1991 Accord LX Race Car

[ukemike]

I finally got it last night. Instead of dropping it hard on my wood workbench. I lowered it to the floor and bounced it with much smaller repeated impacts and that did it. I finished buttoning it up and torquing all the connectors and it's done. Now I just have to remove, inspect, and reinstall the clutch; take apart the rear suspension so I can replace all the bushings; install the trans and re-assemble the front end; and then do all the pre-race maintenance. And do it all by mid February.

[Raf99]

Great! Ever wonder how they do it at the factory ? (put the bell housing on .... I wonder if it's done by hand or machine)

[aventari]

I haven't been keeping up as I've been busy with my Spec944, and didnt race the Accord last year, but it looks like you're still doing awesome!

I tried rebuilding my trans twice and even with new synchros, the grind would always come back. I had Synchrotech rebuild it last time for me. Luckily they are about 30 minutes away from me.

If you have a pink slip for the car and want to register it, email me and I have a good strategy for testing your car on the street nice and legal. aventari@gmail.com

[ukemike]

I had Jason over and between him, Ewan (my son), and me we got the trans installed today. I still need to reassemble all the things that had to come off to get the trans out. I'll start on that tomorrow. We also want to replace all the rear bushings if we can. It's had a weird thing where you can feel the back shift once the front has taken a set in a turn. Then all the maintenance for the trans.

Our next race is Feb 18-19 at Thunderhill. They're going to run the 5 mile in reverse on sat, the 3 mile in reverse sunday AM, and the 3 mile forwards on sunday pm. Should be epic. The trick will be getting everybody a drive on the 3 mile reverse on sunday morning. We'll just have to have short stints. This'll probably be the only chance ever to do the 5 mile in reverse.

When done with all that I had such a great time rebuilding the new trans that I'm going to rebuild the old one too so we have a spare.

[ukemike]

I haven't been keeping up as I've been busy with my Spec944, and didnt race the Accord last year, but it looks like you're still doing awesome!

I've watched several of your spec944 race videos, and it's been really impressive. Makes me miss my old 944. I'm tentatively planning to go to Buttonwillow this year. Maybe we'll see you there.

[ukemike]

Our race was last weekend. It was pretty dang fun. We ran the Thunderhill track with three different configurations.


My son and I picked up the uhaul truck and trailer on Thursday AM and then brought it home to load it up. The race car wouldn't start. Just a click and nothing. Turned out there was corrosion inside the cable where it attached to the positive battery terminal. I used a wire brush to comb out the end of the cable then reconnected it and it started up. By the time we were ready to leave it was noon. We got to Thunderhill and got in line. They opened the gates to us at 5, we went in and chose our normal spot under the middle canopy.

The next morning we attached the splitter, put on the race wheels, and got it ready for inspection. Our inspection was at 3pm. They put us in B with 0 penalty laps again, despite our never in more than 15 races finishing well enough to win C. Oh well.

Our neighbors this time were the same as last time at Thunderhill. Ian Korf with his team and his Toyota Yaris (C class). The Stanford team with their CB7 was there again. These kids are real lemons heroes. They keep their car in some obscure corner of a garage at Stanford, which means they aren't supposed to work on it, so anytime they do they do it overnight and have have it all buttoned up by morning. They have great attitudes and this time they had hardly any problems.


Saturday morning we were running the 5 mile course in reverse. Ewan went first. This was his third race. He started in 51st place and worked his way up into about 25th!!! by the end of his stint. He did go off once in a totally non-damaging way. He set a fast lap of 4:11.6 which was at the time the 20th fastest fast lap! We had a longer stop because Ewan went to the penalty box to see if the black flag he had seen was for him, it wasn't. Dennis started in 52nd and raced his way into 32nd. Dennis managed a 4:08.5.
https://youtu.be/oKr2rb3Aj_U
https://youtu.be/0g1VU3DjdXY

I was up next and I can say I do not like the 5 mile reverse. I just never got confident and had unimpressive times. I got a black flag for touching the blend line. I started in 40th place and got us up to 32nd and my fast was a 4:20.1. Since we will probably never race that layout again, my son will forever be faster than me on that layout. It was funny because he was making excuses for why his dear old dad was slower. He blamed the tires being all used up. But Jason went last and did a 4:07.4 which proved the tires had grip, it was just me. I finished up my stint in 30th place overall.
https://youtu.be/vZHL85r1EFU (I was not fast on saturday, not a super exciting watch)

Jason took the last stint of the day, started in 35th and finished us up in 29th overall and 13th in B class. One of our best Saturdays ever! The car held up well to 7 hours of racing and there was not much to do. Dennis grilled Tri-tip for us on his new portable grill. Deeeelish.
https://youtu.be/iFEkVJiLiPs

Sunday I got there early to visit the tire guy. You see we had 3 pair of fairly equally worn tires. Jason and I had decided that if we used all 6 we could last the weekend. We ran Saturday on the tires that were already mounted. On Sunday I took the fronts in, which were totally used up, the left front one was completely bald. Turns 8E, 7E, 2E, and 1E were all high speed long right handers and it took a toll on left front. So the tire guy opened at 8 and I was waiting for him when he got there at 8:15. He put our slightly fresher tires on and then we mounted them and managed to get Ewan onto the grid before the 9am start time.

