Just getting everyone caught up to the present.

I picked up a set of Mugen Si OEM brake pads for a very reasonable price. Good timing, as my front pads were shot. Doing shakedown runs on your local canyon roads will do that.

For fun, there's a big tunnel down the street from my house, so I recorded a pass through with the Si. This was all stock. I will shoot a new one with the lightweight muffler.

https://youtu.be/ILgMVne9vAk

As stated in the into section, I picked up a Progress sway bar and a lightweight rear muffler, and threw them on. The Civic is pretty forgiving to work on. Did the axleback and rear bar in about 30 minutes, taking my time, and taking pictures.

 

nice, more pics of the car!!

 

I can't believe that I missed my first "mod" to Hitomi. When I bought the car, the shift knob was pretty thrashed. This is a common problem when people drive with rings on.

I wanted to retain the OE look and feel of the car, so I began searching around the forums and Facebook pages. I eventually found the CTR knob and the 9th gen USDM Si knob. I preferred the CTR look, but I did not prefer the price tag. I found someone selling a brand new 9th Si knob for pretty cheap, so I picked that up.

In terms of dimensions with the 8th gen Si knob, here is how it stacks up:

It's lighter than the 8th gen Si knob, which is a bit disappointing, but it gives a different feel to shifting. Not better, not worse, but different. The rounded off golf ball shape comes to the hand quite naturally.

 

The first points event of 2016 went down yesterday. The course was very slalom-heavy, with a few deceptive spots that kinked up tighter than most competitors initially thought. Cones were flying everywhere, and most people coned away their fastest runs, myself included.

Run #1, in terms of raw time, it wa sa solid swinging start, but +2 cones, so it was a scratch, 67.8+2.
Run #2, everything came together and was smooth as silk, but I tipped an easy cone and it killed what would have been a massive in-class sweep of a run. 66.7+1. This would have clinched the win right there.

A few minutes after I had come in from run #2, a supercharged Miata blew an oil line, covered the back half of the course in oil. This brought the whole event to a halt as twenty or so people donned brooms and oil-dry to try and sort it out. Sitting in the paddock for 45 minutes was arduous.

Run #3, too conservative. In my effort to not tip any cones and throw the run, I overbraked consistently and scrubbed too much speed. This car doesn't have enough torque to make up for that sort of driving. 68.2.
Run # 4, again too conservative. Damn shame, but I was off the pace that I had earlier. Maybe I was getting too hangry from a long day on an empty stomach, who knows. Knocked out a disappointing 68.0.

At this point, I figured I was hosed. However, after checking the live scoring of the event, I managed to snag a second place finish in class! While I'm disappointed that I couldn't open the season with a first place finish, second isn't too shabby at all for a car that's not at all fully prepped.

Check it out:

Final results:

 

Here are a few pictures of the car in autocross prep:

 

Hey All, this past weekend was the second points event of the year. Multi-time national Champ, Scott McHugh showed up and proceeded to crush the whole class. With the battle basically devolving into the fight for 2nd place.

The course was incredibly long, and slalom/transion-heavy. The Civic is a bit sluggish at changing direction quickly, so I upped the rear tire pressures to get the car to be more neutral. This was a mistake.

Run #1 - At 45psi in the rear, the car was borderline undrivable, it tried to change ends on me throughout the whole run. They said I hit 3 cones, I counted 5, easy. 80.424+3
Run #2 - Tire pressures dropped accordingly. Much easier to drive, and quick. Knicked as easy cone. 78.397+1
Run #3 - Go time, 78.227 clean. Still off the champ by a huge margin (1sec), but closing in on 2nd place in the Fiesta ST.

Scott threw down a Hail Mary run, 76.8. None of us were touching that.

Run #4 - Nicked an easy cone near the start and threw it away. Bummer, 'cause that run was closing the gap. 77.684+1.

