Photos by Andy Yoon, Denise Conner, and Aziza Jefferson May 28, 2023 (Millville, N.J.) – An unusual set of circumstances forced StudioVRM.Racing driver Roger Maeda to start from the back of the Big Bore field at the 2nd round of the 2023 USTCC East Series. Undeterred by the setback, Roger fought his way through the field before a broken outer CV joint relegated Team StudioVRM.Racing to a distant 2nd place in Sportsman class. Sunday Feature Race A family emergency prevented Roger from arriving at NJ Motorsports Park’s Lightning Circuit until late Saturday, preventing him from taking part in Qualifying or the Heat Race. This meant that he would have to start from the back of the Big Bore field during the Sunday Feature Race. Our Prelude pilot made a flyer of a start, streaming past a classic GT1 Corvette and a Fox-body Mustang in fervent pursuit of the USTCC cars that had qualified further up the grid. By lap 2, Roger’s green Prelude managed to get within half a second of the Sportsman class leader, Martin Szwarc in his newly christened Braci Racing 8th gen Honda Civic Si Sedan. The silver Civic, equipped with high-lift cams from engine gurus Bad Guys Worldwide, used its prodigious straight-line speed to keep our StudioVRM Prelude behind. Roger neutralized the Civic’s power with the Prelude’s superior speed through the Lightning Circuit’s high-speed Lightbulb turn before making an assertive outside pass through Lightning’s Turn 1. Unfortunately, this victory would prove short-lived. The Prelude’s left outer CV joint boot had popped loose during this move, allowing the grease inside the joint to escape the joint. A huge plume of smoke erupted from the green Honda’s left front wheel well as Redline CV2 grease evaporated against the Prelude’s red hot brake rotors. Despite this, Roger did his best to get the car to the finish. But it wasn’t to be. On lap 12, the exposed CV joint failed entirely, forcing an early end to our race. Because Team StudioVRM.Racing had completed over half the racing laps of the 22-lap race, the team earned a 2nd place in Sportsman class. It was no doubt a disappointing result for the East Brunswick based team, but the team left the track with valuable points which would keep us in the title fight. Roger Maeda - #22 StudioVRM.Racing Honda Prelude Si VTEC Qualifying: N/A Race: 2nd in Sportsman, 4th in USTCC, 22nd Overall Fastest Lap: 1:17.476 “An exploded outer CV joint ended our race before we could show our true pace. But we clocked enough laps to classify P2 in Sportsman and brought the car home in one piece. More importantly, a big congratulations to Martin Szwarc and the Braci Racing Team for a well-deserved debut win. I know the team was absolutely thrashing to get the car ready for this weekend and we couldn’t be happier to see their long nights of wrenching pay off in a big way.”

Whether in our garages, on our sim rigs, in our offices, or in our living rooms, there is a good chance that every one of us owns a flat screen TV or monitor of some sort. And if you have ever invited a small child into your home, that TV is guaranteed to have at least one big scratch on its screen. The TVs here at StudioVRM HQ are no exceptions to that rule, as every single screen and laptop in the Studio has been scratched or gouged at some point. And yet, the only way you can see the scratches on our TVs is to shine a bright light directly at the screen and look from a very specific angle. What's our secret? Here it is: This is a TurtleWax clear coat repair pen. You can find it at some auto parts stores for about $8, or as part of the TurtleWax T-234KT Scratch Repair Kit for about $13 US from Amazon. While the whole kit is admittedly pretty average for fixing scratches in car paint, the clearcoat pen that comes in it produces one of the most durable, optically clear finishes of any liquid clear coat repair kit. The method listed below was inspired by a YouTube creator by the name of Bob Does it All. Check out his original version of the fix here. What does this work on? This fix will permanently repair medium to deep scratches on TVs, computer screens, and laptop screens with a gloss-finish screen. It will also help reduce the visibility of scratches on matte-finish screens, but will not work as well as on a glossy screen. Based on our testing, this fix works better on plastic screens than glass screens. Unfortunately, this method will not fully repair scratches on tinted screens. How to Fix Scratches on Your TV or Monitor - The Step-By-Step Here's what you need: One TurtleWax scratch repair pen A brand-new razor blade A small roll of masking tape A Magic Eraser or similar Melamine cleaning sponge A handful of alcohol screen cleaning wipes, or a bottle of 70% isopropyl alcohol and a lint-free (preferably microfiber) cloth And here is the step-by-step guide, demonstrated on this scratched touch screen of a Lenovo X1: 1. Use the alcohol screen cleaning wipes to remove any dust and dirt from the entire screen. Focus on the area of the scratch, and if possible, try to get some of the alcohol inside the scratch to remove any plastic or glass dust that may be trapped inside. The better you can clean the scratches, the better the end result will be. 2. Shake up the Scratch Repair pen and wipe the tip of the pen with one of the alcohol pads. This will remove any "crust" on the tip of the pen so that you won't end up embedding any of it on your TV screen. 3. Lightly press the pen against the screen and squeeze the body to let out the scratch repair liquid. Use a generous amount, and don't worry if it drips or spills over the sides of the scratch. 4. Let the liquid dry for 3-4 hours. 5. Cut some small strips of masking tape and wrap the corners of your razor blade as seen below. This will keep the corners of the razor from putting any new scratches on your screen. 6. Scrape the razor blade at an angle to the scratch to remove any excess clear coat repair liquid. Try not to scrape perpendicular to the scratch, or you may end up removing some of the repair material from the scratch that you are trying to fill. 7. Soak the Magic Eraser in water and gently rub it against the area surrounding the scratch to remove any excess clear coat material. The excess clear should flake off easily. 8. Wipe the screen again and inspect the scratch. If it is still visible, repeat steps 3-7. In our experience, shallower scratches took only one pass, while deeper scratches took 2 to 3 applications to fix. And that's it. Even with the contrast turned up on our camera, the scratches on our laptop screen are much less noticeable than before. With the laptop turned on, these scratches are completely invisible: The results were even better when we used this method to fix the ballpoint pen gouges on our Sony Bravia TV. Even when we turned the contrast up and held a finger up to the screen to get the camera to focus on the scratch, we couldn't get the repaired scratches to show up on camera: We hope this trick serves you as well as it has us. See you at the track. Disclosure Section: All products shown here were purchased out of Roger's own pocket, at full price. StudioVRM is an Amazon Associate, which means that we get a small amount of referral income if you buy a product using any Amazon links above. StudioVRM and Roger Maeda are not affiliated with TurtleWax. While the USTCC series that we race in is sponsored by TurtleWax, the products in this review were purchased from retail sources at full price.

