion where I pointed out the check mark on the top for Tech at Track and we got it all worked out, but it was kind of weird.
In the drivers meeting a friend from Houston autocross came over to say hi and then paddocked with us off and on through the day, because Honda.
We were briefly concerned that the light was the wrong direction for a good picture but decided that none of the cars looked good enough to bother trying to make them look better. Track car stuff.
The track was interesting. It redefines flatness on a galactic scale. The biggest elevation is a series of bumps developing that I can't really feel because of the superiority of stock suspension. The car did great, again, and the day was drama free. We all ran in DE2 even though we are all DE4/TT drivers because DE4 was bonkers with speed and very crowded. We were in a small group with courteous people and had a great time. Spent some time running right with the One Lap car which was interesting. He's got 50hp on me with proper suspension, but was on last year's Michelins while I'm on RS4's. There were several spots where I could enter sweepers without lifting where he HAD to tap the brakes (he tried to follow me, it was ugly) and I we were playing the same game through the twisty bits. On the straights he puled away with 10mph or so advantage at the end of the long straight. All in all I was VERY happy with the car and I've got some thoughts.
I think it has enough tire for what it is. Suspension needs to be sorted. Tire wear is good but it clearly needs a couple degrees of camber in the front. It needs better shocks and some lowering to get things behaving. Springs? Maybe, but it's honestly not bad. After that I'm going to play with aero and see if I can't make up for some of that top speed differential by making the car a bit more slippery.
It's great to drive all day, throw your stuff in the trunk, turn on the AC and do a comfortable 6 hour drive home. No changing tires, comfortable(ish) seats, quiet, it's racecar luxury. I know that I could get that same level of "good street car" out of a Mustang or a BRZ or any of a dozen more appropriate track cars, but I'm really having a good time with this. It's good fun. Track speeds are sane enough at about 105mph tops that mistakes can be corrected on corner entry instead of off in the grass.
This is probably my last track day until fall in this car. I've got two, maybe three autocrosses before summer. I still need to bolt on the aluminum bits and probably a small battery and drop 50ish lbs from the car.
This car is doing exactly what I wanted. It's good enough on track that I'm having a blast, requiring just brake pads, tires and a $30 junkyard rear sway bar to get there. It's a GREAT street car worthy of the Accord's reputation. My co-driver and I are on the same page that this can be a suitable backup for One Lap which allows us to go a little bonkers on his Civic. We can always throw our gear in the Accord and enjoy the event with zero prep. I keep joking that by next year DE groups will be 1/2 Accords when people realize how incredible it is. While I doubt that's true, it could be........
mazdeuce - Seth said:I'm still loving the car. Kids are pretty much over the whole coupe thing.
I continue to learn from this thread as I contemplate my next vehicular purchase. This may possibly be the most important bit of wisdom so far.
Woody said:mazdeuce - Seth said:I'm still loving the car. Kids are pretty much over the whole coupe thing.
I continue to learn from this thread as I contemplate my next vehicular purchase. This may be the most important bit of wisdom so far.
The funny thing, from my perspective, is that Seth's got kids that can buckle themselves into the car... and it's still a problem. sleepywife's rule on coupes is that I have to buckle any sleepykids into any seats in that car.
Seth are you guys doing any datalogging? Sounds like you're able to carry more corner speed but get overpowered down the straight. It'd be interesting to see how far down the straight you get with the faster corner exit before the si drags you.
sleepyhead said:Woody said:mazdeuce - Seth said:I'm still loving the car. Kids are pretty much over the whole coupe thing.
I continue to learn from this thread as I contemplate my next vehicular purchase. This may be the most important bit of wisdom so far.
The funny thing, from my perspective, is that Seth's got kids that can buckle themselves into the car... and it's still a problem. sleepywife's rule on coupes is that I have to buckle any sleepykids into any seats in that car.
I get it though.
When my kid was really young, it was much easier to put that baby seat in the back seat of the 911 than it was to reach across and put it into the back seat of a four door Subaru. But actually climbing into the back seat of a coupe is a big pain in the ass, regardless of how young and spry you are, or how much better the coupe (not this one) looks than a comparable sedan.
klodkrawler05 said:Seth are you guys doing any datalogging? Sounds like you're able to carry more corner speed but get overpowered down the straight. It'd be interesting to see how far down the straight you get with the faster corner exit before the si drags you.
Any recommendations? We discussed a need for it. I have a SoloDL but that's a bit much to ask him to spend on his car. I think something that would record as well as Harry's lap timer but would allow for export of laps for comparison would be enough to start.
Being FWD cars we can get on the gas early, so even though my entrance speeds were higher exit speeds were pretty similar. We do need data instead of guessing.
In reply to Woody :
Being able to buckle themselves in and being able to ignore their complaints are both key. They really only complain loudly when all four are in the car. Nobody likes middle seat.
what's the under/over for divorce after installing an accord rumble seat?
re:Data/Harry's
I tried using Harry's last year at OneLap... and it was...frustrating. Getting it to figure out you're at the track, and then going to do a session, and record it properly were a PITA. Which, reading up, seems to be a feature? I think there was a thread about this recently that had a better alternative?
sleepyhead said:re:Data/Harry's
I tried using Harry's last year at OneLap... and it was...frustrating.
Were you using the GPS in your device or an outboard receiver? Or was it just the interface of Harry’s? I keep holding on to my last phone when I upgrade for the sole purpose of someday using it for a data logging.
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