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This past weekend the team and I went to Watkins Glen International for a race weekend with NASA NE. Luckily the weather held up and it didn't rain but man was it cold, Friday it was in the 40's, Saturday in the 50's and Sunday it was high of 60's; it was windy all weekend which also didn't help. We had a great time and my car ran fantastic and without any issues. It sure does feel fast and I was able to hang with some higher hp cars. Same for Marc and he got 3rd place for both races on Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday DE4 was the 1st group out and the track was cold as hell, there was no grip whats so ever. By the 3rd session around 2:45pm there was good grip since all the other sessions/race groups that went out the track. I actually forgot my GoPro so i've got no footage from my sessions but I did manage to use my buddies Aim SOLO and track some lap data for my last session. My best time was a 2:25.5 and that's 3 seconds faster than the last time I came on track with my older set up which was in 2017. There's a few things that my car needs like an alignment !!!, i've got no camber up front and still ran the car like that lol but this was my last track day for 2019. I'm happy that I got out as much as I did this year but it's time to prep the car for a roll cage and get the ball rolling for comp school next year. I might not have all of the goodies that I want but i'll build the car over time, for now my plan is to cage the car, get some slicks and aero and send it. Now will also be a good chance to do some rewiring behind the dash and get rid of the bird nest I made back there lol, my friend Rob is going to kill me. I'm looking forward to competing with the rest of Honda Challenge and to become a faster driver. Can't wait to show you guys the updates so stay tuned.
I finally got some time and started taking the car apart. Last weekend I took out my autopower roll bar, drivers seat, and my dashboard. I still need to remove my windows and clean the areas on my floor that will have the roll cage base plates. I've got a couple weeks left to do this, my drop off appointment is March 21st. Then once I get the car back from the shop we're going to paint the interior, clean up my wiring behind the dash, reinstall everything and install a few more parts needed for comp school and then hopefully have the car ready for May.
With this corona virus pandemic and the world slowing down it seems that the 1st quarter of this years racing schedule is either cancelled or post poned so I decided to invest a bit more time in my build and actually redo my interior chassis harness and possibly engine harness. This weekend I'm bringing my car to a shop to get the cage work done and then once we get the car back Rob and I are going to redo the harness. Since I'm k swapped I dont use a lot of the oem wiring inside the chassis or even in the engine bay. And if anyone's done the swap the conversion harness instruction manual said to tuck away the original harness plugs so you can imagine the type of bird nest that was under my dash lol, it almost gave Rob (our electrical specialist) a heart attack lmao.
Were going to look at the oem wiring diagram and basically remove any wiring that's not needed and only keep the circuits we do need. Then make a base plate to mount the ecu and some relays, fuses etc and then another plate on the dash for my gauges, a power port, USB, and even some future switches for a defroster system I'd like and fire suppression handle. I'm still debating if I want to install a push button start for my car but I really like having an oem key so I dont know.
Then after that's done we will mount the wiring neatly and zip everything down and paint the interior, and once that cures install some lexan windows. I'm really looking forward to doing this over the next few months, not only to showcase what we can do as a team but to have fun with the build. Nothing better than wrenching with your buddies, drinking some beers and having a good time.
What's going on everyone, hope you're all safe and healthy. These past few months have been interesting and I haven't been able to get much done on my car. I had to move my roll cage appointment to now July 4th because back in March the day before I was planning on dropping the car off the NY govenor and mayor were going back and forth about a potential lock down. I didnt want to drive out and not be able to get back into NY so I stayed home and rescheduled. Of course there was no lock down lol but I'm glad I took the time because i was able to fully remove the interior harness and have the car ready for the cage.
A few days later I was planning on working on the car but since it was raining I lost motivation. I was hanging out inside the house when i hear this loud booming sound that came from the yard, it shook the whole home. To my surprise my neighbors tree fell right into my garage/home. You literally cant make this stuff up, I was in shock, upset, angered and lost hope for 1 second but then I snapped out of it and went outside to inspect the damage. I was extremely lucky because I was planning on working on the car that day amd was going to set up tents to not get wet. Where the tree landed I would have been really hurt or killed plus my car would have been totaled. Besides the garage being destroyed the car luckily escaped with only scratches on the front end, some dents on my hood and my parts/tools weren't really damaged, some scratches on the back of my tool boxes and a set of cams I had have chips on the gears. This put a pause on my build since my wife and I have been working on trying to get this situated and repaired. It looks like we should see some progress and a new rebuild in the next upcoming months since NY just mentioned that construction can continue and also on long island contractors can start working on June 15th. My guess is sometime in July or August I'll have a finished garage where I can then continue the build. I'm dropping off my car July 4th so by the time I get it back I'll be able to move my tool and parts back in the garage and have my shop back up and running. What a crazy couple of months.
