Andy Hollis

The latest test we did had separate autox and track segments. Some of the best autox tires did poorly on the track, as they could not handle the sustained heat. Heck, the RT615K overheated in just a single lap on the front of the car.

I also run at the track at least once a week, always on street tires...using an 88 Civic DX. That car originally had a K20A swapped in, but after that blew, I have the original D15B2 back in there now. So I can relate some specific experience in the car at hand.

For LeMons your priorities should be: Fix what's broken so you finish the race, then focus on brakes, tires, handling (optimize front grip & increase rear roll stiffness), in that order.

Here's what I suggest:

1) Get as much rear roll stiffness as you can in the car. Stiffer rear springs or sway bar. Otherwise, the car will push like a pig. Find some EF wagon springs from the junkyard and cut off the progressive part. Or just get some cheap eBay coilovers. I have a set on the CRX I just bought that came with 400/450. Put the stiffer ones on the back. Or fab a big rear sway bar. It really isn't hard.

2) Forget the a-arm swap for dynamic camber (i.e. caster). Just lower the car about 2" and you'll get all the camber you need in the front (about 2 degrees). Put the rear a little lower than the front to get closer to 2 degrees there, too. Otherwise, the car will snap oversteer when you get excessive body roll (and you will with the stock struts unless you are smooth as silk). Set front and rear toe at 0.

3) Use the Prothane or ES urethane motor mount inserts to fix your crapped-out OE mounts. The front and rear are most important. Go to Amazon and find what's on sale. I just got a set of four for $12.50.

4) Rebuild your front calipers and rear wheel cylinders. The parts are cheap. Otherwise you risk a major failure at a very inopportune time. Use ATE super blue fluid. Hawk HP+ will probably be fine, but the Cobalt CSR is better. XR3's might be too much. New rotors are cheap from Autozone or the like.

5) Find cheap, strong 15x7" rims and mount a 205/50-15 or 195/50-15 tire. I just got a set of 15x7's off craiglist for $80 (off a Kia of some sort). Heavy (19 lbs), but wide and strong.

6) Get as much weight as possible off the car. Gut everything. Figure 1900-1950 with the cage installed.

7) The earlier suggestions about shaving the head are good. Fairly sure you can shave as much as .025 and still have good clearance. Do some research on this. And/or use the thinner MLS headgasket from a 92-96 non-VTEC D-series motor. Also, set your valve lash and clean out the throttle body. Gut/pitch the cat, and dump the exhaust right after the resonator. If you have noise restrictions, install a long glasspack with a dump.

8) Too much oil can cause overflow into the pcv and intake causing smoke and missing. Catch can (beer can) is a quick fix. Or run just a tad under the "full" mark.

9) That motor has a 6500 rev limiter, which sucks. And it is very abrupt. And there is nothing you can do about it.

10: Tires: For 190+ UTQG, I'd suggest the Dunlops Direzza Z1 Star Spec. I haven't heard anything about them being discontinued. They fall off a tad after a couple laps, but are then consistent for long sessions. Much more so than the Falkens. If you can get lots of rear roll stiffness, a trick setup is to put two Dunlops on front and then two Falken RT615K's on the rear. This allows you to overdrive corner entries for tactical reasons and the car will not swap ends. My usual track setup is Hankook RS3's on front and RT615K's on the rear. For hot summer days, Kumho XS on front. But I've also got a real suspension on the car. Also RS3 is 140 and XS is 180 treadwear, so no good for LeMons.

If it will be wet, look no further than the Continental ExtremeContact DW. Only trouble is, no good 15" size. 205/45-16 will work, though.

11) You will have trouble with fuel starvation at around a half tank, which means more refueling. I have not done it myself, but word is that taking both the tank and fuel pump from a 90-91 car will allow you to run near empty. Junkyard, again. Or build a sump/reservoir into your original tank or a surge tank setup.

And finally, check out eBay for things like cheap $30 CAI, $50 headers, etc. It's amazing and the stuff works well.

Too bad you chose a DX and not an Si. With the latter you get better gearing, higher redline, more power, and you can tune the ECU.

HTH,

--Andy

Stinkycheezmonky

Really? I haven't seen the latest test then I guess, but that's great I'll have to find that issue somewhere.

Andy Hollis

Yeah, we did it at Harris Hill Road and we used my track Civic when it had the K20 in it. Still a bit more "time trial" oriented than full track sessions, but the results were pretty clear. One warm up lap, two full-tilt for time, one cool down. There were also some tires tested that were not in the printed results.

To be honest, track testing is way more stressful than autox testing. Doing 100% laps on tires you aren't used to is risky, no matter how well you know your car and the track.