StudioVRM.Racing is defending its US Touring Car Championship East Series crown with a faster, more refined machine and team. Wish us luck, and look for us in the paddock at the following events this season: 2024 Race Schedule **The team anticipates that we will miss these events due to a major mechanical issue with our USTCC car. See you at the track.

Photo Credit: Denise Conner, On Q Racing September 17, 2023 (Watkins Glen, N.Y.) – Handicapped by 100 lbs of REWARDS weight from his early season wins and saddled with the lowest top speed of all cars in the USTCC East Series, touring car driver Roger Maeda expected an uphill battle for the team at the fast and flowing Watkins Glen International. And indeed, it would be a case of damage limitation for the team as they contended with the challenge of keeping faster cars behind them on a famously unforgiving track. Saturday Race – Long Course Despite being headquartered within a 4-hour drive from the Finger Lakes, this was the first time Roger Maeda or StudioVRM.Racing had ever put a wheel on Watkins Glen International’s historic 3.45-mile track. Fortunately, Roger had driven the track in the USTCC Winter Virtual Series and had an idea of what to expect as a result. Building on that experience, Roger quickly ramped up his pace and put the StudioVRM Prelude 22nd on the grid out of 34 cars during Saturday’s race. Crucially, this meant that he was now going to start ahead of all of the other USTCC cars that were racing this weekend. All he had to do was defend that position for 25 minutes on the fastest track on the USTCC East Series calendar. Roger executed a clean start to stay ahead of Andrew Conner’s On Q Racing E90 BMW 325i through The Glen’s steeply banked Turn 1. He then tucked in behind the huge rear wing of Patrick Fanning’s Factory Ford Mustang FR500S and waited patiently for an opportunity to improve his position over the next 15 minutes. That plan would be suddenly derailed with the unexpected appearance of double yellow flags. An engine failure for A Sedan Mustang driver Jared Licklider caused a two-car crash into the guard rails along the high-speed back straight. The safety car emerged soon after, collecting the entire field and bringing them back to pit lane for an early end to Saturday’s race. In the end, Roger would successfully defend his starting position, taking the checkered flag as the leading USTCC car in 21st overall. Sunday Race – NASCAR Short Course The USTCC ran Sunday’s Feature Race on the “boot-less” short course layout – a fast, flowing layout that rewards a bit of risk-taking by racers and teams. Thanks to the experience from the prior day, Roger managed to qualify ahead of Conner’s fire-red BMW and even start several places higher than he had on Saturday. Unfortunately, it would all come undone at Turn 1. A freak mechanical issue pitched the B.R.A. Chevrolet Monza GT into a spin just two cars in front of the StudioVRM Prelude. Roger managed to weave his way through the turn 1 turmoil, but lost six places in the process – dropping him to dead last of the remaining cars in the leading pack. An aggressive fightback ensued as we managed to retake 17th overall from a Mustang GT500 in pursuit of the other USTCC cars further up the field. We had just managed to get within sight of the On Q Racing BMW when the Prelude’s clutch started slipping out of nowhere. We originally suspected that our H22's rear main seal had failed. But when GFAB's Grant Labay assessed the damage afterwards, he discovered that the clutch pressure plate had exploded and punctured the transmission casing. This wildly random failure would bring about an early end to our Sunday race. Roger brought the Prelude back to pit lane a few laps early with a small cloud of oil following in our green Honda’s wake. Roger Maeda - #22 StudioVRM.Racing Honda Prelude Si VTEC Saturday Race: 1st in Sportsman, 21st OverallFastest Lap: 2:18.357 Sunday Race: 1st in Sportsman, 22nd OverallFastest Lap: 1:29.839 “Our car has the lowest top speed of all USTCC East Series teams, so we knew this Watkins Glen round was going to be the toughest race weekend on the 2023 USTCC East calendar. Thanks to our high-downforce aero setup, rock solid FFC / Raybestos brakes, and our well-tuned suspension setup, we were able to defend our position by aggressively attacking the kerbs. The big surprise this weekend was learning just how much we liked this track. I personally love how the high-grip surface, swooping banked turns, and rollercoaster elevation changes all add up to a track that encourages skilled risk-taking. The scenery is beautiful and even the people here are exceptionally nice. Watkins Glen International may have become my new favorite track. Z (our race engineer) and I analyzed the data, and we already found a few places where we can  shave huge chunks off our lap time on both the long and short courses. Long story short, we can’t wait to come back.”

We at StudioVRM.Racing are excited to announce that Blue Leaf Technologies has signed on to become our team's official Enterprise IT Solutions Partner. Blue Leaf Technologies is one of the best-kept secrets in American Enterprise IT Management. Over the last 20 years, this New Jersey-based consulting firm developed a reputation for solving complex technology problems and performing fast-paced, enterprise-grade tech rollouts for big name corporations including global law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, fashion giants Capri Holdings Limited (a.k.a. Michael Kors Limited), and reigning NBA Southwest Division champions Memphis Grizzlies. Blue Leaf's expertise in modern workspace, enterprise cloud, remote access, desktop support, and infrastructure systems has earned them a place in many CIOs' address books, while their ingenuity and speed have helped them succeed where big-name IT consulting conglomerates struggle. Intricate technical knowledge of Microsoft, VMWare, Citrix, Oracle, and Ivanti platforms has helped them become one of the most prominent woman-owned technology implementers in the New York Metro area. Through this new partnership, our teams will combine forces to push the limits of car, personnel, and modern enterprise technology on the gritty, fast-paced world of Professional Touring Car Racing. Roger Maeda, Driver-Owner, StudioVRM.Racing says: "It always surprises people when we tell them that the technology needs of a modern racing team rivals that of a medium-size enterprise. But it's 100% true. Developing and running a modern-day racecar involves an astronomical volume of computer simulations and data analysis. The processing power and storage volume required to handle this data is so intense that we simply cannot do it without the help of enterprise-grade cloud computing technologies. Without these capabilities, independent teams like us would never be able to compete with the larger factory-backed efforts that we race with. I have worked with several top-tier technology consulting companies in the past 10 years, and Blue Leaf Technologies has consistently been the fastest and the most efficient at solving complex technology problems. The creative direction of their Chief Architect Uday Patel has helped us address some of the most challenging performance problems and made our internal IT magnitudes simpler for our team. The implementation team at Blue Leaf has also helped us achieve this quickly, which, for a budget-conscious organization like ours, is priceless. We would like to thank Blue Leaf Technologies CEO Rinku Patel for dedicating her team's expertise towards our pursuit of cutting-edge performance. We look forward to sharing the limelight on the top step of the USTCC podium." To commemorate the start of our team's official partnership, Blue Leaf Technologies' digital designers have outfitted our race team with high-tech apparel: Look for our drivers and mechanics, who will be sporting this fresh look at our next US Touring Car Championship race! To learn more about Blue Leaf Technologies and their services, visit: W: Blue Leaf Technologies LI: Blue Leaf Technologies | LinkedIn