We had planned on all 4 of us driving the reverse 3 mile, but Dennis and I both agreed to drive only on the forward 3 mile so we could all do longer stints. So Ewan went first again. He got a 2:26.5 second lap, and took us from 29th into 27th place. But when he came in there was a bad vibration. Sounded like an axle to me, and sure enough the left axle was a bit wobbly. So we swapped it out. It took us 45 minutes and a bruised forehead to get it in, and with our usual pitstop time of about 10 minutes we were back out there in 43rd place in an hour.
https://youtu.be/ZA8fOJFopoM

This time Jason was driving. He started in 43rd and got us into 38th and set a fastest lap of 2:25.3, a second faster than Ewan. They were changing track direction at 12:15pm by bringing everyone into the pit row, then when everyone was in they led them back out in the other direction. We had Jason come in at 12:10 so we could do our driver change and get gas while no one was moving.
https://youtu.be/iFEkVJiLiPs

So Dennis took over on the 3 mile forward track without losing a place in 38th overall. He got us into 26th. It's a lot harder to move up through the field late in the race. His fast lap was a 2:28.032. There was a red flag that stopped all cars on the track but Dennis pulled off because the shift linkage had just come loose. So he got towed in at the end of the red flag, we fixed that and got me back on track about 2.
https://youtu.be/Zse191hrOqE

That left a 2 hour stint for me to drive to get us to the checkered flag. We know that 2 hours is at the edge of how long we can go on a tank of gas and 2 hours is the edge of my ability to drive without screwing up. So I vowed to short shift and to try to make it to 4pm. I got a 2:27.9 so the fast lap for 3 mile forward (by 0.2 sec) and I did 10 out of my last 13 laps under 2:30. I started in 43rd place and got us up to 38th when our race abruptly ended about 30 minutes early. We asked too much of the tires, and unbeknownst to me, Ewan had flat spotted the left front right at the end of his drive. The tire blew up as I was breaking for turn 1 at probably 90 mph. I had to fight for control as it went all wonky on me and managed to let two cars past on my right, then I went off on the right into the dirt and waited for a tow. When we got back in we might have been able to mount a tire back and get out there for the last lap, maybe, but we decided to pack up instead. We ended up in 44th place. 1 lap down from the Stanford CB7. Our neighbors in the Yaris finished 2nd in C class in 13th overall.
https://youtu.be/n_kntVED0Us (I did much better sunday, worth a watch)


Overall we all got good seat time, we put in a dang good effort and proved once again that even if we were in C class we wouldn't win anything.

[That_Wood_CB7]

Our race was last weekend. It was pretty dang fun. We ran the Thunderhill track with three different configurations.


My son and I picked up the uhaul truck and trailer on Thursday AM and then brought it home to load it up. The race car wouldn't start. Just a click and nothing. Turned out there was corrosion inside the cable where it attached to the positive battery terminal. I used a wire brush to comb out the end of the cable then reconnected it and it started up. By the time we were ready to leave it was noon. We got to Thunderhill and got in line. They opened the gates to us at 5, we went in and chose our normal spot under the middle canopy.

The next morning we attached the splitter, put on the race wheels, and got it ready for inspection. Our inspection was at 3pm. They put us in B with 0 penalty laps again, despite our never in more than 15 races finishing well enough to win C. Oh well.

Our neighbors this time were the same as last time at Thunderhill. Ian Korf with his team and his Toyota Yaris (C class). The Stanford team with their CB7 was there again. These kids are real lemons heroes. They keep their car in some obscure corner of a garage at Stanford, which means they aren't supposed to work on it, so anytime they do they do it overnight and have have it all buttoned up by morning. They have great attitudes and this time they had hardly any problems.


