Last year, I picked up this 1994 Integra LS with an EP3 Type R drivetrain. The previous owner ran it in TT4 in NASA AZ, but I will be using it for track days in the near term and prepping for Lucky Dog over the coming months.

• K20a dyno-ed at >230whp
• RRC manifold
• HR full-width rad, throttle body, intake
• Rywire engine harness
• K-Tuned fuel plumbing kit, ID1050x injectors
• Close-ratio EP3 Type R trans
• M-Factory plate LSD
• Re-valved K-Sport coilovers
• ASR rear brace + ASR bar
• 245 RS4s on 10s in the front, 225s on 7.5s in the back

 

First upgrade (in September 2020) was a 1.5x.120" cage with rocker tie-ins and footwell intrusion bars (hidden behind down bars in the photos) from Kontrolle Engineering near Sacramento.

For various reasons, the car was in storage for 8 months, so interior paint is still a work in progress.

 

Looks nice but those turn indicators dont need to be in there anymore.

 

Thanks!

Are you talking about the lamp housings in the front bumper or something else?

 

I dont endurance race... but my crew chief and i fantasize about this crap all the time.

the number 1 thing you need to do on shake down is measure consumables.
1. what is your fuel economy and how often will you have to stop? adjust your fuel tank size and/or consult your rules (maybe they make you pit X number of times a race)
2. you are going to burn down front tires... the rears will last forever. you need to optimize how the front of the car is jacked up to swap tires. take this into account if you build a splitter.
3. you need to make sure your brakes last. not just pads, but pads that are gentle on rotors. My recommendation as a sprint race is Raybestos ST43s. I raced over 1.5 years on one set of rotors and pads... start using them now because they arent the same old pad

Other things:
1. make sure you add a rXXn light or two to the back of the car. these golden era cars are hard to see the lights when it rXXns. I'd wire them into the head light switch... AND keep your turn signals and use them as extra light (to be seen, not to see)
2. finish your chassis prep... there is a lot of sound deadening in there. the more you dig the more you will be able to figure out how to layout the chassis harness to make any trouble shooting easy.

 

Thanks for chiming in! Great to get the perspective from experienced racers.

Lucky Dog does mandatory pit stops every 2 hours with 5-minute minimum stops, often in the paddock.

• Fuel will definitely be something to work out. I don't think the car will make it two hours, so I'll be looking for ways to carry more fuel. A cell is always an option but opens a bunch of questions. At the very least, I need to make the OEM neck take Hunsaker jugs as fast as possible.
• No splitter for now, but definitely something I'll keep in mind. I do have 2 pairs of 10" Dekagrams with RS4s for the front.
• One of the first changes I made to the car was swapping to ST43s. I'm liking them on track and the life is amazing!

• Good idea on the rain light. It's easy to get complacent when it hasn't rained much here in 5 years, but I'll definitely get one mounted before I need it.
• The chassis prep is a fair point. Unfortunately, the car lives 110mi away from my house in a garage with minimal workspace, so extended prep work is hard to chip away at. I will get around to it soon (famous last words). However, I did remove a fair bit of wire from the main harness, including everything leading to the door and roof harnesses. The "trunk" running down the rocket got a lot slimmer, and I re-loomed it and routed it with Adel clamps.

The car is definitely quite darty on the gas at corner exit. I'm running pretty mild toe (1/16" total toe out in the front and zero toe in the back), so I'm not sure if it's just the low +20 effective offset of the fronts pushing the scrub radius out or a setup issue.

 

FYI, this is what my car did when the plates were dying on my Mfactory diff. IMHO for an endurance car, you want to stick with a helical.

 

your car definitely wont make 2 hours... if it does it will be very close and you will want a hydro mat. DubloCivic (on here and IG) has a K24 setup and he burns through a lot of E85

If you can get away with E85 i think you should run it, it will keep the car cooler.... but you will use more fuel... so there is going to be a pass off.

i've "heard" of guys getting a JY gas tank... drying it out for months... sealing a bolt on air compressor fitting to the tank... and hitting it with air to get 2ish extra gallons in a stock tank. its a lot of work but it might beat getting a 20gal fuel cell.

now if you did get a 20gal fuel cell... you could do E85, tune to kill, and make 2 hours with no problems.

 

The wiper controls and turn signal arms.
You can make those switched.

 

I run Lucky Dog in an EG hatch with a K24A2 out of a 2005 TSX and an 06 Si transmission with the stock helical LSD. In order to make these cars last during an endurance race, you will need to cool the brakes and outer CV joints. You should also be race prepping the CV's. You want to run stock Honda/Acura axles and CV's. After market just don't last as long. Reybestos ST-43 are absolutely fantastic for endurance racing. We typically run one set of pads for a weekend (15+ hours of racing) and have about 40% left on them. We run Wilwood DPHA calipers in the front. Cost of pads for the Wilwoods are less than half of pads for OEM Honda/Acura calipers.

We run 225 tires on 15x8 wheels on all corners. This allows moving front to back and back to front between races.