Another update the team and I worked on Chris's turbo EK and got it running finally. It's amazing how some cars have no issues but then with others you run into something that really makes you scratch your head and go wtf why cant I figure it out and that was the case with this one lol. So we haven't been able to work on the car consecutively which I know caused us to take longer than expected but we started with the car having a SOHC and it ran without a problem. We swapped the engine out to a B series and added a turbo, connected the oil lines, intercooler, fuel lines etc and it turned on and ran. We got a base map downloaded on the ecu and Chris drove the car to and from work for a couple months before it stopped running all of a sudden. We double checked the fuses, grounds, harness connectors, fuel injectors/pump, spark plugs, ecu, battery etc etc and had no luck. Everything seemed ok and funny enough when you let the car sit for a week or so it would just turn on and run no problem and the next day it wont start again. We would all spend hours checking everything and coming up with ideas but nothing seemed to fix it. Then we started looking closer at the engine harness and noticed how hacked up it was so we would make wiring repairs and fix connectors and the car would run so we would think we fixed it and then it would die again lol. One day we got the car running and no matter how many times we revved it, yanked on the connectors, did anything to make it stop running it would continue so we decided to go for a test drive and as I got into the car i moved the ecu from the floor and all of a sudden the car dies. So now we were like "ok ok so the issue is the engine harness near the ecu plugs now"; well we repaired it and got it running again and one more time for good luck it died lmao. We finally were able to source a new oem engine harness and swapped it out and thennnnn it didn't start. At this point we all just wanted to burn the car to the ground. We noticed this "new harness was the correct model since with EK's there's an OBD2a and OBD2b and the conversion harness we had was incorrect also so once again we ordered a new engine harness but this time from Rywire. This harness is beautiful and it comes ready to plug and play, the harness is meant for an OBD2b vehicle/motor but has OBD1 distributor and ECU plus so you don't need a conversion harness anymore. We swapped this bad boy in and had to repin one wire and it started right up and ran clean. When we checked the original harness it appears from age and wear that some wires would randomly break when we would move the car and cause a different symptom every time, what a learning experience but i'm glad we got through it. Now wan focus on finishing up the other miscellaneous tasks to get the car tuned and race ready for his first event.
We're also working on getting a customers hatch ready for an upcoming event and are just waiting for some parts to arrive from Honda to button it all up.
Hope everyone is doing well, is safe and healthy. Quick update on my car, I recently took it to a shop for a full welded in roll cage. The shop knocked out the job in 2.5 weeks and now i have to scoop it up and get cranking on all the items I have left before comp school at the end of September. The list isn't horribly long but there's always something that sneaks in last minute lol. On top of that last weekend the team and I went to Lime Rock Park to race Marc's eg with NASA-NE in Honda Challenge. It was a wild weekend, hot as hell and the weather was unpredictable. Race #1 we checked the weather and there was a 5% chance of rain, we stayed on slicks and went out. Two laps in there's a heavy downpour that only lasted for 3 laps and dried up by the end of the race. The races are only 30-40 minutes long so we didn't bother pitting and changing tires, especially at Lime Rock where the laps are short. We held on, waited it out and ended up getting 3rd place. Then for race #2 it was dry and even hotter, we also ended up getting 3rd. Mid way in the race our car started to loose power in certain corners so we think the fuel pump needs to be replaced (we will have to check it out). Here's some pictures, enjoy.
Last night the team and I cleaned, prepped and started painting the interior and I'm digging the color 👍. Another coat of paint/clear and we'll be moving onto the interior reassembly (dash, harness, seat etc).
I got a little more work done, we finished up painting and clear coating the cage/interior. Then I got started on making the polycarbonate windows and started to install the 1st one. Right now I have it drying because I made a boarder and sprayed it with black paint. Can't wait to see it done, I'm also adding some weather stripping to the back side of the window to help with keeping water out.
Worked on the coupe this past weekend and got some solid progress done. We finished installing the lexan windows (added some weather stripe and with the countersunk bolts it came out really good) and also started re-looming some of the interior harness. Next is the dash install and then to finish up the interior harness mounting followed by the miscellaneous items like a gauge panel, seat, belts, etc. Little by little we're getting there and comp school is in 6 weeks. Dont mind the tape all over the place, this car has been through a lot and will get a well deserved wash, clay bar, wax etc lol.
Finally finished mounting up the dash into the car; it took many hours of trimming and test fitting to get it right. Also secured the steering column and scooped up a set of rain tires so some solid progress was done over the weekend. Next up is to finish routing and mounting the interior harness and then do the miscellaneous things like install a rain light, my seat harness etc.
