Was out lapping and having a good day till my CV shaft started making some horrible vibrations. After swapping it out I ripped it apart and 2 of the 3 legs of the tripod in the outer were broken clean off. Cars fixed, planning to upgrade the shafts (anyone with track use of DC shafts that can explain why the DC half shaft/driver shafts are an upgrade please chime in) I’ll either be doing that or drive shaft shop Lvl 0 shafts cause even tho I get cost on my Honda parts, OEM is too expensive and I’m just a B20V, NA. Going with 500+hp shafts is not only overkill but also too much, but I keep breaking the aftermarket “new” shafts and can’t find a local authorized EMPI dealer to get me the only good “OEM” level shafts…
any way I’ve done some other upgrades like I finally put my sparco seat in (was waiting on a seat base that showed up while I was already out at the track for this event) so I’ll be out again soon and hopefully next time my shafts hold up, here’s a vid.
Aftermarket garbage that is supposedly new, not refurbished. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a good brand readily available in Toronto. I don’t wanna order online and have serious down time waiting on warranty should I break one, the redeeming part of the crap I have it that thru my old work I can call them up to make sure they have one in stock by the end of the day, pick it up on my way home, change it in my driveway in a few mins and return the core on my way to work the next day, and drive my car again and give my wife back our daily.
I would like to find either a local GTA region dealer of EMPI shafts but I can only find rebuild kits, not actual shafts. I’m considering Driveshaft Shop’s Lvl 0 axles but no warranty at all, any racing shafts better are more than I paid for the car, so that seems a bit steep.
Cars kinda low but not crazy low, I have been thinking of raising it up just a little, or at least getting stiffer/better suspension, and no I do not have LSD, as much as I would love to, haven’t got to that point yet tho that’s definitely in the plans for this car, there’s just a few other little things I’d like to do first.
Hmm, you definitely shouldn’t be breaking axles regularly. They are a wear item but you shouldn’t be blowing through them. Even the people I know running Autozone/Kragen axles typically have pretty good luck. Do you have any pics of how low you are? I know being too low can definitely make the stress on your axles more severe, plus it really hurts handling. On my car there’s a 0.5-1" difference between what looks good (but not slammed) and what is more ideal for suspension travel and handling.
It’s not a constant thing, just more often then I’d like. I don’t have any up to date pics on hand but I’m just barely tucking the tread part of my tire, if that much even on 205/50 RT 615’s on 15x8 RPF1’s. I’m not like stanced low. Either way as good as my car handles, I’m looking into better suspension and changing up the geometry to a more track car setting then the sorta stance meets track car setup I have now. Stiffer and raise it a little from where it is, with extended ball joints (I know these will actually lower the car, not raise it) and take out some of the camber. Currently I’m around 3.5 front 6 rear. I know that is too much for track but with my currently sorta soft springs, it actually works fairly well.
Try raising it up, I suspect you’ll see some improvements. In my experience you don’t want to be tucking any tire in the front and instead have around a 0.5" gap. The rear of my car was around 0 gap and the car definitely looks lower in the rear than in the front, but that’s by design for weight balance. What springs/shocks are you running? Soft springs plus a low ride height is not a good combo - it could lead to simply riding on your bump stops. IMO it’s well worth spending an afternoon in the garage taking measurements of your suspension travel to see what’s going on under there while you’re driving. This was extremely helpful in getting my ride height correct.
That’s a massive amount of rear camber, I sorta can’t believe you have that much! -3.5 in the front is a good place to be. You’ll get a lot of different opinions on camber - my alignment guy likes around -2.5 for his EF and I asked him to set mine that way but because of my ride height and parts I was limited to -4.0 which has worked quite well and I don’t see any uneven tire wear. Later I was able to make some tweaks and now have -3.2 in the front. But really I need to check tire temps to know for sure if I have too much or too little. I also spoke with a well known guy who races his DA in Honda Challenge and he says he likes lots of camber, I’m not sure his exact setup but sounds like he’s running significantly more than me. For the rear it’s generally suggested that you run less negative camber than the front, I’m currently at -2.5 in the rear.
I’m not sure if I’d recommend the extended ball joints or not. I did a lot of research and could not find any answers I was confident in. Some said it was a good mod others said it was pointless, others said it could have negative effects. I figured I’d give them a try. Unfortunately I did a full suspension overhaul at the same time so I can’t tell if they did anything or not. I have a feeling they didn’t do anything or possibly even made the handling a bit strange - the car is very darty on the freeway and feels a bit unstable under normal driving conditions even though it feels fine on track. I’m considering removing them in favor of stock units to see if there’s any difference.
