So in the summer of 2000 I decided that I wanted to build up a car for track events and eventually wheel to wheel racing. I was pretty good at autocrossing my Civic HX and had fun the few times I took it out on road courses but it just wasn't quite right for that kind of stuff. It wasn't very fast in a straight line, didn't handle great, didn't have big enough brakes, and wouldn't be wheel to wheel legal without a lot of work. Rather than try to turn my street car into a fast track car, I decided that it would make more sense to just get a second car only for racing.

This made sense to me since having a second car meant I could do just about whatever I wanted to with the track car and not have to worry about bad gas mileage, comfort, or how to drive to work on Monday if I broke it on Sunday. I did some checking around and although I was tempted to build up an older Camaro Z28, I decided it just wasn't really quite what I wanted either in terms of personality or cost. Although you can buy the car somewhat cheaply, they are heavy, have huge wheels, huge brakes, huge tires, (all expensive) and I don't even know anyone who knows how to work on one. They also don't exactly have a stellar reputation for quality, which is especially bad for someone who doesn't have any idea how to work on one.

Now my dream track car would be something reliable, easy to work on, reasonably light, inexpensive, mid engined, rear wheel drive, have a minimum of breakable parts, and be really fast. Unfortunately nothing really fits the bill. The 93+ MR2 turbo would come close, but they are not cheap, not especially light, and everyone I know who's tried to make one fast blows it up. In fact, just last week I saw one blow up on the dyno. Even worse is that they're incredibly difficult to work on. The guy who blew his MR2 up was talking about how it's something like a 12 hour job just to try and change the water pump, and how it's all but impossible to do any sort of work besides changing the spark plugs while the motor is in the car.

So I wound up coming back to what I know about.. Hondas. The 1988-91 Civics and CRX's can be found pretty cheaply, are quite light (1900-2200 pounds), pretty reliable, use a simple 4-cylinder motor and don't really have anything complex about them. With the stock motors they're not fast enough for my taste, but the DOHC VTEC motors can be swapped in and a surprising amount of aftermarket go-fast parts are available in addition to some of the later Civic and Integra parts working with the early "4th generation" Civic/CRX platform. I figured that if I could get about 180 horsepower in a 2000 pound car, I'd have a similar power to weight ratio as a 285 horsepower, 3300 pound Camaro anyway. The advantage being that the Honda's lighter weight means everything from the tires to the brake pads should last longer, plus it's easier to make a light car handle well. So, I searched around for a while and in September of 2000 purchased a pretty decent condition white 1988 Honda Civic DX hatchback.

The car was in pretty good shape and was exactly what I was looking for except for having an aftermarket pop-up sunroof. I probably should have waited until I found one that was exactly what I wanted, but I had already spent over two months looking for a car and was getting impatient. Other than the ugly 13" Prime 3-star wheels and huge muffler tip, it was basically a stock car. For a few weeks I considered leaving it alone until I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but when I found out I could buy a 160 horsepower 1.6 liter DOHC VTEC motor, transmission, and ECU for $950, the madness began. I ordered the motor and had a local guy, Joe Sawyer, swap the motor in the car. There wound up being a bunch of other stuff that had to be done like new motor mounts, shift linkage, wiring harness, etc but it was a reasonably painless process for me since someone else was doing the work.

After about a month of Joe working on the swap a few hours a week, he had it finished up and I got my car back. Unfortunately, the Japanese B16A's have a different exhaust collector which doesn't mate up to the stock exhaust very well. As such, Joe just dumped the stock exhaust and I got to drive the car home with an open header. This was quite loud. Brady helped me create a temporary exhaust system that at least made the car a little quieter as long as I never got above about 15% throttle or so or 2500rpm.

The new exhaust system consisted of the flange from an old GSR catalytic converter, a $20 Cherry Bomb glasspack muffler, and a $12 section of pipe. After Brady welded it all together and welded on some hangars, I fired up the car and was amused at the fact it was only somewhat quieter. It was now only about as loud as a very loud street car, whereas with the open header it was basically loud beyond description. At full throttle - especially once VTEC engaged - it was still ridiculously loud however. With the windows down, a full throttle pass would just about leave your ears ringing from the incredible noise.

Still, I finally had lots of power now. We weighed the car in this configuration and it tipped the scales at just over 2100 pounds with a full tank of gas. Heavier than I had wanted, but the car still had a full interior and everything. The only weight reduction of any kind was removal of the A/C compressor when the motor was swapped in. From here, things went downhill pretty quickly, spending-wise. Pretty soon I'd picked up a header, upgraded brakes, 15" Integra GSR wheels and tires, Kosei K1 race wheels and tires, GSR cams, camgears, a race seat, an expensive dual-spring setup, shocks, coilover sleeves, and all kinds of stuff I won't even try to remember. Brady and I also started another exhaust system using a CatCo catalytic converter and another Cherry Bomb as a resonator. I had a local Midas finish the rest of it for $150.

As such, by January 2001 I had the car at it's first autocross. I ran it on some borrowed wheels and tires from Chris Brinson, who owned a 1990 Honda Prelude Si. The Preludes of that time used the same bolt pattern and offset as my Civic, so the wheels just bolted right on and it was ready to go. Myself, Brian Peters, and Brady all ran my car at the January practice autocross. The car mostly just bounced all around on account of being way too low. It constantly rode the bumpstops and thus the steering was somewhat on-off depending on if the wheels were actually on the ground or not. The car also got a lot of inside wheelspin thanks to open diff and the tires being pretty worn out. It was still kind of fun though, and the car had finally run an event.

