Spoon collection

So rewind yourself to about the time in the last post when I blew up my CRX at Buttonwillow and stuffed the broken car into the garage before for the next day flight out to Japan. I had a lot on my plate when I got home, i'd have to decide what to do with the motor and who to have machine it, then I would have to yank it out, send it off, get it back, put it in tune it- on and on. I know myself enough to know that that this was going to occupy most of my brain until i had a plan in motion. I also know myself enough to know that I am very focused and when I start one thing ill stick with it until its done and there's precious little room for much anything else until that happens.

Now, just over a week into my trip I get a text from a buddy of mine with a link to an ad that  just popped up on an obscure 'racecars for sale' website. When I go to the link i see its for a car that's already familiar to me, the Spoon Sports CL7 accord euro-R. This has been a personal favorite car of mine since I first day I saw it on track in 04-05 at a Redline Time Attack event at Button. It really captured my attention and not because it was a solid mid pack runner at the event; rather it was a real deal RHD euro-R which is unicorn-rare to see in the states to begin with, but also it's a bonifide race car built by one of the biggest names in Honda tuning during their golden age. Thirdly, and not at all least the Honda Accord (or TSX as its know stateside) is an unsung hero of mine, I love big bodied racecars and the Accord-R has got some great proportions when lowered on some meaty tires, very touring car-like.

  I'd been following this very car, the only one accord R spoon built for their personal racing campaign, for the past 10 or so years or so. In that time it'd popped up for sale twice, once when I was literally living on a couch and had about $35 bucks to my name, and another time about 6 years ago and the seller was asking in the neighborhood of 30k for it *gulp*. Having just bought an NSX at the time I could not justify buying and then caring for another car that wasn't even street legal.

Now here I am in a hotel room in Tokyo staring at the pictures of the car and trying to figure out how to get into contact with the seller. Don't get me wrong I Still have an extremely hard time justifying buying a used racecar that's not street legal, but this time i felt like the planets were aligning. After 10 years of emailing, googling and keeping tabs on a car.. this car.. that i'd only really ever seen in person once; this may be the best chance.

Since I was overseas and it was the other side of the clock for me I had my friend try and get in contact with seller on my behalf. A few hours later he reported back that they guy who posted the ad wasn't the actual seller, but a friend of his that was doing a favor since "he's was not great at email and stuff" after a bit of back an forth I was on the last couple days of my trip. The plan was I would fly home and call the guy who was supposed to be the owner and find out a few things that I was still questioning about.
I wanted to make sure that this was the actual car and not some garage built look-a-like. I was 98% sure but the proof would be in the pudding. I was so excited that i didn't sleep the night before leaving or on the entire flight home.

My Girlfriend had scheduled our trip so that we'd be able to have a couple days to re-acclimate to US time before getting back to work.  The way i looked at this situation was, if all went well speaking with the owner I could use those days to mission a pick up in Northern California.. if i didn't sleep. Perfect.

Once we landed and got back to the house I reread up on the car and called the owner. Nikki is his name, he's a nice guy and answered my questions to the best of his ability. There was quite a bit that he wasn't sure about and explained to me that he got ownership of this car through Opak Racing (North American Spoon distributor for a while between 00-07) Opak rented shop space from Nikki and he ended up acquiring a few cars from them when they went out of business.  This meant he was around through the cars time in the states but was only tangentially connected to it at the time so he couldn't be specific about date and such. After he took ownership around 08  him and his team campaigned it a few NASA series.
 
   After speaking to him about the car I was sufficiently convinced that this was worth a drive up and check out in person. So, that same day, having got off of the plane and already not having slept for 30 some hours, I hooked up the trailer for the next mornings departure. The plan was to get some sleep and leave in the morning time, but it quickly became apparent that sleep was not gunna happen so i figured I may as well be driving instead of laying in bed and piled into the truck and began the 7 hour tow-trip up the 5 freeway

wake up call

 On the drive i was thinking, "this will be worth it if"
A.) The car is in overall great condition.
B.) The car is is a bit shabby condition but all the paper work etc are present.

For me the value in the car is its connection to the builder, Spoon Sports, race wins and the list of famous drivers and events that it was in. Secondary value would be the parts and car itself. If I were to remove the connections, race wins and only looking at it as another home built TSX- the cost would be WELL under the asking price.

