The Traccord - 2003 Honda Accord Coupe

Three iterations of the front suspension so far. Stock, junkyard KYB GR2's with springs and the poly seats to make them work, and Koni yellow's with cheap coilover sleeves. Keeps getting better. 

The Koni's let me use the coilover sleeves because of the snap ring that supports the spring seat. In the normal orientation for the stock springs the sleeves won't sit on the seat right, but if you flip it upside down it's perfect. I moved the snap ring down to the lower notch to give me more room. If anyone else does this I'd recomment 8 inch springs rather than the 10 I have. Lighter and more room for low. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

you weighed those all, right?

sleepyhead said:

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

you weighed those all, right?

Phase 4 will be moving to shorter 2.25" diameter springs for maximum weight savings and tire clearance :P

It was only after I popped the second old shock apart to harvest the top (impact gun, no spring compressor, exciting stuff) that I realized I didn't weigh them complete. The next time I take the fronts apart I'll weigh the stock spring vs. the new springs. I'll also figure out how much an 8 inch spring would save. 

This is all going to seem moot when I weigh the new rotors and see what the increase in rotational mass is. 

another thought I had was the access to the rear uppers.  It's probably easier getting back there than the TL (you've got remove the back seat and the SRS trim-covers)... but I was figuring on cutting out a square in that trim panel so adjustment was easily accessible.  You might not want to do that on the original one, but maybe on a J/Y "OneLap only" rear deck piece?  I reckon we're going to want to loosen up the rear for transits, and any inclement weather we interface with... so we'll be tweaking those a bit more than "normal use"

In reply to sleepyhead :

99% certain you can get the knob on them without the trim piece that is sitting in my garage because the seat covers that area anyway. Depends on how high the adjuster sticks up. Might have to modify one of the four knobs. 

dang, those adjuster sleeves are sexy!  ;-)

In reply to AngryCorvair :

They sure are.......

I forgot to mention, AngryCrovair sent me those sleeves because he's awesome. I'm 99% certain they're the "set it once and they'll never move again" variety of sleeves, but they're working great so far! Thanks!

mazdeuce - Seth said:

In reply to AngryCorvair :

They sure are.......

I forgot to mention, AngryCrovair sent me those sleeves because he's awesome. I'm 99% certain they're the "set it once and they'll never move again" variety of sleeves, but they're working great so far! Thanks!

LOL, you mentioned it when you received them.  I commented only because i'm glad to see them being used for something other than wasting shelf space.  :-)

Great project. Enjoying following and reading. 

In reply to mr2s2000elise :

I'm glad you're enjoying it. The car is proving to be much more fun than makes sense. If it holds up for One Lap, the whole project will be a success even without making it fast in the conventional sense. 

I think I have read most of all of your other threads from beginning to end. Keep up the good work :) 

Finally put the rear Koni's on. These have three snap ring grooves and stock perch height is the middle one. If things are saggy with the whole crew on board for One Lap we have an easy fix. 

I modified a Koni knob by hacking pretty much the whole thing off and can get good purchase on the stub through the windows I cut. They are covered by the seat when it's up. 

I also pulled the drums for inspection. I probably have two weekends left in the shoes, but not enough for a full One Lap. Probably going to start collecting parts to put on the rear disks. The drums are great for daily and AX, and if I could get shoes for a normal price I'd keep them, but it's not cost effective at this wear rate. 

I need to get on track to confirm, but my gut feeling driving around is that I have more rear grip that front. Normally I'd be headed to the rear swaybar department, but discussing this with someone else led me to the thought that I should really chase more front grip first through camber (which I need adjustable arms for) and better alignment/pressure that sort of thing and probably a splitter. Those things first, and if the car is still tight, then balance through a rear bar. Working on this sort of thing without rules is different. 

Another tuning tool that you already have is ride height, you mentioned potentially needing to raise the back for OLOA weight anyways. We lowered the front of the m3 earlier this summer by a half inch and the change in balance was astounding. I would think raising the rear should accomplish the same thing.

If you are going to one-lap the car, buy the following and install them or keep them with you..These will save your day.

91345-RDA-A01. Updated power steering O-ring, suction hose at the pump. It will starting leaking and pulling air.

15815-RAA-A02 (rear) 15845-RAA-A01 (front) Vtec screens. These will get blocked and the 2.4 won’t rev above 3k Due to i-vtec use.

In reply to Pbw :

Will do. Thanks. 

In reply to klodkrawler05 :

I talked to Andy Hollis about rake at the last autocross and he said the same thing about it being a very useful tool. My question is whether it's more of a low speed thing or a high speed thing or even across the board. I'm more comfortable with the car being loose in lower speed situations (like most people) and apart from a big ass wing I don't really know how to set up a car that is loose on corner entry that doesn't try to kill me in fast sweepers. 