July 23, 2023 (Summit Point, W.V.) – It was a weekend of mixed fortunes for StudioVRM’s Roger Maeda, as the team converted another back row start to collect valuable series points along with a class win. But it was also a race of what could have been, as the team’s aero-equipped Prelude repeatedly found itself stuck in traffic behind 300+hp big bore cars, unable to show the potential of the Spec B upgrade package that the team prepared for Round 3 of the US Touring Car Championship East Series. Sunday Feature Race For the second Feature Race in a row, Roger faced a fightback from the rear of the grid after a fluke overheating issue and a surprise fuel leak prevented the team from setting a fast lap on Saturday. Fortunately, there would be a split start for the large American Sedan Challenge class that was sharing the track with us, meaning that the StudioVRM Prelude would start 21st on the grid instead of 34th. Unfortunately, this also meant that he would be starting directly behind a Panos Esperante GTS and a Dodge SRT4 – Two 21st century torque monsters, each with a triple digit lbs-ft advantage over our Honda H22 powered Prelude. Roger would have to slipstream behind one of these two cars into turn 1 in the hopes that one of them would open the door for us to get by. But which one? The green flag dropped, and Roger chose to duck in behind the SRT4. Big mistake. The Dodge bogged down at the apex of Turn 1, allowing the Panos to get around both cars with an easy outside pass. What followed was a frustrating lap of following the red Dodge before the SRT driver graciously decided to point Roger by on the entry to the Carousel. This was followed swiftly by the appearance of a safety car to recover a Ford Mustang that was stranded on the short straight between Turn 5 and the Carousel. This meant that we would get a second chance to catch up to the forward pack. This also meant that the leaders in the American Sedan class would be on our heels at the restart. The safety car pulled off, the green flag flew, and four 8-cylinder muscle cars immediately thundered past through the first two corners. Roger latched on to the back of the train of American iron and used it to clear a path to the mid-pack. In a few corners, Roger had managed to close the gap and could see the ST-classed On Q Racing BMW 325i running just a few cars ahead. Roger did his best to get past Jerome Welte’s Porsche Boxster, Mark Liller’s NC MX-5, and Scott Luttrell’s turbo Mini Cooper S as quickly as possible. But the Factory Five Cobra of Bob Hasychak proved to be a much tougher opponent. Hasychak’s classic Cobra racecar lacked the high-speed cornering grip of our Prelude but had more than enough torque to make up for it. Even with our 218hp Honda engine running at full song, the red and black roadster duly demonstrated that it could let Roger have every corner and still power his way past down the following straight. With the rest of the American Sedan field closing in from behind, Roger made the decision to let the silver Pontiac Firebird of George Gustafson through, in the hopes that he could clear the road for both of us to get past the Cobra. Unfortunately for us, the summer heat and the Pontiac’s heavyweight chassis had done a number on its tyres, and the Pontiac struggled to get power down through corner exits. As Hasychak’s Cobra disappeared past the horizon, Roger let John Blanchard’s green Camaro through so he could let the A Sedan cars fight for a final spot on their podium. The race would end under yet another full course caution, as Bob Hasychak’s Factory Five Cobra spun off and became firmly entrenched in the mud outside of the Carousel. After all of the overtakes and retirements ahead, Roger brought the StudioVRM Honda Prelude home in 14th place overall and the top spot in the USTCC's Sportsman class. In-car video: Roger Maeda - #22 StudioVRM.Racing Honda Prelude Si VTEC Qualifying: N/A Race: 1st in Sportsman, 4th in USTCC, 14th Overall Fastest Lap: 1:26.089s “Mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, we ran a trouble-free Feature Race and had some great wheel-to-wheel battles with the muscle cars in the Big Bore group. On the other hand, we had to start from the back of the grid for the second weekend in a row and couldn't get through the field quickly enough to join the USTCC SuperTouring class cars up front. Thanks to the hard work of our crew (with a special thank-you to guest mechanic Glenn Halfpap) and help from our friends at On Q Racing, we still came home as the top finisher in Sportsman class. There will be lots to do for both car and driver before the next round.”

Photo by Bill Stoler Photography April 23, 2023 (Summit Point, W.V.) – An overall USTCC win in the Round 1 Feature Race was the last thing Roger Maeda expected after electrical problems put him out of qualifying and a post-Heat Race crash cracked the Prelude's front splitter. Yet, through the perseverance of his crew, an aggressive heat race performance on Saturday, and a determined drive on Sunday, the StudioVRM.Racing team crossed the finish line first in both the Sportsman Class as well as the entire USTCC grid. Qualifying Disaster struck moments before Qualifying as the StudioVRM Honda Prelude shut down on the grid mere minutes before the start of the session. A low voltage condition indicated that there was a problem with the new battery that the team installed the week before the race. The friendly Summit Point recovery crew towed the stricken Honda back to its paddock spot, and the team went to diagnose the issues in lieu of running qualifying laps. Saturday Heat Race Roger started the Saturday heat race in 33rd place on the grid with a new battery mounted in the Prelude’s engine bay. The StudioVRM Prelude’s new-for-2023 VTEC engine gave Roger the horsepower he needed to rapidly move up the field in pursuit of his fellow USTCC competitors. His upwards charge was paused when an ITS-classed Z car unfortunately caught fire, then was completely curtailed when the Honda’s H22 engine started losing power six laps into the race. The low voltage issue from the morning had returned with a vengeance, this time preventing the coil packs in his coil-on-plug converted engine from firing consistently. These worries were soon superseded by the sudden arrival of a thunderstorm, which flooded the track and brought the checkered flag out five laps early. Then to add further injury to injury, Roger drove through a huge puddle on his cool-down lap and threw the Prelude into the tire wall, damaging the splitter. Despite all of our mishaps and misfortunes, the StudioVRM Racing Team had overtaken 23 cars on the road and recorded a fast lap that was good enough to put them 5th on the grid for the Sunday Feature Race. Sunday Feature Race The team replaced the alternator, repaired the front splitter, and secured a broken battery terminal to make it to the grid before the start of the 20-lap Feature Race. From his position on grid, Roger could see the rear taillights of Coyote Black’s Super Touring classed Porsche Cayman S spurring him on to give chase. That cat and mouse game would sadly fail to materialize. The tiniest of mistakes during the out lap caused the black Cayman to spin nose-first into the tire barrier, ending Coyote’s hopes of a strong finish to the weekend. Seeing his compatriot’s race end on lap zero solidified Roger’s decision to switch to a finish-at-all-costs strategy for the Sunday race. He followed the top three cars until the #00 Nissan Z-car let the Honda through, then carefully tiptoed his way through the field of lapped cars so not to disturb their respective races. As he did, Andrew Conner’s #66 BMW 325i edged ever closer as he scythed through traffic to close in from the middle of the 33-car field. The red BMW came tantalizingly close to mounting an attack, which might have succeeded were it not for the timely arrival of a tight pack of ITB and B-Spec cars. Roger managed to pass the group on a short straight and managed to reopen the gap while Andrew was baulked by the lapped cars. To add one last twist to the tumultuous weekend, the Prelude’s left front outer CV joint failed at the exit of Turn 10. After coming this far, there was no way that the team was going to let this stop them. Roger slammed the throttle to the floor and willed the car across the line to take the top spot in Sportsman class as well as the entire USTCC field. Roger Maeda - #22 StudioVRM.Racing Honda Prelude Si Qualifying: No Time Race: 1st in Sportsman, 1st in USTCC, 3rd Overall “Determination. Sometimes, that’s what makes the difference. This race was a test of how determined we were to see that checkered flag. And thanks to our crew, our friends, fellow USTCC competitors, and technical partner Bad Guys Worldwide, we were able to triumph over this ordeal and emerge with smiles on our faces. In addition to a new trophy and a generous haul of prizes from ScanGauge, Cobra Suspension, and Plastex, we are coming home with a much better understanding of the new engine and setup. You can expect a lot more speed from us in the rounds to come.” Special Thanks Thank you to Ross Shull of the CMP Racing team, Andy Yoon, Martin Szwarc, and Chris Eng of the ProjectCRX Racing Team, and Cole Mulvey from Bad Guys Worldwide for helping us get our new engine installed and running in time for the 2023 season. And thank you to all of you who came out to watch - live, via livestream, or via Racehero. Especially Mike McLaughlin and his friend Mark, who brought their beautiful daughters out on the long trip out to Summit Point Motorsports Park to watch us race. I hope we put on a good show.

