You're My Boy, Blue

[rherold9]

Looks great. Always recommend the STR.T + lowering springs for OEM+ on any car.

From this picture is your lower arm cut, broken, or is that normal? Between the left bolt and hole on the right looks messed up.

[ScottyB]

Looks great. Always recommend the STR.T + lowering springs for OEM+ on any car.

thanks, and good to hear your opinion on it considering you run some super trick stuff on the NC

From this picture is your lower arm cut, broken, or is that normal? Between the left bolt and hole on the right looks messed up.

weird right? that's stock. i do know honda built the suspension geometry to do some weird stuff throughout its travel, so all i can guess at is that those joints had to be positioned in a certain way to allow the articulation its designed for. here's a better view on another car:

[rherold9]

Wtf. Honda engineers broke out the dremel and swazall and were like

[ScottyB]

once you get a solid hit of the VTEC nothing else about the car matters

[davej]

Car looks perfect right now! Good enough to daily and not have your kidneys hate you, low enough to get you into a sheetz meetup. I love it.

[ScottyB]

Car looks perfect right now! Good enough to daily and not have your kidneys hate you, low enough to get you into a sheetz meetup. I love it.

ha, thanks...i miss sheetz and their glorious 2 AM post-party shmuffins

steering wheel and shifter felt a bit grimy after i got the car back from alignment. i went over both with some Chemical Guys AllClean+ diluted down to 20:1 for interior surface. i don't think this is just from the shop, but about 8 years of hand goop that was ignored


freakin gross. but the good news is my wheel and shifter actually feels like leather again.

[Sijray21]

i went over both with some Chemical Guys AllClean+ diluted down to 20:1 for interior surface.

do you use a lot of their stuff? i just went leeroy on their site the other day and am planning on detailing my car in the next month or so. I've never done anything aside from washing and wiping down the interior of the dub, so that's going to change.

[ScottyB]

do you use a lot of their stuff? i just went leeroy on their site the other day and am planning on detailing my car in the next month or so. I've never done anything aside from washing and wiping down the interior of the dub, so that's going to change.

yeah man give the dub some lovin!

i bounce around between a lot of companies to be honest, although i'm finally settling on some products. people seem to really like Chemical Guys stuff and i don't think you can go wrong with most all of their stuff.

currently i have their AllClean+ and TVD Tire and Trim Gel in my detailing kit. Love the AllClean, but the TVD has been meh at best, it washes off after only a few rains and i'll move to another brand. with the AllClean you can get 2 empty hand sprayers and dilute one out at 20:1 for interior cleaning and another at 10:1 for exterior. the exterior dilution is effective, smells great and i use it on everything from wheels to engine bay to wheel wells to bug splats. on the interior its awesome for getting nice aluminum pedals clean, dashboards, cupholders, and carpets. since you can dilute it so far, it meters out to a very cheap product to use.

[ScottyB]

super boring update, caved and bought a new rear caliper with a proper OEM coating. i can't deal with one random rusty-ass caliper anymore and i don't have the time to wire wheel it to death to paint it with something and hope it doesn't rust again if i missed a spot.

went to west GA and back this weekend, about 450 miles round trip, pulled down 32mpg with it loaded up with wife/kid and the cruise set at 74 with the A/C blasting. the new suspension and alignment rode fine, the only time you really noticed that you were getting into the high rate on the spring was over the big expansion joint heaves, so the wife still approves. some mean crosswinds on Sunday had me weaving around a bit with the 0 toe and increased camber but it wasn't any worse than being in a tall SUV in the same circumstances.

i did have a kid in a MkV GTI roll up on me on I-20 and throw some blowoff valve noise my way, but i was in Dad Mode...and i would have gotten smoked anyway, heh.

[WRXtranceformed]

Your dad cred went through the roof though! It's crazy to see how much we mature in our driving actions as we get older.

Great to hear it's such a good yet fun family cruiser

[ScottyB]

oil drained out! new oil poured in! EXCITEMENT! MADNESS! oil nerd warning below.

so yeah, not much to report other than just driving it an enjoying it over the past months. i ran the onboard "maintenance minder" down to an oil life of 0% and then another 500 miles beyond, and at that point decided to change out my run of Mobil1 0W-40 for a fresh fill of Pennzoil Euro 0W-40 that was on a great sale at wally world. figured it was a great time to do an oil analysis on the engine and find out how healthy it is with it sitting at about 94k miles. the maintenance minder is very conservative and geared for use of standard, not synthetic, oil so i felt that running it all the way down was fine, and a good place to start a baseline. my goal here is to find a sweet spot for how far out i can run a synthetic oil change while also keeping the engine in great shape for being able to wail on it without a second thought.

