The Traccord - 2003 Honda Accord Coupe

Welcome to my world.  Every car ive ever touched has been like that.

Seriously- when I bought my XR4Ti it was "ready to rally" and I figured I wouldn't touch much and just run it 

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

I'm a motor/transmission swap away from having spent $4k on an Accord shell. This is such a dumb hobby. I love it, but it's dumb. 

this is part of why I've been scoping out IAA/copart the last few years, especially hail cars.

also... it's not that you're wrong.  the car was pads & tires away from running OneLap...

After Cresson:

Sunday was all about the Accord. I moved to a faster group and went out with the intention of just feeling out the car. It turns out it's pretty damn good. It needs shocks and I'd like to up the spring rate, but the brakes were great, at least on this track. Top speeds on this track aren't terribly high, we saw almost 100 in the Civic and a bit over 90 in the Accord. The car rolls but the elements are far enough apart on track that you can let the car take it's time getting set. It's still just a bit pushy but the tail will come out nicely with trail braking. With just the 225's under the car I was keeping up with almost all of the sane cars in the twisty bits including hanging with a new Cayman GT4 through the biggest sweeper. The NASA prototype sort of obliterated me, but considering I'm in a stock 15 year old Honda, I was very happy with my ability to keep up. I think the difference in speeds between the Civic and the Accord mostly came down to the 50hp difference. The Civic pulls noticeably harder. I did all four 20 minute sessions on Sunday without a hitch. I packed up, turned on the radio and enjoyed a pleasant drive home not even needing to change wheels. 

And with that, I'm ready to call the initial phase of the project a success. The car is comfortable and reliable for the first 3k miles. I've been driving the kids around, getting groceries and doing the bulk of my miles with this car. I've autocrossed it, slept in it and done a track day by adding just proper brake pads and wheels/tires. It's not a fast car on track but I'm betting it would keep close to a stock Miata if one of those ever showed up. I forced the corner workers to throw a passing flag on a Mustang in the first session on Sunday by keeping right up on him for a solid lap. After following me for a lap he seemed to get it and thundered off, but it was enough to indicate that in slower run groups the car is good enough to keep up.

After NOLA: 

The car did great, again, and the day was drama free. We all ran in DE2 even though we are all DE4/TT drivers because DE4 was bonkers with speed and very crowded. We were in a small group with courteous people and had a great time. Spent some time running right with the One Lap car which was interesting. He's got 50hp on me with proper suspension, but was on last year's Michelins while I'm on RS4's. There were several spots where I could enter sweepers without lifting where he HAD to tap the brakes (he tried to follow me, it was ugly) and I we were playing the same game through the twisty bits. On the straights he puled away with 10mph or so advantage at the end of the long straight. All in all I was VERY happy with the car and I've got some thoughts. 
I think it has enough tire for what it is. Suspension needs to be sorted. Tire wear is good but it clearly needs a couple degrees of camber in the front. It needs better shocks and some lowering to get things behaving. Springs? Maybe, but it's honestly not bad.
... ...

This car is doing exactly what I wanted. It's good enough on track that I'm having a blast, requiring just brake pads, tires and a $30 junkyard rear sway bar to get there. It's a GREAT street car worthy of the Accord's reputation. My co-driver and I are on the same page that this can be a suitable backup for One Lap which allows us to go a little bonkers on his Civic. We can always throw our gear in the Accord and enjoy the event with zero prep. I keep joking that by next year DE groups will be 1/2 Accords when people realize how incredible it is. While I doubt that's true, it could be........

Then you found out the rear brakes were working harder than expected.  Plus it'd fun to tinker; and educate yourself, and others.

It's still a grapefruit spoon at a bazooka fight... but: grapefruit spoons are cheap to buy, and can be pretty good for oatmeal, as well as every manner of backpacking meal.  

In reply to sleepyhead :

You know, I've saved all of the stock bits. I probably won't go back to drums but I can see a world where I give the stock fronts a try again if I can figure out cooling. It is fun to tinker and get more out of a car than seems reasonable. 

Also, driving it around yesterday was refreshing. Even though it's my "track car" it's a much more comfortable road car than either the Subaru or the Miata. Turned on a podcast, cranked up the AC and just rolled around drama free. 

The only car that's brake pads and tires away from being a functional track car is a Porsche.  Everything else you're dumping a ton of money into

Scope creep is an evil mistress.

In reply to docwyte :

That is arguable, especially if its a 996/997. 

docwyte said:

The only car that's brake pads and tires away from being a functional track car is a Porsche.  Everything else you're dumping a ton of money into

"Ton of money?" I suspect a set of track pads and tires for a 911 costs more than all the prep work being done to the Traccord. Also, don't be ridiculous; there are plenty of track ready cars that don't have a Porsche crest.

In reply to dculberson :

Ok, ok, a Mustang GT350 or Camaro Z/28 only needs camber plates and a set of track pads.  Everything else needs oil/trans/diff coolers (looking at you C5 Corvettes!) and/or suspension, big brake kits (looking at you E46 M3's, along with upgraded radiator/oil cooler!) etc, etc.  IE, unless it's been factory prepped for the track (ala Z28, GT350) you're gonna spend a bunch of money to get the car truly up to snuff and reliable for track use.  Unless it's a Porsche.

