Tweaking the tweaked

So after the last blog post I was just about to take the car back to Church for a tune on the new stock motor. I could have used the "out of the box" Hondata tune for a stock b18 type-R long block but figured i should get it done custom, as there were a few things I'd want to add-on as extras like my data logging switch and a second fuel map for my new Laguna exhaust. 

Pretty straight forward tune this time around- we had to bump some numbers to get the 370cc injectors I still had in the rail to work well with the stock motor but other than that it was a matter of just doing a few pulls, making an adjustment, pull again and clean it up. Overall i'm really happy with the stock motor I got, it made 210 to the hub on the Church dyno (which is notoriously high) so it would probably translate to like 185-190 to the tire on a Mustang dyno. The exhaust extension didn't really require a huge difference in the fuel maps. Some minor trim adjustments and I was able to make the same HP with it on as without. so really the weight is the only penalty. It was quieter and less sharp with the added exhaust canister, im going to do a few test runs at a local track with it on to make sure everything plays nicely before heading all the way up to Laguna Seca while crossing my fingers that it all works.   

After the tune was done I signed up for the next trackday a week away and at Streets. It would be a perfect shakedown day because Streets Of Willow with Speed Ventures always has a low turn out, perfect to get used to the car with the new 'slower' motor. 

First session felt slow, but not because of the motor. The car had bad understeer issues and I knew right away that it was most likely the tires. I did a second session with no improvement and decided to swap the tires front to back. After some prodding i decided to let Art take the car out for a lap or two on the one condition that he take it VERY easy. The tires were ok but in no condition to set a record lap I made sure he understood he was just to do 4 or 5 laps at 40% just to get the feel of the car.

 My Mistake. Two laps into the session I watch as Art totally biffs it off of turn 4 full lock up dive over the edge of the track. I was disappointed and pissed (more so at myself) that i'd let someone drive my car despite my better judgement, and he end up tossing it off the tarmac unassisted harder than anything that i've ever done and it was painful to watch. The lap back to the pits was marked by a trail of golfball sized rocks and sand pouring out from under the engine off the splitter and wheels. 

The shunt ended up tweaking the splitter mount cracking some carbon and tearing the fender mounting off the apron. Needless to say, that was the last time i'm ever letting anyone drive my car again, Its just not worth it. I pulled the car back up on the trailer and put it back into the garage while I figured out what to do with it. 

splitter tweakage

That coming Thursday-Friday was Super Lap Battle for Global Time Attack. I took some time off work and headed out to help some friends who were running in the event. Elton from Raceline was driving a new 2018 CTR in the enthusiast class and Cory with the Prelude in unlimited class.  Elton and I were dialing in tire pressures and getting faster and faster. Someone protested to the steward and at the end of the first day he was bumped up into Street class. He's not the car owner of the car-which is one of the rules to compete in enthusiast class.  Rules are rules and that was a solid call but that meant he was now competing with some much faster cars/drivers.

These are starting to grow on me a bit

But I only like them in black because it hides all the ugly fake vents on the bumpers.

 At the end of the event Elton's driving ended up taking home second place honors on the Street FWD class, which was a good placement for a stock car with some so-so tires on it.

After spending two days at the track I was sort of reinvigorated. I decided i'd want to do a couple things on the CRX that i had been thinking about for a while. Don't get me wrong, the damage to the front wasn't so catastrophic that i couldn't bang and bend things back into place do an alignment and run it, but it was just damaged enough that I could easily decide to try something new instead of just 'fixing' it. I called over to Chris at Wisecraft and asked if he was down to give my ideas a shot- he had me bring it by. 

   A couple weekends later I made it out to Chuckwalla Raceway for some hot laps in the CR. On Saturday I drove a session CCW and Sunday did the whole day Clockwise. I really-really like Chuckwalla, the type of driving required to go fast there is a lot different than our normal tracks, its all about smooth and feel, how much you can get on the gas when, and how little you need to brake going into a corner. I actually like it MUCH more than Buttonwillow CW13 these days.