You’re also going to be very pleasantly surprised when you get some decent tires, if you’re on RT615’s those things have got to be complete crap by now. My experience with old Azenis is that they’re rock hard and flat out dangerous on track. If you’re using the newer RT615K’s then I’m sure they’re fine but you’ll be happy to upgrade to something better like an RS3, Rival, or RE11A (or whatever awesome new compound will come out next year).
First off, thanks a ton for all the replies I really do appreciate the help. I’ve had both the 615’s and currently the 615K, and actually this isn’t my first set of the K either and this set seems much better than the last and yes the old version were useless. I was on RE-11’s and they stopped making them available in my size at least up here anyway. Was waiting on a set of the new RE-71’s while I was still on the 11’s but had a little mishap take out both my rears on the highway, and the RE-71’s were not available for a few more weeks.
A suspension upgrade is in the works, currently on Tokico’s with sk2 sleeves (no need to tell me how not good this setup is for track, I know) 10K front and I might have put 6K rear on instead of the 8k that came with the sleeves. I’m also on extended top hats and can’t tell you from experience that I’m no longer riding on the bump stops. I was before I switched top hats. I also have a stock front sway, ASR brace ITR 23mm rear.
All in I’ve actually been impressed with the car, I take down cars at the track that should be way better than me, tho some of that is driver error I’m sure, I also don’t think I’m Mario Andretti either.
The plan right now regardless of shafts is leaning toward Sk2 pro C for the EF (same as DA, just only listed as EF) finish adding in poly bushings to the front LCA’s since all my other upper and lower control arms have polly, and add polly to the trailing arms as well, lift the car a hair, and take out just a little camber all around. I know my uneven raked stance is maybe not desirable for all situations, but between that and the camber I find it really helps me swing the rear end around in left foot braking, pitch and catch kinda cornering, and those are the corners that I catch a lot of faster cars on and close gaps as well as gain line position on frequently. The car feels very stable at high speed and yet at low speed is easy to get the back to swing around. Not sure tho if I adapted to the car or built it to suit me tho.
Back to wheels I’m planning on a few mods to increase power this winter, but if I can swing it I wanna have a new set of street rims with whatever tires, like the 615’s and then a better track tire on my RPF1’s as a dedicated set of wheels. That or I put my CRX back on the road as my summer DD and only really use my teg as a track car. But I love driving my teg too much to really wanna dedicate it to being a track slut that only gets driven a few times a year
Which Tokico’s are you running - the blues or illuminas? If you’re using the Illuminas then you actually have a very capable suspension setup and I wouldn’t bother upgrading unless the shocks are blown. I haven’t used the Skunk2 coilovers but as far as I’ve seen they aren’t something used by track guys Maybe I’m not up on their new offerings but I definitely didn’t think they made anything that’s all that track worthy. Personally in that budget I’d look into getting Koni Yellows + GC coilovers. Or possibly even Koni RACE shocks + GC coilovers.
Be careful with the front UCA poly bushings, personally I don’t think they work all that well. But my experience with the poly LCA bushings has been good. Also, make sure your rear trailing arm bushings are good. Use OEM, Hardrace or Mugen or if you’re going all out track car then DEFINITELY run sperical RTA bushings (they are amazing).
Have you thought about dailying your DB1 and tracking your CRX?
Shocks are just the blues. As for what I’m gonna replace them with I wanna get away from sleeves. I’ve had nothing but good parts from skunk2, every time I hear someone I know say this or that part was no good, I find out that they bought them from a shop that has a reputation for selling fake parts.
Teg vs CRX, my rex is an 87, first gen parts are a lot harder to get, plastic fenders/header panel are kinda brittle and torsion bar suspension stuff is both hard to find and expensive. The teg is already gutted, swapped and has stuff like a traction bar, and other suspension/brake upgrades. And getting my 15x8’s on there would be tricky, it rubs already on 15x6’s
I don’t have any problem with the quality of Skunk2 parts, in fact I was quite impressed with the build quality of my UCA’s. I just do doubt that they have the same R&D for shock valving as someone like Eibach, Koni, or Tokico. When you’re discussing coilovers in relation to performance on track (and off) the shock valving really is the biggest thing. Koni yellows and RACE have been tried and tested in the race communities for years with feedback going to Koni, these are also rebuildable to custom specs. I don’t think Skunk2 can match that. They might have great valving, I can’t say for sure, but I’d research it before just assuming. I too would like to opt for a non “slip on” style of coilover but as far as I know there’s still nothing that can touch the Koni/GC combo for that price point. I think PIC was close but I believe they haven’t had the support and customer service that Koni has. Also, the Koni specific GC’s actually look and fit very nice, much better than the generic fitment version.
