Rapid Rebuilt Part 1

So its Thursday night and I just spent a whole night at Hyper16Valve getting all the details on our rebuild. Boy do we have great news.

Moe spent the good amount of Monday taking the current motor out of the car and started the breakdown of both the motor and the tranny. All came out without a hitch and he let us know that in the morning he would be getting some calls from some "friends" to see if they had a motor at their yard for us to use.




Tuesday Moe went out to look at the motor and was able to choose between a few different ones and he called me for the go-ahead and he purchased it. The rest of the day we took list of the damages which include a spun bearing but pretty much that was it, we were expecting the worse and alot of the parts would turn out to be salvagable.




So Wednesday the "newer" motor was delivered to the shop and Moe gave us good reports about it. He felt that it was exactly what we needed and he took the head off right away and sent it off to the maching shop for some TLC.



That night I went down to assess the damages and take photos. We spent the night planning out the time lines and the plans with the motor. We also found that there was a bearing the tranny that needed to be preplaced so with the whole thing aprt this was the time to fix it.





So, with the 2007 SCCA Rule book being tossed between 3-4 people it got a work out as we tried to figure out "the intent" of each of the rules that pertained to what we were doing. After we finally came to a decision we put it down in writing and we called it a night.




Thursday and Friday have been spent waiting for the head to come back and preping the shortblock to be sent off to be checked to make sure it would still run strong. All the meanwhile Moe is running all over town getting us the parts we need to rebuild the motor when everything comes back, as well and making the engine bay like it was 1989.



Right now we are hoping to have the motor back together for a fire up late in the weekend or early in the week. As long as we dont run into any road blocks we would have rebuilt our motor in 7 days...WOW!!

As Moe says "NO Worries sir, We are going to be alright, TRUST ME!!!"

What's that noise?

Sunday rolls around and Jason and I arrive to walk the course. After walking the course, I had a feeling that the tail would rotate today.

The course was modified quite a bit from the Saturday practice and it had become what I considered to be a more difficult course to do well. There was an optional element that was basically a shortcut around a sweeper. There was lots of debate as to which way would be faster. The shortcut had a very tight entry, so you would pay a price trying to get into it. After walking, I had picked the shortcut as my choice and called Dale to discuss and he agreed that the shortcut would be the better option, so shortcut it was.

During the event, when we were in grid, I took my first run and came back. The run was OK, nothing spectacular. Missed a couple of key apexes. Somebody came up to me in grid and said they heard a 'bad' sound, like rods knocking, something like that. We check the car and hear the noise, but it's not bad. After a little discussion, we elect to keep going. Jason takes his run and doesn't make the shortcut entry very gracefully, so his run isn't very good.

Now, we are up for 2nd runs. We listen to the car and discuss again. We decided to keep going. I get out there and take my run. During the run, I hear the noise get louder - just for a few seconds. The car seems like it is pulling normally and I clean up my line a little bit. However, after crossing the finish line, my time is some 2 seconds slower than my previous run. That didn't seem right. As I'm waiting for my time slip, the engine stalls. I restart the engine and it is sounding bad now. We limp the car back to grid and listen. This time, the noise is terminal, so we call it quits.

Jason and Daniel take care of getting the car to Moe's. Now for the work to rebuild the engine. Moe is confident that we'll be back in time for the July 7th practice.

6/23 practice

Given the behavior of the car at El Toro, I was looking forward to doing some more tuning on the setup to get the car where we wanted it handling-wise.

Unfortunately, it seemed like no matter what we tried, the tail would not rotate, just like before. We tried pressure changes, ride height changes and nothing! I was frustrated and decided to not worry about it and wait for another course.

Later, I found out that others also had trouble with their car pushing and not being able to get the tail to rotate, so I'm going to chalk it up to the peculiarity of the course design. Nothing wrong with the course, it just wasn't one that allowed the tail to rotate.

Moe came down and spent the day with us to provide support, check the car out etc. It was nice having Moe around to check things.

The car felt pretty good, pulling hard and driving well. Looking forward to Sunday's event.

Playing with the Porsches - Not!

Well, today is Fathers day and I get to do whatever I want, so I chose to attend the PCA OCR autocross held at El Toro. Jason wasn't able to attend because he had an appointment with his father. We have a set of dead tires that are unusable at CSW, so I figured we'd try them here since it is so much grippier and put the race set on for the final timed runs to compare car handling.

Jason and Daniel have been working on the car and told me to expect some changes. In the mean time, since the last event, the rear bushings have finally been replaced with good bushings, stainless steel brake lines have been installed and the rear drums have also been worked on. The car is almost done. I had been busy enough at work that I really didn't have time to start thinking about the event until Friday afternoon, when Jason was dropping hints about changes.

After walking the course, it turns out to basically be a mini road course. It looked like it would be fast enough to spend a good 50% of my time in 3rd gear. The slalom was spaced so far apart that I figured I'd be flat going through it. What I hadn't figured on was that I was already on the rev limiter going IN to the slalom, so instead of being flat, I still had to slow down.

