$2018 Challenge Build-1991 Honda CRX

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Thanks for the reminder Duster-watching you guys put together the AMC was the push that got the ball rolling on the CRX!

I always liked the crx. Maybe one day I can build one. 

I just came over after you mentioned this car in another thread and wow. this is cool. great job. i am excited to see it in person. i am also in florida, 2 miles from UCF to be exact. if you need tools or help and you arent far you are more than welcome to come by and we can tag team both of our challenge cars. 

I love Crusty! Should be a very competitive car, especially for your first time. Looking forward to meeting you.

maschinenbau said:

I love Crusty! Should be a very competitive car, especially for your first time. Looking forward to meeting you.

Thanks Maschinenbau! Looking forward to checking out the Datsaniti's new paintjob-it was one of my favorites last year.

Thursday Update-

Brakes- I called a couple of places to see if they could turn down the rotors to get rid of some light rust pitting on the rear rotors, but nobody has the equipment anymore. Used a block of wood and sandpaper to knock the scale off. I'll flush out the old fluid and bleed the brakes tonight then do some hard-ish breaking tomorrow to bed the pads.

Safety-According to online calculators Crusty will run in the high 12 second or low 13s in the drag races. This feels optimistic, especially because my drag racing experience is once at a stoplight 13 years ago.

It looks like I need a Snell certified helmet and a SFI 3.2A/1 Jacket because of the turbocharger. A friend is loaning me the helmet and Amazon had a jacket for 60$. If anybody wants to borrow it, let me know!

Do I need a roll cage or roll bar? I could have sworn that crusty didn't need either according to the 2018 rules, but the 2019 rules default to the NHRA. The answer in the NHRA rulebook seems to be "yes, always."

In reply to surfshibby07 :

Man, I wish I was closer, but I'm all the way down south of Tampa. You're making serious progress on that fox body!

In reply to CrustyRedXpress :

Fiddlesticks. Well worth a shot lol. And thanks! Although its generally 1 step forward 1933704 steps backwards...

In reply to CrustyRedXpress :

You should be ok without a roll bar unless you go 11.49 or faster.

13.49 if you somehow made a CRX into a convertible.

In reply to CrustyRedXpress :

There will probably be enough jackets and helmets for you to borrow. You are welcome to use my gear between my passes. 

Check out this thread as a quick reference for passing tech. A big one every year is battery hold-downs. Make sure you use 3/8 bolts if has been relocated. 

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/2000-challenge/nhra-regulations-thread/155054/page1/

I have a loaner firesuit im bringing 

2019 After Action Report

Final Result: 35th out of 72 entrants and 52 competitors. 

What went well?

Crusty got there, finished all three events, and I had a blast meeting everybody and doing drag racing for the first time.

So what went wrong?

On Monday I was taking Crusty to the tuner for dyno tuning and she began to overheat on the highway. After getting her home some quick diagnosis showed missing coolant and a wide range of coloring on the spark plugs. I pressurized the system to make sure it wasn't a hose (it wasn't) and ordered a new gasket set from Amazon prime. 

Gasket set arrived late on Tuesday, and I worked late to get it installed. Tear down revealed one very clean cylinder and three fairly normal looking ones.

I used a razor blade and some of the 3m roloc disks to remove the old gasket, along with  cheap shaving cream to keep crap out of the passages. 

A quick test drive in the early morning was initially successful, but as soon as I got into boost the engine temps began to slowly creep up. E36 M3. 

So the strategy was to give the pro driver one run first thing in the AM and tell him to treat it like a shake down run-hopefully this would ensure I had a functional car for the drag racing at night. The pro driver was a saint and clicked off a 50.1 right out of the bag on his first run of the day-good enough for 39th in the autoX.

It was my first time drag racing, but I got three cracks at it, letting the car cool down each time. First time was in the 17s, second was in the 16s, and the third was 15.2. The car has WAY more with a driver who had ever actually drag raced before-I was missing shifts, struggling for traction, and basically flailing around on all three runs.

What next?

Crusty will probably be back for one more year-Radwood theme is too good to pass up. There is a ton of fat to cut from the budget, and a ton of development work that I just didn't have time for this year. Thanks to everybody who popped into this thread, and everybody that I met at the event-you guys rock!