After the two morning sessions I was pulling back out for my third of the afternoon and heard what sounded like metal on metal skidding. I pulled off and checked; and sure enough my front pads were super low and the inner pads were non existent. The noise I had heard was the backing plate squeaking across the rotor. After asking around and pretty much resigning my fate to driving the 4 hour 45 min trek back to LA with only my parking brake I found a guy pitted way in the back with an s2000 that had a box of OEM pads that he just gave me. I begged him to let me give him some cash but he refused any sort of payment. I was over the moon stoked for this guys kindness.

Porterfield R4-S with 6 track days on the front

When I got home I decided to use the open garage spot to put the CR in the air and to pull apart the brackets and pins of the caliper to clean and re-grease. They see some pretty extreme heat and its always a good idea to check these components on any s2000's that see track time. Sure enough mine were getting dry and gummy.

These were clean when i put them on 4 months ago.

After realizing that the inside pad was wearing faster than the outside pads I decided to remove the backing plate 'splash guard' off the rotor. This is always the first thing I do on any other track cars but had figured that my air-scoop-hole-saw method would've been enough. I got some heat tape and wrapped the ball joints to keep the radiant heat off the rotor face from baking the rubber boots brittle. I'm going to have to add these to the list of things that I frequently check after track days, though with my NSX i've never had a problem once they were correctly heat wrapped.

The inside of the rotor had some drag marks from the backing plate but nothing that would catch a finger nail and cause me any worry. I bought some new R4-S pads and bed them into the old rotors, everything is right again.

Right around this time my corner scales showed up. I was excited to use them and with the CRX off at fabrication and the S2000CR still up in the air I took the opportunity to break out the scales.

Smachancy

The plastic bags under the wheels in the picture below have a thin layer of grease in them to allow the tires to 'scrub out' when lowering it down off the jacks. Lowering a car directly onto scales with sticky tires can create binding in the rubber suspension components, the greasy bag trick is an old one used by racers to allow for some slip and slide of the tire.

add an extra pound for all the dirt and rubber covering the car.

Amazingly enough the CR has perfect 50/50 front and rear distribution and cross weights. That is amazing to see in a factory car.

After the scales I gave it a good wax and polish while waiting on the CRX to be finished.

After a few weeks with the CRX at the shop I headed over to pick it up. Chris once again killed it. After seeing how tweaked everything was I decided that rather than bending it back into place we should just start from scratch, once the decision was made it was easy to see what would and could be changed. The OEM structure is relativity strong but its not built in a way that makes attaching anything to it convenient, a lot of space is used by brackets and mounts that work well with an all factory set up but not so well once you start requiring more (and stronger) mounting points or space to make things play nice with each other.  Once the decision is made to start from scratch it frees up better ways to do things. In addition to the new splitter he built an under tray for the motor to connect the splitter with the flat bottom of the car, the plan was then to v-mount a custom radiator with extraction ducting. 

quasi-flat bottomed. Good enough for now anyways.

under engine cover

Splitter bracket V1 the posts slide into socketed arms welded onto the traction bar. this is a very stable platform with easy install and removal. Lookin at you Markos.

You can see the changes made to the front of the car here, after removing the front radiator support  Chris bent and welded a bash bar. I ended up needing a custom sized radiator built to fit under the bumper skin that would allow us to lean it forward, this space that was previously filled with the bumper beam but that was now gone. leaning it forward did a couple things, First it gave more clearance to the header which on the old set up was about 3/4 an inch away from the red hot exhaust runner.  Secondly, it allowed the extractor vent to span the whole radiator, where as before, I was only able to have it extract from half. For the bottom Chris mounted tabs that allowed him to mount ducting. The radiator itself is mounted via welded bungs at the end tanks.

Ducting progress

Now that I was bringing the car home I would need to do a few things to get it back on track. I would have to plumb up the radiator with -16 AN water lines and re-sort the routing for oil and new overflow line. Since Chris also had to move the shock reserviors and oil filter when chopping the radiator support off, he refitted them onto the new structure along with an oil cooler, I also had him seal off the bumper on the induction side. 

For the new main water lines I decided to use non abrasive Nylon/Kevlar 'Starlite' hose. I cut each to fit the new outlet flanges on the radiator and got rid of the old silicone hose and T-bolt clamps set up. They did the job but were a royal bitch to get on and off the car.

new shock canister location, yet to be gold foiled for heat.

