hondaf8

Well lets start this off, I picked up a 91 ef hatch STD for $200 with a blown motor (perfect!!!) had some passenger door damage and some quater panel damage as well, but that wasn't really a big deal. But before i get too far, ill show my 2009 civic figure 8 car, it was not pretty. it was an 88 sedan with a z6 with some p29 pistons. other than that she was all stock. Thankfully she met her demise when my ex girlfriend hit a car at full tilt in the intersection (for those who dont know what figure 8 racing is, its where the race course in shapped like an 8, so you have to watch out for traffic in "The X" and there are no rules when it comes to "The X". you tube "evergreen speedway stinger 8" and you will see me in the #51 car)




This was the 2009 car, kind of a pile of crap, not very safe (trust me the cage is not mounted mounted properly) and it was heavy and liked to lean pretty bad in the corners.

And this is how she ended up at the end of the 2009 season. Thankfully it gave me an excuse to build a much safer, much faster car for this last 2010 season.

hondaf8

SO... about as soon as my sedan went to the scrap yard (after of course removing the motor trans, and all other valuble parts) i decided to begin the building of my $200 hatch.

Heres the new victim before the striping.



And after the striping. I reduced the all the harnesses to bare essentials to cut down on weight, and ended up with about 15lbs of wire and fuse boxes left over. Now the roll cage install can begin



Its kinf of nice to have the sence of security with the door bars knowing that if your timing is off you could end up t-boned at 50mph in the door. and you can notice in the 1st picture that there is a square tube perimeter framework integrated into the uni-body. this cage is solid as all hell, but you haven't seen anything yet...

hondaf8

Once the basic framework is there you can pretty much go nuts with bars untill you know you will feel safe. we were going with the theory that if the car got hit, it would be so light and strong that it would literally bounce before it would bend (and trust me, i tested this theory)


here you can see the awesome damage that i had to fix before it ever even hit the track lol.




and with a little help from a donor parts car (that was my daily driver) you can get a good as new patch panel

hondaf8

So the cage at this point was %90 done, so next came piecing the exterior back together.


Some sweet lexan windows.

and a new door for the pass side

along with some 1"x2" .120" wall steel nerf bars... and oh yeah dont forget the bullet proofing..


you can see here the custom core support, and later you will see the 1/2" expanded steel bridge decking welded to the front of it for protection.

and dont forgett about the front bumper.

here you can see my awesome 2" exhaust, and also the rear bumper mounts that are tied in directly to the cage.

hondaf8

heres a better view of the front end fortress.

And its on to the painting!!!

First is the gloss grey on the inside and flat on the outside for the 2 tone paint job.

next goes the flat black main color for the car



And this is what you end up with!

The 5 switches are all pretty basic: 1)main power on, 2)vtec shhh... 3)start 4)radiator fan 5)wipers.

Here it is getting all the vinyl graphics on it. And at this point it was about midnight the day before the first race, so i was sweating a bit. But when i got off work and showed up to the track, i had this beast waiting for me all completed just in the nick of time.

thiendegigolo

WOW!!!! NICE!!!!

hondaf8

So the season went pretty good, i started off with a d16y8 with p29's which resulted in an insane amount or compression, like 13:1! unfortunatly i was regulated to stock 91 si pgm-fi due to the rules (technically the y8 wasnt even legal) It was a monster still, and was thirsty for 110 octane race fule (tried 92, and broke every ring land on all 4 pistons after 3 races, oops). eventually after realizing half way through the season that stock y8 headbolts were not up to the challenge i went back to a d16a6 with p29's, and it has remained bulletproof to this very day. Ill show a couple of picture of all the body damage and repair i had to do through out the season to keep it looking to nice, including when i got t-boned in the pass door on the 2nd race.


if you look close, you can see that the cage didnt even get touched.

and thanks to the donor car, it was back together within a week. And did i mention i added a custom wing to the back!!!




In the background is my teammates car, its a 91 celica gt, and in this picture it was still brand new and never raced.

hondaf8

That aout sums up my figure 8 car for this year. currently its getting re-worked (sealed windows, heater, adjutable pedals) to go road course racing at PIR at the end of the months for a 12 hour endurance race. got brembo rotors with ITR calipers and hawk pads up front, and the same in the rear, with SI sway bars and all polyurethane suspension bushings. Next up will hopefully be a tilton pedal assembly with dual brake masters and a hydro trans with an LSD!

2 more pictures, one of how close we get at about 50mph in the intersection, i was fighting to stay in the lead in front of the focus SVT but he eventually got me and the second is after the most recent refresh of the body for the last 3 races.

photec2

thats pretty cool man, nice build

tinctorus

Cool car man, Looks like you put alot of work into building this cage much safer compared to the last one

I always liked figure 8 racing as coming up to the X or "intersection" always seemed exciting to me, especially when your flying through at 50-80 mph

hondaf8

and dont forgett the matching tow vehicle, gotta arive to the track in style!

hondaf8

Thanks, yeah it was a lot easier to focus on shooting gaps in the intersection when you not worrying about getting hit. when i did get hit it was a full speed hit and i was a bit sore, but walked away fine. and yeah, the X is absolutely insane, its a lot less "hillbilly" than a lot of people think. It adds a very exciting new factor, and if you get good you never have to worry about it.

CivicSD

thats sick, u build ur cars just to crash them!

jlk16188

wow that is an impressive build and work you put into your cars. Im impressed!

hondaf8

Lol, I try not to crash mine, but there are those out there that do. Besides it's all made of steel, and it bends back