So it been crickets around here lately, couple reasons one there was absolutely nothing happening on the corolla to report and two is I was busy with work and building yet another racecar.
"ANOTHER racecar?!" you say? Indeed.
The reality is; a project like the AE86 takes time to do right. It takes even more time when there is nothing happening on it for weeks at a time.
"But you have the NSX" you say? Well yeah, and its fucking awesome. check these out;
These were the last two track days i did in it. Now that the new motor is installed and i refined a couple things i smashed my personal best at and got the record for an NA NSX at both venues. Not too shabby.
The more I drive it and the faster it goes- the less it makes sense from a financial/safety/risk-reward stand point. I don't want too keep beating it up weekend after weekend. its like bringing a Stradivarius out to bar room ho'down jam session night after night; Its awesome and sounds good but probably not the best thing to do to the instrument. This is something I've known for a while and if you read all the way back to the beginning it was that very thought that sparked me looking for something else (the ae86) in the first place.
Linear logic is my specialty, its like the card game 'War'. When you're faced with the same card as your opponent you just have to double down and keep going. This logic applies here too- I don't wanna drive the NSX as much. Solution- buy an ae86. Ae86 is taking too long? solution; buy something else. and so on and so on.
To be entirely frank i'd been tossing around the idea of buying something cheap, easy and Front-engine Front wheel drive for a while now. A good number of my friends are die-hard Honda nuts and all run 1990's range Honda FF cars. Its impossible to argue the logic, cheap, reliable, easy to work on and routinely embarrasses much, much more expensive and 'set up' cars. Another motivation was to fulfill my curiosity about how id stack up in some timed, points based, competitions like vtecclub and HFF challenge. After milling over the idea and having most of my friends try and talk me out of it, i started too really look for something that fit the bill.
The way I justified it to myself was simple: if I were to go off track in the NSX and bend a suspension component it would be a MINIMUM of 5k per corner. If I were to blow another motor it would be a minimum of 12k. And there you have it, I can look at it as an insurance policy that guarantees no harm will come to the NSX- I felt that was worth about 4k too me, so there you have it, 4k budget.
After calling around a few craigslist adds and going to look at some pretty beat cars my friend Yuta told me he knew just the car I should be looking at. After a few quick text messages by the end of our dinner I had an email from someone he knew working at a shop where the owner was trying to sell his old racecar. There was a parts list and some pictures but details were vague.
it said:
1989 CRX SI Time Attack/ Track car
1.8L b18c1 GSR block / b16 civic SI head 190WHP
Type R Intake Manifold
Type R Throttle Body
Stainless Steel 4-2-1 Header
2.5" Exhaust Piping
AEM Fuel Rail
AEM Fuel Pressure Regulator
Blox Stage 2 Cams
Blox Valve Springs
Blox Titanium Retainers
Apex Power FC
YS1 Transmission
ACT Light Weight Flywheel
ACT 4 Puck Unsprung Clutch
ACT Heavy Duty Presure Plate
Type R LSD
Apex EXV Coilovers
Swift Springs 14kg front 12kg rear
Baker Precision Stainless Braided Brake Lines
5Zigen FN0R-F Forged wheels 15x7 +35 (super light 9.92lb)
Nitto NT01 225/45/15
C&R Radiator with surge tank
Setrab Oil Cooler
Remote Oil Filter Relocation
HPS Silicone Radiator Hoses
Sparco Corsa seat (red)
Stock passenger seat
Sparco Steering Wheel
AEM Wideband Air Fuel Gauge
Longacre Oil Temperature Gauge
Longacre Oil Pressure Gauge
Longacre Water Temperature Gauge
AIT Carbon Fiber Hood
Sun Roof delete
Lexus Pearl White paint
1-3/4"DOM 4 point roll cage
Tags are non-op.
attachments:
'Ok, cool' I thought to myself. I mean I've never been into CRX's but this one looks pretty set up and right around the budget at 5k. Factoring in 'smogging' and paying off the non-op and doing a few other things I should have it ready to go on track for around 7k. (I suck at sticking to a budget) After all, worse comes to worse, I can always part it out and make the money back.