I wonder if [rake angle directing grip is] all "aero"... or also a about where the front/rerar suspensions end up in their camber curves and roll center geometries?

thinking about this... you're being specific about a rear wing making a car that is "loose" at "low speed turn-in" into "stable at speed"

if that's the case, then a rear diffuser is another way to do the same thing.  I'd have to pull some books out, though to come up with estimates to compare installing one of those vs. a rear wing

In reply to sleepyhead :

A rear diffuser and semi/completely flat bottom is part of the plan, long term. As I understand it, the advantage to a diffuser is that it's basicaly "free" as far as drag is concerned. The down side is that it's not very tunable without building several of them and testing. So you build one and you get what you get and balance that with other aero on the car. Reading says that the effectiveness goes WAY up with a flat bottom, but a flat bottom is a bunch of work and means that the air that's currently exiting behind the motor and out the bottom of the car needs to go somewhere else. There are BIG chunks of frame rail aft of the wheels to the fire wall, it's not like an Insight, so it's going to take some thinking and testing. The good news is that low power means low heat relatively speaking. 

So it's gong to need a wing at some point for tunability, but a diffuser should mean less wing and less drag. Right now I need to get alignment and brakes where they need to be and see how time is progressing. Actually, right now I need to go work on the kitchen. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

In reply to sleepyhead :

A rear diffuser and semi/completely flat bottom is part of the plan, long term. As I understand it, the advantage to a diffuser is that it's basicaly "free" as far as drag is concerned. The down side is that it's not very tunable without building several of them and testing. So you build one and you get what you get and balance that with other aero on the car. Reading says that the effectiveness goes WAY up with a flat bottom, but a flat bottom is a bunch of work and means that the air that's currently exiting behind the motor and out the bottom of the car needs to go somewhere else. There are BIG chunks of frame rail aft of the wheels to the fire wall, it's not like an Insight, so it's going to take some thinking and testing. The good news is that low power means low heat relatively speaking. 

So it's gong to need a wing at some point for tunability, but a diffuser should mean less wing and less drag. Right now I need to get alignment and brakes where they need to be and see how time is progressing. Actually, right now I need to go work on the kitchen. 

yeah, a diffuser is generally "free" from a drag perspective... since you're essentially* giving the air from under the car a "more ideal" path to meet up with the air coming from the top of the car.  It's very analogous/similar to the rear upper surface of a wing.

*cars are highly 3-dimensional objects from an aerodynamic perspective... so it's not that simple

you could tune it if you mounted the front edge in a way that it was supported but still allowed to... bend (?) so that you could have adjustable length mounts for the rear top side so that you can adjust the angle.  The tricky part is sealing the edges of the "flat" part with the vertical sides.

if you're limited to a front splitter, and a rear diffuser... with "OEM" in the middle... you could probably make the rear diffuser more effective by loading up the rear edge of the front splitter with VG's to help the the flow "jump" the disturbed middle section and re-attach on the diffuser.  I'll see if I can dig up the drag of a cylinder vs. a cylinder with a plate behind it... it's kinda similar.

mazdeuce - Seth said:

In reply to sleepyhead :

that the air that's currently exiting behind the motor and out the bottom of the car needs to go somewhere else. There are BIG chunks of frame rail aft of the wheels to the fire wall, it's not like an Insight, so it's going to take some thinking and testing. The good news is that low power means low heat relatively speaking.

One thing to keep in mind is that you're kind of confusing two things together.  The main contributor to "air in the engine bay that needs to get out" is really the radiator... and the fact that the front end around it allows a lot air to seep around the radiator and into the engine bay.  Now, the exhaust and block certainly does heat up the air... and blocking off the engine bay will require more cooling... and/or wrapping the exhaust back to behind the passenger cabin.  But some of this could be mitigated by more strictly controlling the radiator flow... which generally would also help generate more front downforce, since you'd be ideally directing the radiator's exit flow upward.

will it need a wing eventually?  sure... I mean, even the Nissan GT-R LM Nissmo had a rear wing.  After all, a rear wing can actually help produce more front downforce be creating a higher low pressure at the back end of the car which helps draw more air over the front splitter.

it's all a system

so, now I'm getting diy speaker build video suggestions in my feed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdkyGDqU7xA

which has me scratching my goateed chinny chin chin a bit

My kids are starting to get tired of the no radio thing. Doesn't help that neither of the radios in the Subaru or the Miata work either. 

I don't understand wanting to listen to "terrestrial" radio...

music, I can understand missing

are the current speakers "unamplified"?

is this just a matter of Pump Up The Volume?  edit:  or perhaps a jam?