Banner photo by Billy Howell A few weeks ago, one of the most competitive Honda Prelude endurance racecars in North America quietly rode off into a long-awaited retirement. While this was a sad moment for many of us fellow enthusiasts, it did have one upside: It now means that we can share some of the other speed secrets that are rumored to have helped make the car so competitive. We can neither confirm nor deny whether these modifications actually saw any action in Champcar races. But we can say that these creative methods are well within the realm of what could be done to make a fast racecar even faster... Even if we wouldn't necessarily recommend them for your car. Extra Fuel Capacity, Smokey Style If you are a club racer in North America (or follow NASCAR in any capacity), you've probably heard of Smokey Yunick and his rule-bending escapades. Smokey was a master at exploiting the so-called "grey area" of the racing rulebook. One of his most famous tricks involved finding places to store extra fuel outside of the car's fuel tank so the car could run longer stints between pit stops. According to the latest rumors, the CMP Racing team had chosen to follow the spirit of Smokey Yunick instead of following the spirit of the rules. Because the CMP Racing Prelude has been rumored to carry an extra gallon or two of petrol in its fuel system despite using the stock Honda Prelude fuel tank. There were allegedly two parts to this trick. The first part is a well-known endurance racing hack. Pull off the fuel pump access cover, reach into the fuel tank, and bend the metal breather hose upwards so it touches the roof of the tank. This will prevent the fuel from splashing back up the fuel filler early and make it possible to fill the tank with an extra quart or so of fuel. The second is the real secret. The stock fuel filler on the 4th gen Honda Prelude is on the driver's left side of the car. This happens to be the opposite side from the pit wall at most North American tracks. If the team could move the fuel filler to the other side of the car, the pit crew wouldn't have to carry the heavy fuel cans as far during pit stops, resulting in faster fuel stops. All they needed to do was to extend the fuel filler neck to reach the other side of the car. So they did exactly that... using fuel-safe metal tubing that was several sizes larger than the stock fuel filler neck. By extending the fuel filler neck with extra-girthy tubing, they would have created a 3-foot-long space where they could tuck away an additional gallon+ of fuel. They also extended the fuel filler breather to ensure that the extra fuel wouldn't just spill out onto the track when the fuel was brimmed. With both parts of this trick in place, the CMP Racing Prelude would have gained an additional 10% of fuel capacity over a stock 4th gen Honda Prelude. That extra fuel capacity could then be used to run a more aggressive tune or to run longer stints between pit stops, at the team's discretion. There is no way to confirm whether this idea was actually implemented on the car, or if it ever raced in this configuration. But if true, the creative ingenuity that birthed this idea would no doubt have made the great Smokey Yunick proud. Rubber Springs (no, really) One of the unique quirks of budget-oriented endurance racing cars is that they usually do not have height-adjustable coilovers. This is because the rules discourage it, primarily as a cost-saving measure. It makes sense. After all, most dedicated race dampers are height adjustable. And if the rulemakers allowed them, it would open the door for competitors to buy or build some eye-wateringly expensive dampers. On the flip size, the need to use fixed height, non-adjustable dampers comes with an unfortunate side effect - You can't run off the shelf race springs. Race springs are made for standard diameters (typically 60mm / 2.25 in, 65mm / 2.5 in, and 70mm / 2.75 in for cars) and all of these are too small to fit the spring perches of most stock-fitment dampers. You could use off-the-shelf lowering springs, but the spring rates of those springs are often too soft to be useful in a race scenario. So what do you do? The CMP Racing crew had to be creative. They started by getting the cheapest set of eBay lowering springs that they could find. This was a performance-driven decision. Cheap eBay lowering springs are often wound to a super-stiff rate that is unsuitable for street use. Ironically, this makes them more suitable for race use than properly-designed lowering spring kits. After doing some on-track testing, they determined that even the most haphazardly designed eBay drop springs weren't stiff enough to get the best out of their tyres. Rumor is that they solved this problem by ordering up several sets of NASCAR bump stops, stacking them inside the damper, and experimenting to see which ones gave them the best combination of roll control and compliance. Believe it or not, this is a perfectly valid setup strategy that many OEM manufacturers use on their cars. The main suspension spring absorbs the hard hits until the car runs out of travel. Then the bump stops touch and makes the corner behave like a secondary spring with a progressively increasing spring rate. The advantage to using NASCAR bump stops is that the manufacturers publish the spring rates. That is, someone at the manufacturer put each of these bump stops on a spring tester, compressed them as they would a spring, and determined what the spring rates are. Some bump stops are progressive, others are linear. Others have a spring rate that ramps up like a bus hitting a brick wall. If you have the spring rate information for the stops, you can calculate what the spring rate of your finished assembly will be by doing a bit of math. It's a very clever way of running stiffer springs when you can't run stiffer springs. The downside? If you take it too far, the car will literally bounce off of kerbs. Case in point, take a look at this photo of the CMP Racing Prelude rocketing up VIR's uphill esses on two wheels: It's hard to say exactly what kind of suspension setup the CMP Racing team was racing with. But this photo does seem to indicate that there was some real bump-stop-related trickery at play. Seeking Astralogical Direction Contrary to what many racing enthusiasts believe, fast modern racecars have power steering. This is true for top formula cars as well as for the fastest production-based touring cars and prototypes. It's only club racers like yours truly who think manual steering conversions are a sensible thing to do. Part of this reason is that the power steering mechanisms on modern cars are both light and unintrusive. Unfortunately, this isn't really the case for cars from the 90's and early 2000s. For example, removing the power steering mechanism from a 4th gen Honda Prelude will remove upwards of 35 lbs of weight from the front end of the car. The weight savings is a real boon to the performance of the car. The downside is a noticeable increase in steering effort that makes aggressive steering corrections unnecessarily difficult. Being an endurance racing team, the CMP Racing crew needed to ensure that their car was as easy to drive as it was fast. Reliable sources say that they looked to the stars and found an inspiring way to strike that balance - Replacing the Prelude's 90's belt-driven hydraulic power steering system with an electric/hydraulic unit from an Opel Astra. Photo: Wikimedia Commons For those of you who may not be familiar with the car, the Opel Astra is a much-loved compact car currently manufactured by the German arm of the Stellantis family. It's a very popular car in Europe and was, for a very brief period of time, sold in the US under the Saturn brand. The EHPS pump out of the earlier generation Astra is a fantastic self-contained unit that is compatible with the hydraulic power steering rack of the Prelude. It's a great way to retain the power steering system in these cars while cutting down on weight and saving a bit of space inside the engine bay. Word on the street is