Yuta graciously arranged with his buddy a time for me to see it.
When I got there it looked exactly as it did in the pictures, it started right up and idled pretty well. Initial inspection revealed that the rotors were shot, it needed an exhaust and I would certainly want to do something about the gauges and seat that it was coming with. I went to the bank, signed the title over and arranged to drive it to Nitradyne to get the new exhaust made. I was hoping to have it all ready to go for the track even 5 days from then.
Here's a picture Kristian took of me about 2 min after I signed the title.
It took about an hour to arrange everything and get back to HPS where the car was waiting for me to come and take it away. In the meantime the dudes were pulling off the huge side stickers for me (thank god) and finding odds and ends that were to go with the car. By the time I got there the sun was setting and the streetlights were already coming on. Typically this wouldn't be a problem but i quickly realized that there was no steering column switches for headlights or wipers. Undeterred and still in a bit of the exuberant haze that comes with buying a new car I made the executive decision that I was going to drive it the 8 miles back to Nitradyne anyways-- With no headlights. In the dark. With no registration. On shot brakes. No seat belt. No brake lights. Through Baldwin Park of all places.
As potentially bad as things could have gone in so many different ways the car made it with no real issues.
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| Just arrived, harrowing journey |
Wasting no time we threw it up on the lift to game-plan an exhaust and get a better look under the car.
First thing I realized was how sketchy the wheel lug situation was...
They were barely holding on for dear life, its a good thing I was trying too keep the drive low key, I think if I had a chance to 'get on it' the front wheels would have just flown off the car. Yikes.
Another thing I noticed was that the Axles were rubbing on the front forks and looked like they had been for some time. This is something id need to research and address.
The next few days were a mixture of first, trying to figure out what parts were on the car. Second, figure out what car (year/model) said parts came off of. And 3rd, which of those parts needed to be replaced. On top of that I did all the usual stuff I do when I get a new track car, replace the bearings inspect the pads... etc.
It was dirty work, it seemed that the previous owner had put parts on but never really carried out any sort of maintenance to keep everything inspected and clean. I'll admit that I'm OCD about stuff like this so maybe I'm just being too hard on other people. Suffice to say it was a mess.
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| after disk love |
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| Looking at you WORK wheels.. |
Meanwhile Art welded up the new exhaust outta some fancy stainless.
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| New VS Old |
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| Pie cuts, yum |
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| turn down for what? |
After about a 4 days of work I'd remedied just about everything on my list that I thought was going to be a problem. I wasn't happy with some stuff- but none of it was crucial to fix before I could take it to the track that weekend. I figured I'd do some stuff here and there as my work schedule permitted in the weeks ahead
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| Here's the car just before leaving Nitradyne on a Thursday night, using my Porsche Cup Recaro HANS for now. |
Drove it home Thursday night safe and sound.
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So Friday rolls around and I figure id go get an alignment before the next days event. I drive the car 3 miles away from home to the alignment shop where they tell me that my car is too low to fit on their rack. "ah not a big deal ill just find another shop" I go to start the car and ...
Fizzzz-Pop....... nothing
Shit. I poke around for about 30 min under the dash for a simple fix. I'd never looked too closely at the wiring up to this point since I was more concerned with the mechanical stuff. Electrical has always been a weak link for me "as long as its working" was enough to dissuade me from taking anything apart unless it was down right unsafe.
When i did initially check during pre-purchase inspection I focused on the engine bay, the wiring looked pretty good, it was labeled and clean and was all wrapped in raychem heat covering. It looked legit.
But now, now as i'm looking under the dash and behind the curtain I see that this is anything but. I walk back 3 miles to my house to get my truck so I can run to the autoparts store for some spare fuses and relays and hopefully fix it.
