This is one of those weekends where I find myself wondering why I gave up bicycles.

The current fiasco is *still* the Kirkey seat install. I thought I had a winner. Madhatter, who is selling his Integra, shipped me the mount he was using for his Kirkey. In his Integra. He's my height. What could be better, right? Well...being able to reach the pedals would probably be better. Chris I have *no* idea how you drove your car this way.

Meanwhile, my painstakingly drawn up and crafted sunroof cover has completely backfired in my face. I'm at the "phawck it" point now, and will just rivet a piece of sheet metal to the roof and be done with it. Oh wait...I ruined my aviator's snips cutting the now-useless sheet of steel. Guess I'd better go get some more snips...except all the stores are closed.

Then there's the springs. See, I have these 600lb rear springs I want to install out back (and put the current 425s on the front). Of course I have every allen wrench *except* the one for the Ground Controls. And again...all the stores that sell allen wrenches are closed.

Hey, maybe I can get something done installing the oil cooler and associated stuff. Oh...but Racer Parts Wholesale forgot to send me an oil pressure sending unit (hence my search over in tech). And since I have no snips, I can't cut a piece of aluminum to mount the no-sending-unit-having-gauges with.

If nothing else, I got the hedges trimmed today and changed the oil in the Suburban, all 6.6 quarts of it

OK...I'm done. I just had to get that off my chest

--Karl, who hates cars

 

Weve all been there man.
ive been fed up with my car several times in the past month or 2
have a or 2 and relax.

 

1) Open beer. Drink.
2) Realize that GCs are made in America and therefore probably standard units.
3) Take another sip of beer.
4) Realize none of the allen wrenches you have are standard.
5) Take another sip of beer.
6) Pick up phone, call Matt who lives 5 minutes away and have him come over with HIS GC allen wrench.
7) Have a beer ready for Matt.

 

I'm just waiting for Koni to send me my shocks back. My car has spent the vast majority of the last 4 months on jack stands. Hey... that's where it is again. Big surprise.

Shultz, What's up with you? Towne and I both used that seat mount with no issues. You'd **** up a wet egg noodle bro.

In your best Mr. Mackey voice... "Racing is bad m'kay."

 

I'd hate this sport too if I didn't love it so much.

****.

Warren

 

The problem is that Shultz talks to this Chris Perera clown too much over IM. Chris is usually the one who gets rather annoyed when the mechanical gods decide to taunt him by the same methods Shultz is being tortured at this moment. Guilty by association!

 

I don't know how you guys drove the car like that. Do you and Towne sit real far away from the steering wheel or something? The problems are...

1. Too far away from steering wheel and pedals. Left leg almost straight when I depress the clutch.
2. Shifter is actually somewhat difficult to reach comfortably.

The only good news is that I have one of the 600lb springs on, and it only took me like 30 minutes. I think I can do the whole spring swap in a couple hours now that I have so much practice taking this busted *** car apart. In the meantime...I just ordered a pizza and just cracked open a beer. Mmm...beer.

At least I can't find *ANY* of the sockets that I need. How many 15mm deep 6 point sockets will I have to buy before I stop losing them? Arrgh!

OK...got to get back to work.

 

GC allen is a 3/16". Buy the socket. It will make life easier.
I feel your pain. I still have to 1) install lights for night enduro @ Buttonwillow
2) install fire system since we all know that it will be pretty much impossible to really reach the portable extingisher if I need it 3) remove the door glass & speaker from the passenger side since it won't rain anymore, right? 4) reattach the rear sway bar links 5) keep telling myself not to buy new fenders 'cuz they will just get dented like the current ones 6) stop spending all my money on the car since I just bought a new driver's suit & jack.

BTW, the mount might have worked fine in Madhatter's car. I remember when Roger & Taz were building their Civic Si's (both owned by Taz now). There was a 1/2" variation in the floorpan between the two cars. Really suprised me in a pair of Hondas.


[Modified by civicrr, 9:43 PM 3/24/2002]

 

We invite this upon ourselves. Once on track it is left behind with an ease that's remarkable. Success on the track is the goal, the driving force and the reward (Beer really is just window dressing(and pain reliever apparently)). I'd bet there were times like this when you were riding bikes too Karl - I know my rides were down ridiculously long sometimes and I took alot of crap for it.

Scott, who has the luxury of taking a little time on the next big steps....gonna spring it all at just the right moment....after testing it thoroughly.....

 

You must have had more than one beer by now. I dont know of any place on a Honda-Acura that uses a 15 mm socket... might be part of the problem

I hope that is a typo. 14 mm... yea I see that.

Karl... if it makes you feel any better, you could be in my situation.

Smile dammit, I would like to.

Pete

 

Was thinking that too.. That Karl is such a dumbass

 

Variation in what direction? My civic HB has a REALLY weak floorpan. I made the mistake of putting a jack somewhere I thought it would be ok, and it made the floorpan buckled a little. When I sat in the passenger seat, the seat was tilted a couple degrees. So to fix it.... I opened the door, grabbed under the sill, and pulled. The floor pan popped right back to where it was.

As for 15mm sockets, I think there's at least one place that uses one, because I remember being terribly frustrated that I didn't have a shallow 15mm 3/8" drive socket when I was pulling apart my civic suspension last weekend. I just don't remember what it was.

-Mike

 

Karl, IIRC, I suggested cheating the drill points on the seat a little to the rear to give you an extra bit of closeness to the wheel/pedals. Maybe you moved them away instead of toward?
Worst case scenario, I will swap you seat shells. I know that I was close enough with that...

 

Better solution to ALL GC allen key lost/problems is a T30 torx socket and a 3/8" drive ratchet with a 12" extension...

SImply the easiest way to adjust them...And the torx bit gets into the corners because it has a tapered head on it...

All available at Sears, who by the way are open till 10:00pm around here 7 dyas...

Best $18 I ever spent...
Hope the beer was cold...

 

Hardware for the rear swaybar, which is not a Honda piece.

Good call everyone on the torx thing. In a fit of rage I went rummaging through one of the several piles of tools on my floor and found my torx sockets. Looked at them, and thought...what the hell, I'll try it. Worked like a champ.

In some ways the Suburban is even better. It uses a mixture of SAE and Metric fittings. good job General Motors.

I stopped last night after getting the driver's side springs switched over - that was about the time when I was wondering if it was too cold to just sleep in the garage. Thanks to Whitney I remembered to both punch the coilover sleeve where the old springs were set, and wrote down how many threads up on the sleeve the perch was. So if nothing else, should the car suck at VIR South I can get it back to where it was. The other piece of good news is that my rear shocks seem to be in *fine* shape. Full stiff on the rebound is very, very stiff.

Cars:
Beer:

 

The variation I am talking about has to do with the 'length'. The area measured was from the firewall to the verticle surface just in front of the rear seat area. They realized when doing the cages. How come this fit in that car & not this one?

 

LOL!

I hear ya! my $4,000 Litespeed Ultimate is gathering dust this spring. I don't even think it has air in the tires!

Compared to all the time and money i have spent on my car though, the Litespeed seems pretty cheap!

I feel for ya! It reminds me of the time i spent an entire weekend searching for a 14mm metric bolt when the bolts at the rear LCA's snapped while installing my Konis. What a pain in the ***.

Mike

 

home depot never closes (at least the one by me).

 

Please don't tell me Koni has had your shocks for 4 months!?!?!

Mike (who is UPSing his shocks tomorrow in hopes of getting them back by mid-May)

 

Nope, but they didn't get the compression quite right the first time so I sent them back. They say I'll have them within 2 weeks.
The bad news for you is that I heard the backlog is into June at this point.