Some Permex aluminum grease on the thread ends go a long way to ensure that you don't gall or snap a fitting while installing into the hose ends. I also use the aluminum grease on the threads of the fittings themselves to make them easier to get started by hand. 

Now that I had the main water lines on, I built my overflow line that connects to the other side of the radiator and wraps around the back of the motor to the water tank/filler (I'm missing pictures of that at the moment but ill take some and get them up here eventually)

Next order of business was connecting the engine block oil outlet to the remote filter then the filter to the cooler and back to the block. Like I said Chris relocated the remote filter to the fender side of the frame rail so I could more easily get to it to change the oil. When it was on the header side of the rail I would typically have to drain and remove the radiator to get wrench access on the reusable canister. Now that its here I only need to pull off the bumper for easy access. Because the relocation turned the canister 180* the inlet/outlet ports would need some new fittings to point the hoses in the right direction, as it turns out this actually made the routing a bit easier than if they were on the 'correct' sides.

hose rests on the canister body to support some weight

I used standard an10 stainless lines but heat shrunk some thick durable Ray-chem sleeves around them for a bit of extra protection on the exposed hoses at the front of the car; and to help insulate the hoses passing by the alternator  +12v post.

I also bent an extra bracket onto the oil cooler and hose clamped it to the front bar for some added stability. 

You can see the new headlight shapes that Chris had to bend to reattach things like the hood pins and light covers. He also had to remount the blow-by canisters. 

Now with the  extractor ducting in place I needed to rework the hood so that I could seal everything off and make it look pretty again. 

Full size cut out for radiator exhaust air venting

 For the front faring I used some 45* drycarbon I had, it was perfectly tall enough to cover the hole in the hood from the direction of travel This will create a low pressure zone to draw the air out of the ducting at speed. For the sides I used 90% angle in dry carbon to create drop downs for the hood to connect to the top of the radiator and ducting. The more sealed this can be the more efficient the everything will work. I had to leave gaps for the PCV lines running to the catch cans but i'm thinking about ways to seal that off at a later date. 

 Finally after refilling the oil and the water and starting the car up I found that I had a small pin hole leak in the t-stat outlet where the AN bung was welded on. Welding a 25 year old part that has been baking in coolant is always gunna be a risky proposition. Some times the gunk in the metal pops and sputters creating a non water tight weld. I called Chris to let him know and resigned myself to driving around town and trying and find a tig-welder working on a Saturday that could patch this up for me. I was in a bit of a rush because I had an event the next day back at Streets Of Willow. Instead Chris told me that he would have a new one at my house the next morning.

Pin hole at the top of the silver ridge.

Sure enough as promised he found a water neck, rewelded a -16 bung and delivered it an hour north of his shop, super awesome!

Freshly delivered on left, leaky one in center and a K-tuned neck that I was been waiting on ORB fittings for on far right. The K-tuned t-stat housing will go on the car sometime in the future when the coolant is conveniently drained, no real reason to do it before i have it all apart for another reason.


For now i'm using the one Chris dropped off, its got a broken sensor being used as a plug, but its water tight and works as it should. I normally place clean dry blue shop towels under the fittings on first warm up, they act as as great leak indicator as the water spots turn a dark blue and are easy to spot.

 Once everything was on and bled we loaded up the trailer and the next morning headed out to SOW. This time the car had new Toyo-RR tires and all the fresh new front panels. I didn't have time to corner balance or align the car but figured it would be close enough. One of the main focuses was to run the motor hard and data log (as it was only the second day on the new engine) I knew I was down on power compared to the motor that I'd taken out, so I was basically just rd.2 of seeing how everything would feel.

On this occasion I had my older brother with me for the first time. He took to helping gather data like a duck to water, tire pressures, temps, notes - he was on it. This was one of the only times I wished there was a passenger seat in my car so i could give him a ride along. 

As a bonus, Sean made it out to for a shakedown in his beast civic. It was a perfect chill track day, I had no events to run and it was nice and cool with uncrowded sessions. 