After hunting down what I thought I needed and made it back to the car I got no further with the new parts. it was DEAD.
I called AAA and they send a flatbed, not off too a good start :[
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| at this point the CRX body style was starting to grow on me |
By the time it was all said and done it was Friday at dusk and I'd realized I wouldn't be making the track day in the morning. This was a bum-out, I had put in so much time and energy in the last week to get it sorted out only to have it not work out last min.
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The next day I started to pull things apart so I could trace down the problem. This turned out to be much easier once I took the dash out. The good thing I was able to strip out the dead weight cut harnesses and some other junk while I was there.
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| This is starting to look familiar... |
At this point I was TOTALLY confused why someone would have wired the car the way it was. It was a real cluster fuck to even get straight on paper. Making matters worse it was OBD0 plug ends on the motor side to an OBD1 ecu connectors that jumped to a OBD2A ecu through a homemade jumper harness. The motor also had a OBD2 distributor that was re pinned on the back of the plug and also had some weird auxiliary switch powering god knows what that was tapped into the main IGN power...
...all this with a GSR block with B16 head. Good thing about hondas, everything is interchangeable. Bad thing about BUYING a used Honda, EVERYTHING IS INTERCHANGEABLE. Like I said- Frankenstein clusterfuck.
I initially wanted to rule out faulty parts as the problem, I would address the wiring but only after I could say for sure all other components in the system were in good working condition.
Working with this plan I wanted to swap the fuel pump, which of course required me to drop the entire fuel tank.. It can never be easy with this kinda stuff.
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| old pump out new pump in. |
Next, I wanted to be sure that I didn't fry my standalone ECU. My buddy Katman was rad enough to swing way out of his way with a few ECU's for me too test. I found out that they didn't work either- which was sorta good and sorta bad, that meant that there was a chance mine was still fine but that the problem was elsewhere in the system and I still have to find it.
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| Latenight ECU testing with Katman |
I was almost at my wits end and contemplating a scorched earth policy. This would mean scrapping everything I had and buying a wiring solution from a vendor. It sounds easy, but it's never cheap or as easy as you would think. There's always going to be little problems going that route and I was trying to avoid anything that would-
A. Cost a ton.
B. Cost a ton, Take a lot of time, and still not be up to my standards.
After about a week of fruitless trouble shooting I had some good friends up from San Diego, both Acura techs and both very knowledgeable with swaps and wiring. Nate who is an all around badass listened to the symptoms, asked a few questions, then went to work with the multi-meter.
After about 30 min he had a hunch that the short was not in the harness itself but rather in the main battery cable leading up too the emergency breaker switch. We rearranged a few things to test his theory and BAM. I had ECU power.
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| Nate with the culprit |
After all, to feel comfortable on track I needed to be sure I wasn't going to spontaneously ignite in the pit lane.
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The first thing I did was remove the harness and start to map the pinout on the plugs
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| label game on point. |
I'm hugely glazing over exactly how much work was involved here.
I would say at this point I was about 70+ man hours deep. I would get home from my real job at 7 and stay in the garage till about 1:30-2:00am pouring over my hand drawn schematics. I was mostly trying to get an idea of how it was done previously so i could come up with ideas on how I could change it to be better. The 'making it better' part was going to be easy. I mean, the bar was not set too high.
Like I said before, the engine side of the harness itself looked to be in OK shape. My guess is at some point the PO decided that he wanted his car to have a different motor and that he would just modify the existing harness(?) OR, maybe, he got this harness at a smoking deal but it wasn't exactly what he needed.. so he modified the chassis side to work with the new obd2a b16 ecu.
Then while he was at it, he decided to remove all ignition functions but the starter trigger... and then, to make it totally confusing he decided to run a single AFR gauge power and the distro signal directly to an auxiliary switch. (facepalm)
There. was. no. good. reason.
