1991 Accord LX Race Car

[ukemike]

Here is a video from the E30 bimmer that came in 2nd overall of our car. They probably have a 60 hp advantage over us.
Where it is cued up you'll see the car in the front of the pack and a flash of reflected light off of it (left of the screen). That's me. It takes him a until 1:25:23 to get around me.
https://youtu.be/wimmjzLgtOU?t=5034

Here is the same car passing me again. He catches me as I caught up with slower traffic, but I linger in his mirrors for a bit.
https://youtu.be/wimmjzLgtOU?t=8596

So the other Accord team had a bunch of spare wheel studs. That saved us a 20 min round trip to the auto parts store in Willows.

Getting reliable drivers that are willing to contribute money, and are not hard on the car is harder than finding drivers.

[Raf99]

haha.........awesome wings man I enjoyed watching this with my coffee this morning

- wow..... that (2nd gear?) turn at the top of the hill... (by the flag stand / booth).
- ha.. at that civic...
- wow.... beamer wing...
- wow a van, wagon, caprice??, a kit car ? some of these cars I'm saying.... WT... is that..
- nice acura integra

And wow. Don't think I could do 24 hours of this. The heat.... !

[aventari]

Nice recap! If you ever need a driver let me know

That F20B Accord team was next to us at Buttonwillow last Sept. I helped them out with a pile of different sized accessory belts I have, and gave a lot of advice. They seemed like nice guys but are very obviously new to this stuff and I don't know how much sunk in! lol

They black flagged out of that race completely if I remember correctly ahaha

You've given me insipiration to write up my Lucky Dog race at Willow Springs last month. Spoiler alert, we won

[ukemike]

Today I shipped an f22a6 camshaft to delta cams to get a 260 grind.

[Raf99]

Why did they get black flagged? And re-grind? Doesn't that only get ya 5HP on an F-series?

[deevergote]

The 260 should get more than that, as well as moving the powerband up a bit. If airflow mods are enough to let it breathe, it should do well higher in the rpm range.
the 272 was often the more popular choice. I don’t recall how much power it gave, but it was always reported as enough to feel. I had one once, but smashed the car before I put it in (my old 92 DX that was to be a turbo grenade.)

[ukemike]

And re-grind? Doesn't that only get ya 5HP on an F-series?

Well it'll be replacing at f22a1 cam so it should be a bigger step up up than that.

[ukemike]

Life proceeds at such a fast pace. The race was on top of us so quickly. We were ready but only because we had so little to do.

We got our car prepped and ready for the December Lemons race at Sonoma. I didn't install the camshaft. It's still largely setup the way it has been for a while. We did start with new brake pads and 4, not just 2, new tires of the Falken 615k variety and in a slightly larger size, 215 45 r16. The race started very well and turn over the course of Saturday into spectacular. This year Lemons decided that we would have to fuel in the hot pits here at Sonoma. This is a big change from the way we are used to doing things, and it aided our success and eventually lead to our downfall. The car was just plain fast and a completely confidence inspiring blast to drive.

We started in 80th and at the end of Dennis' drive were in 24th! His fast lap was about 2:20. He had very few clean laps, the yellows were out quite a lot since there were 150 cars. We are on a different track configuration with the full length turn 11, that means our old times are not comparable to current lap times. I drove second over after a very quick fuel and driver change, and after that stop we were in 52nd place. One of the differences in fueling in the hot pits is that you are not allowed to do anything but fuel, clean the windshield, change ice in the cool suit system, and change drivers. No maintenance or checking. I went out and was passed by very few cars all of which were in contention for the overall lead. This makes our stops very fast. We had dropped down a half dozen places and I got about passing people and turning laps. I loved how the car was driving. I would catch up with a tangle of slower cars and would find a way through them and often come out the other side before anyone else. The car was just unflappable. I could carry full throttle from turn 2 to turn 4, with just a tiny lift to help turn in at the bottom of 3. I could also carry full throttle from 7 all the way through the esses to the bus stop. I came in about 15 minutes early because it was starving for fuel in turn 7. When I came in they told me I had worked us up into 13th overall and 1st in B class! My fast lap was a 2:15.5. We lost lots of places again while fueling and Jason took over. After that second stop we had dropped to 30th. We had to stretch a bit to finish so Jason went for about 2 hours and got us back in to first in B and into 11th overall!!!! His fast lap was a 2:14.0. Just unbelievable. But the glory ended there for us. One of the things we used to do at every pit stop was to torque the wheel lugs. We didn't do this in the hot pits because we are not allowed. The right front had come loose and sheared off 3 studs in the carosel. Jason managed get it into the grass, but the failure broke the wheel and required us to be towed in. With about 2 hours left in the day, we missed all of it. That took us way out of contention.

We wanted to replace the hub but could not find the part anywhere. We even had trouble buying the right studs. The first ones they sold us were too short, and the second set had a shoulder that was too fat to fit. We also were unable to find a replacement wheel. So we decided to run on the tires and wheel that were on the car when we bought it. They are 17x8s that weigh about 25 pounds and the tires were used up bridgestone re11s that were about 3 or 4 years old. We did get it back together by morning. Tedd went out first and came in after about 5 laps, he had spun in turn 1 doing 6500rpm in 4th gear which is about 100mph but he hit nothing. I can't wait to see the video of that! We adjusted the front alignment a bit and sent him back out. He only managed a 2:20 or so. I went out next and my best was about 2:21. The back end was decidedly loose and that made driving it much sketchier. So it was slower to accelerate and scary to corner, so naturally we were slower and got passed lots more. I nearly spun in the esses and only caught it by violently throwing the wheel into a counter steer like my son does when rally driving in a video game. After that I backed off and concentrated on turning incident free laps. I got my full 1.5 hours in and turned it over to Jason. Now we were fueling in the onsite gas station, which is slower but less stressful and it allowed us to check fluids, tire pressures, and lug torque. Jason went out and was doing well until the clutch stopped working. We thing we bent one of the arms of the clutch lever since it was canted up at a weird angle. He couldn't shift anymore. That was around 3pm. So we packed up and went home. At the end of the race we had fallen something like 99th place. No worries that was one of the most fun races we've had. It was so cool to be in contention for a while, and people noticed. We had a few visitors on Sunday saying they had been racing for the lead in B and wondered what had happened to us. We finished with no black flags and no crash damage and huge grins despite an awful final finish. When we retired we were in 81st place but by the end of the race we had fallen to 97th overall. Oh well!