In the end, the results followed the autox results, except for heat management. For autox, tires need to work "right now". On the track, you can bring the temps up and adjust. So a tire like the Kumho XS, which needs heat to work and tolerates it very well, takes a few runs to get really good in autox, but comes up to speed pretty fast on the track and stays that way. Hankook RS3 needs a little less heat, tolerates it almost as good as the XS, so is really good in both venues. The Yoko AD08 is similar in heat management to the RS3, much more responsive, but somewhat less overall grip.

The Dunlop takes only a moderate amount of heat to work, but will fall off a bit once it warms up. Consistent after that. The RT615K is right there with the Toyo R1R, in that it needs no heat to work, and does not tolerate it well at all. Neither is well-suited to the front of a nose-heavy FWD car on a track. But both do well on the rear of the same since there is so little weight back there.

On something well-balanced like a Miata, I'd be running the same tires all around.

The other nice thing about the Dunlop is availability of smaller sizes, like the 14". That's something for the OP to consider as yet another alternative. 185/60-14 on a 14x6 would be a much lighter alternative and readily available in cheap BMW junkyard alloys (Google "BMW bottlecaps"). Also helps the lousy DX gearing.

--Andy

Edit: Update on the Dunlop discontinuation rumor. My sources confirm that's baloney. The confusion may lie in the fact that the tire is now exclusive distribution to the Tire Rack, so it's been "discontinued" from any other source.

VTECIntegra9

Andy, great posts and tips!!

The tuna crew is also planning a lemons build this summer w/ a possible showing late summer... We happen to have a d16 and trans sitting in Jack's garage :-O

I'll show the guys this thread and hopefully it will convince them to get the ball rolling getting our chassis and parts ready to go.

-Teal

Ecugrad

Listen to Andy, he knows his **** about EF's

We have a 89 Prelude that just completed its 6th race (2 of those 24 hour events). The most important part is to STAY ON TRACK!!! We lost 2nd gear in one race this year (on a track that 2nd REALLY important) and still managed to finish 5th because we stayed on track.

We scored a set of Tokico's for next to nothing and put cut DA front springs on the rear and cut front Prelude springs on the front. Works surprisingly well with a big honkin' rear sway bar.

Be sure to read the 2011 rules as some things have changed drastically. Its a whole lot of fun and it will take more time and cost more than you think it will but its absolutely worth it.

Good luck!

Dustman93

Wow, I appreciate everyone's input and opinions. We have been working on getting the car dependable. The engine runs great and doesn't smoke, but we are going to replace the timing belt and do a leak down test and go from there with the head gasket.

We are waiting for the EBay coilovers (not sure on the spring rates). We'll leave the upper A arms where they are and work on getting the -2 degrees of camber, front and rear. Right now we are working on finding some 15x7 wheels, hopefully two sets. Is there a certain offset we should be looking for or just get whatever we can find? It sounds like Dunlops are the tires we should look at purchasing.

I met a gentleman at the wrecking yard that gave me some pointers about the brakes from the Integra that will bolt on front and rear. Is it worth it to spend the money on stock Integra brakes or should we be looking at keeping what we have and replacing the pads, rotors, shoes, and drums?

Again, thanks for all the great information.

Dusty

Andy Hollis

Integra GS-R brakes (10.3") will fit on the front only if you swap out the spindles, too. You'll lose a little compression travel doing this, and its all heavier. A better choice is the 90-91 Civic EX brakes, which are the same rotor and caliper as the GS-R, but a true Civic spindle so no geometry changes. That's what I have, but I only installed them for the additional stoppage needed with the K20's power. Now with the D15, they are total overkill. I can't go as fast down a straight, and the car is 75 lbs lighter.

In short, you will do fine with the 9.5" DX/Si brakes you have. Just make sure they are working right (fresh calipers!).

As for the rear, skip the GSR disc swap, also. Just leave the drums and put a set of decent shoes on them. Porterfield R4S will work nicely, but OE type stuff from the parts store is almost as good, for way less money. Turn the drums to get a true surface, clean up the adjusters so they work, and adjust to just a very slight drag and then back off one click.

--Andy

PS: On wheel offset...optimal will be 36-ish, but as far in as 43 will work. RWD applications like BMW will be more like 36, while FWD stuff will be more like 40-43.

Dustman93

Ahhh ok, we will just stick with the stock setup and rebuild what we have. Thanks for the wheel offset info, I didn't even know where to start.

Hey dirty19, I erased the two PM's I had in my box lol so now maybe we can message back and forth. For now I will just keeping deleting messages as we go.

