One Lap of America Civic Si

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OneLapCivicSi

OneLapCivicSi

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At the beginning of March we were very excited to receive the official word from Brock Yates Jr. that we were off the wait list and officially in for the 2021 One Lap! We expected the event to open up some after the rush to register back in 2019, but it was nice to be official. This gave us some renewed energy for the project as we headed to the NASA NOLA Region event at NOLA Motorsports park on March 13/14.

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We loaded the car on the trailer the first time before the Friday morning drive to New Orleans. Honda was nice enough to provide T-hook slots on the factory frame rails to safely secure the car on the trailer.

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It was our first time at NOLA, and we were very fortunate to have help from Chris Carver Motorsports. Chris is building the cage for our future WRL E36 M3, and even though he was busy as event director, he still managed to bring a well setup Spec Miata for us to split time in with the Civic to learn as much about the track as possible. Thanks Carver!

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NOLA is a big boy track, and the Indy straight configuration that NASA used for this event really highlighted some braking issues. There were 3 spots on track that required heavy braking from over 100 mph. The Carbotech XP10s managed to do this for multiple laps without giving up, but they left a lot to be desired in total grip and especially in feel. Initial bite was great, but mid-range didn’t provide much additional bite. Deep into the pedal range grip picked up again, but we were still left not being able to really push the car in the braking zones. It was pretty clear that the speeds we will be able to achieve in the Civic especially when we up the power with Ethanol will require a more aggressive pad compound (we stayed on TSP Stage 1, Map 2 Sport all weekend). We decided that we would call Carbotech before our next track time to see what they recommend. We managed the brake issues by increasing braking distances, limiting the number of back to back hot laps to 6, and regularly flushing the fluid as the longer sessions on track were really cooking it.

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Chris L. and I learned some valuable lessons over the weekend when we both had off track excursions. Chris L. dropped a wheel off the backside of a curb into a sizeable hole, and I went off at the entry to the Indy straight at 90+ mph after being distracted by upcoming traffic and missing an apex. Fortunately, the car continued on, and we set our fastest laps after these incidents. The key learning for us was that chasing the last few tenths of lap time like at an autocross is very risky on track. It is definitely not worth it at One Lap were consistent fast over the 3 lap time combined format is needed.

Overall the weekend was a success. The suspension changes (while noisy) were positive and the car handled fantastic all weekend. We used a Garmin Catalyst while running for the first time, and the instant feedback on lap timing is really useful. We are still trying to work out some of the kinks in uploading video with data overlaid, so apologies for the poor video quality below. In our last session I ran 3 smooth, hot laps in a row to simulate a One Lap run, and I was very happy to lay down our three fastest laps of the weekend. Chris L. was right there as well on his last stint; he was just under a second back on my pace. We weren’t running timing equipment in the Spec Miata while we drove, but the same car ran a couple sessions in a TT group with a good driver. The Civic was a full 7 seconds faster than the Spec Miata on R comps! The long straights had a lot to do with this, but overall Civic and its drivers are starting to show some good pace. Next up was some post race repairs and the SCCA Texas Tour autocross in Houston.

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On the first street drive after the NOLA event, I noticed that the alignment was off and there was a vibration coming from the left front. We noticed at NOLA that the balancing weights had come off the front left wheel after we hit a pothole at the end of a curb. I assumed the wheel needed balancing, but once it was spun on the balancer it was obvious the problem was much worse. Unfortunately, the wheel was bent on the inside and the tire showed the beginnings of tread separation. We immediately ordered a new wheel and tire, but it wouldn’t arrive in time for the Texas Champ Tour Autocross on March 27/28. We swapped the front and rear tires and crossed our fingers it would be ok for the autocross. I also put the car back on the alignment rack and found that the left front camber plate had slipped a few degrees and left rear toe was slightly off. Moral of the story again… keep it on the track.

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Alignment set and bad wheel on the rear we set off for the SCCA Texas Tour. This will likely be the only autocross time we get on the car so dialing in a usable setup is pretty critical. We signed up for the event in XSA even though the car is very close to an STH build. The clutch and likely the ALK kit keep us out of STH. Chris L. took the car to do some practice runs on Friday, and he confirmed the overall balance wasn’t terrible. Everything went well until the A/C quit working on his way home. I confirmed the A/C malfunction with a very sticky drive to the site on Sat. morning. While frustrating, the A/C didn’t stop us from running the car.