I’d search the RR/AutoX forum over o H-T and if I couldn’t find a definitive “Pro-C is better than Koni yellows” mentality from those guys then I wouldn’t risk getting the Pro-C setup when there’s another option at the same price point that I KNOW will perform.
Had numerous axles go in the same way you described at the track. I’m upgrading axles soon as I suspect that’s the issue (Chinese), but I never really nailed down the cause. Let us know if that was the fix!
Also +1 the Sandbox (RoadRaceAutox) is a great place to find good racing info, I’m over there a lot these days.
So I haven’t done anything to upgrade the CV shafts really other than replacing them both now making sure they’re both “new” and not rebuilt, tho still cheap china ones. Just can’t bring myself to spend a grand on shafts, when that’s what I paid for the car, the lower level DS shop ones are tempting but at least the cheapo ones I have also have a warranty. I’ve also gone to making sure the axle nuts are torqued proper, not hammered on with the gun as is usual in every shop I’ve ever worked in.
Only changes I made were going to a little higher tire pressure, maybe that’s helped I dunno but ran one last time for the season recently, was at the track from 10am, till 5pm, even made a pass down the 1320 (New PB 14.2 YAY! down from 15.1 with a few mods of course)
This time I ran so hard all day that I cracked both front rotors, no problems with the shafts.
Lots work to do this winter to get ready for next season, bought a GSR block with an ITR head and a CTR trans (sorta going on Colin’s advice) moving down from 2.0L to the 1.8 but factory p&p head, and I bought a 92 teg just for the ys1 case to swap the internals over, and it came with a turbo kit. Rebuilding the turbo, swap the trans stuff and freshen up the gsr/itr motor (B20V/XS1 trans being worked over to go into a 1G CRX) cage going in and a little aero, maybe moving up to a 225 tire…
and some kinda suspension upgrade. New job I get cost on aftermarket/performance parts and we can do legit cages in house. If anyone here is into off road stuff check us out http://www.offroad-addiction.com/ I’m not a truck guy, but the works good and the shop gives me access to anything I could want as a tech, thru friendly other shops I even have dyno access now.
back to the last track day, this vid is a good comparison to the other ones I’ve posted especially since most of the mods I’ve done to the car in the last 1.5 years have been based on track experience and the input of members of this site.
bringing this thread back from the dead, been super busy with life all winter, New job is crazy hectic 6 days a week and not a lot of spare time. lifted the car bit for winter mode and still broke 2 shafts over the winter. I really don’t think it’s the angle I’m running them, the cars not crazy low, that probably doesn’t help, but I feel the main issue is just cheapo axles… and the fact that I beat the crap outta the car. Hard shifts, traction bar etc, I have two step set to 4500 or so and don’t use that on street very often, just saying for example the level of grip I get even on my Conti winter tires at 4500, it barely chirps the tires if at all and just goes. The 615k’s same thing, even almost bogs a little at the track. Now that’s with me probably more riding the clutch a hair to launch rather than just stepping left, but still.
Just pulled the trans cause 5th kept popping out, strangely with almost zero bearing noise, 2 bearings (input shaft and secondary on the same side in the case) have a ton of play/wear. XSi trans and a B20V just weren’t a good mix. I took Colin’s advice and stuffed CTR trans internals into a YS1 box that came with a parts car I purchased awhile back. It looked good inside but turns out 3rd has a slight scratch at high RPM, tho I’m still doing a break in for the new clutch so not too high and granny shifting. The old clutch I took out, clutch, pressure plate and flywheel all look great. ZERO hot spots anywhere. Completely even wear and no cracks or anything around the torsion springs. That’s an OEM spec Exedy clutch that I’ve had in for 2 years of daily abuse, spirited driving, a dozen track days and several drag passes and it still looks mint. I preach to my customers how you basically need to at least machine the flywheel any time you change the clutch or even just have it out, the bearings, yeah I’d change those but if I do use the XSi box again in anything, CRX or otherwise, that clutch/flywheel are going back in how they are.
Also anyone suggest or have reviews of performance shafts? DS shop, insane axles, other? I’m planning on adding power to this car this year or starting this winter so I don’t think OEM is really a good option long term anyway.
bumping my own thread again, but this time it’s cause after my first event of the season, I broke again, lifted the car and new suspension installed, 2 week old CV’s…
BUT, I now know what the problem is.
I’m literally over heating them and killing the grease inside the outer boot to where the boot is expanding and leaking past the clamps, and the shafts toast them selves. Cool off the car, and it drives ok, other than a little clicking and knocking when turning tight at low speeds.
So now the plan is brake ducting and to get DSS shafts with road race prep, higher temp grease and vented boots. Fingers crossed.