that the CMP Racing Prelude used this exact system to keep its steering sharp and effortless throughout the entirety of a 100-minute stint on 245 width tyres. Based on the smooth handiwork on display in their in-car footage, we tend to agree - There is definitely something to the rumors. Serious ABS Work They say the brake pedal is the single hardest thing to operate in a racecar. From personal experience, this author can confirm that this is true. Dancing the car at the edge of threshold braking is an incredibly delicate process that is challenging for us on a good day. Never mind what it's like to do that when you're in the middle of a heated wheel to wheel battle, desperately trying to outbrake your closest competitor. Now imagine if you had to deal with that over the course of an 8 hour race. The mental strain would be enough to physically wear you out. Modern day ABS is a huge help in this regard. You do still need to have a certain level of skill to make the most of ABS-equipped brakes in a racing situation. However, they do offer a bit of a safety net in case you hit the middle pedal a little too hard, which takes a lot of stress off of the driver. Unfortunately, the stock program on the 4th gen Honda Prelude ABS computer is not very useful on track. The safety-focused ABS program in the 92-96 cars kick in too early and too aggressively for the system to be useful on a racetrack with super-sticky modern day track tyres. But the CMP Racing Prelude clearly has a working Honda ABS computer mounted in its passenger side footwell, and in-car footage showed them outbraking even the lightest cars in their class. So how did they do it? The rumor is that one of the more inquisitive members of the team discovered that the ABS computer from the DC2 Acura Integra Type R is a plug and play replacement for the 5th gen Prelude's standalone ABS computer. While this does involve swapping in the wiring and pump from a 1997-2001 Prelude, the more advanced programming of the newer DC2 ABS suits the characteristics of stiff suspension and sticky track tyres better than either of the OEM Prelude units. Once again, there is no way to prove that this setup was ever used in a race. But it would explain why the CMP Racing Prelude was able to stop so consistently well, regardless of which of their drivers was sitting behind the wheel. *Correction - The DC2 Acura Integra Type R ABS computer is a plug and play replacement for the 5th gen Prelude's ABS computer, not the 4th gen ABS computer. The Real Secret It takes a balanced combination of racing experience, engineering expertise, and a creative imagination to exploit the "grey area" of the rules as successfully as CMP Racing. But as often is the case, those qualities aren't enough on their own. The real secret is in their team members' ability to openly ask questions, no matter how strange or silly they may sound. Take a quick look through CMP Racing Driver-Owner Ross Shull's posts on the Honda Prelude Facebook Group and you can see exactly what we mean. And when you do, try to read between the lines and figure out what the crafty racer is really asking. Behind the bizarre photos and outrageous captions is a modern-day Smokey Yunick looking for a competitive advantage for his next race. Pay close attention, and you might learn something too. See you at the track.

In a previous video, we talked about what makes a racecar a racecar. But if you watched that video, you would know that turning your car into a racecar doesn't necessarily make it fast. So what is it that makes some racecars faster than others? If you asked class-winning ChampCar team owner Ross Shull, he would probably say something like "light weight." But then you would glance over at his team's 4th gen Honda Prelude racecar and wonder why it looks like this: Look past the bumps and scrapes on this Prelude's battle-scarred body, and you will start to see a myriad of performance-enhancing modifications that you won't find on slower cars in ChampCar's Class B field. The reason is simple: You can only remove so much weight and add so much power before you reach the limit of what's allowed in the rulebook. After that point, it's creative ingenuity that give the frontrunners their competitive edge over the backmarkers. Today, we'll take a closer look at the curious details that helped this car become such a dominant force in the competitive world of North American endurance racing. The Monster in Question Photo by AJ Allen Photography This MGD-liveried fire breather is CMP Racing's #253 Honda Prelude Si VTEC. And on paper, it doesn't seem like it would be one of the top dogs in ChampCar's competitive racing field. An internally stock H22 engine and a race weight of slightly under 2600 lbs seems downright modest given ChampCar's permissive rulebook. There are no exotic suspension components or expensive coilovers underpinning this car. It's even saddled by street legal, 200 treadwear tyres as mandated by the series. And yet, this car has the pace to run a 2:13 lap around VIR's full course - Faster than many similar SCCA and NASA classed cars that have the benefit of running sticky R-compound tyres, aftermarket cams, and expensive race-tuned suspension dampers. Let's take a look at some of the details that make this car so formidable on track, starting with those 200tw tyres. Maximizing Grip Although the current generation of 200tw street tyres are known to be extremely sticky, they are still a step behind the 40tw R-compounds that rule American club racing. Ross's solution was to make up for the lack of grip with tread width. The CMP Racing Prelude wears 245mm wide Nankang CR-1s, stretched across massive 10" wide, zero-offset Vision Sport Star II wheels. Of course, fitting wide tyres to the front end of a front wheel drive car is a tried and tested way of making FWD racecars fast. The real secret is in the wheels. Running a zero-offset wheel on the 4th gen Prelude has the effect of increasing the track width of the car by 110mm over the OEM +55mm offset wheels. This massive increase further improves the car's ability to grip the road while increasing stability under hard braking. The resulting increase in positive scrub radius also helps counteract the increased steering effort from running such wide tyres on the front end of the car. In stark contrast to the fronts, the rear end of this Honda is supported by a pair of slightly undersized set of 205/50R15 CR-1's. This is also by design. The narrow tread of width of the rears helps the rears to warm up more quickly, encourages the car to rotate better through slower corners, and keeps rolling resistance to a minimum down VIR's long straights. This unusual wheel and tyre combination gives the car the grip it needs to corner on par with R-compound shod club racing cars while running upwards of 8 hours on a single set of tyres. Brutally Efficient Aero ChampCar Endurance Racing rules stipulate that all wheels and tyres must be completely covered by bodywork as seen from above. While this is very important from a safety perspective, the real performance advantage comes from covering the wheels and tyres as seen from the front. The reason is simple: Spinning tyres generate tons of aerodynamic drag when exposed to the open airstream. In order to ensure that the extra-wide Nankangs wouldn't slow the Honda down the straights, Ross and his team built a new lower bumper out of the same heavy duty Sprint Car plastic that we use for air dams and side skirts. This wider lower fascia doubles as the front air dam and is also the mounting point for the radiator and brake cooling ducts. Because the ChampCar rules penalize the addition of any non-stock metal to the car's body, the CMP Racing crew had to be creative. They first cut the lower portion of the stock Prelude fenders and bent them outwards as far as they could. When that wasn't enough to cover the tops of the front wheels, Ross removed the OEM exhaust heat shields from the underside of the car and used them to create weld-on fender flares. Strips of universal exhaust hanger material