The Civic did ok for the weekend, but it was a challenge getting used to FWD, high hp (we ran TSP stage 1, Map 3), and the Michelin PS4S tires. We are used to much better 200 treadwear grip, and we had to minimize how much multitasking we asked the PS4S tires to do. We ran the shocks full stiff in the rear and 2 from stiff in the front, and we settled on tire pressures of 28 front and 38 rear. Once we lowered the aggression slightly were able to manage a 1,2 finish in class with Chris getting me by 0.789 sec over the two days combined. We didn’t do as well on PAX index as we are used to, but if we recalculate using the STH PAX instead of XSA Chris would have finished 41st overall out of 174. That’s not bad considering we are not on a competitive tire for top tier autocross. The videos below are not our best runs. We were struggling with Solo Storm sinking with the GoPro all weekend, and we missed our best runs from Sunday. Enjoy the mistakes… lol

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In addition to the AC issue, the car was making a ton of rear suspension noise. We put it up on jack stands after Sat. runs and checked all the nuts/bolts and found nothing loose. Ultimately the issue turn out to be the rear spring setup. I think the BC helper springs have lost some of their strength, and it's progressively getting louder. We have a couple ideas of how to address this noise as its going to drive us crazy on transit drives.

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Overall the weekend was a lot of fun. Autocross is still a blast and seeing all our friends at the event was great. We also uncovered some mechanical things we need to address before our next event, and I’d much prefer to find them now than during the One Lap. Next up I’ll cover the changes we made in the two weeks we had to get ready for the NASA Spring Fling at Eagles Canyon Raceway.
 
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Lots of work happened in the two weeks before the NASA Spring Fling at Eagles Canyon. The goal for this event was to have the power mods completed and run pretty much the complete One Lap setup, but this didn’t quite happen. The Monday after the Texas Tour, I took the Civic into the dealer to get what I assumed was a bad A/C condenser fixed. Unfortunately, the dealer informed me that the A/C failed due to a leak in a high pressure line caused by the oil cooler lines. They of course would not fix this under warranty, and they wanted $1100 to repair it. I thought that seemed high, so my list of things to do got longer.

I picked up the replacement line from the dealership and ordered a new condenser from Rock Auto. The condenser wasn’t leaking, but I figured I shouldn’t let the opportunity to fix a future problem pass. After removing the bumper it was clear that the hot oil cooler lines did in fact cause the issue. I suspect this would not have happened without all the stress from the track. To prevent this from happening again, I wrapped the new line in heat tape and zip tied the lines to prevent them from moving and form a plastic barrier should the parts touch again.

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As planned before the A/C issue, I installed the very nice RV6 catted DP and FP (FYI, it’s 4 lbs lighter than stock), and I wrapped the turbo inlet tube in DEI heat tape. To counter the noise from the rear springs, I purchased some Swift 65mm 84 lb/inch helper springs. These are almost 10 times stiffer than the BC helpers I was using before. They hold the spring in place much better, but they are still fully compressed when the car is on the ground. The compressed height was also the exact height I needed to make the longer 170 mm rear springs work without needing the threaded collar. 3rd time was the charm for the rear springs, perfect ride height and quiet as stock! Also, while the car was on the lift, I installed new XP12 brake pads, new rotors, and bolted on the new, not bent, wheel and tire. Carbotech recommended we up the friction of the compound by one level after the braking issues we experienced at NOLA. After two long track weekends, the older XP10 pads were pretty worn, but we will bring them along as backup.

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All this work was not complicated, but I had to squeeze it in on weeknights due to family plans on the weekends. This made for some late nights, and what felt like a lot of chaos too close to the beginning of an event. Ultimately, I ended up behind, and by time the flex fuel kit was on and the car was ready for tuning, it was the Monday before Eagles Canyon. This didn’t leave much time for Derek from Innovative Motorworks to help us street tune the car, but we managed to get to a version that we could use for the track. No ethanol yet, but at least we had something safe and smooth to race with. Working with Derek on the tune has been great; it’s very clear why so many people put their trust in his work. I also didn't have time to get all the tools and fluids in to recharge the A/C system, but we don't need it on track and we were already planning to tow the car to the event.