The other Accord that we saw at Thunderhilll was back. They were faster at Thunderhill, but only for about 4 laps because they blew up both their f20b motors, each after only about 2 laps. This time they had installed an f22a and were way way more reliable. I doubt that surprises anyone here. They did stop by for a short time and told us they were having transmission trouble, but I missed most of that since I was elbow deep in the front right hub work at the time. On Sunday morning the lead us on laps but were slower on lap times. I don't know how they broke but they did much better than last time and retired about an hour before us. I was glad to see they had chosen a more reliable motor, now we'll have to work stay ahead of them! So if "Apex Predators" are reading this, nice work!


(edited to include some corrected figures now that the official timing data has been released)

[Raf99]

Thanks for the read. I know the feeling of lugnuts coming loose but not at that speed. Too bad you can't wire tie them up like stock cars do?
Always enjoy your effort in telling the stories. We all jealous of course

[SSMAccord]

That sounds like an amazing event. You’d think that they would allow a torque check of the wheels for a minimum of safety…

It sounds like the car is running very well when it’s wearing the correct wheel setup. I hope you get it repaired and back on the track soon.

Oddly, as I was perusing instagram I came across the owner/owners of that other accord. I was watching their stories and going through their posts when I realized that I had read the story here in your thread. Small world and all lol.

[ukemike]

We are having one stubborn problem that is pretty vexing. We have an intermittent loss of power. It happened to me once on Saturday, and nearly got me rear-ended. But I believe it was because I was almost out of gas and turn 7 is a fast 180 + degree turn. I think fuel was sloshing from the pickup. But something similar happened to the other drivers and when the car still had plenty of gas in the tank. When it has happened to me it isn't rough or stuttery it just cuts power for a moment just like I had lifted off the trottle suddenly. So far it has always self corrected after 1 or 2 seconds.
So it happened maybe 8 times in 450 miles. We have one other symptom, that I've just ignored because it doesn't matter in a race car. The idle surges between 1k and 2k. It has to be either fuel or spark. The fuel pump and filter are new. The coil is fairly new.

I plan to
re-check the distributer cap and rotor, though these are fairly new
replace all the ground wires and straps
check the TPS voltage and see if it is still in spec
???

The main difficulty is how rare it is. I have no way of testing it before the next race. There is no possibility I could drive it on the streets long enough to have it happen again. The car is far from street legal, sticks out like a sore thumb, is noisy as hell, and would get towed if I was caught. So I want to try to address nearly every possibility before the next race.

This weekend I hope to get my bore-o-scope into the bell housing and see what's up with the clutch. I think one of the tines of the fork bent / collapsed. This will be easy to fix compared to the weird fuel/spark mystery.


FYI my son and I are asking for a 10 ton hydraulic press for Xmas so we can systematically replace all the bushings in the race accord, his volvo, and his Gambler 500 Rustang/Crustang/Bustedstang.

[Raf99]

The intermittent power cut on a 180 deg. turn reminds me of a battery connection slopping around. I believe you have S300 and I wonder if you had a datalog of this power cut on the turn would it show a loss in voltage or fuel pressure. I wonder if it's the battery itself (insides).

[ukemike]

The intermittent power cut on a 180 deg. turn reminds me of a battery connection slopping around. I believe you have S300 and I wonder if you had a datalog of this power cut on the turn would it show a loss in voltage or fuel pressure. I wonder if it's the battery itself (insides).

I had a similar notion yesterday when poking around in there. We don't have s300. We just have a stock ECU, from from a prelude right now. But now I believe it's related to grounding. I'm going to replace and improve some of the ground cables. You might be more inclined to agree once you know that with our cutoff switch and battery relocate, we have changed the stock wiring. Thanks for the input!

Next race is in late March. We'll see if we make it.

[ukemike]

I've collected some snippets of video from our race. I'll be getting the raw in-car footage this week, but in the mean time...

This one is saturday when with our better wheels and tires. I was driving
https://youtu.be/_BhagTzO4hc?t=1466

This one is Sunday when we were not so fast, but it's interesting because it's a rear facing camera and you can watch us for a while
https://youtu.be/AA5pBoX5INY?t=1327

This one was early sunday, when we got bumped a bit. Tedd was driving
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7GTkJUGMlw


Here is what happened to the other accord, it hurts a bit to watch. Soon after that I hit his oil slick breaking in that corner and almost lost it. I used the inside line after that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF-JG92tPVE

[Raf99]

lol @ these vids.

1st vid - every time I see a car pass I lol at the mods. And I'm not sure why your hood scoops are facing backwards & stupid question, why are you driving so slow? new driver?
2nd vid - Nice!
3rd vid - no extra wide mirror?
4th vid - I heard him hit the rev limiter and in my head I was saying "that's a long time on the limiter haha" , then smoke appeared.

Not sure if you have a good video editor or not. But it would be cool to see the back and the front camera in one video. See who's coming and how they get around you.