recovered from the car's old exhaust system give added structure and rigidity to the car's widebody front end. The resulting structure is just wide enough to shield the rotating wheel / tyre assembly from the oncoming air. Those of us familiar with American club racing are used to seeing racecars without exterior wing mirrors. This isn't just because of all the bumping and rubbing that we do on track. It's mostly because the wing mirrors on a 90's production car account for anywhere between 7% to 15% of the drag generated by its entire body. Replacing the stock wing mirrors with smaller mirrors mounted inside the cabin makes a noticeable difference to both top speed and fuel mileage. And that can be decisive in a multi-hour endurance race. In addition to switching out the bulky factory Honda mirrors for small roll cage-mounted convex mirrors, Ross has taken the extra step of installing a triangular block plate that extends a few inches into the window opening. Those few extra square inches of clear plastic are enough to deflect the airstream past the open windows to further cut down on drag generated by the two-door Prelude's large window openings. At the rear end of the car sits a Nine Lives Racing wing, mounted to the chassis with endplate pylons. Even though there are many good options out there for affordable racing wings, Nine Lives Racing's wing profile still boasts one of the highest downforce-to-drag ratios of any of its competitors in the 70mph to 120 mph range. The endplate-integrated pylons are as functional as they are interesting to look at. This design is among the most efficient ways of mounting a rear wing on cars that allow for it. These small aerodynamic enhancements add up to a big difference at speed. The CMP Racing Prelude will hit 128 mph on VIR's long back straight while maintaining the fuel economy it needs to finish at the front at the end of an 8-hour endurance race. A Strategic Approach to Cooling Racecars generate a lot of heat. The longer they run, the hotter they get. And the CMP Racing Prelude is no exception. There are many ways to increase the cooling capacity of a racecar and most of these modifications come with some sort of penalty in performance, either in weight, complexity, or in aerodynamic drag. The challenge is in finding ways to achieve better cooling performance without hurting the car's performance on track. The CMP Racing team achieves this by pulling in cooling air from as few inlets as possible, ducting it to where it is needed most, and extracting that air as quickly as possible. Take, for example, the oversized cooling vent cut into the car's hood: This vent is absolutely gargantuan compared to what you see on most vented hoods. When viewed from above, it's the same size as the cooling inlet for the radiator. This is no coincidence. Placing a large vent like this directly behind the radiator encourages much of the hot air to exit the engine bay before it even reaches the engine block. The 1-inch-tall Gurney flap on the leading edge of the vent forces oncoming air to flow around the vent, creating a low-pressure area directly above the opening to pull air outwards. The overhang covering the engine's valve cover ensures consistent extraction, even at low speeds. All of these features work together to reduce the air pressure in the area directly behind the radiator, which in turn helps pull a larger volume of air through its fins without the need to cut bigger (read: drag-inducing) holes in the front bumper. As a result, this car needs nothing more than an OEM-replacement Prelude radiator to stay cool in the heat of battle. Ross and his team applied the same philosophy to solve their brake cooling problems. The bulky radius rod front suspension setup of the 4th and 5th gen Honda Preludes make it notoriously difficult to route brake ducts from the front bumper to the brake discs. The team sidestepped this problem by stopping the brake ducts ahead of the front wheels. This results in a brake cooling setup that feeds the entire wheel well with cool ambient air, albeit at a lower velocity than if the brake ducts went all the way to the front hubs. To compensate for this, Ross removed everything behind the front wheels to encourage the air to leave the wheel well as quickly as possible. This reduces the pressure inside the car's wheel wells and helps pull more air through the brake ducts, while simultaneously reducing the drag generated by the front wheels. Very clever. A Faster Cockpit With all of these creative mechanical modifications at play, it's easy to forget that it's the driver that makes a fast racecar go fast. And yes, it is possible to modify the cockpit of a racecar to make it easier for its driver to consistently punch out fast laps. Fortunately for the CMP Racing team's quartet of drivers, Ross hasn't forgotten that important detail. The dash and gauge arrangement of the CMP Racing Prelude offers the pinnacle of distraction-free driving. The factory dashboard has been removed to give the driver a completely unobstructed view of everything in front of them. The OEM gauges have been consolidated into a single tablet mounted in the middle of the car, out of the driver's line of sight. A hard-wired shift light in the driver's peripheral vision reminds them to shift at precisely 7800 rpm every time. The sole warning light is a blindingly bright center-mounted LED, which floods the cockpit in red light in the event of a catastrophic loss of oil pressure. All of the important buttons and switchgear are mounted on a single switch panel on the center console. The switches are spaced just far enough apart that they can be operated while wearing gloves. Indicator lights mounted directly above each switch illuminate when each switch is flipped on, and the fuses for each circuit are mounted directly below for easy troubleshooting. Below the center mounted switch panel is the factory shifter with two small but important modifications. The first is a budget-friendly short throw adapter to make it easier to make quick, precise shifts. The second is the removal of the rubber bushings that normally hold the shifter to the chassis. The latter improves the feel and feedback of the shifter, allowing an experienced driver to make faster, more precise shifts. This does have the side effect of decreasing the height of the shifter, hence the taller shift knob. A perforated plate of curved metal on the accelerator pedal makes it easy for the driver to roll their foot onto the throttle for precise heel & toe downshifts. The thin gauge of the metal and gentle curvature of the extension gives this throttle pedal better ergonomics than most aftermarket pedal covers. It's a brilliantly effective solution that is as popular with its drivers as it is aesthetically incongruent to the rest of the car. A pair of NASCAR brake fans keep the windshield fog-free in the rain and the driver's helmet sweat-free in the searing summer heat. Finally, a Chillout driver cooling system keeps the driver's body temperature in the sweet spot so they can perform at their best, lap after lap after lap. Its Last Bow It is the combination of all of these clever details that makes the CMP Racing Prelude such a dominant force at the racetrack. Despite its successes, however, the curtain is soon set to close on the #253's competitive racing career. Ross is planning to retire his phenomenally successful racecar at the end of the 2022 racing season. Its last race will be the VIR on the North 8+7 Enduro on December 2-4, 2022. While we are sad to see this paragon of creative ingenuity ride off into the sunset, we wish Ross and the CMP Racing team only the best at their upcoming season finale. If you happen to be at VIRginia International Raceway that weekend, make sure to stop by and wish the team a fast and trouble-free race. And make sure to check out the in-car live streams of their races on the CMP Racing Youtube channel here: Day 1 - CMP Racing VIR North 2022 Day 1 - December 3rd Day 2 - CMP Racing VIR North 2022 Day 2 - December 4th See you at the track.