After a drive that felt like eternity we finally arrived at the place, I parked the trailer (not as easy as it sounds in San Francisco) and we walked up to meet Nikki and see the car. I knew I was in the right place when we opened the door to this.

A quick introduction and a walk around the back and there she was, oh man it was a cool sight to see. A real deal racecar sitting among the standard run of the mill Toyota Vans and Nissan commuter cars. It looked even more brash with the eye galling Spoon Sports livery. 

Someone had added a wing that didn't belong, and there were a few other things that were changed but i could see sticker residue spelling out BF Goodrich on the dash board and also make out a few other tell tail signs that this was indeed the car that I'd been eyeing on for so many years.

I was able to match some race damage to the bumpers and front right fender to some pictures that I had on my phone from the 25h of Thunderhill. The car itself was all there but had certainly seen some better days. Right away I started to see where wires had been tapped for power and gauges had been jostled around, some of the interior switches were missing and only the holes where they once were remained. Overall body had clearly been through many, many 24 hour race bumps and grinds.

I did a quick compression test to verify the motor was solid and gave it all a once over up on the lift to check from frame separation or damage. Again, it was used, but everything looked straight as an arrow.

Nikki showed me some of the trophy's they had won with the car. He is a very warm and honest guy, a real pleasure to deal with.

So after looking at the car for a couple hours we started to discuss what we had touched on over the phone, the paperwork. When Opak Racing disbanded and left the cars to Nikki they had also apparently left a couple of office rooms filled with paperwork. Among sales receipts and all manner of other things in them were supposedly the log books for the domestic races the car had competed in. This was a major point of sale for me, I had seen the car, and it was far from perfect but i had verified that it was THE car i was after. As far as I was concerned the last remaining thing was to get some "Official" proof in the form of a NASA logbook that stated that Spoon Sports had campaigned this car. This seems redundant, as i was already satisfied of this but having them would go far in the future if I ever decided to enter the car in a Historic racing series or a 'classics' touring car event. 

Nikki understood this and told me that he would have one of his guys start to go through the rooms looking for them. By now the 53 hours of no sleep started to catch up with me and i was feeling it. I let them know that I would be staying in the area and to let me know if they found anything. If so, i'd come back and we could strike a deal, with that we left to go find a bed.

After calling around SF for a hotel that'd be able to accommodate a truck and trailer and having come up empty, I made the executive decision that we were going to truck it down to Monterey Bay and stay at the Portola Hotel that way we could turn this into a mini-vacation so if this whole trip was a bust as far as the Spoon car, it wasn't all for not. Also since this was the few days before the Montery Historics the chances of seeing some cool cars that had made it up early was pretty good.  

We made the 2 hour drive back down south to the Montery Peninsula and checked in and ate. By now i was officially loopy and had been awake for something like 56 hours straight. As we limped back to the hotel room from dinner my phone rang and it was Nikki. He had good and bad news. The bad was his guy couldn't find the log books. The good news was he had already called NASA West coast office and requested duplicates of a few of the key races. I knew this was an option all along, if the logs were no longer around, but I was still really hoping to have the originals. I took this preemptive action on his part as a sign that Nikki understood that I was serious about the car and that he was doing everything he could to help the sale along. This 'quick update' call turned into an almost two hour conversation where we both let the other know where he stood. I was serious and I had funds and a trailer. He was serious but was also selling something that he was emotionally attached too. I had to remind him in the nicest way that I would pay a fair amount, even over what market would dictate, but i wasn't going to up my offer biased on his attachment to the car. After speaking about my plans for the car Nikki understood that I wasn't going to tear the car apart and sell it off, rather my goal was to restore it and enjoy it for what it was for years to come.  After a long while we settled on a price that I feel we both compromised on. 

The plan was to wake up first thing and head back up to SF and finish the sale.

After a trip to the bank and some last min pictures it was time to get it on the trailer and start the long journey home. 

Nikki the man, proud previous owner.

ThunderHill 25h trophy's 04-06 

Loaded up and grinning like an idiot

 It was a long haul back to Southern California but I would look in the rear view and get stoked every time I saw the blue hood and Spoon logo looking back at me.

unloaded and in the driveway for the first time

 The next day I got to work cleaning up odds and ends and documenting what I had on the car

spoon sway

spoon links

Ohilins triples

Spherical pivot bushings

Spherical camber arms

Huge spoon brakes

Spoon portmatched TB

Beat-ass F-win radiator

 It was a eye opener too see how a 'real' race car was built, this thing wouldn't be the fastest on an out and out lap, but was designed and built to just crank em out one after another after another. In comparison the CRX is a freaking SPACESHIP.