The first session out I knew was going to be my fastest. I took the first 4 laps to warm up and scrub in the new tires, after that it was game time. The motor felt GREAT and the mechanical grip was on a level above what I had ever felt in this car. Even though I had less horsepower than before I immediately cracked a 1:24:1 on my first 80% lap. Next lap was a 1:23.8- after that 1:23.7, 1:23.6, 1:23.3 and finally a 1:23.1. I could have easily stayed out on track and cranked out a 1:22 (and should have) but every time I came around i'd see my brother waiting at start finish waiting to take temps/pressures and drop the PSI like we'd discussed. When I came in the car had awesome balance, I could flick it into oversteer to help get around the tight stuff but it still felt solid through the back esses. tire pressures were 38 fronts and 37 rears. I had previously thought that these tires liked a lower 34/32psi- and that's where i'd instructed my brother to drop them to when I pulled in. After he made the PSI adjustments and took tire temps I got back on track, immediately on my reentry i could feel the tires roll over and under steer. I did one lap like this and pulled it in, at least now I know how high i should run them.

 I was over the moon- a 1:23.1 is a NA FWD record for CCW and only .1 off the record overall NA FWD for Streets that was set clockwise. Pretty cool seeing how the car that set it has double the HP and TQ on 17x9.5" wheels.

Right after the 1:23.1 session. 

The following sessions I managed to stay in the 1:23 range consistently, getting as low as a 1:23.4 but not bettering my morning session time. I know that its only a matter of time before I break the record by a few tenths which will complete one of the major goals I've had for this car.

treated to an amazing fire sunset on the drive home

After getting it back and taking things apart for inspection I realized that I would need to build skid plates for the new splitter, it hung a bit lower than before and under hard braking or high speed cambered corners the car would lean and rock sufficiently enough to drag the alumilite on the pavement.

The front strake mounting points were almost ground completely off.

And here you can see damage from where I had caught the splitter on rough patches of pavement, which are all over California tracks.

After looking around for something that would fit the bill  for a skid plate I ordered some 1/8" Teflon impregnated sheets from Mcmastercarr I cut them to shape and affixed them to the splitter.

Using some awesome advise from Snail Performance Markos i picked up some cup washers and low profile allen heads. I used a dremel to cup out the Teflon plates so the washers sit recessed in the flat skid surface.

in progress of Dremeling the dish this one had another 1/8th to go

 Once I had the skid plates Dremeled I affixed them to the splitter using 1/4" hardwear and nylock nuts to keep them from coming loose. These will potentially take a lot of abuse and wanted to make sure they didn't give up and fall off half way through a lap. For the center skid plates I counter sunk the screw head 1/16th into the 1/8 inch plate and affixed them with standard washers and nuts.

I also swapped some of the bracket hardware that was damaged and scraped with some dished washers and low pro allens to.

A couple weekends later was the 2017 HFF final round. We had a lot of cars coming out and I was really excited to see what the CRX was capable of at Buttonwillow.  I got there early Friday and set up the car for what was going to be a double weekend Saturday/Sunday event. 

Cory's and my car hard parked the night before. 

 First session of the day I get on track behind a bunch of slower cars, it took a few laps to get up to temps and speed. After the 4th lap I had a bit of space and managed to run 3 1:56's back to back with the fastest (and a new PB) being a 1:56.3. I was blocked by a slower car going into the sweeper so i know there is more time in it, possible a mid 1:55 or :54 on a cold morning with a clear track. I'm pretty astounded i've been able to better my previous times in a car with some 20hp less, best part is the OEM motor didn't skip a beat.

During the second session I was on a flyer and going though Riverside (which is the fastest part of the track) and I suddenly felt a huge whap, whap, whap, whap... it sounded like my entire car was falling apart around me.  I had other drivers behind me so I couldn't jump on the brakes and had to coast it about 80-90mph until I could get out of the way and limp back to the pits. As I pulled in I realized that I had broken the mounting brackets on the splitter strakes and the splitter was slapping alternately off the ground and the bottom of my bumper. After it cooled for a bit we jumped on pulling the splitter off and  repairing the mounts as best we could with what was on hand.

Cory luckily comes prepared for anything and happened to have a cut off disk, some misc aluminum and a vice. 

 Out of which we were able to cut some 90's and a flat plate for the bottom, we drilled some holes and used some 1/4 20 allens that we had and mounted it all up.

It ain't pretty but it did the job.

