1991 Accord LX Race Car

[SSMAccord]

Yeeeouch. That sucks!

[ukemike]

It's been nearly a year and this is only about the 5th post in this forum since my last. One of the best things about racing a cb7 was this website and the vibrant community. It's sad that it has become so quiet.
So a few years back when I needed a new transmission I went on ebay and found one a few hours drive away for just under $300. This time the only sub$1000 trans I found online had a broken bellhousing. Most were around $2200 and all would have needed a rebuild, or at least to be opened to install our LSD. So I called up synchrotech and asked them to build one for me. The only trans of the F-H era that they will build these days is an m2y4. It does have the lower final drive, but not the tightest ratios that our m2f4 had. They did it for a bit less than most of the used ones on ebay. I sent them my lsd and they sent me back a trans. We raced Sonoma Dec '25 and it was okay, but we had persistent overheating issues. We had two coolant leaks. That limited our stints to 1 hour each and we had to wait 30 minutes after each one for it to cool enough to open the radiator and add water. So naturally we didn't place very well, but we all got to drive both days. The other funky thing was the handling. When turning in it would shift, so it took extra long for it to take a set before giving good grip. Turns out that the front inner lower bushings were shot. Those Energy suspension urethane bushings don't last.

The tricky leak to find was from my intake manifold gasket. I was stupid and I got one of those plastic insulating gaskets. (if it seems like a gimmick, it probably is) It did not have a special seal around the coolant passage and it leaked. Since the leak was by the head and block it vaporized and never made a wet spot. The other was a tiny hole in a coolant hose. To find the leaks I put uv coolant dye in the water and pressurized it with a kit from harbor freight. I did find two leaks and after fixing them I pressurized it up to 25psi and it held. I also took apart the front suspension and those bushings were destroyed. After shopping around for options, including looking at spherical bearings, none could ship to us without months of waiting, so I bought stock rubber bushings and installed them.

We have another 25 hour race in late May that we are prepping for. One of our drivers teaches for a HPDE company and he arranged for us to be able to run during the beginner group on their last HPDE day, which was last Saturday. I rented a trailer and hauled it up to Sonoma and Jason took it out for one of the afternoon sessions. Our cooling fan relay seems to have died, which didn't matter until we got blacked flagged for no particular reason other than our car was too lemony looking. When Jason came in the 10 minutes of slow driving allowed the coolant to heat up. They did let him go back out, he got in one more lap but it boiled over as he came back in at the end of the session. While it was out there it was hilarious to watch him pull away from various Porsches and BMWs in the corners only to have them catch up and pass on the straights. The handling was good again. But the overheat was a bit concerning. The guage had stated low until it suddenly shot up in just a few seconds. That was baffling to me. I don't know if it was a sensor issue, but it seemed unlikely to be because of trapped air because I bled it. BUT... Yesterday I took out the thermostat and it had some black plasticy stuff all over it, blocking the bypass valve, so there probably was air trapped in the system.

Lemons does not allow anything in the cooling system except water. No antifreeze, no water wetter, no dye allowed. So I had to flush it. I gutted the thermostat and put it back in so I could flush the system. I flushed it by disconnecting the top radiator hose and putting my garden hose in there and running it until it ran clear. Then I ran it for 5 minutes and did it until the water ran cold. I have three new temp sender/sensors on the way from rockauto (Standard brand) and will replace them all. I bypassed the fan relay so that the fan is on when the car is on, but only one of the two fans is coming on. The harness is not delivering 12v to the driver side fan for some reason. I also have a new thermostat and gasket on order. So hopefully that will solve the overheating and the handling is fixed.

I also did some aero testing. I taped little bits of yarn all over the driver side of the car and took photos as it went by on the front straight. I learned that most of my aero mods are working like I hoped. I have good attached flow along the side and after the required open driver window. The flow does separate on the back window despite my vortex generators, the angle is just too much. I'm gonna fiddle with those. Anyway I already knew my aero mods were helping because we have collosal grip in high speed turns and after my drag reducing changes we were seeing about 4mph faster on the front straight at thunderhill. But it was fun to see the flow visualization. I'll post some of those pics in a while.

