The Traccord - 2003 Honda Accord Coupe

In reply to davefla :

An auto V6 would be a much better car than an auto four. Lots of them around too. 

In reply to 759NRNG :

I have a plan. The brake duct tubing is here, I just need to fabricate some way to attach it to the caliper/knuckle. I've got ideas. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

In reply to davefla :

An auto V6 would be a much better car than an auto four.

I haven’t driven an Accord V6. But Mrs. Davefla dailies a 2010 LX sedan, with K24/5-speed auto, which I had originally bought for myself. I think it needs a manual more than additional power, mostly because our commuting amounts to ten or fifteen miles per day and rarely any freeway. I will take your comments to heart when shopping and test driving. Thanks again.

In reply to davefla :

I think they need either a V6 or a manual. I'd like to drive one with both to be honest. 

Got up early this morning and decided to check the toe. About 1/2 inch in.....on each side. Camber will do that to an alignment.

Got that all adjusted, though I'll check it again this week, and took it for a drive. It's got more grip than I can use on public roads so all real testing is going to have to be on track from now on. Stupid grip. Then off to HD to grab some trim for the kitchen. I knew that 8 foot boards would fit with the back seats down, but all they had were 12's. Made it work anyway. 

Still good at being a car.

mazdeuce - Seth said:

In reply to davefla :

I think they need either a V6 or a manual. I'd like to drive one with both to be honest. 

Still good at being a car.

I often read Jack Baruth's pieces, and find him quite persuasive about the desirability of the Accord V6 manual. I also think that you're solving a set of problems with the Traccord that many more enthusiasts will face, barring an inheritance or the success of their chain of orthodontics clinics. I can't wait to read about this vehicle at One Lap!

Regarding the alignment, did this result from the A-arm replacement? Have you ever performed this step using a laser level?

The toe was purely from adding camber. I knew it happened, it was just a matter of getting out the strings/straight edges and measuring. I've not done it with a laser, though I'm hoping for Santa to bring me a set of Paco hub stands. 

Round two of the superlegarra sound system. It worked. Briefly. 

I have an old door speaker, the new amp with a volume knob and no angry Chinese lady. Bluetooth is handled through an aux dongle what will require it's own power long term, but that's easy to deal with. It worked great and it capable of volume that hurts just a bit. Then I got cocky and decided to try and play it through the factory wiring. I still have one door speaker and one back speaker after all. I pulled up a wiring diagram and easily got sound through the dash speakers. At that point I had a great handle on how Honda paired up wires on the connector. All I had to do was swap my jumpers over and I could get to the other speakers. Right? Then I let the smoke out of the new amp. Dammit. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Series vs. Stereo wiring and balancing out needed resistance vs. power. A lesson I had to learn with about 4000w  worth of someone else's amps setting up a pa system for a live show. At least yours is a cheaper mistake.

Oh, this thread again...

Off to Craigslist to look for v6-6mt accords. Again.

Test day! Thanks to spacedcadet we were invited to a private test day at the 14 million square feet of asphalt that makes up the Mineral Wells Pro Solo site. The group runs a 1.1 mile course that's a bit like a small-ish road course with two segments that are fairly deep into third gear and require proper braking and downshifting. The format is four flying laps and then off, make adjustments, get back in line. Between spacecadet and I we put about 50 laps on the Traccord. It's also about 4 1/2 hours from my house so I got 9 hours of transit time in too. A good One Lap test day. 

A couple of siginificant discoveries. First, when leaned all the way over, a big bump will cause the upright to come into contact with the Skunk 2 arms at the back of the reinforced part. It looks like it's just a cast lump in the back of the upright that can be clearanced with a grinder. Twice during the morning spacedet was driving hard enough that the adjustable ball joints adjusted themselves from full negative to full positive camber. We tightened things back down and went a little easier on the very bumpy sections and all was well. It was way better to find this on a test day rather than losing sessions on a much more expensive track day. I also had a little trouble with the car losing rear grip. Spacecadet is a better driver than me and is way more comforable sliding the car on purpose, but it wasn't where I wanted it to be. I moved the rear shocks from full hard (where I liked them driving around town) to full soft and the rear grip came back. A quite tire pressure adjustment to bring them closer to where I like them hot on track and I now have a baseline setup that I'm happy with. I could hand this car to anyone with any track experience and it's grippy, benign, and the brakes work GREAT. 
For the transits I played Slip Angle podcasts through a bluetooth speaker that I borrowed from Deucekid#2, set the cruise and had very comfortable drives both ways. Plenty of room to pack track gear. It's a great road car. 

Could you pin the camber adjuster to keep it from slipping?

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

I'm not too worried about it. I'll take some pictures of how it's contacting and how it gets clearanced and once that is cleared up it should be fine as long as I don't throw Hoosiers on there. 

Pictures! everyone loves pictures. 

photos of the "damage" first time I bonked the suspension was in a right hander.....

good right side

bad left side 

resetting the camber and discovering the self clearancing.   

My takeaway from today. 

After driving it at the beginning of the month the Koni's and springs were showing signs of what this car could possibly do in a corner. 

After cambers and a smidge more low it's phenomenal. turns in great in "autox" setup where I was sliding the car around and Seth was swapping ends. Turning the shocks down to Seth's liking makes it turn in less, but the new brakes have so much bite that breathing on the pedal will bring the nose in. 

on the new brakes.... OH MY GOD, this is how cars are supposed to stop. We've now got a proper amount of brake for the car and we beat the living hell out of them today and they barely flinched. The pedal is easy to modulate and I can get the car to do what I want at will. 

