Project Hazmat '09 Honda Civic Si

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

In reply to spacecadet :

I like it. I was also thinking we could take the way back machine to the first time we drove together and do "Hands On Wheel"

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

LOL oh that's a good one! 

i can't believe none of you mentioned DANGER TO MANIFOLD

WLCM DELIVRTR

In reply to ScottyB :

it got mentioned on my instagram. 

But the winner was 

Noice! I'm saddled with the dumb built in nav screen. I just switch between aux and CD. The heat and the whirring of the nav cd slowly drive me towards wanting to install an aftermarket android auto unit.

In reply to clutchsmoke :

I can understand how that would be annoying 

Omg, a factory radio that functions normally. The steering wheel controls are just an extra bonus. 

Being able to twist the knob at fingers reach and to have everything just work... 

So underrated. 

Hazmat is everything I loved about the little back civic and everything I didn't love isn't here. AC works, although it's the source of vibrations at idle.. Which worries me a bit, so something isn't happy still somewhere in that system. 

And a functional radio and a quiet exhaust. 

It's such a mundane and normal car. I do look forward to adding an intake and a tune to get a little more pep in its step though. I sometimes miss the low end grunt of the focus ST which made more torque just off idle than the civic ever makes...lol. 

Honestly, it might be nothing more than a bad motor mount. The idle changes when the compressor kicks on and if you have a bad enough mount that changes the vibration in the car. I've had that happen with a couple of cars including the Accord. 

Car is running flawlessly. 

the new radio works very very well and I'm quite pleased with the setup.  

Loading the car up after work tonight to head to Houston and get some back to back testing against the Traccord with Mazduece at a PCA event on Sunday we're both instructing at.  

Should be a good weekend. 

and my co worker brought out his EK coupe again with the JDM B16 swap. Revs even higher than Hazmat does! 

Looking forward to driving the new better sorted version of Hazmat. 

Man these wheels actually look really solid on this car!

Also Mazdeuce's sketchy tire guy is friggin rad! 

Just got home, today was a good day. 

Todays goal: Test Hazmat in near stock trim against the Traccord in OLOA trim. 

Short version: on today's autox course hazmat was slower. It may not always be slower but the traccord transformation works. The double wishbones are very good with minimal mods. 

Long version: We knew going in Hazmat was faster on paper.. But would that translate to the autox course today. 

The autox course today had a large 90 degree sweeping turn and a 180 degree sweeping turn both with speeds 45+mph. This is important. 

I started my day with 2 runs in hazmat. Got aquainted with the course and the flow. Lots of pinch places and while not a bad course it certainly wasn't one that had good flow. It violated a couple of big rules in the course design book and this played to the advantage of the Traccord. Hopped into the accord on my 3rd run and Immediately was all over the place because it has to be driven totally different than Hazmat and I'd forgotten that. The diff becomes really obvious when you can back to back against a car without one. So after botching the first half of the course I go into the first sweeping corner at speed and I can immediately tell the difference. Hazmat's advantage begins to erode the moment i leave the previous element. Without camber Hazmat starts to scrub. The diff does a good job pulling back but the tires are definitely not happy. Where in the accord I'm able to keep accelerating into the next element and the offsets scrub a lot less speed because the traccord can flow better through them and into the big sweeper which is where Hazmat officially trips over itself and falls on its face to the Traccord. Hazmat hits the top of 2nd near the begining of the sweeper.. and I'm stuck there.... shift to 3rd and I lose power and fall out of VTEC and I'm fighting tire scrub without my power advantage. Staying in 2nd I'm still fighting tire scrub cause the whole car is haunched over and beating the front outside tire into submission... Meanwhile in the same element the Traccord continues to accelerate alllll the way around the sweeper into the final mini slalom and damage done hazmat is like a half second slower. 

If the start of the course had elements further apart I could have opened enough speed advantage to beat the Traccord. 

But the Traccord does exactly what Seth intended for it to do. It is slow, but holds momentum very well because it has a favorable camber curve with the double wishbones. 

Now I kinda really want to find an accord shell and stick all hazmat's guts in it.. Cause the chassis just works beautifully.

Also the extra size makes packing the car a lot easier. I jammed 4 wheels and tires, 2 race ramps, compact spare and tools, small bag of clothes, oil drain pan/container. Floor jack and tool bag. And I only maintained the use of the passenger front seats, But just barely because i had 2 tires riding in the backseat behind me and the race ramps jammed behind the passenger seat with all the other gear in the trunk. 

So good weekend. But Camber is my #1 thing on the list now, followed by an intake and a tune to drop the VTEC engagement point. if i had camber today it would have made a huge difference and the VTEC was always right on the bubble of falling out. Seth and I both battled it all day. 

I think I've heard multiple times now that Traccord would be pretty much golden if it had a diff and better spaced gearing. 

In reply to Daylan C :

Yep. And Mazdeuce knows it. 

In reply to Daylan C :

Yes, a diff and an extra cog in the box would make a big difference.  But, those two things plus an extra 80hp would be real nice

although, down that way monsters lie

Daylan C said:

I think I've heard multiple times now that Traccord would be pretty much golden if it had a diff and better spaced gearing. 

