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.
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