Was great meeting you. That's a respectful finishing place with your conservative autocross run. 

It's official-Crusty will be back for 2020. Since my friend @kyngfish moved across the country I recruited a new driver who knows a little more about AutoX than yours truly. 

First order of business-Head Gasket upgrade. The ARP studs were the thing that maxed out my budget last year, so with this upgraded MLS head gasket from felpro, we're officially over budget until I pull some money out of the build. Hopefully the MLS gasket with coppery spray will do a better job than the graphite gasket with nothing. Still using ARP's recommended torque specs. 

After a test drive, I'm cautiously optimistic about the fix. There are wide swings in the temp gage, but after a pull the engine will cool down, which it wouldn't before. We'll keep an eye on it as we do more testing this winter. 

Wheels/Tires?

The current wheels are Honda HX, which are a 14x5.5 inch wheel in the 4x100 pattern, weighing 11.7 lbs. The current tires are Falken Azenis in 195/60/r14. After looking at the race/autox tires on this link, it looks like there are only two options for these wheels-

1. Hoosier R7 in 205/55/r14 https://racerpartswholesale.com/205-55-14-hoosier-r7/ 

2. Toyo Proxes 888r in 185/60R14 https://www.toyotires.com/tire/pattern/dot-race-tires-proxes-r888r

The (maybe) third option is to find somebody to trade the Honda HX wheels for 14 inch BMW bottle caps that are 6 inches wide. That would get me the Hoosier A7 in a 225/50 r14-https://racerpartswholesale.com/225-50-14-hoosier-a7/

Any thoughts from the hivemind?

In reply to CrustyRedXpress :

Have you considered going down to 13s?  A lot larger selection for race tires.

In reply to Stampie :

Yeah, that post is the sum total of all thinking i've ever done about wheels/tires =P 

I'll have to add 13 inch wheels to the search. 

The only reason the bottle caps popped into my head was that I remembered team Gutty ran them in their CRX. It looks like they were running A6s at that time as well.

First AutoX of the season is in the bag.

The Good:

We only had 3 runs, but our last two times were within a 10th of a second of each other. We can use this time (40.2) as our baseline through the season as the local autoX group keeps the same track setup for monthly practice sessions. Teammate says car felt good, but needs more traction, so we're looking for some BMW bottlecaps so we can upgrade to the A7s.

The Bad:

Overheating issue persists. We can work around it, and probably do so for the challenge as well, but it would be pretty great to get this problem solved. Temp started to creep up on the 3rd run. At this point the next logical step would be to send the block to a machinist and have them magnaflux and deck it, but who the hell has budget for that sort of thing?

Rule clarification?

I was reading about the self-trading rule in another thread and am trying to figure out how to use it.

I have a whole bunch of stuff left over from when we bought the car; I'm unable to sell it for recoup because I've hit my limit already. If I buy a nitrous kit for $200 can I then self-trade it for something in my parts stash of equal value (assuming I prove using FMV)?

Seems a weird way to circumvent the rules. Do people actually do this?

In reply to CrustyRedXpress :

It's a rule that some of us disagree with because it's very easy to abuse. My current build should be under $1000 using traditional budgeting methods. I know using the FMV self trade I can make it a $0 build easily. I'm considering turning in two budgets to show it. Do people actually do it?  There's talk about doing it and supposedly one future build plans on using it extensively. I have a problem saying "Look at my $2000 build that I self traded $3000 more into it."  Also remember the don't be a dick rule. 

In reply to Stampie :

I wouldn't consider it being a dick to use all the rules to your advantage. You better have 3 receipts from sources to support FMV of all parts involved in the trade. Having 3 FMV sources makes it harder to find a "great" deal to add in. 
 

I think extensive FMV trading to yourself shouldn't be allowed or if allowed it should be part of your total recoup. I'd rather have recoup unlimited with no FMV shenanigans. 
 

edit: you don't need to use any of the FMV recoup or trade rules to build a car near the top. Just need more skills/tools/time. 

Andy Neuman said:

I'd rather have recoup unlimited with no FMV shenanigans. 

