1991 Accord LX Race Car

[ukemike]

Note that the rear sway bar from the EX won't bolt up to an LX. Honda actually changed the rear cross member. If you have an LX and want a rear sway bar, the easy way is to buy an after market one from someone like Progress.

Aftermarket is too much money. It looks like the cross member is the same but with out the threaded holes for the bar mounts. That's easy to fix with a drill and some threaded inserts. I got all the mounting hardware with the bar.

The intake bit under the right fender was busted up so I plumbed in some metal dryer hose from the air filter box to the fog light opening in the bumper. Ghetto ram air baby!

[hamburglar]

If you're going to do that, you might as well just weld the sway bar mounting brackets to the car.

[ukemike]

Does anyone know how much brake fluid is required to flush the system completely? I looked up the fluid capacity faq here but for brakes it said something like "top it off". I want to flush the DOT3 out of there completely and replace with some racing DOT4.

[F22Chris]

This is accurate. But the header on the F22A4 is also good - perhaps even a bit better than the F22A6 header.

Yes. My bad. The a4 header is a better design. It even looks like an aftermarket header.

[aventari]

I have the LX crossmember too so we welded the EX swaybar brackets on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUDMRSAA_tI

[ukemike]

Video

http://youtu.be/D1ojbhujeqw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I3xcxJiKCU

Less than a week to the big race. God I hope it holds together. It's peppier than I expected, and though the suspension is very soft it should have prodigious grip due to the huge Dunlop Direzzas.

[ukemike]

Do not buy these:

http://www.protuninglab.com/hoacciinprcr.html

They are garbage. They will not hold their setting under even the most trivial load (like driving around the paddock at less than 15mph). After much struggle I decided to fill the voids inside the units with JB Weld so they can't move. I hope it works. Who is the patron saint of JB Weld? I need to make an offering.

[Chrisnick]

Try 88-91 Civic upper control arms. Even stock ones should give you probably 3-4deg of negative camber and some more caster.

[ukemike]

Do not buy these:

http://www.protuninglab.com/hoacciinprcr.html

They are garbage. They will not hold their setting under even the most trivial load (like driving around the paddock at less than 15mpg). After much struggle I decided to fill the voids inside the units with JB Weld so they can't move. I hope it works. Who is the patron saint of JB Weld? I need to make an offering.

Okay the JB weld held all weekend. It makes sense since the loads were compressive and JB weld has a 14,000psi compression strength.

Our car kept going all weekend. The semi-race brake pads we started (that came with the car) with lasted until early Saturday afternoon, after that all we could get were the standard pads from NAPA autoparts. They'd last for 2-3 hours tops. So we got really good at swapping pads hot. The brake thing wasted 2-3 hours of race time over the weekend and we finished in 112 place out of about 177. This may not sound impressive but we FINNISHED. That's huge. I am ecstatic. It was sooooo much fun. On Sunday late morning with new pads I put together a string of hot laps, and my fastest was just a bit more than a second over our fastest driver (lots of racing experience). At one point I held off the eventual winner (BMW E30 and well sorted out) for more than half a lap just by being fast enough. Our tires were brilliant but it handled like a boat. We need new bushings everywhere and shocks, and brake improvements in a big way. I'd say that most of the teams had cheater mods and were well sorted. One of our team-mate drivers loved it so much he wants to spend his money improving the car. That's great because I spent as much as I could and I can't spend more, so it looks like we get to keep going!!!

[ukemike]

Try 88-91 Civic upper control arms. Even stock ones should give you probably 3-4deg of negative camber and some more caster.

Brilliant!! You anticipated my next big question. We found some adjustable UCAs for the civic that looked like they would fit the Accord but we weren't sure.

It's good to know they'll fit. I'm gonna have lots more questions, but I'll ask them in the appropriate forum later.

[illinois_erik]

Does anyone know how much brake fluid is required to flush the system completely? I looked up the fluid capacity faq here but for brakes it said something like "top it off". I want to flush the DOT3 out of there completely and replace with some racing DOT4.