Anyway if someone reads this, wish us luck. Even if only one or two read it, I couldn't leave this thread ending on my short and bitter post from last june.

[ShipOfTheseus]

Glad to see someone still posting. I was never here for the glory days of this forum but I think the ssl certificate expiring and giving people a "this website is not secure" warning was probably what finally stopped the regular posting on here.

I have been trying to figure out what to do with my CB7 as it runs and drives fine but needs a lot of work to compete for use with my other cars. Lemons was one of the top things I want to do with it but without any real experience or support it seems like a far away dream at this point. Hopefully the forum stays up and can come back to life.

[SaddleMtnMan]

Glad to see you're still ripping around ukemike.

[ukemike]

Glad to see you're still ripping around ukemike.

Well a few laps at a time anyway. We entered the Thunderhill 25 hour Lemons race and made 10 laps before throwing rod fragments through the side of the block! :-( During those 10 laps I went from 30th to 13th, so it was great while it lasted.

Now I'm looking for a "new" engine. I'm not sure I want another junkyard engine. I don't trust the remanufactured engines to be anywhere near Honda quality. I've even considered buying a donor car just for the motor, but dang that seems wasteful. We are considering our future as a team. My son will soon have a Volvo 940 wagon chassis for donation to our cause and we could swap something into it. That's starting from scratch and will probably never handle as the Accord does. So we are thinking of going all in with bafffled oil pain, accusump, custom wire harness, and hondata so we can have telemetry. We'd really like to get back to finishing races.

Here is all the race footage we got:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfElrQkXI-c

[SSMAccord]

There is a pretty good and knowledgeable CB7 crew on the Discord server if you want to check in there. It stays pretty busy. The join link is: https://discord.gg/xGwwSyKTu

RAF99 also launched a replacement/alternative CB7 forum las week to try to fill the void left as this forum winds down. ProjectCB7.com of you want to check it out or sign up.

[aventari]

I'm still here reading your posts! I just haven't raced the Accord since Lemons Buttonwillow 2024 so haven't really been on this forum much.

I had to laugh at 2 things, ONE, I took out and tried to rebuild the trans a couple times myself with not much success just like you, and in the end, just drove it up to Synchrotech and had them build mine too (an M2Y4) Luckily they are in LA and I'm in San Diego so not a huge deal.

TWO The other thing just like you I bought one of those plastic insulating spacer gaskets for the intake manifold about 6 years ago thinking I could gain a bit of power. When it came I looked at it and realized the material was not OEM quality and would have to seal coolant, AND resist being compressed by a tight fitting intake and under very high heat. I thought the material would probably creep and start leaking. So I never installed it. Looks like I was probably correct lol

I really dont like the design of the intake with the integrated coolant passages and that always seemed like a pretty big failure point.




Anyway I'm getting ready for Buttonwillow with Lemons in September. I've just been rewiring the ignition and starter switches and in the process, went through the wiring and removed a lot of the superfluous stuff. I ended up pulling about 80% of the fuses and relays out of the fuse boxes to eliminate issues and simplify troubleshooting at the track. I have a simple Haynes Accord manual and it was AMAZING wiring diagrams that are super accurate. I'm pretty good at wiring and going through diagrams so if you need help with your fan wiring please hit me up. Send me and email or call me.

I've basically spent the last 3 days immersed in the wiring and there's some interested features our cars have that are a bit confusing. For example theres an Electronic Load Detection (ELD) module in the underhood fusebox that tells the alternator whether to output high current or low current, and there are some interesting things like the Integrated Control Module in the under dash fusebox.

I should probably make a diagram of how I wired my car to eliminate issues and stuff.

For the fuel pump I bypassed the main relay and wired up my own relay with a 14 gauge wire straight from battery to eliminate voltage drop through the stock wiring. That always helps the pump run better and longer I've found.