93 Accord race car Build/Questions thread

[aventari]

Is an H22 plenum the same as an H23?

I can find plenty of H22 manifolds local, but no H23s..

[Rilas]

Is an H22 plenum the same as an H23?

I can find plenty of H22 manifolds local, but no H23s..

The upper plenum is the same between H22/23's, just the flange on the runners is different. Also the H23A1 runner's are shorter than the F22A6's, which isn't a bad thing but gives some options.

[aventari]

Thanks for the info Rilas


Today I pulled the pistons and cleaned them up. I also honed the bores with a dingleball hone. The pistons are ready for new rings and new rod bearings and to be put back in.




New rod bearings because the old ones have some weird wear on them. The coating flaked off on each upper bearing in the same spot on all 4 cylinders..




See the missing piece in the upper left next to the tang?

Just say no to $11 rod bearings kids!



Since I never took a pic before, here's the little mini baffle I welded in the oil pan 2 years ago:





Now the drain plug is stripped from the PO, so I've gotta weld in a new nut or something and get a new drain plug.

They were super cheap replacement bearings: ENGINETECH BB1520STD is the part number and they cost $11.27. Cheapos from Rock Auto, I don't recommend them.
Tonight I ordered Sealed Power bearings this time for $30.

[KBA]

Pulled head today, and like a dumb-ass noob I broke the intake manifold trying to pull too hard on it.

So if anyone has an F22A6 lower runner to sell me, I'd like to buy it!


Other than that everything looks pretty good. I don't see any obvious problems. The intake nuts were pretty loose though so maybe the intake to head seal was leaking and letting in air on cylinder 3 and leaning it out??

aventari,

Can I please ask you a favor? Seeing that you are now looking for new runners, I suppose you have the old runners laying around somewhere. Can you please try to measure the runner lengths for me? You can use a piece of wire for that - from the manifold flange to the beginning of the velocity stacks. Preferably both, short and long runners. I will use this data to produce some material for the "PT3 under research" thread I am running.

Thank you in advance, and sorry if it is no longer possible.

Regards, KBA.

[aventari]

Honed cylinders, new rod bearings, new rings and installed pistons. Plastigauge came out well. .0015" on three cylinders and .0020" on one.





I got this cheap intake spacer from Ebay, does anyone have experience with it? I'm worried it will leak around the coolant ports.. Or work the mounting nuts loose.

[aventari]

aventari,

Can I please ask you a favor? Seeing that you are now looking for new runners, I suppose you have the old runners laying around somewhere. Can you please try to measure the runner lengths for me? You can use a piece of wire for that - from the manifold flange to the beginning of the velocity stacks. Preferably both, short and long runners. I will use this data to produce some material for the "PT3 under research" thread I am running.

Thank you in advance, and sorry if it is no longer possible.

Regards, KBA.

I got them welded up so I'm putting them back on, but they're not in yet so I measured it up for you.
I love your thread BTW!

in inches
cyl    short      long
1       9 3/4     11 1/4
2       8 3/4     10 1/2
3       8 5/8     10 3/8
4       8 7/8     10 5/8

how I measured




You can kind of see, I chamfered the beginnings of the runners where they didn't line up with the butterfly plate. I didn't have to do much though, 1/16 of an inch max.

[KBA]

That was more than I hoped for!
Many thanks mate! I will have some data to work with now, gonna make sure to post updates! Cheers!

[ukemike]

This is great. My team has been talking about doing a poor man's ring job just like this. We get really dirty oil after one race so we think we have lots of blow by at the rings. I'm betting that rings and a hone would recover a lot of lost power for us.

[aventari]

Yeah if you ever have the head off it's not hard to do the rings. I can give more details on how to hone and all that stuff too if you want.



As for me I thrashed on the car last night and got the motor together and it's running great.
We're headed to Buttonwillow tomorrow. It's going to be rough as one teammate dropped out due to a family emergency so we're down to 3. And then another teammate's father is in the hospital and may have to leave early.

So it could get rough. Wish us luck!

[aventari]

24 Hours of LeMons Butt-turrible @ Buttonwillow Raceway

Despise many, many setbacks, we did really good!
Overall 29th of 136 cars, 9th in class B



For reference: the Taco Ninjas are in a Del Sol with a B18C motor and 6 speed custom transmission.



I won't bore with the details, but you need to have 4-6 members of the team, and we had the minimum of 4, and two days before the race one driver had to drop out due to personal family problems So we were down to 3 drivers and a car that didn't have a cylinder head on it 2 days before the race. I also just broke up with my girlfriend a few weeks ago and she was supposed to be helping with logistics. She also stole a bunch of my GoPro stuff.

I had the week off work so I busted ass for days before the race and installed the pistons and cylinder head. I was able to seat the rings and heat-cycle the new tires driving around on the street the day before we had to leave.

That's why you keep your race car registered for the street kids!

Anyway by the time we got to the track I forgot the Gopro stuff I still had, which is embarrassing considering I was a software engineer there..
Happily we were able to zip tie some mounts together to get footage.


