Building for the road course...again

im still amazed at the customer service from wiseco for such a large company

this eric guy seems solid as well

 

It was great to meet Eric. I’ve heard his name many times over the years. He’s a good dude for sure.

As for wiseco, so the Canadian warehouse here has a total of 4 employees apparently. The girl who answers the phones/all the questions. Same girl who takes your money and gives you great pricing on parts.
There’s someone in the warehouse, there’s someone for accounting, then there’s a guy who handles the custom stuff.

That’s about it. It’s a cool operation. Great support and great pricing on product directly through them. Avoid the middle man I guess.

 

Swapped over my street setup back on the car. Brake pads and wheels.

Been pretty impressed with these hawk HP+ pads. I use to kill them on the Mazda. To the point they weren’t a track pad for me at all.

In the civic, they’ve been more then enough for some time attack type sessions.

more then enough bite, plenty of temp capacity. Definitely a good pad for my uses. I’m definitely far easier on brakes then I ever use to be. The car even has a mix of last years 660 and some old 5.1 fluid I mixed cause that’s all I had. So far so good lol. These pads have been to 4 track days and 2 autox’s between last season and this season

you can see a little cracking in the pad material. Mostly from heat. That’s ok. They keep working. I’m using way less brake and it shows!


Tire wear looking good. These nankangs are definitely soft. Fronts have 1 autox day with probably 15-20 runs on them. Not too crazy. These were stickers before the event

alignment seems to be pretty dialed. Close to anyways.
-3.25* front camber
-2.25* rear camber
9.5* of caster
0 toe all around

 

Pistons picked up.
I feel like this is too nice of a part for me. These pistons are damn nice. They also weigh…nothing? My heavy duty wrist pins alone from the turbo pistons weighed more then this piston. i guess that’s good since we’re gonna be sending them at Mach1 lol


Still need to sort out the rods next

 

Read up on this to understand what squish is

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squish_(piston_engine)

 

Well thanks for that! That’s explains it I guess. Not exactly sure what i need for it to be ideal but my tuner seems to know. I guess I’ll see

 

So I’ve done a ton of searching around/talking with my tuner. Unfortunately it seems like the BC light weight rods are the rods to go with. They are 578usd with arp2000 rod bolts. Those bolts are no good for where I’m going so arp625+ bolts it is.

BC wants 860usd for those rods with those bolts. Ouch.

I was able to find the rods for 440$ elsewhere online. I’m thinking to order those, then just get the 625 bolts locally. Should be significantly cheaper.

after that, I’ll be on the hunt for my intake manifold. Skunk2 ultra street. Very nice unit.

After that it’s camshaft time. Skunk2 ultra 1. Pretty nice camshafts. The header design will be extremely important here. I may have to go full custom.

then valve train time. We’re going with ferrea this time. REAL nice stuff.


Hoping I can get out to the track next weekend. Been busy past few weekends and the weathers been total crap.

I also finally picked up a microphone adapter for my GoPro. Hoping for some sick underhood vtec noises!

 

Zoom zoom!

Oh wait.

 

Proof of concept test. I do need a better microphone but we know the setup works!



After searching high and low all over the internet I think I have found my solution. A battery powered microphone with volume control! 0db or -10db.
The microphone being battery powered also allows me to turn off the GoPros internal sound processing/compression which you can hear cutting the audio out pretty badly.

Stay tuned for hopefully some better vtec noises!

 

Rods ordered. Ordered through king motorsports as they were $140usd cheaper then ANY other source. Hopefully they fulfill the order.

I ordered the arp625+ rod bolts from another source after searching all over the web.

BC wanted 40usd/bolt. I found them on some random Canadian website for $41cad/bolt. Free shipping. Never dealt with that site either so hopefully they also fulfill the order with no BS.

New mic arrived for the GoPro. This one sounds awesome, and the -10db switch is perfect for what I need. I’ll be experimenting with that setup soon as the weather changes from pouring rain to not pouring rain

 

Sketchy site 1 cancelled my order. Just got the rods through my shop since they’re a BC dealer anyways so whatever. Extra $90 cad since I save on shipping and duties this way

 

Got my rods today. Threw everything on the scale for my tuner. He wanted to know weights of everything.