Saturday morning we were running the 5 mile course in reverse. Ewan went first. This was his third race. He started in 51st place and worked his way up into about 25th!!! by the end of his stint. He did go off once in a totally non-damaging way. He set a fast lap of 4:11.6 which was at the time the 20th fastest fast lap! We had a longer stop because Ewan went to the penalty box to see if the black flag he had seen was for him, it wasn't. Dennis started in 52nd and raced his way into 32nd. Dennis managed a 4:08.5.
https://youtu.be/oKr2rb3Aj_U
https://youtu.be/0g1VU3DjdXY

I was up next and I can say I do not like the 5 mile reverse. I just never got confident and had unimpressive times. I got a black flag for touching the blend line. I started in 40th place and got us up to 32nd and my fast was a 4:20.1. Since we will probably never race that layout again, my son will forever be faster than me on that layout. It was funny because he was making excuses for why his dear old dad was slower. He blamed the tires being all used up. But Jason went last and did a 4:07.4 which proved the tires had grip, it was just me. I finished up my stint in 30th place overall.
https://youtu.be/vZHL85r1EFU

Jason took the last stint of the day, started in 35th and finished us up in 29th overall and 13th in B class. One of our best Saturdays ever! The car held up well to 7 hours of racing and there was not much to do. Dennis grilled Tri-tip for us on his new portable grill. Deeeelish.
https://youtu.be/iFEkVJiLiPs

Sunday I got there early to visit the tire guy. You see we had 3 pair of fairly equally worn tires. Jason and I had decided that if we used all 6 we could last the weekend. We ran Saturday on the tires that were already mounted. On Sunday I took the fronts in, which were totally used up, the left front one was completely bald. Turns 8E, 7E, 2E, and 1E were all high speed long right handers and it took a toll on left front. So the tire guy opened at 8 and I was waiting for him when he got there at 8:15. He put our slightly fresher tires on and then we mounted them and managed to get Ewan onto the grid before the 9am start time.

We had planned on all 4 of us driving the reverse 3 mile, but Dennis and I both agreed to drive only on the forward 3 mile so we could all do longer stints. So Ewan went first again. He got a 2:26.5 second lap, and took us from 29th into 27th place. But when he came in there was a bad vibration. Sounded like an axle to me, and sure enough the left axle was a bit wobbly. So we swapped it out. It took us 45 minutes and a bruised forehead to get it in, and with our usual pitstop time of about 10 minutes we were back out there in 43rd place in an hour.
https://youtu.be/ZA8fOJFopoM

This time Jason was driving. He started in 43rd and got us into 38th and set a fastest lap of 2:25.3, a second faster than Ewan. They were changing track direction at 12:15pm by bringing everyone into the pit row, then when everyone was in they led them back out in the other direction. We had Jason come in at 12:10 so we could do our driver change and get gas while no one was moving.
https://youtu.be/iFEkVJiLiPs

So Dennis took over on the 3 mile forward track without losing a place in 38th overall. He got us into 26th. It's a lot harder to move up through the field late in the race. His fast lap was a 2:28.032. There was a red flag that stopped all cars on the track but Dennis pulled off because the shift linkage had just come loose. So he got towed in at the end of the red flag, we fixed that and got me back on track about 2.
https://youtu.be/Zse191hrOqE

That left a 2 hour stint for me to drive to get us to the checkered flag. We know that 2 hours is at the edge of how long we can go on a tank of gas and 2 hours is the edge of my ability to drive without screwing up. So I vowed to short shift and to try to make it to 4pm. I got a 2:27.9 so the fast lap for 3 mile forward (by 0.2 sec) and I did 10 out of my last 13 laps under 2:30. I started in 43rd place and got us up to 38th when our race abruptly ended about 30 minutes early. We asked too much of the tires, and unbeknownst to me, Ewan had flat spotted the left front right at the end of his drive. The tire blew up as I was breaking for turn 1 at probably 90 mph. I had to fight for control as it went all wonky on me and managed to let two cars past on my right, then I went off on the right into the dirt and waited for a tow. When we got back in we might have been able to mount a tire back and get out there for the last lap, maybe, but we decided to pack up instead. We ended up in 44th place. 1 lap down from the Stanford CB7. Our neighbors in the Yaris finished 2nd in C class in 13th overall.

will post my video here when it is uploaded


Overall we all got good seat time, we put in a dang good effort and proved once again that even if we were in C class we wouldn't win anything.

4:07 was flying on Saturday! You guys did great! Hopefully they give y'all a shot at C class soon. We spent about 2 years getting our butts kicked in B until they started putting us in C.

[ukemike]

Here are our fast laps from the last race:
Ewan Saturday 5 Mile Reverse 4:11
Dennis Saturday 5 Mile Reverse 4:08
Mike Saturday 5 Mile Reverse (I was 12 seconds off the pace and didn't make a video of that lap)
Jason Saturday 5 Mile Reverse 4:07

Ewan Sunday 3 Mile Reverse 2:26
Jason Sunday 3 Mile Reverse 2:25
Dennis Sunday 3 Mile Forward 2:28.03
Mike Sunday 3 Mil Forward 2:28.08

[ukemike]

We are not going to make it to Buttonwillow after all. I have personal business to attend to that weekend. :-(

[ukemike]

Another race is approaching soon. First weekend of December, and I'm hoping for rain again. I'm going to get the team to agree that if it rains we are going to hot-pit and do all the extra hustling to stay in the race this time. We're usually pretty lax. If we're doing well, it's very fun, but if we have things break or take our time on driver changes, we don't sweat it, we're still having fun. But in the wet I think we are competitive with the pointy end of the field.