This past weekend I knocked out a bunch more items off my "to do list" and included on that list was installing my new Nine Lives Racing rear wing. I also made a new gauge panel and will be installing a water temp gauge; I left room for additional switches and a usb which i'll add in at a later date. The car is coming along and we now have 2 more weeks before comp school to get everything finished and sorted out.
Made some major process on the car last weekend, installed and wired the battery kill switch, gauges, rain light, fan switch, steering hub extender, seat, harness, rear view mirror, front windshield, and a few miscellaneous other items. Only things left is to remove this tape and glue off the paint, get an alignment, wash the car and add in my racing decals. We're going to the track next week !!!
Once more weekend in the books and we finished the car just in time, the car is getting an alignment done today and we'll be good to go for this weekend. Comp school and then racing Saturday/Sunday. Can't thank my team enough for the help and i'm super excited to get out there and compete, i've been dreaming of this moment for a long time.
Last weekend I finally achieved something I've been wanting to do for about 6 years, I was able to complete competition school with NASA and got my provisional license. I've been talking to some OG racers about doing this for years and was finally able to get it done and now I can say I'm an amateur race car driver. The team and I drove out to NJMP Thursday night and arrived at the track around 1am, we got everything set up for our pit area and went to bed at 3am. I woke up at 6am and went over some last minute items on the car and then started comp school at 7am, the day felt like a blur. Between jumping from class room sessions to on course drills next thing I knew it was the end of the day and was told that we all passed the class. We did 2 wide and 3 wide drills, some passing drills, some class room tests, a fun race with 40+ experienced drivers of all classes and a fire drill test. Man I was really hoping to not go 1st for this one and as things always work out I was 1st lol. We finished the day and I went over to my team and told them the news, we hung out drank some and grilled. The next two days we had our race weekend, did some practice sessions, a qualifier and then the race. My first two races went clean and I got a 4th place finish on the 1st one that Saturday and a 3rd place on Sunday. The high from this weekend is still with me, I'm itching to get back out there. The next event we're planning on making is the November 6th-8th event again at NJMP but this time on the Lightning course.
A few things I learned that weekend were that slicks are awesome and the grip levels are nice, I can definitely push the car more and find time but this weekend was my 1st time ever driving on slicks and with aero so I had no expectations of braking any records. I also noticed my car doesn't wiggle anymore on the hard brake zones after straightaways so that means the aero is doing it's job which is cool. I beat my lap time of a 1:42xxx and my fastest lap was a 1:37xxx. I need to invest in a LSD, even though my lap times dropped I was slow compared to the rest of my field. The top two drivers in the HC1 class ran a 1:29xxx and a 1:32xxx and then the slightly slower class of HC2 majority were running in the 1:34-35 range. Most turns I couldn't blast through it on throttle because my car would understeer and push out so I would have to play with throttle to get the nose to point or get off throttle and wait a second to be off the curb and then get back on it. I also got a CEL mid race and noticed a misfire, and then lastly my oil pressure was dropping and floating around 40-60 psi WOT when it should be 80-100 psi. Besides the misfire, the lack of oil pressure might have caused my vtec to not engage because I was noticing that I couldn't catch certain cars in the straights when normally I can reel them in fine. So with having these issues and still managing a 37 I was happy, that means the car has a 34-35 in it when it's running 100% and once I get more used to aero+slicks and a LSD I feel like I'll be right up there with the pack.
I definitely have some bottom end motor damage, so I'm going to check my bearings and see if I get lucky and just swap new ones in there and I'm all fixed. If not I'll need a rebuild but wont have time before Novembers race so I'll swap in my spare base model k20 and send it haha. As long as I can get 2 more clean races I'll be able to come off my provisional. And who knows, maybe I can keep pace with the base model and get lucky and pull off a win. Lets find out. I also need to order spare axles since i popped one and some rotors since I cracked them a bit. Overall great experiences and I'll be more prepared for 2021 but lets finish the 2020 season strong. Here's some cool shots people took, I'll post up some videos soon.
08-19-2019, 05:35 AM
Re: EG Vera's build/timeline thread
but I did manage to use my buddies Aim SOLO and track some lap data for my last session. My best time was a 2:25.5 and that's 3 seconds faster than the last time I came on track with my older set up which was in 2017. There's a few things that my car needs like an alignment !!!, i've got no camber up front and still ran the car like that lol but this was my last track day for 2019. I'm happy that I got out as much as I did this year but it's time to prep the car for a roll cage and get the ball rolling for comp school next year. I might not have all of the goodies that I want but i'll build the car over time, for now my plan is to cage the car, get some slicks and aero and send it. Now will also be a good chance to do some rewiring behind the dash and get rid of the bird nest I made back there lol, my friend Rob is going to kill me. I'm looking forward to competing with the rest of Honda Challenge and to become a faster driver. Can't wait to show you guys the updates so stay tuned.