Ended the competition with my fastest clean run of 78.2 and another podium finish, in 3rd place. This car is still on stock shocks and no alignment. As is, it's neutral, and fun to drive, if not lacking the torque to really pull through the slower corners like the Fiesta ST's or K24-powered Hondas.

Currently 2nd place in points for this year's Championship. Stay tuned.

 

I am watching these thread with great interest, as I am someone looking at running H-street in my 09 Fa5, instead of my extremely noncompetitive bmw this season. How are you liking the RE71rs? I am currently trying to decide between a set of those vs the Kuhmo V720s. I am leading towards the V720s currently due to the extremely short life of the RE71Rs I've seen of locals with BRZs running them, Although they all seem to do quite well in PAX.

 

Seems like it's a tie between the tires. The fastest street tire people out here are either on the Bridgestones or the Kuhmos. Unsure of the wear on the Kuhmos but the RE71R wear fast. I put no street miles on them beyond driving to and from events. Hoping to get a full year out of them.

 

Great thread. Interested in autox-ing my FG2 as well, awesome find on that RSB, need one my self. LOVED it on my old Fit

 

Another Autocross weekend has come to a close, and we are only three weeks away from the ProSolo!

Yesterday's event was crazy packed, so unfortunately, they had to cut our number of runs down to three, which made quickly assessing the course even more important.

The El Toro pavement is brutally unforgiving to tires, and I actually managed to overheat the Bridgestones in three runs.

Run #1: 72.41.6+1 - A good scouting lap. Tipped an easy cone, oh well. The car felt great, but still a bit sluggish in transitions. Shocks and fresh control arm bushings would be great. My buddy said I was picking up a rear wheel in the slalom
Run #2: 71.551 - Was certainly faster, and felt pretty good, but my times didn't drop as much as I was expecting. There were nuances to the course that cause me to compromise speed where I shouldn't have.
Run #3: 71.631+1 - Overheated the RE71R half way through the lap! I figured since it was my last run, I should just push hard everywhere and see what sticks. The Bridgestones are good, but they can only defy physics so much.

Ended up 4th in class out of 16 drivers. 1st and 2nd place were miles ahead of me, 1.9 and 1.5 sec respectively - which is a lifetime, 3rd just inched me out by a tenth of a second. Unsurprisingly, the car was hurting for torque in a few spots. My ham-fisted driving didn't help. As the car really needs to be kept in VTEC to move, overbraking the car or scrubbing too much makes for a lot of lost time. Always learning.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiGFTg9siQ4

 

Great thread man. Definitely interested in updates.

Question for you:

What psi are you running the RE-71R? I cupped my RE-11s badly running 35psi. Loved the tire and have no complaints but I'm thinking about getting the 71R.

Whats your alignment looking like? I'm not running a ton of neg camber in the front so I used the higher tire pressure to help with the sidewalls.

Are the 71r pretty stiff sidewalls?

Have you done any extended sessions on the new tire? I know my RE-11a got very very greasy and slippery on anything over 20min. I'm concerned that the new 71R is supposed to heat up quicker. If so is the potential for overheating the tire worse than the older 11?

Thanks for any insight you have.

 

- ~35psi F, ~38 R
- Unknown alignment, as is from when I bought the car. Haven't installed the camber bolts or had an alignment done yet.
- The sidewalls are miles better than RS3. At these pressures, tire wear is completely acceptable even with heavy, stock suspension FWD car.
- No track days with this car. They will overheat after two flying laps though, it's pretty obvious when you drive them.
Will take the Civic out to Buttonwillow at the end of the season just to see what sort of lap time it can lay down. It has to wait until post season so my tires will make it through all of 2016.

 

Fellow HStreet'r here, just did my OEM crash bolts yesterday and aligned today, ended up with a whopping -0.3* drivers side and -0.5* passenger side (with both bolts) so I'm curious to see if you get anymore than I did. I am also running the RE71r's in 225/45/17 in hopes of helping with the gearing as much as possible (I'm running a 9th gen.) still deciding what if any rear bar to get and have the first big event with the car next weekend. I have ran it at a small lot a few weeks back but it's hard to tell how well it will do on a real course.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QurkAb1uptg

 

Thanks for the reply. I may alter my tire choice.

