New to Hondas. road racing, and IT

hondatech.com seems to be a good place to get lots of replys whenever you post a question
also, majestichonda.com has just about every part you could ever need
not real sure about body panels though
but they def have all the parts you will surely need in the future
 
Welcome to Improved Touring!:happy204:
As far as Honda's go, you have a solid and reliable car:026:

go out there and have fun man!!!!:D

:eclipsee_steering:
 
Thanks guys.
The car is coming along fairly well. Thought it had a blown head gasket, or worse, but after running a compression and leak test it seems everything is fine. Hoping it was just water in the oil from sitting for a year... :shrug:

Been cleaning it up inside and out and re-doing things that were done in a rather hodge podge manner before I bought it, including the wiring and master switch.

After finishing that and mounting my seat and harness I should be good to go, pending a successful annual tech of course. On a side note, I recieved my Novice Permit paperwork back from SCCA in the mail yesterday and everything is in order! :026:

Still looking for spare body panels for it, namely all the plastic bits.

Any of you local guys know any good body/paint shops that would want to partner with a newb at cost in exchange for lots of exposure for their shop??? :D
 
Do you or any of your friends have access to a decent air compressor? If so, I'd probably recommend that you do it yourself or possibly a better option, prep the car and bring it to a shop like Maaco. I did the whole body shop sponsorship thing and while I learned a lot, in the end it was probably more of a PITA than worth. Your car will always be the very last to be worked on (wonder why? :) ) and in my case it resulted in me missing a couple of races. Then when touch-ups were necessary, you are dependant upon them. They did do one super cool pear paint job that used several pearl colors, that is until we needed to repaint something and none of us wrote down what we used. LOL

That body shop was sold and I tried a different approach that works much, much better. I contacted an auto paint supplier and they sell me products at cost (paint, materials, a nice spray guy). If you use Fleet paint, it's not too expensive. They didn't want me to put anything on my car because of fears of having many other racers approach them for sponsorships too. At least I don't think they ever saw my car and that's the real reason. Could it have been purchasing body filler in bulk? :eek:
 
Ryan, have you decided what SCCA school you're going to do this spring? I'm going to be up at Blackhawk Farms for the April 24th-26th Double School & Single Regional event helping two track n00bs get their licenses. So if you're doing that one, I could probably help you out a little bit too. We'll have our ITC '85 Civic there, so I've got a bit of knowledge about these cars.
 
boywonder said:
Thanks guys.
The car is coming along fairly well. Thought it had a blown head gasket, or worse, but after running a compression and leak test it seems everything is fine. Hoping it was just water in the oil from sitting for a year... :shrug:

Been cleaning it up inside and out and re-doing things that were done in a rather hodge podge manner before I bought it, including the wiring and master switch.

Still looking for spare body panels for it, namely all the plastic bits.
Click to expand...

I'm 99.999% certain that it's water from sitting a year. When we parked the car in fall 2006, the oil was a wonderful color. When we looked at it in spring of 2007, it looked like latte. After an oh shit moment, we drained the oil, replaced it with fresh and never saw latte the rest of the season.

We think that it's the heat/cool/heat/cool cycle. Interior gets warm in the sun, temp drops at night and condensation occurs, drops into the oil. Repeat for 17 months.

Sorry about the hodgepodge stuff. We fixed alot of stuff as we found it - e.g 4 bolts 2 metric and 2 english - but never got around to the kill switch or the door locks.

The plastic bits are impossible to find otherwise we'd have replaced the broken trim. If you find a source, let me know.
 
boywonder said:
Thanks guys.

Any of you local guys know any good body/paint shops that would want to partner with a newb at cost in exchange for lots of exposure for their shop??? :D
Click to expand...

Ryan: Give me a call. I will PM you my contact info. You need to take a look at my 50/50 racer (looks great at 50 feet, 50 mph!!!:eek:).
 
Yeah, my neighbor has been pushing me to just paint it myself. I have a decent (?, this one) compressor I think, and the car was painted with rattle cans by the previous owner and didn't look too bad, so I think I could do it. My main concern is with the body work–it was rolled the last year it raced and while they did a decent job of pounding it out I don't want to run into some scrutineer on a power trip and fail on a neat/tidy note. Plus there is a decent amount of rust and I'd like to have that taken care of properly and never have to give it a second thought.

Dave: you're right, I already decided to stay away from fancy pants colors, no desire to be trying to match paint later in the year because I had an off. Good point on working with a body shop, maybe I'll just try to hook up with a paint shop instead.

Another thought I had was to try to partner with a vinyl shop and have the rear half wrapped as it's the "rough" part of the car. I think a nice wrap would hide a lot of the blemishes...

R2 Racing: thanks for the offer. Right now I'm shooting for the double school at Nelson Ledges (Apr 18-19), it's much closer to me and the rally that originally conflicted with those dates got moved up a few weeks! My hope is that everything goes well at that school, but if not I like the idea that the Blackhawk double school is still an option.