On Saturday the race started and I drove first. On lap 10, on of the hood pins popped out and the hood flew up half way. I came into the pits and we zip-tied the hood shut. That was fun every time we had to open it..

After that, everything was smooth. The actual racing was extremely aggressive. More aggressive passing and blocking than I've ever seen. I was getting that red mist from being pissed off and I started driving too aggressively. I was lucky not to have any car to car contact.


So the car was running great, plenty of power with the "new" motor, the new Hankook RS-4 tires were sticking great and the engine temps were rock steady.

At the last stint of the day Saturday, we go to change drivers, and I cut the zip ties and pop the hood and see the timing belt hanging half off the cam gear. It was amazingly running fine, but the tensioner had worked itself so loose that the belt almost slipped off. That would've SUCKED.

We spent the next 45 minutes in the pits re-tensioning it. Eventually I had to move the power steering pump completely out of the way. I really HATE how the tensioner is designed and how little room there is.

Turns out when I put the cylinder head back on, I tightened the little 10mm tensioner locating bolt, but not the main 14mm nut. Whoops.

Then we got rear ended (lightly) by an aggressive driving BMW. Saturday night we went to talk to them and one of them had the balls to say "You should watch your mirrors before you brake".
Right, dude...

Pigs that hit us:


At the end of Sat we were in 46th place.

Compared to Saturday, Sunday went smooth as could be. I raced in the 1st session and last session to take the checkered flag. We got up to 29th place.


The car ran awesome except for the timing belt. It didn't use a *drop* of oil. It used to use about a quart every 2 hours. Amazing. I think theres a few more hp too but it's hard to tell.

One bad thing is that 3rd gear is starting to grind. I JUST replaced the synchros! I think one teammembers lack of heel-toe rev matching is the culprit.

Oh well, more work to do before next race




Video of sunday:
Me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A-DuG9nih0
Benino:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxvX7ji-NFw

Karl getting pushed off track by asshole in Camaro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP37Tmb5HGk

Outside video of us on the front straight at 15:15
https://youtu.be/RYa1Iud4_yw?t=914


EDIT:
I set up a facebook page if you want to join/like

https://www.facebook.com/takatard/

[Grumpys93]

Nicely done! How does a b18c not throw a red flag on the Del slow? If they can get away with that you could probably get a away with an H22 in there. Nicely done, sorry to hear about your ex-girlfriend stealing your go pro equipment.

[aventari]

Yeah I'm okay with the Del Slow having a B18c and everything, but having it in class B is pretty ridiculous. At LEAST put it in class A.

The other ridiculous class B car is an 80's RWD Celica with a 250+hp V8 in it. That thing is just crazy fast.

Oh well it's all for fun anyway I'm not butthurt about it

[aventari]

I tried to smog the car yesterday, so I put on the old catalytic converter and took it to my dude. I don't have the EGR hooked up, and it failed on NOX and HCs pretty bad.

My guy says I need the EGR connected, just the cat alone won't get the emissions low enough

So I need to do that. The problem is that I actually blocked the EGR port in the intake manifold becuase I didn't want any exhaust getting in there and heating up stuff. So I have to remove the intake manifold for that..

Also the car was overheating bad on the dyno, and I remembered the radiator fan wasn't coming on. It overheated at the end of the race too.

So I checked the fan: works, fan relay: works..
Turns out I forgot to connect the temp sensor plug. Whoops. I do love easy fixes like that though.

[aventari]

Quick update, we're gonna be racing at Laguna Seca again with Lucky Dog Racing on July 13-14

Right now the tranny is apart while we repair what I thought was a bad 3rd gear synchro, but it turns out the synchro spring broke.. I don't know how.. I got new ones to put in though.



Also I adjusted the valves and reinstalled the straight pipe cat bypass.

After that the list is relatively short..:

change oil/filter
bleed brakes
bleed clutch
Current sound check from a 3rd party and submitted to Lucky Dog prior to arriving at the track less than 88 db 50ft away
Add 2nd muffler? ^^
Check on fire system expiration
Get H22 or H23 upper intake plenum and throttle body
Ebay large throttle body
Get new tires
Modify seat back brace to be wider
Add car numbers to front and rear bumpers, 4" high
Check window net for SFI tag and expiration
Get seat belts re-certified, they're over 2 years old

[aventari]

Last month we got the transmission rebuilt and installed, at first it was locking when shifting from 3rd to 4th, and it really worried me, but once it was installed and filled with fluid, and the motor run a little bit everything smoothed out!
Love the cheaty Quaife diff and Prelude ratios.

After that adjusted valves.

Today I fabricated a dead pedal and sheetmetal headlights. The dead pedal will be SO NICE, I often find myself on track with the lap belts too loose and me sliding down and the firewall too far away to push my ass back into the seat. This will fix that.

Then installed the H22 upper plenum and throttle body from Ebay. I still need to set/check the TPS as the idle was doing the bouncy thing until I unplugged the IAC.











Oh yeah, I also installed a 2 post lift in my garage I got it for my self at the beginning of the year and a sort of 40th birthday gift to myself

I FUCKING LOVE HAVING A LIFT