This is where i began the arduous process of deciding how much i want to 'restore' the car. I want it to maintain its character and race patina at the same time fix things and do a mechanical refresh. This is a very fine line to walk, how do you honor all its history at the same time as restoring it to a specific period in time? The reality is you really can't unless you pick a date and say "im going with this, if it was not on the car then its not going to be on the car now"  After going back and forth and back and forth about this- I decided that i'm going to make the car how *I* want it. I'm not going to change anything drastically or put anything on it that was never there, but i'm not going with a 'snapshot in time' approach. My plan is to pay homage to its entire history and not overly stress out about the timeline.

  First and foremost for me the goal has always been to maintain is track functionality, which out-of-the-box means that upgrades to safety is exempted from any time period, newest safest and most current technology trumps anything.

First, I pulled off the wing that came on the car. It only raced with a large style GT wing in one off races in 2008, and it wasn't even the wing that came on the car when i bought it.

Second, I pulled off all the stickers that were new additions so I could see what I was working with and plan which ones I'd need to make or find.

already looking better

Out of the gate it was apparent that the head lights had been swapped at some point with some USDM amber corner marker TSX lights. The euro-R lights have clear corners and the parabelum in the HID are set up for Right Hand Drive streets. I would need a pair of those.  Also I found that many of the clips and reinforcement brackets were either bent or completely missing causing misalignment of body panels, I had to hunt these down one by one and match them up to Euro-R accord Part numbers to see if they were any different.

Euro R headlight from Japan

When i got the car its wheels were held on my an assorted mismatch of OEM and after market lugnuts. I bought Work steel lugs as a replacement. These will be swapped out every 3 or 4 years as a precaution like i do with all my lugs. The hubs also have OEM studs in them, which i thought is weird and funny. I guess whatever works..

This Spoon Sports steering wheel was more of a knee-jerk purchase but a Spoon Sports car should have a Spoon Sports steering wheel. It did for most of its life, i think it walked off the car sometime in 2007..

 The hood, aside from being a bit wrinkled and damaged after flying up on track, was missing its hood trim garnish and the front grille was missing the Euro R badge

Since my one car garage at this time was full of a disassembled CRX my buddy came in clutch and offered up his garage to store the CL7 until i figure out a more permanent solution. I swapped out the 17" Konigs that were on the car when i bought it with some Regamaster EVO Monsters that i had in my storage, they were, after all sold as Spoon sports SW88 wheels in the 15" size. Kinda the same, i guess,  I have to say the car looks AWESOME with them on.

Swapped out the front headlights with the Euro R correct ones.

 Also re-wired the PIAA HID ballasts correctly, and modified the new headlight housings to accept them. Good GOD they are bright. The car is still missing the fog lights that it had run with most of its racing career, this bumper was swapped on in 08 before the 2008 touring car season (which it won). All the wiring guts are still there, but the loom has been hacked to shit with spliced clips. I want to rebuild everything from scratch before adding them back in so i'll wait to do this until I can get the car somewhere where I can completely disassemble it and leave it apart a while I work on it.

 Next up was to crack open the motor to verify that its what i was told it was. Sure enough its a 2007 spoon built FD2 type R motor. Its a newer motor that didn't come origionally in the CL7 but has a bit more power and compression. Its also a bitch to get an ECU and oil pan baffle for.

head looked very clean, you can see the port marks. 

The humps right next to the cam lobes are tell tail of FD2 type R cams. this is THE big daddy 2.0 K series motor to have.

Although its not the motor that the car shipped from japan with- I also didn't at all expect it to have the original. To put a bit of perspective to this you gotta think a single 24 hour race can be the equivalent of pretty much driving across the United States... at 9k RPM's.... And this car has done 8 of them as well as countless other seasons and one off races.

 The one thing it is missing from the FD2 type R is the FD2 civic's bad ass RSP intake manifold. The one that came on the car is the RBC and likely from the original motor. I had and RSP on my DC5 RSX and it was awesome. Still deciding on if I want to find another one and swap it out. Ill make the call when i get to the point of figuring out a tune for the car.