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With the thrash to get ready complete, we were very excited to head to Eagles Canyon and learn the track.
 
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We started searching for a damper solution for the car early in the planning process. As long time autoxers, this is our comfort zone, and we’ve had experience with a wide range of solutions including some high end stuff like MCS. I didn’t want to spend MCS money for the One Lap since the plan with this car is to run the event and de-mod back to a daily driver setup.

We were very fortunate to find an outstanding solution from Chris Shenefield at Redshift Motorsports. Chris takes BC Racing dampers and rebuilds them to perform like digressive racing dampers. Key to this is that the damper provides high levels of force at relatively slower speed movements (transitions left to right on a track) and lower force at high speed movements (bumps, track curbing, etc.). We went with the single adjustable solution for simplicity and cost. Chris helped us pick a spring rate starting point of 8K front and 12K rear. We felt like this would be a good compromise of capability on the track and still tolerable for the transits.

This was the first set of dampers Redshift has done for the Civic Si platform, and there were a couple of things we had to work through. We ended up using the regular BC racing Civic Si shock body for the front and adapting the Type R body for the rear. Using the Type R damper in the rear gave us a larger shaft diameter which allows for much better damping curves. Chris also had to do quite a bit of R&D to get the fronts correct as this was the first time he had rebuilt a BC damper with the 38 mm pistons.

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We also had issues with the rear spring length that took some R&D. We started out with 170 mm rear springs (stock BC rear for the Si is 190 mm), but with the much higher spring rate, the car sat way too high even with the adjuster set to its lowest position. The first pass solution to this was to replace the rear threaded collar section with a BC racing helper spring setup. Fortunately this got the ride height in the right range while we worked out what length spring to actually go with. The helper spring has the added advantage of keeping the spring captive without having to limit rear shock travel. We ran our first track event of the season on this setup without issue, but the final solution was threaded collar + helper spring + 140 mm spring.

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Along with the coilovers we also installed SPC adjustable rear camber arms (OMG the bolts are hard to get to!), and we used D2 adaptive damper bypass units to avoid any lights on the dash. We roughed in the alignment, put on the new wheels/tires, and then went to get it done right before our first track day of the year. We weren't totally happy with only being able to get -2.1/-2.4 for front camber. We were hoping for closer to -3 without using the adjustable ball joints, but this was as much as we could squeeze out of the camber plates and factory slotted mounts. We set the rear camber to a little less than the fronts and put a slight toe in front and rear for stability. Overall we are super happy with how it all turned out. Next post I'll cover some of what we learned running the new suspension setup on track.

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I have the exact same coilovers coming next month but I went with spring rates of 10k and 16k. What is the ride height that you are running? Why didn’t you mess with caster?
We started searching for a damper solution for the car early in the planning process. As long time autoxers, this is our comfort zone, and we’ve had experience with a wide range of solutions including some high end stuff like MCS. I didn’t want to spend MCS money for the One Lap since the plan with this car is to run the event and de-mod back to a daily driver setup.

We were very fortunate to find an outstanding solution from Chris Shenefield at Redshift Motorsports. Chris takes BC Racing dampers and rebuilds them to perform like digressive racing dampers. Key to this is that the damper provides high levels of force at relatively slower speed movements (transitions left to right on a track) and lower force at high speed movements (bumps, track curbing, etc.). We went with the single adjustable solution for simplicity and cost. Chris helped us pick a spring rate starting point of 8K front and 12K rear. We felt like this would be a good compromise of capability on the track and still tolerable for the transits.

This was the first set of dampers Redshift has done for the Civic Si platform, and there were a couple of things we had to work through. We ended up using the regular BC racing Civic Si shock body for the front and adapting the Type R body for the rear. Using the Type R damper in the rear gave us a larger shaft diameter which allows for much better damping curves. Chris also had to do quite a bit of R&D to get the fronts correct as this was the first time he had rebuilt a BC damper with the 38 mm pistons.

50980369387_5282ffb4d9_c.jpg


51050322692_2d560b321c_c.jpg


We also had issues with the rear spring length that took some R&D. We started out with 170 mm rear springs (stock BC rear for the Si is 190 mm), but with the much higher spring rate, the car sat way too high even with the adjuster set to its lowest position. The first pass solution to this was to replace the rear threaded collar section with a BC racing helper spring setup. Fortunately this got the ride height in the right range while we worked out what length spring to actually go with. The helper spring has the added advantage of keeping the spring captive without having to limit rear shock travel. We ran our first track event of the season on this setup without issue, but the final solution was threaded collar + helper spring + 140 mm spring.