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| half the harness. |
After I figured out what the fuck was going on I took my drawings and moved into the office. I needed to visualize everything as a whole so I could see what I was dealing with and what I could potentially remove.
I found a sharewear program that allowed hobbiest users to create circuit board schematics. It wasn't exactly what i needed but it was free and I could hijack it enough to at least get the bare bones stuff up on screen.
First schematic I made was the version of the harness that was in the car when I bought it. This took about 20 hours to fine tune so i could make changes to the schematic without everything on the program imploding and erasing huge chunks of work.
Once I had a working version that was stable (and after I made about 20 back ups) I started to electronically cut into the harness too see what I needed and what could be better.
After I had that version starting to shape up I added stuff that I knew i needed to replace. OEM cluster, for example, and the half functional ignition switch were out. A new tachometer and some new dual gauges were in, I also was ditching the starter for a push button triggered one and running essentials like the injectors directly off a fused lead from the battery. The rest of the power would go through a terminal bus so I could cleanly ad and remove circuits as needed. Things like the fan and headlight would need to have relayed power.... I needed to have everything i could think of down on the chart so I could figure out fuse loads, wire gauge and the best way to make it modular while trying to reuse the existing connectors.
At this point it would have been WAY easier to just start from scratch- but I was on a mission and committed to getting this solved with what I had on hand. At the very least I was committed to marrying the 'good' part of the existing harness, i.e the engine side of things with the new fancy stuff I was building on the chassis side of things.
After a few versions and much double checking I was able to get the harness that came in the car down to 2 main clips that carried only essential signals from the motor to where they needed to be. I ditched 2 relays, 3 16pin Deutche connectors and about 80 feet of useless wire... not too shabby.
At this point I was building this harness about 40 times a day in my head so i was becoming extremely familiar with it.
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| Some early version of the wiring schematic on top of my hand drawn pinouts |
Parts started to trickle in, I got my stack clubman st250 gauge and pilfered my ae86 stash for the SPA dual gauges that will no longer be used. I bought some carbon and started to figure out how I wanted everything to look. THIS was finally the fun part.
After mucho fab work I had everything test fitted in the OEM surround, not pictured are the push button controls for the SPA gauges.
Next up was ordering everything that was needed to run the gauges. This means figuring out thread pitches and buying adapters... always a pain in the ass.
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| oil pressure at the head. |
oil relocation 1/2 npt to 1/8 npt. While I was there I resealed all the spots that I saw were leaking, which was a lot.
I had to start to figure out how I was going to mount everything on the dash board itself. It now needed to become the attachment point for all the equipment, harness and wiring loom. I wanted it to be a modular part of the system that could be removed complete with the chassis side of the harness still attached. This would make it much simpler to build, work on and would let it be removed and swapped elsewhere if necessary.
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| blurry picture reflects my mindset at this point. |
Below is the main power junction switch with removable key mounted into a pocketed space in the ABS plastic dash. I did this an additional precaution so there wold be no chance of a live lead shifting and contacting anything metal.
I don't have pictures but I also built a fused lead off of the back to separately deliver power to the injectors outside of the auxiliary circuits, That way there is no weakness or spikes from any relays or heavy draws that may kick on while i'm on-track revving the motor out. That could be bad.
This carbon plate fitted to OEM climate surround was a TOTAL PAIN to build. Since the vents are slanted slightly toward the driver you're working with 3 3d planes that need to line up to get the hole for the breaker switch in the right spot. Passerby's will not give it a second glance but I know how much time and effort went into making the tolerances fit and look pretty as well as making it durable and functional.
test fitting an unwired switch panel to the center stock of the dash.
The push button came much later than the rest of the parts. I had originally mapped for the plate next to the main breaker but had to rethink this once it showed and I felt how much force it took to press. While looking for a good spot I realized that the OEM cigarette lighter provision was perfect, it was roughly the same size and right on the crux of the metal frame and just offset from the main attachment bolt. I cut a piece of carbon fiber to make a face and riveted it on. Perfect.
