Our maiden voyage in our new Prelude build went extremely well, with a top 10 overall and a class win! With what essentially amounts to a stock H22 powered 4th gen Prelude, we were very impressed with the car. The race was a 12 hr enduro at VIR, and our only off-track time was to change a serpentine belt (which was new to start the race). Stock H22, stock suspension aside from Tokico Blue's and some squishy Eibach lowering springs. We basically gutted it, caged it, and raced it. With some more development we expect it to be a solid top 10 contender. First up, more roll control...

 

Nice. What kind of times do you run?

Also, I thought ChampCar was supposed to be for cheap sub-$500 cars. Yet your car looks better than mine does on most days.

 

 

Times have changed (kinda) Points based now vs $$$. 500 point cap, all cars have an assigned starting value. Most mods have a fixed points value as well. I'm at 450 base, +20 for oil cooler and +10 for accusump, so 480 total. LOTS of things are now "free."

We were on the South course for this race, so I don't have a time for Full yet. But our best on South was a 1:24.0.

 

looking for drivers?

 

Not at the moment, but once my current drivers go broke racing I may.

 

Ah. Sounds expensive. Ironically. : )

Still, that's pretty decent on street tyres on VIR South. Nice.

 

Thanks, I'm taking it for a track day at VIR (Full) at the end of May, I look forward to seeing what it runs. Improvements planned before then: tuned on Hondata (damn JDM P13 speed limiter was hitting us on South), rear toe at 0 (had 1/8" out, rear end quite unstable under braking), new bushings, and playing around with bump stops. I need to get the rear to do more of the work cornering, so I may spend my remaining 20 points on a bigger rear bar.

The H22 never skipped a beat- water & oil temps never wavered from 185 & 215, respectively. She did burn some oil though

 

Bigger rear bar is def worth doing. I have a 1" rear bar and 1000lb rear springs, and there's still capacity back there.

Alignment wise I'm actually finding that 0 toe in the front and a tiny amount of toe out (like 1/16" total) in the rear gives me the best combination of stability and corner entry rotation. It's a counter-intuitive setting but it seems to work well in practice. I use very little camber in the rear but this year I'm going to try stepping it back up to about 2.25 deg to see if I can lean on them on corner entry.

 

wow is that a prelude thing? when i bought my car it had 1200lb rear springs on it and it was TERRIBLE. i went to a giant rear bar and dropped the rear springs to 700 and its wonderful.

 

4th and 5th gen Preludes are a very different car from the Integra of the same vintage. Long body, short wheelbase, strange weight distribution, front suspension from the Accord, and 2WS rear suspension that's an odd mix between the 4WS car and the US Accord of the same era.

You can go one of two ways with springing a Prelude race car if you're using the same tyre size all the way around. One way is to use a front spring that's very slightly stiffer than the front in the 700~900lb-f/in with a big front bar and a 600~800 lb-f/in rear spring with an OEM rear bar. The result is a very snappy car that turns in very quickly if you lift off the throttle. Ruck Racing built their ITS car that way and with an experienced driver the car had superb handling.

The other way is to use a relatively soft front spring in the 650~800 lb-f/in range with no front bar and a stiff rear in the 900~1200 lb-f/in range. This works the rear more and results in a more sedate car at the expense of sharpness through transitions. McKinney Raceworks set their H2 car up this way back in the day, and my car is built that way too.

If someone made a small front bar for the car, I would consider putting that back to help with fast transitions through fast esses.

 

 

4th gen H22 preludes are amazing. It's the car that made me gay for Honda

 

Congrats! Top 10 first time out is very impressive - and a win to boot!

Hoping to eventually get to VIR. I've been running a DSM (featured on roadkill.com this week) in chump and Lemons since 2011 at Summit Point, Nelson Ledges, PIRC & NJMP. My team couldn't make the upcoming May race at NJMP so I found a seat with a foxbody V8 Mustang. Should be quite a change from a turbo AWD.

Add me to your list of people if you ever need drivers.

 

 

Yeah - that's us! Seems to be a memorable theme. Which F-body were you in?

I miss Summit too. So much fun. I've been on the Chump and Lemons forums trying to see if they'll bring it back but I think they have concerns about more deer strikes.

Any plans to do the summer 24 hour race at VIR? Or the one in December?

So far we've avoided races in the summer (like the VIR 24) since we don't have a cool suit set up, but I think now that we finally have the car sorted out, we can budget for one.

 

 

Ah ok - I remember that car.

The mustang team I'm running with in May has a coolsuit set up so I'm planning to get a shirt for the race... so it will probably snow.

We've done two 24 hour Chumpcar races at Nelson Ledges in Ohio - well one only lasted 7 hours for us and that sucked. We didn't have any extra crew so it was just us 4 doing everything. It was manageable with 4. You get your sleep when you can and hopefully the car doesn't need any fixes in the middle of the night. After you do one you definitely appreciate the "regular" 7+7 races and being able to park the car in the evening and relax.

I know VIR has their 24 hour race in August, but Nelson Ledges is back on the Chump(Champ) Car schedule this Spring and they've made a lot of improvements to that track for this year. Fun little track - lots of high speed sections and sweeping corners. Hondas did pretty well if I recall. I think an LS swapped Civic came 2nd behind the R-Bank Racing Saab last time we raced there.

 

Sup @ross2004 - CMP Racing gonna win this one again?

 

Preliminary testing in the simulator looks good.

 

Might be time for an update for the 2x 12 hour winner

 

Good luck at your race this weekend @ross2004 !

 

Thanks Tim! Hope you enjoy the drive down in the wagon!

PS- Don't take turn 1 like this.