Jeff: I'm really hoping it's just condensation. Of course when I first looked at the oil and saw milkshake I immediately saw red and cursed your name thinking you tried to pull as fast one on me. :shrug: The wiring and such isn't such a big deal but since I have the time, and that's really all it costs to re-do it, I figure why not? Plus then I can label everything and learn more about the car. Re: plastic bits–what about all those CRXs in Martin's yard? He has a CRX breeding ground there, are they the wrong gen?

Bill: I will definitely be giving you a call when I get a chance, thanks for your continual offers of help.

mc-integra111: That's the exact kind of experience I want to avoid. How was the situation resolved?
 
boywonder said:
Jeff: I'm really hoping it's just condensation. Of course when I first looked at the oil and saw milkshake I immediately saw red and cursed your name thinking you tried to pull as fast one on me. :shrug: The wiring and such isn't such a big deal but since I have the time, and that's really all it costs to re-do it, I figure why not? Plus then I can label everything and learn more about the car. Re: plastic bits–what about all those CRXs in Martin's yard? He has a CRX breeding ground there, are they the wrong gen?
Click to expand...

I'm sticking with sitting in a field for 16 months. It did it in the 06-07 winter and that was only 5 months. Not certain why the dew problem hits this car worse than others, but that seems to be the case.

Those are the right generation. You'll need to talk to Martin about the plastic bits. I doubt he'll let any go as a bunch of those cars are spoken for as future race cars and the remainder have some of the last good condition plastic on them. I never asked him if they were for sale because my intent was to paint where the trim was missing. Let me know if you need his contact info. . One thing to consider is that you will need to modify the trim because of the way Kirk installed the cage - that's why the damn things kept breaking and finally got to the point that we couldn't save them.
 
jjjanos said:
I'm sticking with sitting in a field for 16 months. It did it in the 06-07 winter and that was only 5 months. Not certain why the dew problem hits this car worse than others, but that seems to be the case.

Those are the right generation. You'll need to talk to Martin about the plastic bits. I doubt he'll let any go as a bunch of those cars are spoken for as future race cars and the remainder have some of the last good condition plastic on them. I never asked him if they were for sale because my intent was to paint where the trim was missing. Let me know if you need his contact info. . One thing to consider is that you will need to modify the trim because of the way Kirk installed the cage - that's why the damn things kept breaking and finally got to the point that we couldn't save them.
Click to expand...

I doubt Mr. Burke would allow any of that go.
 
mc-integra111 said:
I suggest being very careful about a 50/50 racer and the "Neat and Clean Appearance" rule. It is a subjective decision and some regions/clubs may be more lenient than others. You are welcome to read about my first experience with SCCA at http://72.167.111.130/forums/showthread.php?t=24778.
Click to expand...

Jared: I will read your tread when I get home. One of my objectives when I started preping my car was to have a good clean look. As with any painting, prep is most important step. No, my car does not look like a brand new car or a $5000 paint job. But the body parts are all straight and it looks clean. And I don't freak out when someone leans on the car in the paddock, or when the nut behind the wheel does something stupid!

I was actually contemplating using that paint that gives a 'hammered' look!!!!! But decided to use the original traditional paint sceme.
 
boywonder said:
mc-integra111: That's the exact kind of experience I want to avoid. How was the situation resolved?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the final resolution was me running the other side into a wall much worse than the previous damage, which forced me to get the whole car fixed right (I am actually picking it up from the body guy this weekend :happy204:).

The main message I try to convey to people is to be ready because the rule is subjective. From popular opinion (you can see from reading other racers' posts) my car was about 50/50 on whether it should be raced as is or be fixed.
 
I guess I need to become more intimate with the rules but if I recall correctly...I'm allowed to remove all that rocker/trim plastic, yes? And does that include all the trim on the doors? That would be awesome from a "not having to replace stuff all the time" aspect, but I suspect the car would look a bit odd with all of that removed.
 
boywonder said:
I guess I need to become more intimate with the rules but if I recall correctly...I'm allowed to remove all that rocker/trim plastic, yes? And does that include all the trim on the doors? That would be awesome from a "not having to replace stuff all the time" aspect, but I suspect the car would look a bit odd with all of that removed.
Click to expand...

"Body side moldings, rocker panel moldings and wheel opening trim pieces (not stock flares) may be removed. Resulting holes may be filled."
- GCR Page 340
 
Sweet. Why didn't you ever just rip that stuff off then and run w/o it?

I was impressed by your zip-tie craftsmanship though. :023:
 
I received my hard copy in the mail earlier this week but I'm at work. Forgot about being able to dl the pdf, duh.
 
jjjanos said:
"Body side moldings, rocker panel moldings and wheel opening trim pieces (not stock flares) may be removed. Resulting holes may be filled."
- GCR Page 340
Click to expand...


I know it doesn't specify in the GCR, but IMHO molding and cladding are two different animals. I hate reading the GCR between the lines, but molding is going to be those chrome strips around fenders and under doors, and in the case of the 1st gen CRX that red trim that goes all the way around the car, ~1 1/2 cm wide. Cladding is the big chunks of plastic on the doors, bumpers, rocker panels etc. I don't think you can remove those. Hell, if it was OK to remove the plastic from a CRX, you'd have to run in some open wheel class.:D
 
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