Did you run the RS-3 on this car or a previous one? Any insight on how they are in the rain? I don't have the room for a 3rd set of wheels so my summers end up being my DDs. I have a second dedicated winter/snow setup.

 

I run RS3 on my BMW 135i track day car.

RE rain: RS3 suck. Dunlops star Specs are good. Kuhmo V720 are good. RE71R are also surprisingly good!

I'll have a big follow up post on this, but this past weekend was the SCCA ProSolo. We were fighting rain off and on all weekend. The RE71R handled the course beautifully wet or dry.

If you're going to do a general summer and winter setup, I'd steer you away from the Bridgestones, and towards the Dunlop Z2 Star Specs. Those tires can actually handle a fair amount of street miles without wasting away. They also have good street manners while still being a fast tire. You're giving up some peak grip/speed from the Bridgestone, but you're getting a real street tire in return.

 

Last weekend, the FA5 threw down in the SCCA ProSolo, a Nationals-caliber event, which drew competition from across the country. It was a hell of a challenge, with very talented drivers, and an easy to understand, but tricky to master format that was even throwing off the most impressive drivers.

The ProSolo is different from a normal Autocross event a lot of ways. First off, clear your calendar, because it lasts the whole weekend. Friday is devoted to getting through registration, passing technical inspection, walking the course, and getting to understand the start.

When running at the Pro, stickering your car up is actually required. The TireRack banner is mandatory on all cars as they are the chief sponsor of the event. The SCCA also wants one sticker up front and two on the sides. Then Bridgestone wants their stuff on the car as well since I'm using the RE71R.

I mentioned the start: what is so special about the start? The ProSolo uses a drag racing "Christmas tree" at the start, so you have the beat the lights. If you launch too early, you get a redlight and your run is disqualified. If you're slow to react, that extra time from when the light turns green is added to your score, so you're reaction times are critical. Each light on the tree is spaced out 0.5 of a second, so the gap between the last amber light before the green light is everything. A perfect R/T is 0.500 of a second. It's very nerve wracking.
The resemblance to the drag strip doesn't end there, in the ProSolo there are two courses, mirrored of one another, and you're at the lights with another person, facing off on either the left, or right side course. They take your fastest run with each course and add them together for your total time.

Saturday and Sunday are the meat of the event, the competition days. There are three heats of 4 runs - 12 total. A morning and afternoon heat on Saturday, and a final morning heat on Sunday. During those 4 runs - 2 on each course, you drive back to back to back to back. I started on the left course, did my run, immediately switched over and did the right course, then back to the left again, and then back to the right. At best you have about a minute to breathe between runs. Between each heat, your class' starting order gets changed based on lap times, so you get paired up with someone in theory who should be a direct competitor against your times.

The starting line:

After each heat, the whole class is put in "impound" where you have to pop your hood and leave your car unlocked so people can check for any "surprises" you might be hiding. Our class was pretty chill, but other classes were definitely very heated about what is and is not allowed.

Impound:

In the first heat, I had managed to stake out a 2nd place finish and the car was feeling great. However, I was about 0.7 second total off first place. I knew that the the tree was killing my times, and that if I pushed hard, I could begin to close the gap.
Heat 2 went pretty poorly for me. I tried to close the gap at the tree but was struggling with redlighting, or blowing the launch - by either bogging the motor, or roasting the tires off. By the end of Saturday, I was in 3rd place, and everyone else had found more time out there.
We were fighting rain off and on all weekend, and Sunday wasn't much better. Upon arrival, the pavement was still wet/damp, but trying to dry. Unfortunately, our group was running in the morning, so my shot at challenging for a better time was not looking good. I was able to close the gap with 2nd place, but not by enough. He edged me out by 0.144 of a second total. That was a close battle. If it was dry, I think I could have had it. Lightweight cars do better in the wet than heavy cars, and a 30 year old CRX has about a 500lb advantage over the Civic in that regard. Scott whupped us all, by a full second. Granted, for an 80+ second combined time, that's not as bad as it could have been. However, I still have a long way to go in developing the car and myself to close that gap.

