Yeah, you’re definitely restricted a lot by those rules then. You may benefit from a larger collector on the header, and possibly a larger exhaust, but I’m not sure since you’re stick w/ the stock cams and IM.
Other than that it’s like you said, you’d need to go over that thing with a fine tooth comb and ensure each and ever little piece is perfect. It’s like the stock class cars that go to the dealership and order 100 pistons just to find the 4 which are lightest and most similar in weight…
It wasn’t specifically stated in your post and I’m guessing it’s illegal, but combustion chambers could be welded to gain some extra compression. But again, something expensive. In your situation you should probably just keep it as is and have as much fun as possible.
Exactly. While I’d love more power (who wouldn’t), I’m having a lot of fun and am fairly competitive in my class. Any extra hp I find is more of a bonus.
And yeah, no combustion chamber welding. Mods that aren’t specifically allowed in the rules are a no-go.
As it is, I’d have no problem hitting 0.5 extra compression on head shaving alone. The only reason that I left it at 0.3 for now is that I don’t want to have to find a new head if I find oversize pistons. Since they add a bit of compression due to the larger bore, I’d have to find a new head if I was already at the 0.5 over limit.
DB2-R81, yes, I’m using the Ishihara-Johnson crank scraper. The basic, non-teflon version. The Integra is the second car I’ve used one on (my old CRX was the first). I’d consider it a race-only modification. In both cases I had to do some grinding on the scraper to make sure fit and clearances were good. Other than that, no issues on their D and B series scrapers. I did have some issues with one I tried on my street car (1988 Supra Turbo), but they were my fault. Didn’t adequately test clearances taking into account that the crank shifts when the clutch is engaged. Not good.
Picked up another 2nd and 3rd place finish in my other race group. Looks like I’m now out of the running for the club championship, but with one more race to go I might manage to get second.
The DA’s are classic because they are a 20 year old car, and are becoming rarer and rarer with every day.
VTEC was actually introduced to the North American market through the NSX. Japan had them in DA1 and CRX’s prior to that, so to say that VTEC all came from the DA is more then a little wrong. Maybe you’d better brush up on your history.
Maybe you should be the one to head back to HT. All you’ve done that I’ve seen since your arrival is try to incite arguments with derogatory comments, random posts completely irrelevant to the topics at hand and a presence that borders on trolling.
All in all, this season went really well. I managed to get a solid second place in the overall club championship. I only dropped out of one race due to mechanical problems, which is a huge jump in reliability from last year. And I think in the class I race in there’s only one car that’s definitely faster than I am, and one or two that I’m about even with.
Anyway, now to start working on next year. I’m planning a lot of tweaks to try and find that last second per lap. If I can manage that, I think I have a legitimate shot at winning the championship next year.
The biggest change I’m planning is a front splitter/air dam. Hopefully this will help the front tires grip better which should help reduce medium-high speed corner understeer and improve braking - two of the areas I’m weakest in right now. It also should reduce drag a touch, which is a nice bonus. I’m going to try some stickier brake pads for the rear wheels because I suspect they could be working harder under braking and still not lock up. I’m going to start next season with 6 new slicks instead of 4 so that I can have fresh front tires every 2 race weekends instead of having to use tires that have fallen off in grip by the end of the year. Also, believe it or not, but I’ve never done an alignment on my car :-). Need to fix that…
Then there things that are farther down in priority that I still want to do:
Get a set of rain-specific tires since it rains a lot up here.
Redo my header and exhaust to see if I can find some more power, try some different intake lengths on the dyno to see if there are gains to be had.
Try some slightly stiffer springs and/or front bar.
Fresh OEM valve springs + more RPM. Maybe.
Oh, and my 3rd and 4th gear synchros are starting to go, so we’re going to rebuild the transmission.
Good work on your standings.
It turns out you race along side a friend of mine Tracey (the blonde girl in the orange miata) and she’s wanting me to look into getting a camera for her similar to your Aiptek since she likes the quality of your videos compared to her previous camera setups. Just one question which she forgot to ask you is, does it come with a remote? Because it’s sort of a deal breaker for her since it’s hard for her to hit record when she’s already strapped in. Other than that, the price seems about right for her and Tom.
Thanks.
The Aiptek doesn’t come with a remote, but they do offer one as an accessory, around $15 from Amazon. I don’t know how well it works, since I just start recording at the five minute warning before strapping in.
While the Aiptek does produce good video, it is a bit more fiddly than something like the GoPro HD. There are a few fixes I needed to do on mine before it worked well:
The battery cover lets the battery vibrate around a bit, so sometimes the camera would power off in the middle of a race. I taped a piece of folded paper to the inside of the cover as a shim and haven’t had that problem since.
Audio sucks. As you can tell from my videos, the noise level from a race car completely blows out the microphone. I opened the cover over the microphone at the top of the camera and crammed some foam in to try to quiet down the audio, but it still clips the signal badly.
In my car, it needed a wide angle adapter to frame the video properly. You can see the difference between my videos from 2009 and this year.
Also, the Aiptek doesn’t come with a video editing program. If Tracey has a Mac, iMovie should work to edit the files. I use a video scripting language called AviSynth to do my editing, but it’s not very user friendly at all.
All in all, if Tracey doesn’t mind a bit of DIY, the Aiptek works well. Just be aware of the limitations :-). If she wants it to just work out of the box, the new GoPro HD uses the same video chip as the Aiptek and should produce video at the same quality, with better audio and sturdier construction.
A fellow racer posted up this video of a rain race from last year. I show up at about 1:30 in when I pass him. He then keeps up with me as we work our way to the front. He actually has a faster car than me and was closing in, but spun twice and couldn’t recover the lost time before the end of the race. Great race, great video:
you seem to do really good in the wet. I’ve watched your other wet races and your car seems to have alot more stability than your competitors in the rain. My car is the total opposite, mine has a tendency to break out the back in the wet.
I love rain races. Even when I was racing a CRX, I always seemed to do better when the track was slippery. Not sure why. With the Integra, I have a longer wheelbase than the Civics and CRXs I race against, which helps with the stability. And the BMWs are rear wheel drive, so it’s easy to get power-on oversteer for them, especially when it’s wet.
When does your car break loose in the wet? Is it if you lift in the middle of a corner?
what do you plan on changing for next years setup?