We typically need 14-15 gallons of fuel every 2-hours. The rules do not allow ballooning the gas tank as mentioned above, but they do allow modification to the vent system. Our modified vent system allows the stock 13 gallon tank to hold 17.25 gallons. The modified vent is also required in order to fill a stock tank quickly. Gutting the fuel filler neck allows a flex hose on a Hunsaker fuel jug to fit.

What are you doing for an engine oil cooler? We run a RSX Type S OEM sandwich plate cooler and never see over 220 deg F on the oil. For water, we run an OEM style S2000 radiator (full width) and don't have any cooling issues.

 

Deets on that vent system ?

 

OEM gas tanks have a lot of empty head space above the "full" fuel level for expansion and emissions requirements. We bought a new fuel tank (less than $100) and had an AN-12 bung welded towards the top of the tank. We still left several inches of head space in the tank. From the bung we have a braded AN hose to a 90 degree ball valve and a short section of hose to dump behind the rear bumper. When we pit for fuel, we pop the rear glass and open the ball valve and place a catch container under the vent line. Fill with our dump cans until gas comes out the vent. replace gas cap, close the ball valve and close the rear glass.

You still need a vented gas cap to let air into the tank as the fuel is drawn out. We only fill the tank up to the new vent before and during a race. If you fill it up to the vent a leave it, the gas vapor pressure and gas expansion could cause some issues.

Oh, and the added weight of fuel caused the gas tank straps to break frequently. We added extra support under the tank with rectangular steel tubing.

 

You mind me asking how much Kontrolle charged for putting that sweet cage in?

 

Thank you all for the great advice. Lots of good TODOs for my checklist

I'll keep an eye on this and start thinking about swapping to an OE Torsen. Do you have any tips on bias torque checking or anything diagnostic? I have some low-range dial torque wrenches.

Maybe some day. I kind of like the OE stalk ergonomics, and I want to keep working wipers/lights for bad weather.

Thanks for the tips, and I love the livery! The car currently has OE base RSX axles with CV-2 grease. Are you just grabbing junkyard spares?

For cooling, are you just pointing the outlet of a brake duct hose in the general hub area so it can hit both the outer CV and the rotor bell / caliper? I'm currently running an OEM sandwich oil-water cooler and a full-width aluminum rad. Water temps have been right on the 180* thermostat in 105* heat for 45-minute stints (the longest so far).

 

I think the OEM diff is semi soft for the settings... id look for someone whos run an OEM and then a Mfactory and see if it was better.

that being said... one of the super fast B series guys in my region is on a stock ITR diff... but we dont have the HP/TQ that you will... well i will shortly, but he doesnt.

 

Yes, we are pulling spare axles from auto dismantlers. Fully disassemble and clean everything, looking for any wear. We prep the outer CV by loosening the fit of the holes in the cage that hold the ***** in place. Less friction equals less heat. CV-2 grease and heavy duty boots.

Brake cooling is from inlets in the front bumper and directed at the base of the rotor and CV.

 

I was more curious about the outlet side: is it just the end of the hose pointed at the hub area, or do you have a special duct outlet plate? A plain hose end pointed in the right direction feels like it might have more cooling effect on the CV than a real duct plate, so I'm wondering if the easy approach is also good for CVs

 

Okay, all of this got me pretty excited about getting a new tank to mess with. Still need to do some more thinking, but any thoughts on Spectra-branded OEM replacements? They're crazy cheap (~$120) with free shipping.

I'll pick up some new straps and add some extra steel now before I do anything with the tank.

 

Dont cheap out on a tank get the safest one you can buy/afford. seen too many of those cheap summit racing ones crack.

 

I do not have a picture, but we are set up with a short piece of rigid aluminum mandrel bent tubing fastened to the shock fork. The tube is pointed in between the inner rotor and the cv joint. Flex hose from the aluminum tubing going forward.

 

I PMed you a little while back.

 

Yeah you did. My bad... now you know how my wife feels.

 

This weekend, I had a day to go up and work on the car a bit, and I discovered that the bumper corner lamp openings are perfect for holding the front bar for a DIY alignment string box. The height is right on the wheel centers and it's easy to adjust the bar left-to-right to get the box exactly centered.

Still trying to work out the easiest way to mount the rear bar. For now, I used some straps, which took a bit of fiddling to get perfectly secured with the bar centered.

Starting settings are 2.5* F / 2* R camber, zero front toe, and 3mm total rear toe in, since the car has been on the loose side with the stagger. We'll use the pyro and make some adjustments at the Friday Lucky Dog test.

 

I also did a little bit of "rain prep" hoping it would keep the rain away:

• Lifeline flashing rain light on a DiBond license plate mount. This thing is bright, the photo does not do it justice.
• Frost Fighter hot wire defroster on the front windshield (purchased from Bimmerworld -- link). I got the grid-only kit to DIY the wiring.

 

i found that i go through too many windshields to run that defrost setup. i went to an 8lbs hot rod defroster... i'll let you know how it works out this year.