Thanks,
Dusty

Andy Hollis

Just saw this: https://honda-tech.com/forums/showpo...&postcount=792

If you want a cheap power upgrade, here's your answer. The MPFI->DPFI swap on an EF is good for a significant gain in power. Search on it for details. Pretty simple to do, if you have any clue with wiring. You'll get a much higher rev range, more overall power, and the ability to chip the ECU and tune it. There is free tuning software out there (ECUControl, Ghettodyne, etc.). Add an Si cam (see earlier in the thread) and you have an Si version of a 1500 motor.

--Andy

Dustman93

Hey Andy, good looking out. I have read up a little on that swap but wasn't sure if it was worth the out of pocket right now. I guess for our first race at Infineon, anything would be a big help with having almost no power to start out with lol.
Dusty

FSRslug

Awesome thread. Tons of good info. If only I had know what I do now a year ago...

Like others had said, make the car reliable. Then after you have done that, make the car more reliable. There is nothing worse than getting to a race and blowing up 30 minutes into a 24 hour event. Ive done it. It sucks.

If you can get $100 for the glass and interior that's great, but I ended up tossing mine in the trash after sitting with it for 8 months hoping someone would buy something. Even giving it away for free didn't work.

The MPFI swap is worth it. If you look hard enough you can get stuff for dirt cheap. I think I ended up spending about $75 on everything.

Also, dont rush things. Make a plan and try to stick with it. I thought I had things under control, but after many months of work on the car, we were still working on it a few days before our first race.

import2nr88

We did two lemons race way back when, I think one was in 07 and one in 08 with a da integra. The key isn't about being the fastest car out there but being the most consistant.

On another note, try to sell everything you can, we parted out everything we could off the integra and were able to then add that money into our build budget.

I dont think they are available anymore but we ran Hankook RS2's and they performed great for what they are.

mattEG

HUGE respect to Andy for writing out what is essentially the definitive guide to how to do well when crap can racing a civic.

I've been lucky enough to prep and run a 92 civic in both Lemons and Chumpcar and don't mind sharing the knowledge I've managed to glean from the awesome competitors at the events I attended. I warn you that I tend to ramble when writing and most "informational" posts I end up posting are usually braindumps.

On endurance crap can racing in general:

1. Organization is KEY. Label everything, spend a day or two packing the trailer or truck before you go so that you know where everything is. In the event you need a spare part the more time you save off the track the better you will finish on.

2. Bring a spare everything. It's an old civic - it is cheap to bring everything. I was already what my wife calls a "used honda wrecker" so it was easy enough for me to bring a spare cars worth of parts. I'm not kidding. We brought everything but a chassis and needed none of it (thankfully) but we were able to help out our fellow competitors in need.

3. Bring lots of spare people. You will always need crew, whether to help with stops, prep things, clean up crap, change bits at night, time, etc.. You will need crew. Doing it with four drivers is possible but sucks. Bring crew.

4. Setup a 2 way radio comm system. You will thank me later. Send your most interesting golden voiced radio teammate to the highest point on the track that he can spot from - you will thank me later. Proceed to thank me when said spotter saves your *** from carmaggedon racing pileup in the chicane 38 laps in a row. Have the spotter also call ALL flags that he / she can see on the track. It is super handy to know if you are coming up on a flag and/or how many corners you have to perform your demon late braking crashtastic pass maneuver on the poor unsuspecting soul in front of you. Radios also allow you to yell at your team mate when you get your first penalty - it is like chicken soup for the soul.

5. Find and bring **** retentive attention to detail guy. Have him stand on the pitwall the whole race and time and record each individual lap. Keep track of who is in and who is out and what session times are between pit stops. Have him record the pit stop times. Make this his only job and ensure he is well fed / caffeinated so as not to murder anyone. This guy will save your *** and give you useful data after the race that you can use to learn more for next time. That and he can alert for driver changes, fuel stops, timing discrepencies (it happens), etc. Short on people? Make him the spotter too.

6. Tools - make sure you are tooled up for rebuilding the space shuttle from scratch. If it is a double 7 enduro you will probably need to do a ton of work on Saturday night after you wreck the car perfecting the passing move we discussed in step 4.

7. Respect EVERYONE & EVERYTHING. I cannot stress this enough so I will say it again. RESPECT EVERYONE & EVERYTHING. This includes but is not limited to: Track officials, organizers, corner workers, timing folk, your team, every other team, spectators, local wildlife, your pit stall, the facilities in general, the guy that cleans the disgusting racetrack bathrooms (never poop there), etc.. A good rule of thumb is respect absolutely everything you encounter from the moment you enter the race track to the moment you leave. Not only will this ensure that you don't draw negative attention to yourself and your team for being "that guy that won't shutup at the drivers meeting because he knows everything about racing because he watches nascar on TV" but it will go a LONG way in the event that you do make a boo boo and need to apologize for it. It also sucks to race with ******** - don't be an *******.