Stuffs pretty light. Rods are rated for 125/cylinder(however they get that number).

I think I’m gonna get this stuff balanced. Usually I wouldn’t bother but since we’re revving the hell out of this thing maybe it’s worth it.

625 rod bolts should be here Friday. Hopefully. Gonna get the big end checked with the 625 bolts as well to see if they go out of round and need resizing. Hopefully not

Edited for competition purposes

 

Microphone setup test 2. This is with my new mic. I think it’s pretty much as good as it’s gonna get


GoPro under hood audio test 2 - I think this will work!

 

Pretty much a bummer of a season so far. I’ve gotten pretty limited track time. With all the rain lately I’ve missed out on 2-3 track days recently. Sucks.

I am on the fence for potentially competing in a time attack event this season. August 12-13. Weekend event up at one of our BIG tracks. Walls everywhere. Forestry behind the walls. Elevation and blind corners literally everywhere. It is a big balls track. I have driven it once before when the civic was stock. It would be an incredible weekend camping at that track.

For my class the tire rules suck. 245/40/17 MAX 200tw tire, UNLESS you buy the series spec tire which is a pirelli trofeo R semi slick. It’s not even a great tire. They allow you to run a 265 if you buy the spec tire…from the series directly only though. No outside source.

Of course I purchased 255’s at the start of the season for this year. I do not have budget for another $600 pair of tires. I’ve posted a forsale / trade ad but it ain’t looking good.


too bad. That event will be awesome and the car would be a ton of fun.


I am toying with the idea of just sending it on my 235 wide hankook rs4’s but at that point I’m not even close to competitive so that sucks.

Freaking tire rules

 

New personal best acquired. The car is good. Power is good. Brakes are good. Tires are OK. Little lazy on steering feel but after tuning dampers I got that to be a lot better.

The lap looks visually slower then my other slower laps BUT g forces are higher just about everywhere…and I’m kinda chilling in there lol.

I was stuck running 1:22’s and I had a buddy of mine virtually coaching me. I’m bad for focus I told him. I glance at my speedo or lap timer and there go a few tenths right there. I’m terrible for it.

My buddy suggested I cover everything up which I may do in the future. It’s a mental game for sure. He told me he’d know I was looking if I run another 1:22. It took everything I had to not look at all and when I did end up not peaking…1:21.6. Holy crap lol. There we go.

GoPro was dead during that lap of course because 5 prior laps stuck in traffic lol. Great.

I had to go back out and give it again. This is a 1:21.79. Again after 4 laps stuck in traffic. There’s easily another 1.5-2 seconds in the car I believe. It will get very difficult to extract that though.

Previous PB was a 1:22.4
Toronto Motorsports Park - 1 Lap with the Civic NEW PB(sorta)

 

Tire wear is looking pretty good here across the fronts. Car could probably use a little bit more camber but we’re going to try adding caster first. Don’t want to take away too much braking or power on exit


rears seem to be rolling over a little too much maybe. I’ve made a rear sway bar adjustment. It’s on full stiff now. Full stiff is 535 lbs/inch up from 500 lbs.

 

If your car was handling well before, could adding more rear bar cause a loose condition in the rear or did you have room to go still?

 

Last season, the car was ridiculously loose. It was hard to drive. I figured it out throughout the season. It was not an easy car to drive though.

I had the rear bar on full soft. 465lbs.
This season? The cars been pushing like absolutely crazy. Just understeer city.
Theory is more power + more driver now. I set the bar to the middle since the beginning of the season. That’s been 500lbs.

i found the car was still pushing way more then I remember. I’m having to use a lot of steering angle so now we’re trying full stiff.

this should also help with the rear tire roll over.

I’ll just have to take it easy to start and see how the car feels and go from there

 

Is the tight condition on initial turn in or through the corner? Perhaps if the rear was more in line it would help rotate the car better. Hope it improves for you.

 

Turn in is a little numb. That’s the tire though. Mid and corner exit understeer isn’t great though. And the increased need for steering angle at mid corner really doesn’t help.

I’m hoping with the bar on full stiff, that it gets the car to be just right. I can use damper tuning to further change the balance. I’ve noticed using the dampers correctly makes such a difference