This is my 1990 CRX DX that I purchased in 2000 as my first car. It was my daily and had fun with for about 6 years before life got in the way and it went into deep storage for a decade. A few years back I pulled it out of storage and started the slow process of turning it into an autocross / track car.

This is my earliest photo of the progress after I had already fixed a few things. Sadly, all my old photos have been lost over the years.


As it sat I had a B16a, YS1 trans, a built head with cams, springs, retainers, valves, a port and polish and some bolt-ons. Also, everything leaked and everything made of rubber was dry rotted. I replaced all the rubber hoses including brake lines, coolant lines, fuel lines and vacuum lines. I chased oil leaks everywhere. I ended up replacing every gasket in the head along with the head gasket. I also replaced the shocks and springs with some cheep Progress ones but the remainder of the suspension was still stock. I threw on some Hankooks to the old heavy 16" wheels and replaced the ball joints, wheel bearings, and tie rods. I replaced the pads and discs and put on new shoes in the rear. There was lots of electrical issues from sensors to wiring that I worked through along with basic maintenance like the timing belt, water pump, plugs, etc.

I also painted the stupid body kit to get rid of the silver stripe along with throwing some black paint on the hood and roof as much of the paint was worn down to the primer and the car took a beating in a hail storm when it got pushed out of the shop to make room for a different car. I figured I would get back to putting better paint on eventually so didn't bother too much to make it look nice.

At this point with all the fluids staying inside the car, it was time to get it to its first event last March.



Quickly the car started to show its flaws. The first event the alternator died along with the car being entirely undrivable. After replacing the alternator, the first thing I did was add front and rear upper control arms to adjust the camber and try and get more grip.

I found an SI in a junk yard and was able to salvage the body panels off of it to get it back to stock; though I wasn't able to find the little fender garnishes. I also salvaged the stock SI swaybar, rear disc brakes and replaced the master cylinder and prop valve. I put in an Energy bushing into the control arm while I had everything apart but didn't touch the rest of the crusty old bushings.



Next I removed the old fart can muffler. I fabricated a 2.5" exhaust using a Vibrant resonator and a FlowMaster muffler. Here I was testing a down pipe right in front of the gas tank. This was a sonic assault and should never ever be done.




While I was in the fabrication mood, I also built a panel to cover the giant hole where the fender garnish was missing. The rules allow for replacement body panels and there so I spaced it off the car a bit to try and get some air to escape from behind the wheel. So far this had held up very well.



Next I addressed driver comfort. I installed a Kirkey seat, CoolShirt and steering wheel. It was a giant difference between the stock seat and I felt I could actually drive rather than trying to hold on. The CoolShirt was a god send by not having my face melting off during the summer. Moving the wheel further back helped with the lack of power steering.

The tach is only there for Pro Solo style events (drag race type launch) when I have the two step installed or events when I need to shift to third; otherwise it doesn't get a free ride.




After this it was time to start addressing the rest of the suspension. I pulled the front lower control arms and replaced the bushings with ones from Hardrace and replaced the rear tow bars also with Hardrace ones. I ordered a set of Whitener Racing Shocks which I new would require different rear lower control arms so didn't bother finishing the rear. The shocks were going to take a few months to build so I moved on to the next project.

I ordered a new set of Konig wheels and BFG Rival S1.5 tires. The rules allow for up to 275s so the 205s that I had on it were far to skinny. I went with an 8" rear wheel and 9.5" front with 225/245 tires respectively. These were the best lightweight 15" option I could find in the widths I wanted. Mounting these were going to require some "adjustments" to the car to make fit so I rolled the rear fenders and cut the fronts. The fronts also required a 10mm spacer. While SCCA Solo rules do not require the tire to be covered, NASA requires it so I opted to cover them so I can one day get it to a time attack event and not have to make any changes.

I also replaced the front and rear wheel bearings and installed longer wheel studs.





The new shocks finally arrived so I went to work getting them installed. The fronts are stock type custom valved Bilstein shocks with a shrader valve installed. The rears are Bilstein coil overs which are also custom valved. These were not too difficult to install but I did have to grind out the rear lower control arms to get the shocks to fit without binding. I also installed an ST rear swaybar at the same time and had to build some spacers to prevent the rear swaybar end links from having too much angle.





At this point it was nearing the end of the season so it was time to start planning for winter projects. The biggest thing I wanted to address was aero. The car was too unstable in high speed sweepers yet had too much understeer in the tight turns. This meant I had to tighten the car up for events with sweepers and suffer through the tight turns; not much fun.

The first thing I tackled was a front splitter. This took longer than I would like to admit but turned out really well. I wanted to try and make as many parts as possible so built my own mounts and support rods on my lathe. The SCCA rules allow for a 6" splitter that ends at the center line of the lower ball joint. I went with 5 inches, again to align with other rule sets. This is built out of 1/2" plywood, various sizes of aluminum rod, HDPE plastic round stock and some steel I had in the shop. I wanted to reduce the turbulence on top of the splitter so opted for through bolts that thread into the supports directly and bend the supports to the correct angle rather than using heim joints on both ends.