8. Be your brothers keeper. This means that if any of the other 2 dozen honda teams you will meet at the event run into a problem and you have a spare moment. Offer a helping hand or a spare part if you can. This makes you not an ******* and also goes a long way in the event that you require a part that you forgot because you didn't listen to what i said in step 2.

9. Budget = budget x 3 + $1000. It is WAY more expensive than you will plan for. **** retentive penny pinching only makes it less fun. Budget for a number plan on spending more and make sure you have the means set aside to do so.

10. Penalties suck. Don't get them. Don't get them for car prep, don't get them for on track behaviour, and most certainly don't get them for off track conduct. Receiving a penalty will essentially end your chances of victory as soon as it is applied. Don't do this to yourself.

11. Stay on track. Time on track is better than time off. You would think this would be obvious but some people just don't get it. If you have to be in the pits for 5 minutes when fueling (like in chumpcar) your pit stop should take 5 minutes and 1 second. I understand racers are generally less intelligent than most people (i organize and race, SCARY!) so I will say again - SPEND AS LITTLE TIME IN THE PITS AS POSSIBLE.


On crap can racing a civic:

1. Tires - We run old Azenis RT615 with no issues. 185/65/14 I believe. The car is pretty slow so heat / greasiness wasn't really a huge factor in our race. In fact I observed that they were WAY better than the old Kumho's we ran and far superior to the 215s. In april we will upgrade to the 615-K's as we are out of old 615's. I will let you know.

2. Suspension - In my humble opinion it is all in the spring. If you can find yourself a set of eBay coilovers with ridiculously stiff spring rates you are in the money. Put stiffer ones in the rear - dump the car 2" as mentioned by Andy and you're good. Go get an alignment done and make sure it has 0 toe. Bring toe boards to the track for when you smash into someone and mess up the alignment. Don't know what those are? Find a wrinkly old guy at the race track and he will be able to show you how they work.

3. Brakes - anyone that neglects these bits is retarded. This is the BEST place to spend your money on any endurance effort. Brake fade will end your race faster than anything else on the list save for hitting things. We have been using Hawk DTC-60s and they are absolutely amazing. We usually get a weekend out of a set of pads and then it's time to throw them out. We have had 0 fade with these pads and the braking force they provide on dinky stuck front DX brakes simply amazes me every time. If you've got the rear drums like we have realize they do little to nothing. Shoes are $12 from auto zone. Replace them anyway. Brake fluid is important. I have had awesome experiences with the Wilwood stuff. Stainless lines for civics are ridiculously cheap - make it so. Bleed your brakes before you put the car on the trailer. Bleed them again when you get through tech. Bleed them after the first day of racing. Bleed them the next morning before you go on track. See my point? Make sure the car has muffler bearings.

4. Intake - mod the stock intake box. Gut the ribs, pull off the bottom of the box, notch a hole and run a K&N drop in. Cone filters qualify as $ in the rules and will result in penalties. Those make you automatically not win. Avoid them.

5. Exhaust - read the rules. Andy had a great point. Run whatever the minimum amount of pipe required is. The more you can dump the better.

6. Other mods - pretty well everything else you can do to the car falls under the "it's no longer a $500 car category". Chipped ECU's can be done for $16 with the moates kit but depending on the tech guy you've got he may or may not penalize you for it. Everything else is cheating. Cheaters suck - don't be a cheater.

7. Weight reduction - people talk of massive gutting. Dump the interior and the dahs. Keep the heater for defrost awesomeness. Nothing is worse then not being able to see. Attach the cluster to the front cage bar and be done with it. In our case the fattest part of the car that was easily changed was the driver. Eat less and take a big **** before racing. Problem solved.

8. It's kind of cheating - $500 civics are like $500 miatas or $500 e30s. In Socal they might be $500 but everywhere else they are worth more than a kidney on the used market. Be cautious and carefully plan your mods so as to ensure it is still a $500 car.



The GOLDEN RULE:

Have fun! This is all you are there to do. You don't win much for victory at an event other than bragging rights. These aren't worth much in the grand scheme of things. Remember that no matter what you are there to have fun. Even at 8PM when you are in 3rd place 14 seconds out of second at the end of the race making time on the leader like it is going out of style and mathematically you are esentially guarenteed a victory as long as you have a clean drive and the teammate driving writes the car off remember after you're done beating him up that there is still track time to be had! It's about fun! I'm not bitter!

s1ngle

iTrader: (1)

Great info here. I run a 90 Civic LX in the Chumpcar series.

