Civic of Doom: Honda Challenge Recycling

[Kaan]

Executive Summary: I passed, I’m slow, I’ll be back out there…

HOLY SMOKES… those of you that follow my IG closely… feel free to skip to “COMP SCHOOL – Hell on Earth.” It was a MAJOR thrash sessions to get things finished up. I’m very thankful to Jason Lineberg for coming through and taking the stress of wiring away. It was causing me nightmares…. His help really saved me pre disaster (and he came by post disaster to finish it off!)
I’m away from home at least 14 hours a day… so I would come home, Sylvia would make dinner, I would be in the garage… for at least 6 weeks I was in the garage every night until bed time, pushing my bed time closer and closer to midnight (I wake up at 4am).

That was amplified by a tragedy on the dyno. Visual inspection of the rings and bearings indicated the engine would be fine… I used all new OEM parts, HIGH dollar aftermarket parts, etc. well it only put down 174hp… with at least one cylinder chugging oil like the Honda Challenge kids wreck bud lites. I was feeling pretty defeated… my trans was already built to run the Vtec motors and switching back to the B20 would have me sitting on the rev limiter in 5th gear for a LONG time.

My wife and crew chief, Sylvia, told me to give it a night (mind out we only had 11 days to go), think about it and figure stuff out. I had settled on the fact I would send this B20 to its doom, rev it out, and probably be the first person on the internet to use a Hondata coil on plug kit on a non vtec motor…. It was going to take some ingenuity, but it should have worked out.
Sylvia knew with 9 days left and my only local go to for parts to make the B20 work would be amazon prime… handed me an envelope full of cash with “happy birthday” on it. Enough to go buy a B18C5 from a local JDM importer. I’d check my bosses calendar, see when he was in a meeting, and call all the importers. Needless to say, outside of “illegal” “spoon” motors in Richmond (which they wanted $8k for)… there was ONE left in Manassas. I called, they agreed to hold it for me… and I had to figure out how to get the motor on a week day. (be inventive… I’m not typing it out).

BAM… I got my hands on the motor, unloaded it, and had it hung in the engine by before sun down. I hate that I have gotten so good at this… We fire the motor up, sounds great… no leaks, etc. Deren at MachV agrees to give this one a tune for me… quick work of the tune with a healthy motor… all be it Wednesday night, and we leave for VIR the next day.




COMP SCHOOL – Hell on Earth & Paddock Gnomes

We are all lined up waiting for the gates to open at VIR… we are pretty far back in line, but we know we are paddocking with the HC kids on the beach. Its dark, we have to camp, etc… I have to get through tech for my annual… we rush to unload and are maybe 10th in line… not bad.

Tech goes too well… pass with flying colors and then… the smell of fuel. My injectors are leaking… they didn’t leak in the garage… they didn’t leak on the dyno… so we stayed up until midnight, the night before comp school fixing the car. Obviously I have things on my mind… driving four 40 minutes sessions (turns out to be 5) the next day… I have a written test to pass… I don’t want to be the first NASA Official to fail the test… blah blah

Just as I get to sleep, during a windy 30-ish degree night, our air mattress touches down on the cold steel trailer. We only put the tent on the trailer after all the rain last year… but I’m not sure the ground would have been much better. I pass out a couple of times that night and wake up sore and tired. But hey, comp school awaits.



NOTE: when they tell you it’s a full day, they aren’t lying. If you plan to go to comp school recruit help, good help, lots of help… its not a joke. You will do nothing but drive your car… you don’t have time to add gas or torque your lug nuts…

I got SUPER lucky… session one, having fun with standing starts, I rolled 2/3 of the field… seeing the front, I got a little aggressive in turn 1 and flat spotted my front tires… Paddock Gnomes changed them out (Brent and I think DJ)… because Sylvias only fear is jacking the car up. If you tell her to swap this or that, do the brakes, etc… she’s fine, as long as someone else puts it in the air. THANK YOU PADDOCK GNOMES!

Session 2… even more lucky… First off my hearing came back… but second/third another driver in the paddock stopped working on his busted AI car to weld up my header … yes I broke a header in comp school. THEN… another guy in comp school who was “out” due to a rear main seal dying out… pulled his Vband off and gave it to me to use… all put together with time to spare (though I didn’t get to eat lunch).

Session 3 and 4… all is good… having lots of fun. Getting side by side with people, battling it out, swapping spots… learning how to take a spot back on the exit of a turn, etc.

Session 5… AKA the “fun race.” It was fun for me… I’m sure there were several BMW drivers that were pretty pissed off though. I’m not sure what they were thinking or if they were really that worried about the non rookies being in the group, but their pace was way behind. I had one bonzi me in 14a (man I need to work on that section of the track) only to get really mad when I passed him coming out of hog pen… overall, fun times… but at this point I had 3.3 hours of track time on the car in one day… HOLY SMOKES.



RICE RACE BABY

Saturday/Sunday were “race days.” And I flat spotted the crap out of my front tires on a COLD track first thing Saturday morning. At this point I was out of spare tires and I know for qualifying and for the races I’m going to need to dial it back. It’s a mental challenge for me to not go all out … luckly I held out long enough for my tires to get warm.

I go to gas up for qualifying… and magically I have no forward gears… but I can go backward. SO I backup from the gas pumps to the beach. I have popped an axle out from the trans, fluid is everywhere and the axle end is shot. I borrow an axle from a competitor and throw it in there… off to qualifying.  

I switched from harrys to the aim for this event… I’m still running a 2:20 (easily 8 seconds off the pace, every HC driver picked up at least 2 seconds from last years VIR)… I just cant stay in the gas like the other cars can in 4-5, oak tree, and hogpen… and I’m being a little soft in braking for 14 and 1… After thinking about it, “man you suck at the whole track…. I guess that’s where 8 seconds can go.” I laugh about it, Sylvia gives me a dirty look and wants to know the joke… so I tell her… then she goes “hey… why are your front tires so far off.” UMM my alignment is a LONG way off… I might have 1 degree of camber on the left side… Deren goes “well that’s not going to help you in T4/5, oak tree, hogpen, or anywhere…”  


The Sunday Beast of the East race was fun… right until I watched the E30 no brake for southbend and crash it just before oak tree. I was tangling with a miata for a bit, but mostly because the E30 driver was a little crazy and I couldn’t get around him… once he was crashed out I walked away into my lonely zone in the Lighting pack.

The final race for Sunday started out pretty well…. I stopped looking at my AIM, I was sorta keeping up with the HC field, etc… right until I popped the dipstick out of the engine and kept throwing oil onto the radiator and header under braking! FYI, my hood vent works like a mother… placement must be amazing because the smoke pours out of the vent… BUT it does get all over the windshield. Praying it was just water and steam, I took my brake marker early into oak tree rounded the corner… and decided the hit the windshield wiper when I grabbed 4th… NOPE… its oil. I limped it in and took a DNF for the Sunday race.

I got my license, the car needs work, the driver needs at least equal amount of work… I need more tires (and wheels lol)… and Sylvia is convinced of an enclosed trailer now.