After a engine detail, took everything apart so I could understand what I would need to plan for. while it was apart we cleaned the hell out of it.

 Next up was verification that the bottom end was also FD2 type R as well. I also wanted to check if it had and oil baffle. By now I had started to form plans to drive the car at the next HFF event, since the CRX was down with a blown motor and I was still in the points chase i figured id kill a few birds with one stone and drive this on track to see what other little gremlins it may have as well as getting some back marker points at the event.

So now I knew it was slated for track duty the first thing was first; to make sure the car was ready and if not get busy fixing it.

After cracking the oil pan off the car it was confirmed that it did not have an oil pan baffle. This was sort of expected because the oil pump location on the FD2 motor alone makes is different from all other K's, this is a sort of one-off oil pan design that not many company's make oil pan windage trays for. 

After thinking about it I decided to seal it all back up and over-top the oil. It would be fine for now, god knows how many other countless races its done without one, one more HPDE event at 6/10th wasn't going to kill it.

The next big step to get it ready for the track-- and to keep it from making my buddies garage reeking like gas was to rebuild the fuel system. 

We removed the tank and bladder and marked off the routing to the swirl pot. 

this says 'this way forward' in Mandarin 

Fill plate before service

Now that the tank was out and empty we cleaned and scrubbed all the places that were impossible to get too with it in. You can see the penetration marks from the mandated cage redesign with NASA in 2005. They had to move the rear mounting plates to be flat to the strut towers instead of attaching them to the top of the speaker tray area as they were. I think this was done around the same time the floor bar triangulation was moved to the rear passengers seat hump. To do this they also had to get rid of the e-brake lever. I'm going to figure out way to reinstall a rear e-brake locker somehow soon to help when towing and storing the car 

FIA cert expired in 2013 

 After a few calls to FuelSafe and speaking with a rep, they told me to carefully inspect the bladder for wear, if it passes inspection and is still water tight they said it'd be fine to run, it just wont pass FIA scrutineering, which is fine by me. I'm going to perhaps spring for a new bladder at some point but for the next while while I draw up real plans for restoration this one will do.

rinsed and drying.  

New fuel filter, you can see in the before pics the one that was in the car was installed upside down.  :/

You can see here I elected to rebuild all of the stainless hoses to. For this i used specialty fuel stainless hoses with an inner layer that will not let them 'breath' or 'out-gas' like the old ones. I found the exact heat shrink and re cut everything to the exact specifications so it looks identical, just with new, safer stuff.

detail of hoses. 

helicopter taped all the weld seams on the upper and lower of the bladder box. 

All clean, de-varnished and ready for the re installation of the foam and lift pumps. 

New cork gasket and hoses to the low draw lift pumps. also sealed the bulkheads with fuel safe gasket sealer 

After re installation. All the hoses hooked up and re routed correctly. You can see on the far left the FRP sits in the trunk and next to it I added a new vent canister.

I am not at all happy with the fuel pump wiring, but it would have to wait until i would have a chance to do it all correctly from scratch.  This is how it was wired for god know how long.

I also cut and re installed some new heat proof air tubing to the OEM air box. It draws air from the lower left intake duct in the bumper.

PIAA HID visible here

A part that I had been trying to find since getting the car were the specific brand of number plate lighting that illuminated the car number during night time portions of endurance races. They were both missing from the car when i got it but the holes remained and I had pictures of the lights i found on some obscure flickr page. It was just a matter of looking up every conceivable light on the internet to visually match them up.

After about 60 hours spend specifically on this search i finally came across the exact match. It turn is that the 'Racing number lights" were actually the tail plate light that you'll find on a Range Rover Defender. I was so glad to order a set and never have to think about this again.

Defender light? you bet. 

In the flesh. 

installed, thank god. Not yet wired though. 

I also got tired of the high-tech "Racing broom handle' that was used to prop the hood open. I had it bump out of the way and got a nasty crack on the head by the heavy ass metal hood. Im glad that my shoulder was in the way to or I legit could have gotten a concussion. Never wanting to take that chance again, or perhaps losing a finger tip one careless night I looked into an OEM hood prop. It turns out that due to the mounting of the air jack lines the provision for the hood prop is blocked. After looking around for a solution online I decided to install these gas shock props, they are undercover looking enough to not draw attention to themselves and are well out of the way when working under the hood.