sent the oil in to Blackstone and the results came back great.

minimal trace elements in the oil (particularly lead/copper/chromium which is your bearings and rings), low silicon so the OEM air filter is working well, low insolubles so the Honda A01 oil filter is doing its job. the cSt viscosity shows that the 0W-40 dipped into 30 weight range by 6600 miles which is right where i wanted it. i take care to drive the car gently until its fully warm, but otherwise it sees normal shifts in the 4-5k RPM range and sees the 8,200 RPM redline multiple times a trip, as it should. being a daily driver, so it sees all the rigors of traffic, long interstate trips, extended idling with the A/C cranked up, and lots of engine shutdowns/cranks when running errands. given this performance i'm sticking with 0W-40 and Honda filters, and will run the next oil change out to 9-10k miles.

also, in case anyone asks, the K20 is spec'd in the US for 5W-30, but given my driving habits, hot as balls climate down here in GA, and feedback from other guys that run these cars hard, made me feel i wanted something a notch above a 30 weight. Mobil's OW-40 is a great oil and notorious for basically being a really beefy 30 weight by the time you put a few miles on it, and then holding that viscosity. with the added thickness, cheap price and shear-stability of this oil i thought it would be the right call.

to further back this up, Honda's higher performance Japanese-market Type-R variant of this chassis, the "FD2", calls for a 5W-40 weight in the factory service manual. Given that the engine in that car is essentially identical internally to mine, aside from a slightly hotter cam and the deletion of balance shafts in the oil pan, supported my thought that the engine would be happy with a 40 weight oil.



up next: it'll be time to crack the valve cover off and install new OEM Denso Iridium spark plugs along with a valve adjustment for its 100k service. i'm interested to see how the top end looks. i've also gotta find some time to replace that ugly, rusty rear caliper with the new factory-coated Nissin unit i got in.

[ScottyB]

had my face/shins/ribs smashed so many times by the insanely weak doors closing on me on the slightest incline that i had to relent and tear the door panels off to replace the door "checkers" with upgraded 9th gen units.  i hate interior work (i break clips like a champ) but this wasn't the worst thing ever.  

its clear by the condition of the plastic membrane and the messyness of the sealant bead that this door has been opened up before. the passenger door was untouched. i wonder if this was for yet another replacement door checker at some earlier time?

before


after


i didn't expect this to make me so happy

[.RJ]

its the little things in life. Nice job.

do you have interior trim remover tools? they're a life saver.

[JPolen01]

Look at Mr Fancypants with the gifs! That looks excellent. If I wasn't insanely lazy I may consider replacing mine because having the coupe the doors are even heavier and always close on me. Good work sir.

[Sijray21]

that's crazy how easy the door would close; that would drive me nuts... glad you fixed it. the smallest irritations are the ones that drive me away from a car i drive daily.

[Goodspeed]

Lol, that's awesome. My IS300 doors are like that - I constantly look like a crazy person with a tick that the driver door must be open and shut 3 times before I can get out of the car, when in reality it's just the door slamming back in my face immediately if I don't catapult myself out.

[ScottyB]

its the little things in life.  Nice job.

do you have interior trim remover tools?  they're a life saver.

it really is, and yes i picked up a little tool (like a fat bladed screwdriver) off amazan for like 7 bucks. wish it hadn't taken me so long to just go ahead and buy it.

Look at Mr Fancypants with the gifs! That looks excellent. If I wasn't insanely lazy I may consider replacing mine because having the coupe the doors are even heavier and always close on me. Good work sir.

I AM INTERNETTING AS HARD AS I CAN!

but seriously, yes do it, new checkers are like $12 each from hondapartsnow.com. easy to find tutorials on yout00b on how to pull the door card off. i used p/n's 72340-TR3-A01 (right) and 72380-TR3-A01 (left) but those are for the 9th gen sedan.

that would drive me nuts... glad you fixed it

ha you have no idea. my driveway's on a pretty decent hill so watching me flail my legs onto the kick panel and then stumble into a spin move out of the driver's seat while trying to hold a drink/keys/phone makes me look like a drunk, cursing idiot

catapult myself out.

Goodspeed gets me

[Apoc]

Those gifs need to be memes, like, yesterday.

[ScottyB]

Those gifs need to be memes, like, yesterday.

i'm not funny enough to know what to do with those, so you guys have fun with em

[V1GiLaNtE]

Need the scoop on dat sick passenger seat cover yo. Looks like phresh fo I-talian leather.