New member sharing my track experience

boscotheduck

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Hello all, I’m new to the forum and wanted to make a post sharing my experience tracking my 17 Si so far.


The car: 2017 Si sedan, all stock with the exception of 18x8 +48 Volk CE28SL with 245/40-18 RE71R, Porterfield R4 front pads and Motul RBF600 brake fluid. I also have the front strut pins pulled for more negative camber. Front toe is zeroed.


The track: Gingerman Raceway in South Haven, MI


Me: I’m an average to acceptable driver on my absolute best day.


Disclaimer: just my experience and opinions. I’m not an expert by any stretch.


I brought my Si to Gingerman Raceway this past weekend and ran in their novice group with my 17 Si. It was very cold with lows in the morning around 19° and highs in the upper 30°s on the second day. The best lap I could muster was 1:50:61, which is decent from the feed back I received. This was my first time at Gingerman and my first time on the RE71R and Porterfield pads. Here’s some thoughts/findings:


  1. RE71R wasn’t too bad in the cold. A little slippery for the first couple laps with full grip by the third. These tires absolutely live up to the hype. I found that running right around 33psi in the front and 30psi in the rear worked well.
  2. I encountered sputtering in turn 10b which is slightly off camber and brutalizes LF tires. I determined that with right around 3-4 gallons in the tank in the hard right hander I would encounter fuel starvation. This resulted in going into limp mode once. Keeping the tank always filled over half alleviated this issue.
  3. I found my front caliper piston boots are burnt, almost melted. I’d speculate if a lot of track time is in your Si’s future a higher temp boot kit may be needed.
  4. I’d be very hesitant to make any changes to the suspension on this car. I found that utilization of trail braking or inducing a little lift oversteer could get me as much rotation as I needed. Other wise the car is incredibly composed. I had to really do something dumb or erratic to get it out of shape.
  5. If you’ve tracked your Si at all you know the front pads won’t last more than an hour or so of track time. I contacted Porterfield and they made me pads in their R4 compound. I have no complaints with these pads, I even drove to/from the track on them which was about 120miles each way. They perform, that’s all. I’m still on stock rear pads but they’re almost done. I have a set of Porterfield R4S compound that will go on the rear soon.

That’s all that immediately comes to mind. I’ll be doing my first Chicago region SCCA autocross this weekend. I anticipate doing poorly as I’m not a good autocrosser. I’ll be doing the SCCA Spring Training Time Trials, also at Gingerman, the following weekend which sounds like it should be a ton of fun. If I have any relevant info from either of those events I will make another post.


Thanks for reading. Here’s a couple pictures.

Honda Civic 10th gen New member sharing my track experience BE65E220-4C2D-45C9-9EC4-A495E88309F0
Honda Civic 10th gen New member sharing my track experience 9960AA41-104C-4576-A19C-19836B1BD445
Honda Civic 10th gen New member sharing my track experience 7579B499-8599-4D63-BC6F-87589EA3371B
 
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5inn

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Thanks for sharing!

I've been curious about the fuel starving in this car. My last Honda (AP2 S2k) would have this same issue at autocross if the tank was below 2/3rds or so. I'll have to make sure I keep plenty of fuel in the civic as well for autocross.

Hope to do a TNIA in the car at some point. Sounds like new pads and fluid would be a wise idea before that.
 

Vincent@27WON

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My question is how do you like the new Solo 2?
 
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boscotheduck

boscotheduck

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Having only gotten to use it once so far all I can really say is I like it. Seems pretty accurate and super easy to use. The predictive lap LEDs are pretty awesome for instantaneous feedback although I ended up just tossing it in the glove box a few times so the lights wouldn’t encourage me to over drive the car.

Edit: I’ll have better feedback on the lap timer after the time trial this weekend. I’m curious to see if there’s any discrepancies between a transponder.
 

Vincent@27WON

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Having only gotten to use it once so far all I can really say is I like it. Seems pretty accurate and super easy to use. The predictive lap LEDs are pretty awesome for instantaneous feedback although I ended up just tossing it in the glove box a few times so the lights wouldn’t encourage me to over drive the car.

Edit: I’ll have better feedback on the lap timer after the time trial this weekend. I’m curious to see if there’s any discrepancies between a transponder.
I have used a SOLO gen 1 for years with great success. I am looking into getting the new updated one. Looks very nice.
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