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Along with the coilovers we also installed SPC adjustable rear camber arms (OMG the bolts are hard to get to!), and we used D2 adaptive damper bypass units to avoid any lights on the dash. We roughed in the alignment, put on the new wheels/tires, and then went to get it done right before our first track day of the year. We weren't totally happy with only being able to get -2.1/-2.4 for front camber. We were hoping for closer to -3 without using the adjustable ball joints, but this was as much as we could squeeze out of the camber plates and factory slotted mounts. We set the rear camber to a little less than the fronts and put a slight toe in front and rear for stability. Overall we are super happy with how it all turned out. Next post I'll cover some of what we learned running the new suspension setup on track.

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OneLapCivicSi

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We’ve been really busy the last two weeks getting everything ready, but I’m going to try and get this all caught up before we leave so the updates can come as daily summaries during the actual event.

April 9th and 10th were spent at Eagles Canyon Raceway for the NASA TX Spring Fling. This is by far the best track we’ve driven yet. 2.7 miles, lots of elevation change, mostly 3rd gear corners, super grippy surface, great viewing area where you can see most of the track… awesome place all around.

The car performed well all weekend. We ran the 3rd revision on the tune from Derek Robinson. Didn’t feel that much faster than before, but a lot of that can probably be attributed to us getting used to it and most of the acceleration zones where uphill. The Carbotech XP12s work great, but they get super hot. We will need to limit our use of these at the One Lap to only the tracks that are hardest on braking, which Eagles Canyon is not. The car handled great, but you can tell from tire wear that we still need more negative camber up front. Fortunately, Chris from Redshift is helping us by having some more aggressive camber plates machined. Lastly, we used a Simpson Hybrid S head and neck restraint for the first time. It didn’t take much getting used to, and it does make us feel safer pushing the car as hard as we are.

There were some fast cars in our HPDE group and there was a lot of traffic on course. We had trouble getting clean laps in, but Chris L. hung back on his last session and was able to put down a real flyer 2:16 lap. The video of that lap below shows what smooth fast looks like. I had the same pace based on our data, but I couldn’t get a clean lap in. The weekend was a success; we both succeeded in learning the track, finding decent pace, and most importantly we kept in on the track.

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I have the exact same coilovers coming next month but I went with spring rates of 10k and 16k. What is the ride height that you are running? Why didn’t you mess with caster?
The caster is not adjustable from the factory, and the BC Camber plates only adjust for Camber (unless you rotate them in the mounting holes, but this is too extreme I think). We have added a little over half a degree of additional positive caster with the Whiteline Anti Lift Kit. However, the new plates being made for us by Redshift adjust for both camber and caster. Depending on how much extra camber they help us get, we may add some more caster as well.

Ride height front and rear is 14 1/4" measured from the bottom of the wheel centerbore to the center of the fender arc.

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After Eagles Canyon we had a long list of things to complete; first up was getting the A/C running again. A/C repair is tricky, and most of the internet will tell you not to attempt it on your own. However, if you are patient and sift through the noise, there is plenty of good information out there about how to properly complete this task. 10th gen Civics, like all new cars, use a new type of fluorocarbon refrigerant, R-1234yf, that is much better for the environment than R-134A. This refrigerant is more expensive than R-134A, but it can be purchased in 8 oz cans from Amazon. You will also need specific high and low side adapters to hook up to the lines. I was able to purchase a kit for about $70 from Amazon that contained what I needed. I also bought a vacuum pump to evacuate the system prior to charging. Despite having to buy some new tools, I still came out way ahead since the dealer wanted $1100 for this task.

The system needs Honda POE compressor and it is usually in stock at dealers (PN# 38899-RLV-A01). The factory service manual has a chart that tells you how much oil to add to the system. For me, this was 60 mL since I replaced the line that was damaged by the oil cooler and added a new condenser. I used a syringe to add this to the condenser. After fully evacuating the system, I used a scale to make sure I added the right about of refrigerant. A/C blows cool as ever now.