Now that everything had its place I could start to build the actual wiring for everything, I would reference wire gauge on my chart, measure length needed, then cut and solder the main connections before finishing them off with heat shrink.
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| solder penetration close up |
Once I had the switch panel built an wired I attached it to the center console of the dash board where I would start to clean up the power wires.
This pics is halfway through running the power wires. The orientation the wires on the distribution block denotes their individual function at a glance; Main function vs aux function. Each is also labeled with their termination point.
After building as much as possible outside the car I put the dashboard back in so I could finish the job by connecting to main power and grounds.
Another thing I paid extra attention too was the grounding location of each component. For example the STACK tachometer requires the grounding location to be the same one used for the distributor. This is the type of thing that required multiple changes to the schematic. As I did more and more research the more stuff I had to adjust to try and make perfect.
You can see here I had wired the distribution block with the switched main power terminal. The distribution block has a cover that snaps on to cover the 'hot' screw heads and exposed metal (obviously still off in this picture)
Well, here it is. Moment of truth. after double and triple checking everything I click over the switches in order one by one and hit the starter button...
Now,, I don't know what I would have done if it didn't start, at this point I was so invested in this project mentally that i dont think i would have eaten or slept until it was running...
Vrooommmmmm...
It fired up flawlessly, I let it idle for a solid 30 seconds before I shut it down. There was still other things i needed to address before I could let it get up to temp and take it out for a spin.. Still though it was a major victory.
Now that it had power and everything was running I could wrap everything else. I ran the wires through the engine compartment for all the gauges, Its a total pain in the ass time consuming job. You need to find the cleanest path from the sensor back to the gauge itself but be aware of spinning or moving parts and mindful of not putting it in the way of something that may need to be removed or serviced. After the gauges looms were run through the bay I plugged everything into the back of the gauges and mounted the aux function light and buttons.
I had to find special 12v LED lights that had less that a 100mA draw as not to damage the gauges themselves. Once everything was in place i had to carefully fit the dash pod with one hand and corral the wires through a hole id cut with the other.
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| led warning light, small but BRIGHT |
The next day I'd planned too pull the car out of the garage and let it idle up to temp while I set the gauges up. I tightened everything down on the motor and fired it up. Sounded healthy, and was good to that no gremlins had snuck into the system the night before. Everything was looking good and I felt that I was actually on target to to maybe be able do a track event in the car in the next few days.
I pull the car out of the garage to let it idle up too temp when i hear a piffffffffffftttttttt. Oh shit. jump out only too see that the radiator had decided to spring a leak right on the edge of the end tank and the matrix and was spraying the filthy brown gunk all over everything. I quickly shut the car down and asses the damage.
The radiator would need to come off for me to really tell what was going on, and as soon as I removed it that same brown sludge water poured out.
After running the hose through it I could easily see where it had sprung the leak. I thought this was strange since the car wasn't even up to temperature and at full pressure yet.
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| you can see the leak just below the coolant output in the 4th riffle from the bottom |
For the radiator to blow like that likely meant that there was likely pretty heavy restriction going on in the matrix, and from the looks the water than came out it was likely due to extremely old sludgy coolant and calcium phosphates. This car came with an indy style sealed coolant system, that means that there are water lines that feed from the main coolant passage at the back of the block to a aluminum canister that acts as an overflow tank on the fire wall. It also means there's no good way too see the water color unless you drain the system. I'd topped it off before driving the car home weeks before but I never really looked too deeply inside assuming it would be fine. Now all signs were pointing to it NOT being fine.
Looking down into the core you could see what looked like a melted peppermint, this is the calcium and phosphates that had mixed and turned into sludge. As soon as I saw this I knew the entire water system would look exactly the same.