We had spent so much time in 3 gear and we were going so fast, on my first two runs, I missed the slow turn that was thrown in and blew straight through it. I had 'forgotten' that I no longer have Porsche brakes and can't stop like I used to, so I had to finally accept the fact that I had to brake way early in order to not go off course.

By the end of the third run, my oil light was flickering while I was idling in line for my last morning practice run. I checked the oil and it looked like it was still full, so I decided to take my 4th run for the morning. At the end of the run, as soon as I passed the finish, the engine died with the oil light on again. I let the car keep rolling for a little while and it restarted with the oil light still flickering.

Ken Motonishi was there, so I asked him about the problem. I also talked to Dale and Jason too. Ken referred me to Bret Norgaard and after a brief consultation, I decide that it's not worth running the Civic under these conditions and risk blowing up the engine, so I sit out the rest of the day and instead, get sunburned!

In hindsight, I should have swapped cars and run my GTI. Oh well.

Oh yeah, the good news - The shitty tires work at El Toro, so we can save them for practice events at El Toro. The other good news, the car now feels like it works. Turn in was very crisp and I actually hit cones instead of it drifting around the course. We are finally getting close. Yippee!

Just a Little tighter in the rear and some STOP power!!!

Well I just needed to sqeeze this in here for completion. In between race we managed to get a few things donw on the car.

Uber Rare Mugen Rear Trailing Arm Bushings:




Replaced the soft rubber brake lines:



Replaced all the bushings in the in the rear trailing arms:



Rebuilt the rear brake system including changing the the slave cylinder and new pads:

The Crossovers at Camarillo

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JASON'S FASTEST RUN

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STEPHENS FASTEST RUN

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So the results have been posted from the Ventura Corvair Club event and it looks like when the dust settled we did quite well at holding down our own among alot of great fast cars.

All in all we ended up 5th and 6th out of 48 cars or so, so not a bad finish, for our little car that could.

The car really came to be this weekend. With the motor running top notch and the suspension dialed in we were ready to go FAST in the car.

Tech and registration whet much smoother then in the past and we were very happy about that and we found the course surprisingly technical given the room that Guy and Lisa had to work with.

We did our ritual walks with measurements and banter about short line vs carrying speed and came to compromises on what we felt would be fastest. Boy were we surprised, first out was Stephen and man he put down a smoking time that got every ones head turned and after 3 runs he was still cutting time down, although coning the runs he was going faster. I was standing at the timing booth in between runs and everyone was concerned that he wasn't going to get a clean run and I told them "eh this is the was we run the car he will get a clean run no worries from me" and sure enough he put down a solid 41.5 putting him only slower then 1 person the race ready built to autoX Ackeny Racing Camero. Awesome times

After that heat everyone seemed to gather to see what was making our car so fast and our favorite answer was "its stock, really its stock" well we changed the shocks and springs but that's it, hahahaha.

Later that afternoon I was pumped to get in the car i ran 3 heats later at the very end of the day and i was rip ready to go. I was figuring I would run about 1 second from Stephen an man in my first run I matched his 41.5 with 1 cone on the run and the next 2 runs shave off time from there. My last run was amazing when I pulled everything together and cleaned it up and it felt as fast as the last pass, unfortunately there was a time hiccup and I was given a time almost 6 seconds slower then my last run. Unless i hit some time warp continuum out there at the turn around I dunno what happened. Later we found the run to be very close to Stephens 41.5 run as we compared frame to frame on our out board camera.

Overall it was a great weekend, better run and smoother overall. Driving to Stephens place the night before really gives you an understanding on how much Stephen loves to race because it is a LONG LONG drive from our usual 30 - 40 mins from the garage where the civic usually is. I admire that and share his passion and hope that our relationship grows overtime because we have ben doing great so far.

Thanks to Hyper16Valve for getting the car ready to go for this event and also to Mako for taking great photos.

If you want to see a fun run of a subaru/lotus driver drivng a tiny underpowered civic check this video out of MakoFoto behind the wheel of the SCP STS Civic

Click here to watch "Ventura-Corvair-Club-060307-Makofoto"

Jason has done it!

Ventura County Corvair club autocross on 6/4. Today was an iffy event for me. I wasn't sure I'd be able to attend because I had an early afternoon commitment, but after talking to Tim Chew (event organizer), we felt that it was doable to attend and run this event and still be on time for my commitment, so I did. Besides, it's hard to pass up a chance to run so close to home.

Guy Ankeny designed the course and it was a technical one again. Good fun for a runway. I didn't care for all the little cones that littered the path, causing a visual nightmare trying to see your way around the course.



Since I had to leave early, I ran first and put up some respectable times, but felt that I had left time out there. Jason hadn't run yet when I was leaving, but I had a feeling he would do well. I had no idea how well...

When we met after the event for dinner, it turns out that he did very well. Jason ran faster than I did in this event - congratulations! Nice driving. Jason has a nice video of us side by side showing how he pulled away from me that I'm sure he'll post shortly.

I feel like I still need more speed and with Jason nipping at my heels, I'm going to sign up for the next practice event. If you'd like a ride, come by California Speedway on 6/23 and look for us in the black Civic.

Mako came out to volunteer and took some beautiful pictures. Check them out here.