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We had been debating whether to put an exhaust on the car or not. I’m not a fan of things that don’t add performance, but the even with the downpipe the car was just too quiet on track. We picked the MA Performance Street setup because of availability and reviews on it’s sound. It was an easy install and I had none of the reported issues with ground clearance or heat shield rattling. It did take some forceful holding in the right position before tightening the connections, but it was a lot better than some I’ve worked with on other cars. I really like the deep tone, and it was 5 lbs lighter than stock. However, maybe they’ll grow on me, but I’m not a huge fan of the “look at me” quad tips. Oh well.

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The week of April 12th we kept working our way through the tune with DRob, and it all seemed to be going well. On Friday of that week, he gave the green light for flex fuel. I blended my first tank, sent him the data logs, really enjoyed all the extra power, and was feeling like we were right on track. All this would change however when on Monday the 19th, he instructed us to check the car for boost leaks. Apparently, we were just missing our boost targets even with the waste gate fully closed. Derek said this usually happens in cars with a minor leak or a failing bypass valve. With 10 days before we had to leave for the South Bend, IN I was not excited about tearing the car apart again to search for a leak. I also knew there wasn’t much time to source parts and finish the tuning process.

I pulled the bumper off to check all the hose clamps on the high-pressure side and intercooler connections; I found nothing. Next, I took off the inlet tube since I had removed that to wrap it. Here I found a slightly damaged O-Ring, and I was confident I’d found the issue. I found the O-ring from the parts diagram and ordered the part from the local Honda Dealer. Since we were so tight on time, just to be sure I addressed the issue, I also went ahead and ordered a whole new inlet tube since that’s the only way to buy the factory bypass valve. I figured I could return it if the O-ring was the fix.

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I picked up the parts on Weds. morning, and on Weds. afternoon I sent a datalog to Derek with the new o-ring installed. Thurs. morning I found out that the waste gate still was not opening correctly. I put the new inlet tube/bypass valve on and sent another log. Friday morning Derek informed me that the issue was still there… damnit. At this point we were 6 days from loading the car on the trailer for the One Lap. I had been over the system multiple times, and I did not understand where there could be a leak. I also didn’t know if we’d even be able to get a part sourced in time if we found the issue. I asked Derek if he could make us a low boost conservative map just so we had something to run just in case.

One of the things I was thinking was maybe there was a pinhole in the intercooler. I hadn’t done a boost leak test yet, and while I was making the Home Depot list to build a leak tester, I decided to do a quick search on the Burger Motorsports intercooler to see if anyone else had an issue with them leaking. This search led to pictures of different 1.5T IC options and it struck me how much larger and how oddly shaped the Burger Motorsports IC is. The BM IC also has very abrupt inlet and outlet designs. On a hunch I decided to put the stock IC back in and log a pull. Sure enough, with the stock IC on the wastegate opened as expected and we hit our boost targets!!

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Corey at Two-Step Performance was able to ensure we got a PRL IC on Tues. the 27th, and I’m happy to report that we are now past the issue. The PRL unit is a much nicer piece; it’s clear actual fluid dynamics were considered in the design.

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I fully regret going the cheap route with the BM intercooler. I wrongly assumed that any IC would be fine, and that it was an ok place to cut spending. Ultimately, it cost me more than it would have to just do it right in the first place. We ran 4 days on the track and an autocross on an intercooler that caused the turbo to work way harder than it needed to and we are lucky to not have damaged anything. Looking back at past logs you can see the issue was there, but not as pronounced. I’m glad we didn’t do any damage, and that the BM intercooler ended up where it belongs.

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OneLapCivicSi

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While we were trouble shooting the issues with the IC, we were also finishing off the rest of the final prep. We received a gorgeous set of caster/camber plates from Redshift. These allowed us to gain an additional .4 degrees of camber and some extra caster. We ended up with -3 degress up front and I didn’t bother to measure the caster, but I suspect we are now around +7.5 or so. While we had the suspension apart for the new plates I regreased the ALK bushings with energy suspension grease. It’s much quieter now, and hopefully this will last longer than what Whitline sent with the kit.

We also swapped back to a new set of Carbotech XP10 pads and new rotors. The XP12s will come along for 2 tracks with more demanding braking, but when the XP10 is enough it will help keep the heat in check. The XP12s melted the plastic hub centric rings, so we also swapped over to aluminum rings. The final touch on the car prep was swapping in a new stock style air filter. With 19k miles on the original it was definitely past due.