After looking at how much a replacement CR radiator would be ($1400.00+) i decided that fixing the core would be the best solution second would be removing the sealed system and going back to an open Koyo unit of need be. Again I was trying to take the path of quick, cheap, good. I figured repair was the best bet and on a tip from Art I took the radiator into a local shop called Burbank Radiator. They're a blue collar outfit and have been in the same building since 1953, if they couldn't fix it, it couldn't be fixed. I knew that being aluminum I at least didn't have to worry about corrosion- only the nasty sludge build up. If the they could repair the matrix and hot tank the gunk out i could re-install the core after cleaning out and inspect the rest of the system.
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| so close |
While I was waiting I pulled off the t-stat housing to check the condition of the parts. As expected everything was totally gummed up and in no condition to get on a racetrack. I expected the water pump too look the same as the t-stat picture below.
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| swamp thing |
6 hours later I was called and told that the radiator was hot tanked, pressure tested and ready to get picked up. It was $90 for a repair but better than buying a new unit. You can see the location of the leak and the aluminum repair.
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| fixed |
I also decided to be extra sure and pull the pan off to check the bottom end for wear and or brass shavings that would be another indication of the condition of the motor that you cant see on a compression test. After seeing the coolant and water passages I wasn't going to take anymore chances on the PO's diligence to maintenance
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| oil squirter stuck to the magnetic drain plug |
Good news was, there were no brass shavings.... but I did notice a beat up looking tube stuck to the drain magnet. turns out that it was the snout of the oil squirter that had somehow been sheered off. I guess this isn't uncommon on high revving b series motors but it IS good I found it. The larger opening on a broken squirter changes oil pressure as well as not having cooling oil is being aimed at the bottom of the piston.
After removing the pan, girdle and oil pick up and spinning the crank you can see where it used to live (second bolt from the right with the nub on the bottom.)
I was able to get it removed from the block with a few extensions. I added 2 of these to my order with Honda, the second as a spare for the future.
Valve cover came off for the timing belt and water pump swap, pretty straight forward and uneventful. Checked the valve tolerance and verified timing was spot on.
The majority of this work happened on the Friday and Saturday before the Sunday track event; actually we finished up at about 130am the morning of. I couldn't have done it alone without a tight group of about 5 people that lent their input in trouble shooting skills to all sorts of small issues that popped up along the last few hours. I was honestly ready to call it quits and aim for another day but they kept me going long enough to get everything sorted.
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| me flushing the water passages in the block while Dan and Mark bro down. Picture by Dave |
The next morning on the way to the track was the first time id actually driven the car at speed since I drove it to the alignment shop where it died all those weeks ago. I was staring at the gauges as much as i was watching the road. I'd swapped onto some street tires so I could at least run a session and get some points in the vteclub round 1 event if the car were to make it that far. Eventually we made it to the track with no problems. I was so relived to just be there driving the car. funny thing is Dan and I had to show up late because I hadn't had a chance to wire up functional headlights yet.
I ended up doing a session and a half (about 30min of hard driving) on clapped street tires with ZERO alignment and some small ergonomic issues. This was a shake down run 100%. I didn't expect much, if anything, out of the car. Maybe one or two laps at most before coming in, but when I got on track it preformed flawlessly and gave me the confidence to stay out there and just turn lap after lap at 80% and stress test the motor. Having no alignment was probably the sketchiest part to say the least. I was super sideways all over the place especially on the fast up hill at the top of turn 1 it was still a great deal of fun and reminded me of driving my old ae86. At the end of a few sessions i ran a 1:30.09 clockwise, a pretty respectable time for street tires. I feel that the car is good for maybe a mid 25 once its all dialed and i get a few more session behind the wheel. Mostly I had to keep an eye on the clock because I had to get home well before the sunset.
A LOT more to come!
Ill end this long-winded post with some pictures I found around the net from the event. Im so proud to see it actually driving around on track. Until next time. ill have more 86 progress pictures and much more crx pictures!