 I went out for another session but a couple laps in I got the familiar low fuel shudder and pulled it in for a refill, since I was also signed up for the next day I wasn't in a hurry to turn every lap. I wanted to save the car for the next morning when I knew it would be the fastest.  Also, since it was the HFF finials Jared and I had to get busy organizing awards for competitors of a hard fought season. After the awards ceremony while sticky and soaked in champagne, I decided to swap my tires front to back before the next days PB attempt.

Some awards I won for the season

It was down low 40 degrees in the garage and pretty late when I started. Once I had the wheels off I found that I was pissing CV grease all over the bay from an axle boot. 

After being prodded by Nick to swap in a spare axle he had I decided that it was to cold and late, and I would just fix everything at home.

I put the car back together so I could drive it up onto the trailer and ended up just hanging out watching and helping friends the next day. 

Once I got home I pulled the car apart and inspected how everything held up. My skid plates definitely got some use, a little to much use from the looks of it. After curiously reinstalling the splitter on the car and taking some measurements I found my suspicions were correct and it was hanging down about .75 of an inch lower up front. I didn't recall this being the case before the event so i'm starting to think that I'd tweaked the mounting points when the front struts broke and it was thwapping itself to death. Now bent it was sitting static with permanent angle of attack likely getting much worse when at speed. This is something i'd have to remedy before heading back to the track.

wear marks on my skid pucks

My billet water neck and t-stat fittings finally showed up. like I said, I'm going to hold off and swapping these in until I have a good reason to put them in. I do like the way it all looks though.

After pulling everything off and draining the trans I found that the whole big mess from the axle was cause by a tiny little slit that somehow appeared in the boot. I think that I may have overheated the grease inside the boot causing it to swell and burst through from the inside. I have seen this before.  

Furthering my suspicions, it was hot enough under the engine cover to start to melt the shiftier arm polyurethane bushing.  I defiantly would need a way to pull some of the heat off the header in the future. In addition to a vent of some sort that would need to be made I cut a heat blanket out of some thick heat fabric i got from some old firemen gloves. I neglected to snap a picture but it wraps around the bushing and is affixed using the threaded hole in the trans on the right of the picture below and a metal ziptie.

After talking to Chris over at Wisecraft and explaining to him what had happened and how I thought we'd need more bracing on the splitter mount he agreed. We scheduled a time for me to bring the car over to him for a rework. Meanwhile I ordered some more (and better) aero extractors for the front fenders and some splitter diffusers that I wanted to incorporate into the new splitter that we'd be building.

taller extractors cut and mounted

                Bumper off taking rough measurements for the new splitter diffusers.


After getting everything in my hands I decided the new splitter diffusers would likely make some significant down force and decided to remove the canards from the front bumper in an attempt to reduce unwanted drag. Now that I was limiting myself to 200hp in this stock motor for the next season or so I was going to everything I could to help it along without adding and extra power.

I put the car in its race set up on the scales (wheel weights over the hubstand weight being adjusted for by the scale brain) and it topped out at 2033lbs without me in it, half a tank of gas. Heavier than i thought but still not to shabby.

Getting the car high enough to get on the levelers with JRZ's suspension is not an easy proposition, the shocks have so much droop capability, I have to use a ratchet strap as a limiter and compress the unweighted suspension clear the scale pads with Hubstands on.

I bought some weight plates off of Craigslist to account for my body weight and locked down the steering wheel. Once I had a pretty good approximation of the car with me in it the goal is to set the corner weight, rake and cross weight to be as close to 50/50 as possible. This will ensure the car is turning the same to the left as it is to the right. Also optimizing grip by using each tire as evenly and as possible. Once these weights are set and heights are dialed in you must re align to get back to square. This just takes time and focus to get right, but the more you do it the faster you get at it. 

I was able to get 50/50 cross weights (plus 10lbs for the jack pads I had on the car) at this point just putting my cell phone on the wing would change the percentages.

cross weight percentages right front to left rear

Left front to right rear

 With a 61/38% Front to Rear weight bias and the rear wing and the front splitter contributing to loads at speed it would have something like 45/55%. This is something i can figure out with some simple math; Wingspan+cord+cambered surface+speed

  and it will yield pretty accurate downforce numbers, but 

it gets a bit more complicated when dealing with a raked flat bottom car acting as diffuser. Also figuring out the moment or 'center' of mass of the downforce would get fuzzy. For now i'm just going to make the changes that make sense and see how it feels.  

