Truenotch

This thing is great @doullama! Well done on getting it road legal. Didn't realise you were a Waikato local! You should bring this to the Burgerfuel cruise tonight.

It's a drag car so it won't turn at all. Nice work Tom, it's coming together! What's the reason behind the flutes in that Nascar pipe? More velocity or just rigidity?

Everyone should have one of these. They make it super easy to get into tight spaces to clean up welds etc. They're on special for $99 at the Toolshed this month too. Got stuck into the engine bay with the powerfile and a flap disc. Still a bunch of finishing work to do, but the powerfile did an awesome job of the radius on this weld: Also bought myself a set of step drills. Their first job was to make the correct sized holes for the new engine mount threads: The nuts sit in there really nicely. It's a slight hammer fit to get them below/even with the surface and they can't drop any lower because the hole steps down as it gets deeper. The nuts need to be tigged in and tidied up, then that job's done.

Hah, yeah. I was going to race this for another year at least before pulling it apart (note: I've been saying that for a few years and still never pulled it apart).

Nah, the track doesn't care at all... But I do. I'm not aiming for prefect, I'm aiming for good. And shittiness is also the enemy of good .

Back to those bad decisions... I don't really want to share these photos, but am going post them for the sake of good record keeping. I did all this with maximum haste and minimum care and it shows. First up, half assed tub job. From what I remember, I left the paint on for most of these welds. I also did the tubs and "wedge" sections before the front rad support panel was removed, so it was hard to get in there.... But never cleaned up the welds after removing the slam panel. Started by attacking them with a flap wheel to get rid of all the super high spots. I'm going to clean all the welds up as much as possible and will re-weld some parts. There will be grinding.... And welding.... And cleaning.... And filler. The inside is just as bad: Like, what the actual fuck 23 year old Markku? You didn't eve cut the bottom edge straight! Oh well, just weld'er'up anyway I guess!?!?! Firewall - not finished and the welding at the back needs to be taken away and shot. Firewall notch to get the coil pack out - this was done at the track or on the dyno when we realised that the coil hit the seam: Started by cleaning up the edges and will weld parts of the seam: Next issue - engine mounts. The original idea consisted of pancaking a piece of Urethane between the engine mount and the pedestal with a bolt going through. In other words, it was basically solid mounted... Until the bolts snapped from the torque, vibrations and bumps. This was the situation when I removed the engine: On top of that, 3 out of 4 of my gearbox mount bolts had disappeared! So the engine and box would have been flubbering around like a kitty on crack. The best solution is a set of Land Rover engine mounts as seen in @DAD's KP build thread. These are 10mm taller than what I had before (26mm vs 36mm), but I've got another solution in the works to get the height right. Old: New: I'll also need to re-set a captured nut into the pedestal. I'm currently trying to decide on the strongest way to do this... The pedestals are welded onto the crossmember, so the only way in is from the top... I can either drill a big hole and weld a flange nut in there from above OR drill a bigger hole and weld an extra plate on top of the pedestal with a nut welded from underneath. I'm open to ideas - what have you got? So I'm taking the run bearing as a blessing after seeing the sum total of issues that need to be sorted. I'll be spending the next few months getting this right and am taking ti as an opportunity to learn some new skills and will take my time to get it looking good. Luckily I work for a company that sells flap wheels, grinding discs and linishing belts! Here's a pic of @nothingsfree's engine bay for inspiration:

If I could go back and talk to 23 year old Markku I'd give myself a good clip around the ears. There's untold amounts of messy work that I did whilst in a rush, half cut and on a university budget... Credit where credit's due - I managed to go racing with almost no income (thanks Studylink!), but I'm about to pay the price for it now. More on that later... Last Friday after work @Rhyscar, @mark105, @japawagons and I bombed down to Palmy for the weekend to go racing and celebrate a friend's 30th. It's been a while since I last raced this car at Manfeild, so I was pumped for a good weekend. I'm happy with the look of the red bonnet too - in the right light you don't notice that it's a different shade of red... It'll look really good when we re-wrap it with the right colour! Got the car out onto the track on Saturday and it was going REALLY well. It felt peppy and was turning well. The rebuilt front shocks have made a difference! The rear felt OK, but Rhys noticed it was hitting the bump stops on the way out of some corners which was unsettling the rear - big skids ensued! I played with the rear compression settings and it got much better - good bump compliance, good turn and fast corner speeds. It felt faster than ever through the Turn 2 sweeper and was easy to point around the last corner which is a great sign. I still had a few issues with it being a bit twitchy, so now it's time to play with rebound settings and get it dialled in nicely. I left on Saturday pretty happy with the car and was looking forward to Sunday. We headed off to do some drinking with the birthday boy: Started the car on Sunday morning to warm it up and there was a ticking sound. After a bit of revving and diagnosis it became apparent that the noise was big end knock. Bugger! We drained the oil and saw evidence of glitter - Sunday was done before it even started. Turns out I could have had more to drink on Saturday night after all! Pulled the engine out yesterday and dropped the sump to inspect. First thing I noticed was this: And there was some crap in the strainer. Inspected further - all 4 big ends look like this: And all 4 mains look like this: Crank: Took the crank to ST Automotive in Cambridge today to get the crank measured and inspected. Shane said I'd got away with murder! The crank measured up perfectly and there's no grooves. Win! He looked at the big end bearings and told me that the wear didn't look like oil starvation. Most likely cause? Not enough clearance on the bearings. He's suggested that I take the block out to him and he'll get everything right and reassemble it with ACL race bearings. Now that the engine's out I've got a front row seat to see all the terrible panel work I did 5 years ago.... So back to that conversation about 23 year old Markku's bad decisions....

Oh man, diesel smoke approved from this member. Put the Hoosiers on it.

I can see it now.

I've run mine before.... Are you laying down a challenge?

Nice. That's what I was going to use for my beams conversion but we couldn't find them. Ended up just slotting urethane in there and bolting it down, so more like a solid mount than a rubber one. Might look into these ones - cheers!

I've heard about those Rangey engine mounts before but didn't find them last time I looked. They look sweet. What's the thread size, how tall is the rubber and how rigid are they?

Took the bonnet out to @Archetype's place on Sunday to have a go at wrapping it. We'd used a bunch of vinyl samples to choose the colour "3m Dark Red" which seemed to match well. The 3m 1080 film is amazing stuff to work with. It seems almost impossible to get a bubble! After a bit of mucking around we had it finished with new vinyl eyelids and "grille" too. We used matte black for the eyelids and gloss for the grille to add depth. Got it home and chucked it on - looks nice: But... The colour is different to what we thought it would be. 3m obviously has a different colours for the 1080 wrap vs the standard 30 and 50 series vinyl. This is called "dark red" but it looks almost orange compared to the test sample. After a bit of research it seems like there probably isn't an option in this range that will match my paint... Dammit. For future reference - it's best to wrap your panels on or next to your car to make sure the colour matches as expected. Massive thanks to Brent / archetype / Doozi / MotoringEvents for making it happen. The job itself turned out mint.

Jason managed to turn my "buck" (read: bucket and piece of wood) into a part that will hold the filter and funnel air towards the air box. the filter fits like a glove! Test fitted with some big hose: Gave it a wash and a paint. I didn't want to sand it too much because I hate fibreglass dust and don't have any masks at home, so it can stay rough . The setup has turned out good enough for now. I'll re-visit everything next time the engine comes out.

I mainly did the ducting to clean up the airflow in the front of the car. It's a job I always planned on doing but never got around to. The bonnet has been flapping around at high speed and I really hate that. I'd also been planning on adding an air filter, going to a bigger diameter inlet pipe and forcing more cold air into the box, so it kinda does all of those jobs. That said, on very hot days the coolant temp will rise to ~100° and I suspect it starts to lose horsepower when it's in that temp range, so I'm kinda working on both issues. As far as weight goes, the whole shebang weighs bugger all, so that shouldn't worry you too much, although it hardly seems worth it for the Civic if you're not having cooling issues.