 I also has SPA inspect and refill the on board fire suppression bottle. It still had 'green' pressure but was old and mucky on the inside. There were also a number of internal part upgrades that this older unit was able to get retrofit. You can see the whole inside of the car was scrubbed and cleaned as well.

Id been sitting on a pair 17x8 TecnoMagniso magnisum/aluminum racing wheels for years, only recently I happened on another pair to complete my set. Once they arrived I  immediately sent them off to powder coat so I could use them on the Spoon car.

I got them back the day before the track and made the last min decision to remount the BF Goodrich R-comps that the car had come on. This was a dicey proposition as the date stamp on the tires were mid 2008.  I figured id be throwing them away anyways so I may as well see if they had any life left in the at all after all I wasn't actually planning on going that fast.

just before loading the car up 

In this time I had also changed the Recaro Hans seat for a newer one that was still in cert date that had just come out of the NSX and swapped in new 6pt harnesses. I also resealed the windows. added some misc weatherstripping and window molding, pulled a couple dents, cleaned and aligned the radiator, adjusted and resealed air ducting, valve adjust, flushed some fluids, added new FIA/SFI approved roll cage padding and reattached the chin spoiler.

After the mad scramble to get everything done in time it was nice to get to the track a day early and be able to catch the car in the sunset. 

I still had no idea how the car would do on the track, I hadn't had time to check the alignment or verify the tune on the ECU. Also, just driving around the paddock it felt like maybe remounting these old ass tires may not have been the best call.  :[]

This track day happened to be running CCW Buttonwillow 13. This is the opposite direction that im used to driving this track and to top it off I hadn't driven a RHD car in a while. I would be shifting with the opposite hand going backward on a super familiar track, i was hoping that they would both cancel each other out and anxiously grid up.


Oh and it was also like 100+ degrees out.


The first session I was really just trying to stay out of the way and feel what the car was like. It had a dead spot in the tune from 1000 to 4500rmp where it would feel like it was lugging around sandbags. Though, once it passed the magic number it sprang to life and felt like it was ready to party.
    I could definitely feel the weight of the big sedan being pulled around by a 2.0l motor, its very much a momentum car, moreso even than my CRX; which obviously has a much better power to weight ratio. The steering feel is AMAZING and honestly one of the best parts about the car. Is light, but not too light, and had a TON of feel through the hydraulics.
 Visibility was good, I was sitting up higher than I usually like to since seat bracket id ordered had not showed up in time. I think i'll feel more comfortable being lower down once I get that in. The motor itself gets to redline FAST and I was extremely conscious to not over-rev or mis-shift (i did that once like an idiot)
 The brakes are phenomenal, even though I was only using them up to about 40% of their potential due to the shitty tires i was quite impressed how well the car stopped. Handling was fast and nimble and i could feel that the balance was good. I had a few moments on riverside corner at over a 100mph that required some fast hands and puckered asses not to go off, but I managed to keep it all together. I think most of the reason for that is how used to driving a car with down force i am. Also (speculating here) is that the missing cavity from the relocated gas tank on the bottom of the car is creating a fair amount of rear lift at speed.
 I wasn't 'fast' this day at all (like 8 seconds off pace) but i didn't even care. I was FINALLY driving the car id been lusting after for so many years.

 The car still uses a normal, removable, Honda Key to start. Go figure.

All in all, it was a great first run out with the car. Funny enough it really lit a fire under me to get the CRX back on the track. Keep in mind, All this was happening at the same time as the last blog entry... I had a REALLY busy and expensive few months of car stuff but I'm at the point now where hopefully everything is stable and i can pick and choose what I work on.
Mostly I want to focus on driving this winter season. The Spoon car was put away and has waited patiently for its turn since this track day. I had plans to start the restoration this coming month but unfortunately plans changed last min, and i lost the place I was going to use to work on the car. Not a big deal, it just means that restoration is being put on hold for a little bit longer until i can get it to a place where I can take my time and do things right.
  At the moment there's not really any other track events planned for the CL7 in the immediate future, I want to work a few things out before taking it back out again. I'll touch on all this as it happens but until them its just research research research so I really understand what I have here. The thing that excites me most is the prospect of being able to really take my time enjoy the process for the sake of the process and not so much for its end goal.

 Until next time!