After the January event, I immediately did my best to raise up the coilover perches and get the car up to an acceptable height. The back end wasn't too much of a problem, but the front end needed so much preload of the springs that the tender spring of the dual-spring setup was effectively deactivated by the time I had the lower perch high enough to give the car the ride height I needed. I didn't want to buy new springs at that point though, so I just left it alone and moved on to the next area that needed attention.

What I discovered over the next few months was that the transmission that came with the motor was junk. Not completely destroyed, but it was junk. It would intermittently pop out of 2nd gear when autocrossing and it would grind going into 3rd gear at high RPM. I continued to run autocrosses and also a NASA event in April and then a PCA event in May. Those two open track events are what really did in the transmission. By then, 3rd gear would grind all the time and 4th gear was grinding too.

I had actually purchased a transmission from a guy in Houston back in March when I first realized that the transmission I had was on it's way out. The reason for this was that the transmission that came with the car was never sold in the USA. As such, you can't get parts to fix them either. The only transmission which has somewhat close gear ratios and would work with my car is the 1992 - 93 Integra GSR. Back in 92 and 93, nobody really knew what the Integra was, much less that the GSR was a sporty compact car. This was LONG before the whole import craze took off. So there's not many 92-93 Integra GSR transmission floating around the country and I figured I'd buy the one from the guy in Houston.

Since I was going to have the transmission off anyway, I also picked up a new clutch disc, Type-R pressure plate, clutch bearings, an 8 pound flywheel and a Quaife "auto biasing differential", which is really just a gear type limited slip diff. So pretty soon getting a $400 transmission turned into buying $1500 in go-fast parts in addition to the tranny itself. So I continued to run the open diff tranny up through the June autocross. I skipped the July one and then took my car to HASport where Joe pulled the tranny and sent it off along with the Quaife to Doug the tranny guy, their oursourced transmission repair guy.

This is where my whole project really stalled. The idea was that I would have everything all put together in time for the August autocross or at worst, by the September autocross. Doug the tranny guy discovered that the transmission I purchased had been heavily abused. 3rd and 4th gears were trashed, as well as the 3rd/4th gear shift fork. 5th also looked somewhat worn, but not enough to really warrant replacement given the fact that 5th sees very little use anyway, even on fast road courses. This wound up slowing things down while he waited for parts and I missed the September autocross. He finally got all the parts he needed, put it together and gave it to Joe. Joe installed the new clutch and flywheel and put the tranny on the car.

He went to take it out for a test drive and discovered it would not shift from 2nd to 3rd gear. It was like it hits a brick wall once you come out of 2nd gear. You cannot hit 3rd gear unless you wiggle the shifter around in neutral for a while and then try to go straight from neutral to 3rd. To me, it felt like the whole shift pattern was off, too. None of the gears seemed to be where they belong. Then it went from bad to worse. Joe needed the car out of HASport's shop because they were moving and he's not supposed to have cars there that aren't officially being worked on by HASport. Since Joe was the one technically working on the car itself, I had to pick up my car and drive it home. Around that same time, Joe and Doug the tranny guy were also going to Ohio for a week for the SCCA RunOffs.

So time passes and I miss the October autocross too and finally get to take my car back. More time passes. Joe sends tranny to Doug the tranny guy, Doug does some sort of work (I have no idea what) gives tranny back to Joe who puts tranny on car and it still won't shift from 2nd to 3rd gear. Again, Joe says I need to take the car home, so I take it back again and it sits in my garage for a while. Time passes. I miss the November autocross. Tage has moved back to Phoenix by this time and brings over a bunch of his tools and helps me put my car up on jackstands and pull the transmission. This way I can at least get other stuff done with my car while the tranny is with Doug the tranny guy for the 3rd time.

This was around Thanksgiving or so that I took the transmission alone to HASport. In the mean time, I got a bunch of other stuff done with my car since it was going to be immobile anyway. I got new urethane drop links for my front anti-roll bar, and remounted the bar. I got new bushings for the radius rods and front lower control arms. I purchased a rear anti-roll bar and front upper shock tower brace. I got a new O2 sensor bung welded to the correct runner on my 4-1 header so I won't have to get check engine codes anymore. In fact, I even wrote a tool that shows my to-do list for car stuff so that I could keep track of everything that needed to get done.

Somehow, tons of stuff continued to get done, and an equally large number of items still remained as needing to get done. This really baffled me since the car had just been running autocrosses six months ago and now it seemed to be so far from being ready to run again. It was at this point that I realized just how incredibly complex and time consuming it is to build up a real race car. I was no longer just working on a backyard project to have a somewhat quick autocross car and a car that would almost keep up with stock NSX's in the street group on the track. I wanted the real thing. I wanted an awesome, crushingly fast race car that would be legal for wheel to wheel racing and absolutely blow the doors off any street car short of a C5 Corvette.

This realization brought a certain amount of sanity to my situation. I was no longer just fretting over the fact that I haven't had my car running for six months. I was in the process of totally transforming it from a quick street car into a full race car. It may still have many more months of work to go before it's done, but once I got organized about it and started really tracking exactly what needs to get done to get me where I wanted to be. Slowly, one step at a time, I get a little closer to my goal. Some weeks are more productive than others, but at least at this point I feel I've gotten past the hardest part for me, which was just getting the whole project started for real. 2002 will be the year that I finally start working on improving my car, rather than just fixing everything that's wrong with it.