After Eagles Canyon, we wanted to move to a taller tire size to help with gearing. We were planning on going 265/35/18, but unfortunately by time we ordered that size and the 255/35 we previously ran was out of stock. We debated switching brands, but ultimately, we went with the 245/40/18. It’s not too much narrower when on a 9 inch rim, and since its better supported I doubt we will notice the difference. Overall, I think the taller gearing will be faster for most tracks.

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Since this is such a big event, we decided to go big on the livery design for the car. We chose to honor the classic Motul Civic by using the same colors and adopting the Motul font to rep On the Ledge Racing (OTLR). We made sure to leave room on the front doors and fenders for the required event stickers. We aren’t vinyl expert, so don’t look too close, but overall I’m pretty excited about how it turned out. We also managed to get it all done in one late night which was key with the time pressure we were under.

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Last up was loading up the car and planning what to bring. With 2 fuel jugs we can haul 10 gal of ethanol in case we have trouble finding it. We have enough tools to do just about anything we could possible need to fix the car. We have two sets of spare brake pads and one extra set of rotors. We are allowed to carry one spare tire for the event. We packed scooters for track walks, couple folding chairs and lots of rain gear. We also have a roof mounted bag that we will use to store gear in at wet events (we won’t be putting it on the roof though). Car is full, but we are able to take a lot more than many of the competitors because of the room in the Civic. Finally, we loaded up early this the morning for the day and a half drive to South Bend!

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OneLapCivicSi

OneLapCivicSi

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The tow to South Bend from Houston was uneventful. We split it into two legs with a long first day to Champaign IL and then a short trip to South Bend the next to allow for plenty of time to check in and get the car tech’d. Arriving at the host hotel was pretty exciting and somewhat intimidating as it was completely overrun with race cars. At registration we were asked to switch classes from Economy to Mid-Priced Sedan, which was a good thing since there as only one other car in Economy. We spent the afternoon putting on decals, troubleshooting the front alignment, and discussing plans for the week with a few friends.

The event kicked off on Sat. morning with the wet skid pad event on the Tire Rack test track. The event consists of two runs in each direction with the best run from each direction averaged to calculate average lateral G loads. We can all have a good laugh at my nervous mistake… when I made the turnaround to go the other direction, I ended up going back around the same way… ugh. I made a 3 point turnaround without penalty and completed my two clockwise laps. I wasn’t sure how we did, the sprinklers were disorienting and I made a couple mistakes. However we were shocked and stoked to find out we finished 3rd overall with an average lat G of 0.745!

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Next up we had an 80 mile transit to Grissom Air Force base for the autocross. Chris was up for this event, and he put in an awesome drive with a 17th overall finish! The ethanol tune made for a very rowdy autox car. But it transitioned great and dug out of corners well.



We are sitting 6th overall which way exceeded our expectations. We figured these two events would suit the car, and we don’t expect to be able to keep this up at the higher speed tracks. The 490 mile transit to Memphis should put us there around 10:30 pm tonight. Tomorrow is supposed to rain, which could change some of the event format. More to come tomorrow. You can check out the results from the event at http://www.onelapofamerica.com/event/ResultsIndex.do?eventId=40.

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OneLapCivicSi

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Day 2 took us to Memphis International Raceway for what was supposed to be two on track sessions and a drag race. The forecast called for rain to start mid-morning, so unfortunately, they changed the format to a point-to-point race to avoid using the drag strip because of the lack of traction on wet VHT. The portion of the track they used began with a standing start at the end of the drag strip and followed into a 2000 ft straight away. The straight ended with a long fast 180 that led into some slow offsets and then a straight into the finish. We ran 3 sessions of this short course with one recon lap and one flying lap in each session.

The long-standing start with only a few corners afterwards really favored the high horsepower cars. In the dry first two sessions we finished 40th and 42nd, but when the rain finally came in the 3rd session, we moved up to 26th. Despite the lower finishes in the dry, the car felt great, and it was fun to enter the back turn at 114 mph. It was also great to backup the wet skidpad performance with a good finish in the wet. After these sessions we loaded up and headed out for the 8hr transit to Decatur, TX for the time trials at Eagles Canyon Raceway

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OneLapCivicSi

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The transit from Memphis was wet for the first part, but overall uneventful. We arrived around 10 pm and we were ready to get some sleep. After Memphis, we were excited for Eagles Canyon since it was a track we knew well. Chris was up first, and he had a great session. All 3 of his laps were all faster than when we were there earlier in the Spring. He ended up 26th overall for this session, but we finished 2nd in class to the Dodge team Charger. The Charger had won our class for both dry events in Memphis, (we won in the wet), and it was obvious they were going to be a real threat on the big tracks. 3rd place in the morning session went to the Subaru/Yokohama team of Bucky Lasek and Rally Dave. The run groups had been rearranged based on the finishing results from Memphis, so we were now gridded with most of our Mid-Price Sedan class competitors. Running next to our competition was a lot of fun and we enjoying the banter and comradery with the Yokohama/Subaru team.

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After the morning session we were sitting first in class and excited to see if we could go faster in the afternoon. I was up for the hot afternoon session as it was 89 degrees with full sun, high humidity and no wind. The session started out ok, but on the back straight during the 2nd flying lap the car lost power at 104 mph. I coasted through the next few corners but had to pull over when it finally stalled. I waited until the session was complete and then managed to get it refired and limp it back into the pits while being followed by the safety car and the tow truck. I could only use first gear and had to keep it under 15 mph or the car would stall. It was pretty obvious something pretty bad had just let go.

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Back in the pits we began to troubleshoot, and we had a lot of help from other teams including the Yokohama/Subaru guys. The car had no fluid leaks, and we didn’t find anything when pulled the bumper to check for a disconnected charge hose. The car didn’t show any error codes, but when we took it on a short drive around the pits to try and troubleshoot the check oil level light came on. The track was gracious enough to offer us access to a garage to keep troubleshooting and get us out of the incoming bad weather. We drained some oil and didn’t find any coolant, but when we pulled the outlet hose to the turbo we found a lot of oil and the problem. The turbo was toast.

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Bummer about the turbo. Right when y'all seemed to be getting in a groove too... Hope y'all can get it sorted soon!
 
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While waiting on the tow truck we waited out a severe thunderstorm with 2 other One Lap teams that had issues that day as well. Needless to say we were all pretty bummed. It was starting to set in that we weren’t going to make it to New Orleans for the next days events, and that meant we would lose our class lead. It was also starting to set in that even catching back up to rest of the week at all was going to be a real challenge. We tried to stay positive though; there was a very nice rainbow after the storm. We spent the time looking for a replacement turbo. All the local Honda dealers could get the part for us, but it wouldn’t arrive until Weds. morning. The support network for One Lappers is impressive, and we had multiple people helping us search for parts. One of our friends, Pete Lindberg,managed to find several replacements, but the closest one was 5.5 hours away in Conway AR.

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Fortunately, my Mom lives in Fort Worth about 50 miles from the track so we had the car towed there. We knew that this at least put us closer to Houston if we couldn’t get the car running again, and she has garage space to work on it or store it for a while if we needed to. Determined to get back into the event as soon as possible, Chris decided he was up for the round trip to AR. So at 4 am on Tues he left for Arkansas while I stayed back and made sure the car was ready to go when he returned. Chris returned a little before 3 pm and I had the “new” turbo in in about an hour. We added fresh oil, topped off the coolant lost during the install, and went for a test drive. I was worried about other damage done when the turbo went, but fortunately everything worked great!

At 5:30 pm, 2.5 hours after getting the working turbo, and about 24 hours after finding the problem, we quickly packed up the car, cleaned ourselves up a bit, and hit the road for the 12.5 hour drive to Atlanta Motorsports Park. The overnight drive was brutal, but at 7:15 am on Weds. morning, we arrived at AMP exhausted, but excited to be back in the event.

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First impressions of the new parts setup were ok. I was happy with the camber gain, but after a couple days of driving the ALK bushings were already sounding like they need re-greasing. I also got the occasional pop from the front. It sounded like binding, but I held off on judging until we got it on track. Next up was the NASA event at NOLA Motorsports Park on March 13/14.
So how did the ALK bushings ended up ? I also wanted to install these ,but didn't after i saw they change the angle of the other bushings like you mentioned before.If they made lower ball joints that have adjustable caster and camber that would be much better.I know SPC has some on the older civics .I would push the caster as far as you can for the added dynamic camber.
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