Next was getting a something stupid to make rear downforce. There was no way a reasonably priced standard wing off the shelf could generate the amount of low speed downforce I wanted. In the face of a lack of options, I got in contact with a sprint car wing builder to make a custom wing. The rules allow for up to 8 sqft of combined wing and canard area so I this built using 7 sqft of the allotment. This is the first mockup just sitting on some boxes:



Because this was a custom wing and the rules are very specific about how it can be mounted and the box the wing must live within, I opted for a custom mount to allow for adjustability within the rules. I started in CAD and pulled measurements from the car to build a model that should fit. I cut it out in thin plywood first and verified the design. There were a few minor tweaks but was pretty close. I then cut the 5/16" aluminum plate into rough shape with a jigsaw then finished on the bandsaw. Cutting this took a bit of time as I ordered a 2' x 2' sheet in the event the design changed rather than getting something closer to final dimensions that would actually fit in my bandsaw. I also built the adjustable support tubes as there were none available in the length I needed.




At this point I was ready for the first event of the season. I had hoped to get a few other projects done but I blew the rest of my winter budget on a new trailer and also was planning on moving so everything else had to be delayed.

This was the first event. Of course it rained so it was a slick course but the car felt much better even in the wet conditions. The downforce was noticeable and allowed me to trail brake into the corners and made high speed transitions a lot less sketchy even in less than ideal conditions and running last seasons tires. The second event also rained so again, lots of fun but couldn't really push the car.


On the third event, I ended up running into low fuel pressure issues resulting in the car shutting off mid course. After getting it home, I dropped the tank realized the sock had fallen off the pump and it sucked up a bunch of rust. I replaced the tank, pump and filter and got the car back running. This was right as Covid-19 canceled everything so work kind of slowed down.

As anyone with a desire to go fast, getting more power would eventually come back into the picture and in order to do anything I needed to convert to OBD1. I originally had a chipped OBD0 ECU which was very difficult to tune as it required individual chips to be burnt and could only be done on Windows XP. I could have made it work on a modern OS but would require dropping a few hundred dollars into an already archaic platform. Needless to say, this was a serious pain and made no sense to keep with OBD0 so I put a very safe tune into it at the start of the 2019 season and never touched it.

I opted for the easy path and got a P28 with a Hondata already installed, ECU and disy conversion harness's, and a new distributor. This was beyond painless and only took a few hours; I had hoped for something to soke up a few days of time but I can't complain when things work. I ended up cleaning up some more wiring while I was at it. I will spare the wiring pictures as that may just be too much excitement.

So now we are up to real time; I picked up a second set of identical wheels and mounted some Nankang AR-1s. I am still waiting on dyno availability so I guess I will be running a mostly stock tune for the next event. I will try to post what I am sure will be astronomically average numbers for a mostly stock NA B16 once I get them.

The next step is dialing in the setup and a purchasing a new pull vehicle. Super exiting stuff so probably nothing new will really happen until fall. Eventually, the plan is to turbo this motor with a target of about 220WHP and to get a different trans with better gearing and an LSD. An engine build will come sometime after that to get some more power.

So far it has been a bunch of fun and I kick myself for not starting my mid life crisis earlier. Even with several failures the car has been more reliable than I expected having sat for so long. I can't wait to get it back on course and see what breaks next.

 

With racing mostly canceled in June and July and my shop floor slowly becoming a pool of black race car tears, I decided it was time to tackle some needed maintenance on the car. I've been chasing leaks for years and while all the ones on the top end were sorted, the bottom looked like it was on strict diet of Olestra potato chips.

The first three were coming from the axle seals and the shift rod seal and naturally I ordered all three and dropped the trans so I could clean it, inspect the main shaft seal and work on the engine. However, in my poorly researched late night ordering bonanza, I failed to realize the hydro B-series trans use a slightly larger shift rod than the cable and I had the wrong part. The cable seal trans seal (91215-689-013) seems to only be available from Honda and I assume is built when you order it as it took over two weeks for it to arrive.

While I had the trans out, I also replaced the right side wheel bearing as it was showing early signs of failure. It would have been fine to run the rest of the year but I hate letting things be. Here is a tip, use a bearing separator like this one (https://www.harborfreight.com/bearin...tor-63662.html) to remove the bearing race that is left on the hub after you press out the bearing. Why I never thought of this before is beyond me but it only took 20 minutes to replace the bearing. I had dedicated the entire night to this one job and found it difficult stretching it out enough to feel justified for running the AC in the shop.



Also with the trans out, I could take care of the rear main seal and oil pan gasket. There are no pictures as no one cares about your oil pan which is why it is mounted out of site on the bottom of the engine. I used the blue Fel-Pro gasket with the molded rubber over steel. The rear main seal was more difficult to remove and I should have just put it on the press but chose to wack it with the hammer for 10 minutes before it finally gave up it's will to live. Upon inspection, the rear main didn't look too bad and the backside of the flywheel wasn't wet so it was probably fine but still one less thing to worry about. All that was left is to slap a new clutch and flywheel on. I went with an ACT flywheel that I had purchased probably 15 years ago and a new OEM style Exedy clutch. I am going to replace the trans at some point in the near future so there was no point in spending the money on anything fancy as I don't know if the splines will match the new trans.