Photos by Paul Hayden October 21st, 2022, MILLVILLE, New Jersey, USA - New Jersey-based racing teams ProjectCRX and StudioVRM joined forces to tackle the South Jersey SCCA 3x50 Endurance race, fulfilling an eight year old promise to the team's founding members with a top 5 finish in class at the classic South Jersey endurance race. StudioVRM.Racing's lead driver Roger Maeda took the wheel for the first part of the grueling 3-part enduro, handing over the reins to ProjectCRX.Racing's ace Martin Szwarc to close out the race. At 107 hp and 2250 lbs, the team knew the CRX would be one of the lightest and least powerful cars in the field. They therefore gambled on a strategy of running the entire race on one set of 100 treadwear Nankang AR-1 racing tyres. The treads on the hard compound Nankangs would prepare the team for the possibility of rain, while giving the car just enough grip to match the cornering speeds of the Miatas that dominated the E4 class. Although the track stayed dry, the strategy still paid off. Martin and Roger aggressively hustled the lightweight Honda from the bottom of the grid to a solid 4th place finish in the E4 class. When they crossed the finish line, the duo also achieved a long-standing goal for team ProjectCRX.Racing: Finish the classic South Jersey endurance race in the car that they built together over 8 years ago. Qualifying Qualifying: 8th in E4 Class, 16th Overall Qualifying proved to be the biggest challenge for the team. The sole qualifying session was only 30 minutes long, and it had been several seasons since Martin or Roger had driven the single-chicane layout of NJMP's Thunderbolt circuit. The team opted to sacrifice qualifying speed and dedicated their time to learning the track and car. This was particularly useful for Roger, who discovered that the extra cushions he put in the CRX's large Racequip full containment seat put him too close to the pedals to drive comfortably. 6 laps in, he hot swapped the car with Martin, who experimented with what gears yielded the fastest results through the Thunderbolt course's tighter turns. Their combined best lap of 1:44.135 placed them 8th in class and 16th out of 22 cars overall. 3x50 Endurance Race Race: 4th in E4 Class, 9th Overall Roger took full advantage of the car's small size and weight, slipping past several cars at the start and latching on to a group of Miatas that were stuck behind a Mustang FR500 in the faster E1 class. The Mustang would experience a sudden and unfortunate incident just 6 laps into the race, crashing tail first into the corrugated steel barriers under the bridge to the Thunderbolt paddock and spinning back on to the track in the path of an unfortunate Miata. This crash brought out an early red flag that halted the race for a full 30 minutes while course workers furiously cleared the track of debris. When the race resumed 30 minutes later, Roger found himself in a race-long dogfight with the other cars in class, punctuated by the short break between the first and second stints. A quick fuel stop and a quick drink of water later, Roger returned to the cockpit a second time to resume their battle. By the end of the second stint, he had brought the car up to 4th place in E4 and 10th overall. With a promising foundation set, Roger handed the car over to Martin, who has been the regular driver of the car for the past two seasons. Martin immediately got into his comfort zone, set his sights on the cars ahead, and muscled his way to 9th overall in his first three laps. While the cars around him started slowing down, Martin kept a steady pace to bring the car home a respectable 4th out of 13 cars in E4 class, and 9th overall. Their best lap of the race? A solid 1:41.829. Driver photo by Andrew Conner Martin Szwarc - Ace Driver#99 ProjectCRX Honda CRX Si "This race was a nearly perfect end to our '22 season. Qualifying could have gone better, but given that we were bedding pads and scrubbing in tires I'm happy with our position. The team worked hard to move from 16th to 9th place overall and we showed the car's potential. I'm looking forward to next year's improvements to the car. We're also still looking for a third driver so Roger doesn't have to work twice as hard." Roger Maeda - Starting Driver#99 ProjectCRX Honda CRX Si "What an amazing race. Normally our post-race debriefs are 2-hour long discussions about everything that went wrong and what could do better next time. Today, we debriefed by celebrating everything that went well. Then we sat in awkward silence because we ran out of things to talk about! I would like to thank all of the members of the ProjectCRX Racing Team for their combined work in building such a great car and for keeping the dream alive after all these years. And equally importantly, I would like to apologize again to Warren Sackman in the #77 Mazda Miata for inadvertently turning in on him through Thunderbolt's high speed turn 9. We will be back next year. And next time, we're coming for the podium." Special Thanks Special thanks to Paul Hayden, who helped outfit the car with a special livery, accompanied us to the track to support us at this special event, and took many of the fantastic photos that we featured in this race report. For more information on ProjectCRX, visit their team site at https://projectcrx.racing.