I was able to flush my system with one quart of denatured alcohol followed by half of a quart of brake fluid for good measure,finishing with the remainder. bled and rock hard. do *not* use any petroleum based fluids to flush the brake system in case you didnt know.

[frohawker]

You can also just order a SPC/Ingalls camber kit and still maintain the relative geometry. It won't be the pretty tube control arms that you can get for civics/tegs but does it need to be? SPC offers two camber kits: +/-1.5deg and like -1.5 to -3.5deg IIRC. Check out the energy suspension kit for the bushings. It made the world of difference in my car. For the brakes look at the Wagon/prelude brake swap. All factory bolt on parts that again make a huge difference 10.2" vs 11.1" rotor and matching caliper. Not to mention the ROH swap that will make changing rotors doable as fast as the pad change. Find an EX in the JY or on craigslist that someone is parting out and grab the sway bars (at least the rear). Bump up your tires to some 205s. Hope this helps!

[ukemike]

Back in business

We're back in business. We are doing a bunch of work to get our car ready for the Thunderhill Lemons race in September. Our front end was a bit messed up if you've read this thread. I got some civic adjustable upper control arms. We also got some new shocks. The old ones were so bad. When we got them off one of the shafts was bent and the other was so loose you could compress it with one finger. Our brakes were also a disaster. So Tedd spent a day at the pick and pull and though we had looked up that they had several accord EXs and a few other relevant cars every one he went to had the nissin calipers. We have those and they suck because the only race pads you can get are bespoke from porterfield at $300 a pair! He did find a car with the Akebono's and he got the whole knuckle/wheel carrier unit. We also got new rotors and new front bearings.

A few weeks ago we got the new shocks on, and started replacing some of the bushings. Today we painted the car white as a starting point for our new theme. No fancy paint here my son and I rolled on some rustoleum. We also got the rotors and bearings on. Sounds simple but it was pretty epic. Great fun to.

We still have the rear shocks, more bushings, and more theme work to do. We also are going to get the A4 header on it finally, and Tedd's worked a deal with a guy he knows that will help us with the welding and get us a high flow muffler like a cherry bomb or something. Altogether if it doesn't break we expect to be much more competitive this time than we were at Sears Pointless in March.

[aventari]

I have the Raybestos ST42 pads on Akebono calipers and they are incredible. THey've lasted a few races and never gave us problems. Pricey though

Also used the ebay Civic upper control arms and got 3.5 degrees of negative camber which worked great. One thing I did is weld the balljoints to the arms once they were adjusted because the bolts holding them are really shitty.
I wouldn't trust them on track.

Do you have any pictures of your arms?
What kind of shocks? I'm running Bilstein HDs and H&R race springs, which is a great combo.

Jay gave us some shit, but still put us in class B with no penatly laps

[ukemike]

I have the Raybestos ST42 pads on Akebono calipers and they are incredible. THey've lasted a few races and never gave us problems. Pricey though

Also used the ebay Civic upper control arms and got 3.5 degrees of negative camber which worked great. One thing I did is weld the balljoints to the arms once they were adjusted because the bolts holding them are really shitty.
I wouldn't trust them on track.

Do you have any pictures of your arms?
What kind of shocks? I'm running Bilstein HDs and H&R race springs, which is a great combo.

Jay gave us some shit, but still put us in class B with no penatly laps

We've been working the theme lately but saturday I set the camber. I've got both sides to match -3deg. Instead of welding them, tomorrow I'm taking them out and I'm going to make a brace that fits inside the top of the control arm to hold them in place.

We got koni orange shocks. They are on sale this summer and are cheaper even than most of the pure stock replacement shocks. The Bilsteins weren't in our budget. Not in the official budget or the real one.

I keep forgetting to get a picture of the UCAs. But they are these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/TruHart-Adjustable-Camber-Kit-Front-88-91-Honda-Civic-EF-CRX-/281557040532?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories &fits=Year%3A1988|Model%3ACivic&hash=item418e1b7d9 4&vxp=mtr