I've been putting effort into a number of different improvements. I've installed a 2 element wing on the back. I've made and installed a center console for our switches and the lap timer. I replaced all the rear bushings with poly bushings from Prothane. I bought two new wheels, and 6 new tires, so we have 2 backups if needed. This time we are going with the Hankook RS-4s. They are supposed to be faster and more durable than the Falkens we've been using. Since supply chain crap has made all tires more expensive the RS-4s were only a few dollars per corner more than the Falkens. I hope we like them. I had to get our fire suppression bottle recharged and recertified. That should arrive this week. I put grip tape on the driver floor to make getting out easier (especially in the wet). I bought a seat slider so my son and I can reach a bit better. I had to fab up a bracket to mount it as low as I could. Next weekend the team is coming over to test it out and see if it is too tall for them. If it is I'll have to scramble to remount it the old way. The biggest news for the team is that I bought a 2002 Suburban for towing. No more per-mile charges to Uhaul, though I'll still be renting a trailer from them. The Burb is 4x4 with about 166k miles and I got it for $2700! It's actually in good shape, but it guzzles gas and rides like it's running on the cheapest available aftermarket shocks (which is actually true). Looking at putting in Bilsteins.

Out of all that the wing was the most fun. I got a crappy 2 element wing off ebay. When it arrived and I assembled it I realized that they had the wings set up relative to each other all wrong. There is no way it would make any substantial downforce. So I had to turn on my engineering brain and make it right. That involved fabbing new endplates and some spacers. The lower element is still very short and could be much better but I suspect this will actually generate some negative lift. Maybe I'll post some photos later.

The bushings in the rear lower control arms were a pain. Taking them out, pressing in new bushings was fun and easy with my hydraulic press, but re-installing the arms was super hard. I realized I have never had the rear disassembled like that before. A witch's brew of pulled muscles, bleeding knuckles, swearing, sweating, and using the jack to position the wheel finally did the trick.


Thought for the future... Now that I own a tow vehicle, the prospect of taking the car to a tuner with a dyno seems... possible. So I've started to think about hondata and a custom tune for our cammed engine. So please call me names for avoiding this, shame and encourage me into dropping the cash and effort. Wouldn't that be fun?

[ukemike]

As of Feb 8, 2024:
The car came out of the last race intact and with minimal needs before the next race, so we are going to Thunderhill in late February. The race will be on the 3 mile track. They’re going to do clockwise one day and counterclockwise the other day.

Our safety harness belts were expired, they expire every 2 years, so in December I took out the seat and removed the belts and sent them in to Crow Safety Gear. I asked them to set them up in a “pull up” configuration, so you pull up on the belts to tighten them. Pulling down is hard because the seat and roll cage are in the way. Hopefully it is an improvement. I finally got the re-webbed belts back a few weeks ago, and last Saturday our seismic improvement work got the the point where we were able to move stuff out of the garage and back into the basement. So sunday I started re-mounting the belts. This was one of those things that was fiddly and needed 2 people to tighten the nuts and hold the other side. So I put in the work to make it much easier. Now all the mounting points have welded in captive nuts so that the belts can be installed entirely by one person. I did make one mistake. I didn’t measure the anti-submarine strap before removing the old one, so I don’t know what length to set it at. Luckily this coming saturday the team is coming to help with all the maintenance tasks, so I can test fit everyone and make sure it is set so that it fits all of us.

We also have to change the oil and filter, check the trans fluid, bleed the brakes, and check the alignment. But it looks like we’ll be ready in time.

[ukemike]

Well the team day went well and we got all the maintenance things done. Since then I've been playing with the aero. I changed the wing to a much lower angle of attack because Thuderhill 3-mile (next weekend) is a fast track and drag matters. Unfortunately I won't have time to work on underbody drag but I am thinking about it a lot and maybe for the next race. I blocked off all the space between the bumper and the hood. I plumbed in a new path for the intake. Just for fun I bought some string LEDs and mounted them under the hood so that they would reflect off the roof flashing I have been using for most of these aero mods. I added side plates and side ramps to the splitter. I cut holes in the hood to give the high pressure, and hot air a way out. I added vortex generators to the rear of the roof and added a small spoiler to the back edge of the trunk.

[ukemike]

We are leading C class! Look to picknpullracing.wordpress.com for updates.

[ukemike]

We are leading C class! Look to picknpullracing.wordpress.com for updates.

[juneville]

We are leading C class! Look to picknpullracing.wordpress.com for updates.

I will have a look, thanks for information

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