1991 Civic Hatch, Just For Fun

A helmet, a HNR, and a 30 day tag for a 1991 Civic hatchback that starts tomorrow. This is going to be fun.

What are you doing with it?

Well, tomorrow a friend and I are hopping in his Exige, driving four hours to pick up the Civic, driving another 45 minutes to MSR Cresson and spending the weekend with NASA on track.
After I get home I'll poke around and see what's there. It's a nationally prepped STS car that has won some pro-solo events. I'm going to autocross it and see if I can't get better. I'm going to run time trials with NASA. I'll drive the kids to school and grocery shop. Inevitably I'm going to mess with it, but for now it should be ready to just do gas/oil/tires for a while.

You're driving it home? Hope you have good kidneys...

I've been assured that it's not THAT much worse than the Lotus and I made a set of custom molded ear plugs last night. How bad can it be?

Along for the ride this sounds like fun.

In reply to mazdeuce:

I guess you'll see. It may not be too bad one smoothish roads.

The guy who is looking over the car for me just sent me a message suggesting that I bring noise canceling headphones.

mazdeuce wrote: The guy who is looking over the car for me just sent me a message suggesting that I bring noise canceling headphones.

I thought noise canceling headphones were standard for road trips... or noise isolating earbuds and earmuffs.

Small car, huge fun.
More to come.

Cool! How are the rocker panels on that thing?

Awesome!

Woody wrote: Cool! How are the rocker panels on that thing?

Lifetime Texas car. We don't have rust.

Made it back from the weekend. Car is helicopter levels of loud. Full trip report in the morning.

I am now the proud owner of a 1991 Civic Si hatchback. It's an EF chassis? Yes? And the engine is a D16A6? Yes? I'm still trying to learn Honda stuff. It's even more confusing than trying to learn Porsche stuff.
Mrs. Deuce was super awesome and said she'd bail from work an hour and a half early on Friday so that my friend and I could leave right after I dropped off the kids. We loaded our meager possessions in his Exige S and headed off on our four hour drive.
We found that wearing hearing protection made the drive more comfortable. We also flound that 40tw Yokohama's with 2/32 of tread do not make good rain tires at freeway speeds. I drove for about half an hour in the rain before I said "berkeley this, not my car" and put the owner back in the left seat.
I was dropped off at the shop with the car at noon and my friend headed to the track to work. The Civic is exactly what was described. I needed to swap some bolts in the seat mount to move it forward about three inches and pick up some taillight bulbs when we headed out for lunch, but other than that the car was in fine shape. There are a few things that need to be done, but I'll go over that when I do them.
The chassis has 225k miles on it. The engine was rebuilt a couple of years ago to try and get that extra 2hp out of it for STC autocross and hasn't been a street car since, so the rebuild is pretty fresh. There are multiple dyno sheets in the stack of papers showing 119-120 HP to the wheels.
Saturday was DE3-4 sessions with me progressively getting faster and falling in love with the car. Sunday I was moved up to TT because they felt I was ready and it was useful to have me there to help fill classes for contingency. I picked up around 5 seconds of time on Sunday though I'm still 1.5-2 seconds from where I would be competitive on the 1:30ish track. The car is an absolute blast.
The drive home was interesting. The ride isn't THAT bad. A bit like driving an unloaded dump truck. The noise however......holy cow. I wore ear plugs and ear muffs and that made it tolerable, but wow. I need to find out if there is a way to quiet the car without hurting power. I'll gladly add a few pounds.
Oh, and an acquantences dad brought his 918 out to the track to play in the DE session on Sunday. That was pretty neat.

we ran an ebay 2.5 stainless exhaust on the crx. actually felt faster than open header with turn down, and was tolerable with a completely gutted car. not the straight through version, the one with a separate tip and transverse muffler

Sounds like a fun weekend!

In reply to Dusterbd13:

Because of the sway bar I can't get exhaust past the rear suspension. I have different sway bar option in the future that may allow me to get something back there.

Hmm...

Side exit with big resonator, header baffle, and muffler? Turn down the end of the system and it reduces noise and resonance.

Might need a good whole car under pic and can come up with something.

I've had a few under-vehicle exhausts which were quiet enough. I am not sure how much room you have though.

Moar pitchers!
Car is very clean. A couple of dings but no rust which is what you'd expect on a Texas car. The hood is in primer. Something got on it and messed up the paint so this was the previous owner's solution. I'll need to do something about that.
Nice behind.
Drivers seat is a Corbeau with GForce belts that have four of five points present and a date stamp from 2004. Seat mount needs to be redone.

Rear seats are basically brand new. Passenger seat is this weird old fiberglass Kingdragon seat.
It is an FIA seat. Might be slighty out of date. I'll have to check the rules.
It also has a MaxQData system. Vintage AX awesomeness.

EG chassis is still my favourite but love this car! Looks like loads of fun.

Sweet! My Dad has a 88 CRX he does Auto X in. They are a ton of fun for a smallish price tag.

In reply to java230:

The CRX, the shorter lighter competition. They're so close in speed it's going to be fun.

In reply to mazdeuce:

yeah they are way fun.... all 100hp :)