One interesting thing was, after replacing the oil pan gasket, the car sat for a few days and with no oil in the engine and I noticed a drip from the pan. I had cleaned the pan but didn't spray down the outside but rather just wiped it down to try and preserve what little paint remained. So, was the front main seal dead? Did the pan have a small hole in it? Was quantum mechanics playing out in front of my eyes? No, it was just residual oil behind the oil pan reinforcements that had squeezed out after I torqued it back down. I hate oil leaks.

Now for the easy part, just slap everything back together...



I don't remember reading this step in Honda Tuning Magazine.



Well, that isn't anti-seize on the bolt. As I was torquing the trans down on my first pass, one bolt just never seemed to tighten. I pulled it out and rediscovered the sad truth that love is not forever and eventually, fine thread bolts will always leave an aluminum block broken hearted. Back to waiting for a time-sert kit to arrive. The time-sert was dead easy to install but still I could think of plenty of different ways to spend $100 that don't even involve copious amount of whiskey. Still, it was only a matter of time and I will probably replace the rest of the threads with inserts at some point.



So with that last issue solved, the car went back together without issue. After the next event, the clutch was no longer slipping and I checked the pan and trans and they were dry as a bone. All the leaks seem to be resolved for the first time ever which is a major milestone!

I finally got a set of scales and was able to corner balance the car. All I can say is, she is fat.



I definitely need to start thinking about how to put her on a diet. Thus far, I have done nothing to lighten the load but the rules are fairly strict about what you can and can't do. You can't strip the interior, glass must remain, sound dedening can't be removed, and lots of other stipulations are in place to prevent you from destroying your car. With a target weight of 2075lbs, I need to lose 125lbs. I still have one stock seat that can be replaced, the battery is still stock, the hood can be replaced, I had 25lbs of water in the back for my cool shirt, the passenger side mirror can go, I lost a few lbs from the flywheel, I can chunk the foam bumper inserts, there are some electric locking mechanisms in the door and if needs be, the muffler can be removed. That still puts me about 40lbs heavy. The turbo is going to add some of that weight back and I would really like to put in a roll bar so I probably need to go a little further. I could look at a aluminum gas tank as the stock one requires nearly a full tank to prevent fuel starvation and possibly find an HF rear bumper. I guess, it's time to start making a list and working through it.

Now for the next major purchase of the project, a new pull vehicle. This one even has 4 speakers that work and can do over 60MPH on the highway. Yay!



Well, while not as glamorous as a turbo, it's sure more reliable. So while my bank account recovers from yet another questionable decision, I'll start planning for winter projects and praying the car can stay together for the rest of the season. I'll probably have some prep work in the next few months for the turbo along with adding lightness but I don't expect any major changes for the remainder of the season.

 

Well, it's been a while and the car has progressed forward, be it slowly.

I started designing canards for the car and after a number of revisions I got a design that fit the rules and fit the car. Not perfect and I ended up making a few more changes but they are easy enough to print. You can see in the last pic that I changed from flat end plates to an arc.





Next I turned my attention to the electrical. I had an issue that I thought was caused by the main relay but ended up being the igniter. So to mitigate any future problems, I simply removed the main relay and built a relay board to control a few other things too. I 3d printed a switch panel and installed it all in place of the stock radio. I also installed a RaceCapture MK3 for better data as this both enables 50HZ GPS and captures data from the CAN bus from the ECU. Oh, and at some point I converted the car to OBD1 with a P28 and S300.







After that I focused on the suspension. Even with the wing, the car still had the tendency to snap oversteer. I ordered a set of Honed roll center brackets and welded them into the car. These actually helped and while the car can still get loose, it is much more controllable. You can see the lower control arms are much more flat than they were before.





Winter projects started after this and I started pulling things apart. First was the passenger seat which was swapped for a Kirkey. Then I installed a new radiator and fan, fabricated new rear swaybar mounts, installed a new battery and stiffened the front and rear cross members.








After the new year I started acquiring parts for a turbo build. These sat on my table for a while as it took a good bit of time to get everything shipped. In March I put the car on jackstands and started the actual build. This was by no means easy and between needing to order additional parts, fabricating brackets, fittings and mounts and a struggling with 6 weeks of intense vertigo, it took four months to complete. Nothing fit quite right and space was minimal. The radiator can only move around 1mm in any direction which took about 10 hours if fitting, trimming, and welding to get it right. I also found an oil leak coming from the oil pump. This turned out to be a failed thread next to the high pressure o ring. Because there was no space, I had to drop the trans and shift the engine about 8 inches over to put a time-sert into the block. Not that big of a deal as I also replaced the trans, clutch, flywheel, intake, engine mounts and oil pan so it all had to come apart anyway.







After getting it all back together I got it on the dyno and we were easily able to hit my very conservative numbers. It ended up around 220HP and 145ftlb torque with torque being flat from 5500 to 8100 RPM. So as usual, still lots of work left to do on the car and plenty I didn't document but moving in the right direction.

 

Awesome keep it up!