I'm properly in love with the setup now. I'd love a little more low, but it can't do one lap any lower than it currently is. 

side note, since I bought the focus, my driving style has changed a lot to suit how that car works. so, I now like moving FWD cars around under me and chasing the ass end. It's been 18 months since seth and I drove together for a whole event. I'm very comfortable on the "mineral ring" 1.1 course we ran today and so I was comfortable with constantly moving the car around under me and so seth was laughing about it and forced me to change my driving to a track environment style, only braking in straight lines, and I could see why he was having issues with the rear of the car at the beginning of the day. 

Overall a phenomenal day and we had a blast. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

I'm not too worried about it. I'll take some pictures of how it's contacting and how it gets clearanced and once that is cleared up it should be fine as long as I don't throw Hoosiers on there. 

so... stay off the curbs;  no Dubler action for the Traccord this year.  Got it

In reply to sleepyhead :

Curbs will be fine. I'm going to bang curbs. Once we clear up the mechanical contact issue and get things properly tightened and torqued it will be good. The Hoosier comment was simply a way of me reminding myself that this will be something to watch in the future when the car has 600hp and is wearing 315 Hoosiers in front. 

Seeing the progress on this car is awesome. Can’t wait to see you do some track time to see how quick it is compared  other track cars. Hope aero is next. 

In reply to BeardedOne :

I really wish we would have had timing this weekend. We don't need it, but seat of the pants everyone who drove it felt like it had more mechanical grip than the Focus ST. I know when I was out behind one of the Miatas I was putting time on him. 

From here I need pull down the Accord Hybrid rear knuckles that I have and figure out exactly what I need to convert the rear brakes. The original plan was to keep the drums which would have kept me legal for a couple of autocros/TT classes, but I've already pretty much blown that with the front brakes, so I might as well save some money long term. I know the rear disks take a different parking brake cable. The plan is to just get new calipers instead of taking a chance on JY ones. I know the eccentric toe bolts on the car right now are frozen and are going to need to be cut off so if I can find a set of them that's not frozen in the JY that would be nice. Oh, and front brake cooling which will require moving the washer reservoir and a couple of other things. 

And then yes, aero, but the bulk of the beginning of that is simply to provide a good place to pull air for brake cooling. 

The car is good enough that if I had to leave for One Lap tomorrow I'd be comfortable. That's a huge step. I'm happy. 

I am jealous of your preparedness level for OLOA already. I'm also excited to see how many "proper sportscars" you guys wind up running ahead. Seat time + easy to drive cars have to be the 2 biggest assets to any team considering OLOA.

mazdeuce - Seth said:

In reply to BeardedOne :

I really wish we would have had timing this weekend. We don't need it, but seat of the pants everyone who drove it felt like it had more mechanical grip than the Focus ST. 

Definitely does, I was running old, REALLY old RE71's on the focus but the car was behaving as per normal and when the focus was scrubbing the accord was biting and carrying lots of speed. 

klodkrawler05 said:

I am jealous of your preparedness level for OLOA already.

We sweat like dogs over the summer months, but Houston track/autox scene never stops going and while the north texas autox scene dies Nov-March and the track scene slows a bit, Mineral wells is available almost every weekend from December to Feb. I enjoyed the warm winters when I first moved ot Houston in 2012, but now I could never do without them. I never stop driving and it's been critical to my ability to develop as a driver when I keep swapping cars, cause I'm an idiot. 

Also with Seth as chief mechanic/team owner and me to push everything to the limit and find things to break and provide feedback, it means that we can make use of all 7 days in a week. 

Which is crucial, I get us invited to days like last Saturday and Seth does what needs to happen to make those days. It also helps I'm just a broken in the head as he is, the 5 minutes of seat time I got at the autox in the beginning of November, in the Accord, made it very easy for me to slide into the seat this weekend and see what changes we had made because seth wasn't able to get to an event before this weekend.  Also, to get those 5 minutes of seat time I had to drive 600 Miles in 24 hours. 

klodkrawler05 said:

I am jealous of your preparedness level for OLOA already. I'm also excited to see how many "proper sportscars" you guys wind up running ahead. Seat time + easy to drive cars have to be the 2 biggest assets to any team considering OLOA.

The biggest issue is time. I could go do the same test course in a couple weeks. After the new year I could probably do a proper track weekend three weekends a month right up until One Lap if I had the time and $$$$$. From about mid November until One Lap is the best time to live in Texas. 

We're so ready I'm working on the radio. Version 3!

This is the same $15 amp that I blew up a week ago, but this time I spent the $5 for a connector to connect it right to the harness. Weight is just shy of 4 ounces for my new stereo. 

The vinyl covered cardboard isn't sturdy enough to support this for the thousands of miles of One Lap, so out came the jigsaw and the top of the garbage can that I modified to fit in the new kitchen cabinet. 

Hot glue and holes and stuff, including an extra one because things don't fit if it's all the way over on the left, and we have music! It's just running through the single back speaker that I haven't taken out yet but that's loud and clear enough to listen to pod casts already. I have some new speakers coming because experiments earlier showed that the extra clarity with better than stock speakers let me run them at a lower volume. Right now I'm running it through an AUX cord, but I also have a bluetooth dongle that is in the Forester right now that works great and doesn't scream at me. I just need to set up power for that and we'll have a four ounce bluetooth stereo for about $45. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

  0 - 11
 -knob-
Booost!

Your trash can plastic is much cooler than my mud flap plastic

4 oz for $45 sounds like exactly the sort of OLOA radio we'll need too.

I suppose the seasonal advantage for OLOA prep goes to the south, that makes sense to me. We just got our first snowfall yesterday which mostly motivates me to sit in front of the computer with some hot cocoa and watch you guys play with cars!

we've had snow for 2 weeks! and it's dark at 4 PM.