One question I have though: why would you want to mess with caster? Shouldn't caster just be a certain value and keep it that way?

We're doing the ebay coilover thing. All the springs were the same rate, heh. No difference front to rear. They are pretty stiff though. We have the car lowered quite a bit, our camber is a bit over 2* in the front and a bit over 1* in the rear.. Are there any tricks (other than bending the spindle, that scares me a bit) to reducing negative camber in the front a bit? I ovalized the holes
in the legs of the front upper arms to essentially allow me to lengthen them a bit. I wasn't able to get a whole lot out of them that way, but I think it helped a bit (we haven't visited the alignment guy yet for this season)

Also, the people I talk to say about 1* is good in the rear, helping to offset the understeer that plagues hondas. We ran our car this way in a couple races last year, no sign of understeer at all. Although, at times it did feel a little twitchy, maybe we _should_ try more camber in the rear? Is this the reason for recommending 2* all around?

Andy Hollis

This ^^. You should be able to take about a half degree out. The material gets pretty thin on the outside, though, so I suggest welding washers on either side for strength. That also keeps it from sliding under load.

Yes. Reducing grip to encourage better balance by pushing a tire over the edge takes consistently smooth driving to that edge. Hard to get that from a team of crap-can drivers. So putting a more optimal camber angle back there gets rid of the twitch even when you toss the car. Work the spring/bar rates to get as much off the rear as you need in corner entry and focus then on early power application coming off the turn. Once you are back on the throttle even a little, weight shifts off the nose and the car will stop pushing like a pig.

You can also play with a little bit of toe-out in the back, but that also takes consistency and smoothness to not get in trouble.

--Andy

VTECIntegra9

STICKY!!! Thanks mattEG for the additional large post! I'm itching to get a car build going.

Has anyone done much with the rear sways? Or have you counted on the increased roll stiffness from the springs to be sufficient?

p.s.
lol mazdaspeed3 is in the tags.

Jr.'s '08 Si

Keep in mind that you have a 200 tread wear rating limit in a Lemons race, nothing lower than that may be used, but price is irrelevant. That eliminates most of the tires recommended in this thread. Don't spend to much time on the engine and suspension mods, the speeds are kept low and the handling is not that important. Staying on the track the entire race is the most important thing in Lemons, having experienced drivers matters little in this series, the speeds are too low. Keys to winning, stay on the track, don't run at 100% until the end when you may need to. Don't break down, get good gas mileage and get the right brake pads. You don't want the Cobalt or Hawk race pads, you will deal with lock up issue's the entire race. Don't go with their street pads either, they won't last. Call up Carbotech and get the XP8 compound front and rear. Many of these races have been won with that compound. Given the weight, power and tires that you will be running, it is the best brake pad compound that you can get. Honda's, VW's, Mercedes, Mazda's and Ford Crown Vics have all won with these pads. The XP8's will go the distance, AND they are a race compound. After you get into the Lemons/Chump car thing for a while and are loving it (which you will!), then you can think about doing suspension and engine mods. However, the guys at the Lemons and Chump car events are pretty savvy, and they will quickly add penalty laps (I have seen as many as 10,000 given) if they feel you have left the spirit of the event and brought a legit race car and not a $500 car. Have fun and good luck!

s1ngle

iTrader: (1)

we added a $12 junkyard integra DA rear bar. Its a noodle though, and probably didn't make any difference as compared to the stiffer springs.

s1ngle

iTrader: (1)

Thanks Andy. We're hoping to get an opportunity to hit up a track day at Brainerd International Raceway this year early in the season to play around with suspension settings. Unfortunately we're just gonna guess and pick some settings for Road America in March!

Ecugrad

Yeah I kinda agree with this. Too much brake pad and you will have flat spotted tires. We have done alright with Hawk HP Plus pads. Remember, the brakes don't stop the car, the tires do.

mattEG

We had no issues with flat spotting or lockup with Hawk DTC-60s and 185/65/14 Azenis. The thing stopped amazing.

snapturn

Don't make it too fast...they'll wind up welding a giant air brake to the top of the car. This crazy race favors slower cars.

itrSteez

excellent stuff here, thank you andy and others. This will greatly influence our crx chump build.

Jr.'s '08 Si

What is the wear rating on the Azenis?

Jr.'s '08 Si

Your right, this thread has some great info and break downs on what Lemons is all about, what works and what doesn't.

Have fun at your race, take lots of pics and maybe a video???? then let us all know how you did and how much fun it was so that we may live vicariously through you!!!!! --Jr.