61% front

61 front bias, not to bad for a front wheel drive car

 ALWAYS KEEP NOTES

Alignment done.

A package from 4piston racing showed up and in it was the replacement head I'd bought for my 'race' motor. The idea was to use this head core in place of the Portflow one that kept chewing up the retainers. Sometime around the oem motor swap I'd decided that I was going to assemble a 'race' motor  outside the car while I was driving on the stock type-R. This would mean no down time, and if I were to hit some issues with 97 type-r motor i'd have a new one on hand to swap in.  

Intake side of the head. 5-axis CnC a machined

 I also go the Skunk2 Street ultra intake manifold port matched to the intake side of the head.

The delrin gasket needed a little Dremel massaging to fit perfectly. Kinda annoying to have to do this but whatever, its not that hard.

Before

After

Now with everything matched up it will work as intended at its peak flow. I also bought a 74mm throttle body and all the accessories. Stock size is 62mm so the extra 12mm will allow more air to flow into the intake manifold, I'll obviously need to get a new tune for this stuff to work to potential but that's all part of the game. With these motors its all about getting the air to the motor, the b-series will start to make more and more power up at the top end as long as it can breath.  I'm excited to see how all this goes together and what type of HP numbers it will make. As of right now the new core and longblock with damaged head are off at the RS machine.

Also delivered for the motor and head were a few things I wanted to try. I got some NSX Lost Motion Assemblies shimmed for B series use. They'll replace the piston type ones I have in there now and hopefully go further in solving the issue of the cracking and chipping retainers i'm taking no chances.

Also for ease of swap and so the rotating assembly could get balanced I grabbed another race damper from ATI.

 By now Raxles came back with brand new inner/outter polished cups and joints and brand new repacked boots and grease. These are NOT cheap but if I only have to rebuild them once a year ill be happy.

 Once I had the car back to Chris at Wisecraft for the splitter fix we discussed ways of incorporating the new diffusers into the rebuilt bracket. After a few days Chris settled on a solution that he was happy with. He ended up entirely rebuilding the hanger portion and tied the diffusers into it, he also reinforced the traction bar portion on the chassis side so there is no longer any flex.

I reinstalled the skid plates from the old splitter and used more cup washers, here's a shot of the diffusers from the bottom.

For the new strake brackets Chris came up with something more substantial to avoid a repeat of what had happened out at Buttonwillow, there are now thick aluminum arms at reach all the way out to the front of the splitter with the strakes attached to the front bar. Chris could stand on this section now with no deflection.  Once i had it back home I panted all the hardware to make it look nice and clean.

I also installed racer tape and foam to the gaps between the bottom of the air dam and the splitter surface. The foam was stuck on the back of the air dam and compresses against the front lip as the splitter is installed. Losing any air around the splitter to cracks and gaps reduces it effectiveness considerably.

I did the same with the diffuser corners to. 

I had brought over some louvers to add to the bottom of the engine shield under the header. Remember these were to extract some of the heat and hopefully prolong the life of the components in close proximity.

Blowing shop air down along the bottom of the extractors creates noticeable suction on the top side. Hopefully this will vent enough heat out the bottom that things will no longer melt. And nice side effect is that the oil temps may actually run a bit lower now that the header wont be baking the oil pan.

Extractors in place. 

  I also had Chris chop and reweld the rear flap struts shorter so I could reduce the AOA. Before it was up at about a 20* angle which was probably OK as long as the diffuser was doing its job- but i'd decided to flatten it out and see. These are all the fine adjustments that you really need a wind tunnel for that i'm just winging, maybe one day.

Chopped and welded

trimmed off the edges and you can see its now almost flat with the back of the hatch. 

After it was laid down to about 5* i bought some clear acrylic 1" 90* and cut it to use as a gurny flap.

 So thats it for now. I have a few track days coming up and am curious to get this thing out there and start to feel the differences the changes made to the car. I'm going to Chuckwalla Valley Raceway this weekend where the drag reduction should help lap times quite a bit, hopefully i'll be able to match if not better my back to back 1:59's I got last year with a bigger motor. I've got some more stuff planned for the car in the next couple months that should hopefully made a big differences to. We'll see!