Tires/pads are something ANY car is going to need for the track and while they may cost a little more for the Porsche (have you priced tires for a Corvette/GT350/Z28?  Same, if not more than a Porsche) you save a ton of money on not having to do brakes/suspension/coolers....

Let's put it this way, I'm not surprised in the least that Seth has done brakes, suspension, etc to this Honda.  It's a commuter car, not a performance car. 

I assume by now Mrs. Deuce has known you long enough she just smiled and nodded when you said a car only needed 2 parts. Mrs. Klodkrawler does the same thing.

In reply to docwyte :

I still think you're being a little bit of a fanboy (and, I know you self admitted you're a German car whore, so ...) but I don't want to clog Mazdeuce's thread up with Internet bench racing.

Car passed inspection as I knew it would. That means I've had it for a year now. 

Before I pour money into the rear hubs, I'd like to make sure I can get the ABS to work with these tone rings and sensors. Unfortunately a normal (cheap) scan tool doesn't appear to read the ABS computer. I looked up a procedure that involved shorting pins 4 and 9 on the OBDII port but that doesn't seem to be working. At the end of the procedure, instead of blinking twice and staying off, the ABS light blinks three times and stays on. Crap. 

Possible dumb solution: are the number of teeth on the tone rings equal between the drum hubs and disc hubs? 

In reply to Slammo :

Funny you should ask........

My next order of business was to pop off the rear hub to see what was up. It was noisy anyway so even best case scenario it had to come off. On the top is the old hub with a 48 tooth tone wheel. On the bottom is the new hub with some sort of magnetic stripe thingy. 

Searching through the parts catalogs, it looks like they swapped tone ring styles after 2005. The disk cars had the same type of 48 tooth ring for 2003-05. My super trick aluminum knuckles are no good. Sadness. The pick your part south of town is showing four 2005 Accords on the lot and I'm getting pretty good and taking these things apart. 

Edit: Ok, looks like only the Hybrid had the weird hubs. The regular Accords kept the tone rings on cars through 2007. Probably. sorting through parts is weird. 

Oh boy...... Well.... At least non hybrid accords are plentiful....

Dang, that sucks that you have to swap them all over again. Let me know if you find yourself at the southwest lkq. 

In reply to Slammo :

I'm getting pretty quick at swapping these, so it's not too bad. Besides, I was able to explain to Mrs. Deuce that it was imperative that I spend another day in the junkyard.  

Good day at the junk yard. I stumbled on an Accord that someone had loved and lowered. The shocks and springs were gone, and the rear camber arms, but the rear knuckles were there and in good shape, and attached to them were two adjustable toe/link arms per side. I'll have to see if I can figure out the manufacturer, but they're steel and pretty new. $17 each. Tomorrow I'll play around and see if I can use the larger rotors from the hybrid knuckles if I use the caliper bracket from them. If not then I'll get a new set of rotors. Junkyarding is still fun. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

I wonder if the rotor backing plates swap between the knuckles nicely?

One of the great resources on the web is the Centric Brake Catalog. You put in your car and it gives you all of the brake rotors/drums that were put on it. If  you click on the part numbers it gives you all of the dimensions of those rotor/drums which makes cross referencing easy. It's cool. 
For 2005 there were two rear rotors on disk cars. The Hybrid (with the aluminum knuckle) and everything else. The Hybrid disk is 281.1mm and everything else is 260mm. Same bolt pattern and all of that, but interestingly, the same offset as well. I checked at it looked like the calipers were the same, so maybe, just maybe, the only difference between the "big" disks and the "small" ones is the caliper bracket? Since I have every permutation of knuckle that was ever put on an 8th gen Accord, I get to check!

I disassembled things this morning and everything looked good by eye, so I dry assembled it on the iron knuckle and it all fits! Yes! Bit of a busy day so I may not get them all on the car, but all of the clearances are the same and it appears to work. Maybe it's common knowledge in the Accord community that a factory "big brake kit" is a bracket change away? I don't really know. I also don't know if these caliper brackets are unique to the hybrid car or if they're on all of the aluminum knuckle Honda/Acura cars. Someone else should do that research. 

260mm is 10.2 inches and 281.1 is 11.07. Not a huuuuuuuuge difference so "big" should be in quotation marks, but the total area of the disk (including the hat) goes from 88.01 in^2 to 96.2 in^2 or roughly 9.3% more area as well as a slightly longer torque arm on the rotor. I'll take it. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Good stuff right there, nice sleuthing.

badwaytolive said:

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Good stuff right there, nice sleuthing.

Ditto. I don't know why, but it's a lot of fun to figure stuff like this out.

Thanks! It was cool to see that it actually worked. The initial plan for the car was Honda factory+ before this whole scope creep nonsense so I'm happy that the rear brakes would have worked. The only sad part is that six pounds per corner that I saved. The cast iron knuckles are......six pounds heavier than the aluminum ones. 

However, there might be an upside. Maybe. The Hybrid used the other wheel speed sensor, and looking at Rock Auto it looks like the front used a different wheel speed sensor than the rest of the non hybrid cars. I'd assume that the ABS code is the same as the Acuras and later Hondas that used this, so maybe, somehow one could write the later code (or use a late computer) and use whatever the front pieces are. All of that for 12 lbs? Someday. Maybe. 

For 12 lbs of unsprung weight I would try really hard to adapt the ABS tone ring and sensor from the iron knuckle to the aluminum one. Oh how I hate, Unsprung weight.