The Traccord - 2003 Honda Accord Coupe

So I broke Golfball, and then I found more broken stuff resulting in the car ending up on jack stands longer than expected. And then life happened. I ended up moving to the Chicago are, planning on coming back to grab the car from mom's house and finishing it as soon as possible. Well life kept happening and that car is still in mom's garage in Kentucky. (don't worry it's not going anywhere. I've got fun plans for it. These two cars are going to be really confused when they realize they live together again though).

Anyway during all that mess, Seth had mentioned that it was maybe time to let the Traccord go. We had talked about it but life kept making buying the car not really an option for me.  I finally got things on my end more stable and was looking at getting the Miata ready for track work again but knew it was a very long expensive list to get it where I'm happy with it again. Oddly enoguh the rough mental number I had in my head for the parts list was fairly close to the number that was mentioned on the Traccord. And this car doesn't need entirely rebuilt before going out to play again. So finally agreements were made but by this point we were going into winter and the minty old rust free Honda from Texas deserves to be spared from Chicago salt. So I asked if we could let it stay in Texas through winter and I come pick it up in the spring. Seth remembered Super Lap Battle is in March so we decided to shoot for that weekend. Fast forward to last Friday and I'm leaving work a half hour early to catch a plane to Houston. 

After a flight with only mild turbulence and dark jokes about our confidence in Boeing, and a few minutes of us trying really hard to figure out which grey scale crossover is which in the pickup line, Seth picks my roommate and I up and we head to the grosh. I sleep terribly as I usually do on these trips, with the added flavor of that kid on Christmas eve feeling making it just a bit worse. We hang out and have breakfast at the house chatting about things before finally loading the car up with our bags and the related spare parts stash and heading to COTA. 

We get to COTA, have the fun of trying to get into the gate by saying we're on the staff list with literally 0 evidence that this is the truth. Guard tells us we can come in but the car can't because we don't have a parking pass. It is about this time we realize we are far too use to having "authorized personnel" privileges at race tracks. We go park the car in the normal person lot and start walking towards the track. Finally we find spacecadet and figure out where everyone else we know at this event are. We hang out and help grid a GLTC field with only the minor inconvenience of COTA marshals doing their job and yelling at me for being where I wasn't supposed to be without a staff band.

Parking pass acquired and car is parked at the track for the night while we take a ride the airbnb in spacecadet's unreasonably nice Lexus. Go back to pass off keys so Adam Jabaay can drive it out to the Rally Ranch for evening hangs. 

Sunday morning we had back to the track for an 8am standing start GLTC race. Traccord serves as pace car for this race and scores a bit of screen time on the Super Lap Battle livestream.

After the race finishes, we decide to hit the road where job one was correcting the fact that I hadn't seen a Buc'ees in either of my prior trips to Texas. 

I keep driving after the required stop had been completed and drive another 190 miles before I need to stop to use the restroom. By which point I came to a sudden realization.

 I had just driven 190 miles without really thinking about it. I was starting to figure out what Seth had actually pulled off with this car. This silly little 4 cylinder Japanese coupe is the best car for clicking off miles with no fuss that I've ever driven. And thats why the rest of this story is actually pretty boring. This was just a nice pleasant road trip with a friend talking about life and our plans for the near future at this point. 

Common sense prevailed and we decided we should use the day off we both put in for and make this a 2 day drive. That was the smart decision. The dumb decision was deciding the appropriate overnight stop was the cheapest hotel with a "meh" rating I found in Blytheville, Arkansas. We had a surprisingly decent dinner and then pulled the ECM fuse before heading to bed because neither of us really trusted where we ended up. Thankfully the next morning the car was still there and we headed to the walmart to replace the charging cable for the bluetooth speaker I managed to lose then get gas.

and then it was 6 more hours of just a nice pleasant road trip. The biggest issue we had was the door frame trim trying to escape. We even made it home early enough that I decided I should use the rest of the day off to go ahead and get plates dealt with and see how simple the door trim fix was going to be. 

And that's how the next chapter for the Traccord started. My plans for the car are pretty simple; Keep refining little things on it with a goal of keeping it a good summer daily driver and getting seat time. The car is really good. I'm going to do my best not to ruin it. 

In reply to Daylan C. :

Ooh, I bet that's the same hotel my daughter booked a room at, then walked in the door, took a look around, and went to the Loves to sleep in her car instead. 

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

Is there the opposite of the GRM assist list? Member avoidance zones?

In reply to johndej :

I'd have to add a hotel I looked at in Jacksonville FL on 2 separate years, both times it had very recent complaints about bedbugs...

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

I mean they offered the option of a smoking room. I feel like that's how I should have known it wasn't worth it. 

Minor update. The shifter was a bit sloppy, my initial thought was play with the pin going through the side arm. I took it apart to measure that bearing however and learned it was actually supposed to have play to avoid binding so I removed Seth's shims and put it back together and found no difference. I got in touch with somebody at K Tuned and they informed me this early example of the shifter was missing an adjustment screw they added later. 

This took all the fore and aft play out of the center pivot and the shifter feels really smooth now. There's still a bit of wiggle but that's with original cables and me not being used to a fwd cable transmission in general. I'll call it a solid win for now.

Oh. Right. This forum still exists. Nothing much to report as far as any updates with the car. But it has taken over as my daily driver and we've been on a few adventures already.

I realized how close I live to Joliet now, so I drove down there just for a picture.

Then I remembered Tire Rack was close and what weekend it was, so we drove down to say high to friends on One Lap of America

And then we went to Gridlife Midwest Festival.

EDIT: finally fixed all the pictures. My bad.

Basically the car is still really good at being a car. Next adventure for it though is West Michigan Honda Meet, where it gets to finally play race car again. 