The same thing could have been said with my '10 Forte. Funny how a massive gap in the 2-3 gear change can have such a drastic affect on acceleration. And 4-5-6 were just too tall for the meager 165whp it made. I think the Tib's 6-spd in the Forte would have made one helluva track car but it would have never gotten the 35mpg with that gearing. (80mph=3600rpms in the tib where that was 3000 in the Forte) 

sleepyhead the buffalo said:

In reply to Daylan C :

Yes, a diff and an extra cog in the box would make a big difference.  But, those two things plus an extra 80hp would be real nice

although, down that way monsters lie

I'll probably talk about this in the Traccord thread, but yes, you open a HUGE can of worms by adding all of that. Right now I can sit in the car with AC on full blast in the car rider line for half an hour when it's 98 degrees out and not worry about the car at all. 28-30mpg on regular. All the time. There is a chance I can preserve that through a lot of work and money, but it's a lot of work and money. 

As spacedet said, right now, on this day, the Traccord was faster for both of us as drivers. There are really only two elements of that. The first is that is transitions a little better because the shocks are better matched to the task at hand. Hazmat is fine, unless you try to ask it to change directions too quickly. You can't drive it with a "fast hands" style of driving that you use on well set up cars. Slowing down inputs helps the car behave but it limits what you can do on tighter parts of the course. The second is camber. This is a combination of static camber and the fact that the car leans quite a bit losing even more camber. Strut car problems. The more you load the car the less optimal the contact patch is the less total grip you get. We knew this, but driving the cars back to back really highlighted the differences between the front ends. 

Motor and trans are great. It's been a while since I autocrossed a Si without a tune that lowers V-tec. Spacecadet could probably do the calculations to show at what rpm/speed it drops in and out but I was having a hell of a time being right in the middle of that transition while trying to balance the car on throttle. 

The car is good. It will absolutely be faster on a big track than the Accord. Corner speeds won't be thaaaaat much different that they can't be made up out of the corners and onto the straights. Long term a similar amount of money into the suspension will close the gap between the two and the Si will also be faster at autocross. The economical answer is clearly the Si. The drivetrain makes up for a lot. 

Perhaps not the optimal setup technique but rather than adding stiff shocks/springs to help limit the roll I wonder if you couldn't keep stock/soft suspension and then add big honking swaybars. combined with the added camber that it sounds like is already coming, that may be enough to keep outside shoulder abuse to a minimum without negatively impacting the comfy ride it has now?

Back to back's with similar but differing cars is such a fun exercise. I think it's probably especially beneficial in the scheme of building an OLOA car because you can start to figure out what things make the car faster, while also not making it a total nightmare on transits.

In reply to klodkrawler05 :

There's.......so many options really. If you start with the idea that it's a One Lap car, you put yourself in a funny box. For starters you basically have a single rule, 200tw, so it makes sense to start with tires and work out. Pick a general size, get them to fit, and then figure out how to make the contact patch function. Because it's a strut car, and not a terribly good one compared to some of the magic on the new TypeR and some other cars, it's going to need about as much static camber as you can tolerate from a tire wear/street driving perspective. You can't get much from the strut tops at stock ride height, so it's a combination of strut tops and lowering. Lowering has it's own issues as you have to go stiffer to deal with the reduced compression travel. The big deal with that is shocks and what you can get off the shelf to handle the spring rates required to make all of this happen. And honestly, I think that's the bottleneck in all of this, what shocks you can get in your budget. If you're limited budget wise to something like Koni yellows then you're limited spring rate wise and lowering wise which affects camber. 

My gut feeling with this car (and I've been dealing with these thoughts since I started doing OLOA in the other CivicSi) is that ideal ride height is going to be as high as you can run it and get 2.5 static in the front. Spring rate will be determined largely by a combination of shock choices and how much tire gets stuffed under the car. Then run a fairly giant rear bar and try to balance that with whatever front bar works for balance and doesn't overwhelm the system. When Brian screwed together the blue civic he used BC racing stuff with stiffer springs and the better single adjustable Bilstein inserts. It worked well though it was still under damped on long corners where the car was able to hold a set for a long period over bumps. Great highway car though and it was on 275's. The ride height (and to some extent camber) on that car was dictated largely by tires and making them fit. 

My Proclip mount arrived last night after a shipping debacle. I'm going to need a new longer center mount bar for the RAM parts because this is really close to the shifter and it's also a good bit lower than the one on the focus. 

I still prefer this placement to the placement up on the dash to the right or left of the steering wheel though.. Just need to work out the kinks. 

OK, going to try and make the RAM mount parts I have work before buying a large 3 link part. 

So I bought this one small joint piece. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ES5D5Y/

These are all the bits I have currently. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KWPJ04/

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013FFNXOG/

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/rmi-4949/overview/

I'll put it all together at lunch today and see how it works. 

That's better, still not perfect, but better than before cause i can angle it up more than yesterday 

So I'm having a hard top figuring it out from the pictures, how is that actually attached to the console?