End result is the same.
There will come a time when the event begins to suffer with cars that are budget legal, but blatantly in excess of $2000 build value. I imagine that limiting, or eliminating, FMV self-trades and sales will happen eventually.

As it was originally written the LeMons rules allowed the event creators to purchase your car for $500.

"1.4: Claiming Race: At the end of the competition, the Organizers–and nobody else, you lazy, better-car-wantin’ bastids–may elect to purchase any vehicle from its owner(s) for $500. In 80 races and counting, we’ve claimed cars precisely twice. Don’t piss us off so much that we raise that to three. "

They may have only done it twice, but it certainly prevents people from showing up with $10,000 cars that they put together from recoup and trades to make the numbers look small. Not sure if that is possible here, but if part of being in the event would allow someone at GRM to purchase your vehicle for $4,000, it might make people think twice about abusing all the recoup and trading to put 10k into a car. I'm not saying the rule will ever be used, but it might provide adequate protection from someone being a dick and abusing all the rules.

Doesn't even have to be just 1 GRM staff to decide if a car needs to be bought from its owner. Maybe it's a panel of people who decide when someone has crossed the line as far as those rules go.

The rule itself seems pretty clear and has been discussed before, so I can't fault anybody for using it. 

Hopefully somebody soon will abuse the hell out of it so we can get it changed-but I don't think that somebody will be me. 

Not sure the Lemans 500$ buy-back rule is the right one for the challenge either. Would Ed Malle or the Nelsons enter their cars if there was a chance somebody could essentially take them? The fabrication time/abilities that these guys put into their car is tough to put a price on, and is one of the reasons the challenge is so cool.

Regardless, I need to remove some of the expensive parts that I put on the car last year and replace them with cheap/free versions.

Price and Part to remove: Replace it with X and net $N

13$ Blinker Relay: I can re-solder and re-cap the old one and net about 12$

63.5$ front motor mount: I can learn to weld and replace this with a homemade version, net about $50

11.24$ zinc L Channel: I can remove this and replace with the free sheet metal I trashpicked, net $11.24

40$ of ebay turn signals and bumper lights: I may actually do a FMV self-trade for the OEM turn signals and bumper lights that I have in my parts stache. My other option is to solicit trades on Facebook and wait till somebody figures out that the OEs are more desirable, and let them order new ones from China (which is what I did for the ones already on the CRX). Net about $40.

$23.45 block plug adapter: I should be able to fabricate something here from scrap, net 23.45

There's way more fat to remove from the budget, but the above comes out to $137, which is more than enough to get the block decked if we need to.

Budget Neutral Stuff to help Appearance:

36.50$ of yellow paint: replace it with 40$ of rustoleum sunrise red-hopefully enough to do the whole car, net -$4 (DIY instructions here: http://www.rickwrench.com/index79master.htm?http://www.rickwrench.com/50dollarpaint.html)

Finish old passenger seat, replace the ruined driver's seat, net -$5

Crap I just need to Trade for:

Driver's window garnish. I have multiple rear sway bars and a bunch of AC stuff that I should be able to swap for this.

Just put the 225 width A7 on the hx wheels, it'll be faster and an easier solution. 

In reply to Andy Neuman :

Hoosier reccomends 6 inch wheel width for the 225s, HXs are only 5.5. 

What tradeoffs am I making if I ignore Hoosier's reccomendation on minimum wheel width?

In reply to CrustyRedXpress :

Wider wheels are faster. Hoosier A7 are faster than a different tire that may fit better. 

I need some budget advice...

I just picked up a set of 6 RC 550 injectors that would fit the CRX.  Cost with shipping was $113. Seller claimed that they were cleaned/matched, but I want somebody to verify that.

Current injectors were $175 against the budget.

The plan is to find an injector shop that will clean and flow test 4 of the injectors and keep the other two in trade. This would leave me with a budget hit of (113/6)*4=$75.33, correct?

Any other advice on how to get this done? No clue how hard it will be to find a shop willing to make the swap, but pulling $100 out of the budget would be pretty cool.

EDIT-Now that I type that out I realize that I could sell the 2 injectors for $113 of recoup and use that money to get the injectors flowtested/cleaned. It's not quiet as good because it costs me recoup and 113 is a little less than what it would take to get them cleaned, but it should work as well.