So this weekend I learned about the service position of the Honda K series transmission.

Because this guy decided to break apart and spin around making angry noises.

It's going back together now. Will update with a nicer post once the car is done making me nervous about making an event. 

In continuing adventures of the band of idiots plans falling apart. All the track cars needing love at the same time meant the '95 Cadillac hearse that usually hauls all the camp supplies to events wasn't able to get prepped to tow my buddy's Del Sol. So the hearse is staying home and the Traccord gets to use its hitch again and pretend to be a drag and drive car. 

Ended up doing a clutch and throwout bearing, replacing the passenger side axle because it had torn boots on both ends, replacing both lower ball joints because I ruined them being an idiot using a stool wrong, and replacing the slave cylinder because I discovered it was leaking. Also the actual track prep which was fresh tires, pads, rotors, and fluids all around.

And with that we're finally ready to head to Gingerman this afternoon and do track rat things with our track rat friends. The convoy consisting of a suspiciously clean but loud BRZ, an itasha wrapped Del Sol, and the Traccord towing a uhaul is sure to draw very little attention on the way to South Haven. 

So last weekend was my beginner HPDE weekend at West Michigan Honda Meet. I decided this would be the perfect event for me to get back out on track again because its a chill DE only event where you get lets of seat time. It's also at Gingerman, which everyone tells me is a good learning track. We ended up towing a 4x8 Uhaul with all our camping and cooking gear for the weekend, which the car had very little complaints about. Comfortably cruising at reasonable transit speeds and getting surprisingly solid fuel economy doing it.

The car did great all weekend and immediately started to feel like I could trust it once my first anxiety about it being my first time on track in forever with a car I just had do invasive work on calmed down. The brakes are amazing and the car is very communicative giving you plenty of margin for error if you do something stupid. My only real complaint about it is that the stock seat definitely doesn't do much to hold you in place with how much grip this car has, so a good seat is definitely on the list for the off season. 

So basically. towed the party trailer down to the track with the AC on. Ran a lot of sessions over two days with 0 drama. Then towed the trailer home with the AC on again. I'm pretty happy with this car right now. 

So several of my friends who know Hondas a lot better than me suggested running a Honda engine overfilled at the track to prevent oil starvation, especially with this K24A4's stock pan with no so great baffling. I did this at Honda Meet but was kinda just eye balling it the whole time. Having a more reliable mark when checking the oil seemed like it would be nicer and fairly easy to do. 

Step 1. Make sure the oil is full.

Step 2. Add the extra quart. Let it settle a bit and mark where that oil level lands. Realize when writing this post you completely forgot to take a picture of this step.

Step 3. Touch a cut off wheel to the side of the dipstick by your mark. You know have a +1 quart full mark on the dipstick. 

This is me realizing I kinda forgot to update this thread with how the rest of the season went....

So the band of misfits went to Road America for Summer Apex Festival. The drag and drive uhaul program was getting pretty well sorted by this point and eventually I'm going to have to build my own trailer to fix the last complaints I have. 

As usual with my existence at Gridlife I was primarily there as volunteer staff, but I still got to get 3 sessions in while I was there. The car did great for all of them. Including getting to lead my friend and instructor from Honda Meet who never been there in his K20 swapped EF hatch. The only issue that popped up is I started feeling a shake from the front end under heavy braking that I suspect was lower control arm bushings getting loose. They're on the list for a few upgrades i'm looking at now.

After a wonderful weekend of track rat friend hangs at a music festival where I got to see deadmau5 live at one of my favorite race tracks, we packed up the circus and headed home ot prep for the next one.

Next I got asked to come help out at an SCCA TT weekend at Putnam. I had heard good things about Putnam and I got offered a couple sessions,  plus I hadn't pulled the Falkens off the car from Road America yet so I guess I'm headed to Indiana. Which funny enough just ended up being a saturday hanging out at bottom of grid with bobzilla just like usual. I went out for the worker session at the end of saturday with the tire pressures maybe a bit too high and was greated with pouring rain as soon as I finished the out lap. I called it after one more lap that consisted of catching 3 big sketchy slides in 4 corners. It then immediately dried up and Bob went on to set a new PB. Good work Bob. 

Sunday I helped train another new guy at bottom of grid and then got a nice long dry session at the end of the day for workers. Turns out this track is really fun in slow cars. Not much else to report on that one. 

After that was the last Gridlife event of the season for those of us that couldn't swing a trip to one of the coasts, which was Autobahn Country Club. For this one we had the New York BRZ friend in town again as well as another local friend doing his first HPDE weekend in his V6 Camaro. The Accord got to skip trailer duty since it's the local one and somebody really wanted their lowrider hearse on spokes hauling the camping gear to the track on their birthday weekend. A decision I fully supported. 

my weekend on track went pretty smoothly other than finding out the spare key I brought wasn't actually programmed to the car. So I spent a few minutes really confused why the car randomly wouldn't fire. Finally realized the key was literally the only thing I changed and then it fired right up.  I got a lot more seat time at Autobahn than I did at RA or Putnam. Which was good because I actually got comfortable enough to start feeling things out. I found myself keeping up with cars I really expected to just walk right away from me and for the first time saw a blue flag that was for the guy I was catching.

it ended up being a great end of the season with several friends coming out to hang out for our friends' birthday. The same friend who finally managed to get his car to do enough laps to find out he has a heat management issue to sort out. (You've never seen a group of people so excited to hear that a car overheated, it was great) Camaro buddy also bought Golfball the Miata, so I'm excited to see that car be somebody else's first track car. 

Basically. Car is so good it just works. I don't even have much interesting to report at most of these which is why I kinda just forgot to check back in with it.