Results:

Video:

 

This is a fantastic thread! Thank you so much. I am waiting to mod my 08 Si Coupe till I wrap up a couple of Hill Climb H-Street records this year. I beat them last year but didn't even check and was running in a "fun" class with my friends.

 

Had a very interesting learning experience with last weekend's event. Kai, a very fast fella from San Diego, was not able to bring his usual ride (the Fiesta ST) to Autocross due to a timing issue with his co-driver. Kai asked if he could co-drive my car. I figured it would be good to see what a talented driver could do behind the wheel of the Civic, and give me some feedback on the car, and it's setup.

The course had a lot of interesting elements, with a high speed slalom trailing into a steep off camber sweeper, and several inconsistent-radius corners that required a lot of throttle and steering work to get through efficiently.

Kai elected to take his runs first. The first run came in solid, right out of the bat with a 67.797+1. That was a mystery cone because he didn't see/feel it and I didn't see it happen watching his run. Regardless, a quick time. Run #2, the aforementioned off-camber sweeper and a lift of the throttle resulted in Kai doing a huge 180* on course.
Kai brought his tire sprayer and was cooling the front tires and adjusted the rear tire pressure. Run #3 came together with a 67.864 clean. In an attempt to save my tires a bit, he said he was happy with that and traded the car off to me.

My first run was a 68.274+1. A touch off pace. Run #2: 67.780, picking me in the first spot by less than a tenth of a second. Glad to know I can hang with the good drivers. Run #3, alost identical 67.875. I took a 4th run and went 67.737. Talk about consistency, there's only .138 between all my clean runs.

Kai opted to take a fourth and final run after me and pulled out 67.678, edging me out by 0.059 of a second. Now that's competition.

After the fact, we we're trading notes on the course, it turns out I gave away a lot of time by not shifting into 3rd gear for the back sweeper. D'OH! Comparing video, Kai hit 68mph in the sweeper, vs. me banging off the limiter at 57mph for several seconds. That would have been good for several tenths right there, let along the 0.059sec difference in times. Damn.
After looking at video from previous events, I run into the same issue of banging off the 2nd gear limiter as opposed to trying for 3rd. I made a note and stuck it on the dash for future events: "Believe in the power of 3rd gear VTEC." Sounds like I have been giving up time on course all year. Lesson learned.

 

Some basic maintenance to the car: oil change and engine air and cabin filters changed out.

Autocross this weekend, looking at registration, the usual fast suspects will be there. Stay tuned.

 

Another autocross this weekend, and another podium finish. Took 3rd in class, right behind the Fiesta ST boys, with a bit of a battle between the Top 3. The course was fast and filled with sweepers. Check it out:

A close up perspective on times:

Hot lap:

 

Wow thats alot of cars in your class, that must make everything a lot of fun.

 

Another Autocross weekend come and gone. Another podium finish, 3rd place. Scott, Kai and myself were trading positions back and forth after each run. On Scott's last run, he pulled a hail mary move and picked up an extra second out of nowhere. Going to have some work to do to beat these guys.

 

Been pretty quiet around here lately for the Civic. Most of my attention has been directed towards the shop demo car which has required a lot of love.

Attended two events, both were very hot and my times were appreciably off pace. Turns out with this level of heat, the RE71R really NEED to be sprayed and cooled down. Everyone who was outpacing me was spraying their RE71R's and the performance differentials showed.

July's event:

August's event:

 

Another autocross weekend come and gone. Seems like when push comes to shove, the Civic really struggles on these big, open courses against the torquey Fiesta ST. Still another podium though.

Results here:

 

great build :clapping: