The Little Details

After thanksgiving I was supposed to go to KC for a few days and do the shopping thing. After some thought I decided that there wasn't really anything I needed to shop for and working on a race car would be some good therapy for me. So I stayed in Topeka and spent 3 days in our storage unit. The work that I got done in those three days doesn't seem like a lot was done and probably to someone that knows Honda's it is probably something that could of been done a lot quicker. in fact if I knew what I know now about the way Honda builds cars I probably would of finished up in half the time. Anyways, what I did was very minor detail things. The first thing was to finish up the hood pins. I ended up having to cut a tiny hole in the hood skeleton to get everything to fit properly. Once I got everything cut out and secured down the pins were done. Next up were the tow straps. The rules require tow hooks or straps in the front and rear of the car and must be able to be pulled out of gravel traps. This means that bolting the SafeQuip tow straps that Howard provided to the front bumpers. I tackled the front tow strap first. After looking and looking all over the place where I am used to bumpers being bolted to I decided to look at the at the internet and found that I needed to simply remove the turn signal housing and the bolts would be right in front of me. I did this and the bumper with cover came out. I looked at a few places that I could mount the tow strap. I decided that the best place would be close to the center and have the strap route through the grill. This would keep the strap as level as possible when in use. To do this right I needed to drill a hold in the bumper and make some room for a nut on the other end. I did this quite easily. I needed a bolt after this so I went down the road half a mile to Tractor Supply and picked up a grade 8 3/8" bolt and nut along with a lock washer and a couple of flat washers. installed everything and put the bumper back on. While doing this I also cleaned up the mounting of all of the underbody shields. Front done:

Now came time for the rear. However, before I moved on I spent a few minutes to clean up all the dirt and crud that came out of the car when I took the front bumper off. Once everything was cleaned up I moved the car around in its stall and proceeded to remove the rear bumper. Again I spent some time looking where I look for on Toyota's but didn't find anything. Looking closer I found how it mounts and took the bumper off. Figuring out where to mount the rear tow strap was quite easy and there was an opening right in the middle of the bumper. Again I had to drill a hole and make an opening for a nut. I installed a the same kind of bolt and nut as I did the front. Put the rear bumper back on and was done with another small detail but a needed detail.

When I was installing the tow straps I had the car up in the air and the wheels off and noticed that Howard's son had installed some go fast parts already. It looks like there is a set of Koni reds on it along with some Neuspeed Sport Springs. Doing some research on the springs it looks like the springs are supposed to be 275 lb/in in the front and 225 lb/in in the rear for spring rate. I think that we will take them off at some point and check exactly what the spring rate is. We may also do some tuning on the shocks by putting them on our shock dyno. I also noticed there is an after market rear sway bar on it. I haven't measured it yet or know what brand it is but it is nice to know this for when it comes time for setup. I also noticed some rust on the suspension parts. More than likely from all the road salt. To be on the safe side I think that at some point we will take off the suspension parts and clean them up and add a coat of paint to them.

We should have the brackets for the seat mount in the next few days. Once we get that in we can mount the seat and start getting the rest of the required safety items installed into the car.

The Start

The technical services department here at SCCA was given an opportunity to take a 1991 Honda Civic Si from autox trim to road racing trim. The car was mildly setup for SCCA Solo ST class. Howard Duncan (VP Rally/Solo) gave us this opportunity so the tech department can get a better idea of building a vehicle for club racing  for better relation/understanding of our members. Once this car is ready to race and given a logbook we will get the chance to take it to drivers school and get our competition license.

Howards son (Geoff) was the owner of the car and decided he would like to build it into a fun track day car and started stripping the interior. Shortly after doing this an ITC CRX was found and the Civic was put aside. The decision was made that is was no longer needed but probably wouldn't sell in its current trim of no interior and pretty much stock everything else. However, if the proper safety equipment were to be installed it could be turned into an SCCA Club Racing ITA car and would be worth something to sell. So a Kirk Racing bolt in roll cage, Recaro pole position seat, tow hooks, and the other required safety equipment were ordered.

 Above is the car we are working on. All work is being done in the SCCA storage building.

As you can tell in the picture we had already put the cage into the vehicle. At this point the cage is just in the car. No holes have been drilled yet as we are waiting on the seat to be mounted before we proceed with cage install. Here are a few inside pictures of the cage in the vehicle.

                                                                 

Last night (Nov. 22) Ryan Miles (SCCA Technical Services Assistant) and myself (Brian Harmer, SCCA Solo Technical Specialist) went over to do a little bit of work on the Civic. First task was to install the hood pins. We ran into a few problems and were not able to finish installing the pins. First problem which we over came was the headlight housing. The back of the housing was preventing the nut to hold the pin in to be straight. The end result was bending the metal slightly to allow the nut in properly for the pin to be straight. Next problem was with the hood itself. Where the pin is going through has part of the skeleton on it which makes it very difficult to install the hood hold down. What we have decided to do but were without the proper tool is to cut out the slightest part of the skeleton to help with installation. However, we need to read up on the rules to make sure that is compliant or not. One thing that we did prevail on last night was removing the stickers on the passenger side and hood of the car. Using a hair drier and a steady hand with a razor blade the stickers came right off. Of them all only one left some sticky residue on the vehicle but nothing a little heat, patience and goo gone wont fix.

With Thanksgiving in a couple of days there probably wont be much work on the car the rest of this week but I expect to get back to working on the car next week. The goal next week will be to finish the hood pins and get the stickers off of the drivers side of the car.