If you want a race-ready, fixed-caliper big brake kit for your classic Honda, you have three popular options: Install a Wilwood-based big brake kit from a manufacturer like FastBrakes Roll the dice with a fully custom kit from brands like KSport Custom build your own brackets around a performance-oriented racing caliper The annoying reality is that Option 1 would give you less than ideal performance unless you sprung for the 6-piston Wilwood DynaPros (or better). The 4-piston Dynalites are notorious for flexing, and there have been reports of the newer ones leaking from the bleeders. Option 2 is known to have hit and miss quality control. And Option 3 can be expensive if you can't do your own fabrication. As it turns out, there is an Option 4. Thanks to a small US-based shop called FatFour Customs, there is a way to get an affordable bolt-on fixed caliper big brake kit for less popular Honda cars like the Acura ILX, Honda CRV, Honda Accord, Acura TL and of course, the 4th and 5th gen Honda Prelude. Intrigued by this possibility, we took the plunge and ordered a kit for the StudioVRM Honda Prelude. What's in the Kit? The FatFour customs kit is, in essence, an integration of proven OEM parts. It uses a combination of the much-loved 4-piston fixed calipers from the 2005 Acura RL with the beefy 324mm diameter brake rotors from the 350Z, and a series of adapters to fit them on to the much-loved Honda of yesteryear. Because FatFour Customs makes applications for quite a few cars, you do need to select the components to fit your car. The shopping list for our 4th gen Honda Prelude included: A FatFour Customs Brake Caliper Bracket Aluminum Hubcentric Rings PowerStop Evolution Rotors redrilled for 4x114.3 New (or rebuilt) 2005 Acura RL calipers The hubcentric rings are an important component that is unique to our application. These small aluminum rings are necessary because the center bore of the 4th gen Prelude is just a few millimeters shy of the centers on the 350Z rotors. Without them, the rotor would not center properly, and could cause balance issues at higher speeds. The thickness of these hubcentric rings meant that we would not be able to run the 10mm spacers that we had been running on the front end of the Prelude. We compensated for this by making some alignment adjustments to help the car rotate. Alternatively, most machine shops would also be able to bore out the centers our wheel spacers for the outer diameter of the rings. We would also need brake pads that would fit our new calipers. Our pad of choice is, as usual, the Raybestos ST-45, custom cut by Porterfield Brakes. The total cost of the kit? Less than $950, including a set of Raybestos racing brake pads custom cut to fit our RL calipers. It's a solid deal when compared with the comparable FastBrakes kit, which comes with flexy Dynalite calipers and lack brake pads. The kit is also a total of 14lbs heavier than the stock Prelude Si VTEC brakes - A weight penalty that we are happy to pay if these brakes work as well as we hope. Watch that Brake Balance Upgrading to any big brake kit will inevitably affect the front-to-rear brake bias of your car. It's generally safe to assume that upgrading to a larger rotor with a larger width pad will move the brake bias further forward. The question is - by how much? Thankfully, the formula for calculating brake bias is well-known, and there are a number of calculators that you can use to get a good estimate of your brake bias. We happen to be fans of this one hosted by Track and Build. By taking a few measurements, we found that upgrading from the stock Honda Prelude Si VTEC's 11.1" front rotors and single piston calipers to the FatFour Customs Kit's 12.76" rotors and RL calipers moves the brake bias moving forward by 5%. This is a welcome change, as we need as much front brake bias as we can get to ensure that the front brakes lock before the rears under hard braking. If the front bias proved to be too much, we could dial it back using the Wilwood proportioning valve that we previously installed inline with our rear brakes. If you want to try the calculator yourself, here are the key figures for the FatFour Customs kit: Front Rotor diameter: 12.76 in Front piston 1 diameter: 1.690 in Front piston 2 diameter: 1.690 in Front pad width: 2.90 in Pro Tip: You can get the majority of these numbers for any car from RockAuto. The pad width can be found by looking up the FSMI pad shape code (e.g. D1091 for the 2005 Acura RL front brake pads). An Unusual Installation Process Every kit has its quirks. With the FatFour Customs kit, those quirks were in the installation process. The first thing we noticed is that the FatFour Customs bracket comes with US Standard ("SAE") rather than Metric hardware for attaching the RL calipers to their brackets. We suspect this is a cost-savings measure, as high-strength USS fasteners are available for much cheaper than their Metric equivalents in most of North America. While the cost savings are welcome, it is a bit annoying to see USS fasteners on a car that uses all-metric hardware. The silver lining is that the hardware is all common automotive sizes. 9/16" is a common size for spark plug sockets, while 13/16" is a common size for lug nut sockets. Most automotive enthusiasts will have sockets for these sizes in their toolbox already. Because the brackets are made of a lightweight aluminum alloy, you also need to torque the bolts carefully so you do not strip the threads. We recommend that you follow the manufacturer's installation instructions to the letter to ensure that you do not damage the brackets while tightening everything down. Another quirk of the installation process is that FatFour Customs recommends securing the big caliper to bracket bolts with high-temperature Loctite 243. This is a good solution for drivers with street driven cars. But racers tend to remove and replace their brake calipers quite often. We were concerned that repeatedly removing and reinstalling the Acura RL calipers would result in us accidentally stripping the threads at the track. Fortunately, FatFour Customs also sells a stud-and-nut kit to replace the big bolts that come with the kit. This will let us install and remove the caliper without unthreading anything from the aluminum caliper bracket. Upgrading to studs is easy with the use of a stud installation/removal tool. We would highly recommend that you spring for this on any track or race cars. We were also surprised at just how tightly the Acura RL calipers fit over the big beefy 350Z rotors. With the calipers perfectly centered, we had just over 1mm of clearance between the rotor and the caliper on either side of the rotor face. Just to make sure that things were perfect, we broke out the feeler gauges to measure the gap between the calipers and rotors on both sides. We would need to test to ensure that this wouldn't cause any clearance issues under hard cornering while on track. On-Track Performance We had an opportunity to test these brakes during our unexpectedly eventful USTCC East Series double header weekend at PittRace. The bad news was that our Prelude's engine expired during the pre-race test day. The good news was that we were able to put in enough laps to put our big brake kit to the test. And boy, were we surprised by the results. The first thing we noticed was just how much firmer the brake pedal felt under hard braking. 90's Hondas tend to have long, vague brake pedals owing to the internal construction of their Master Cylinders. We had worked hard to get a good consistent pedal feel from the Prelude's mushy stock VTEC brakes, and we thought we had a decent pedal. But FatFour Customs' kit brought the pedal feel in line with what you would expect from a modern production racecar. The tight clearances between the Acura calipers and the thick 350Z rotors was paying dividends. Happily, the clearance concerns proved to be a non-issue. Even after a full session of hard cornering around the notoriously tight PittRace North course, there were no signs that the brake rotors had contacted the calipers. This is notable because our Prelude runs on super-sticky Hankook F200 race slicks that happen to be particularly hard on wheel bearings. If these brakes worked on our setup, they will work just fine on cars with a DOT R-compound or high performance street tyre. Most importantly, the FatFour Customs brakes were consistent. With our stock Prelude Si VTEC brakes, we always expected a bit of front brake overheating (and fluid fade) after 10 laps of full-bore hard braking. Not so with these brakes. We were able to last the entire session without a hint of fade. We even managed to lock the front left brake going into the entry to the super-slow Turn 10, something that we hadn't experienced since we started running 245mm wide F200s on our Prelude. While we were not able to test their thermal capacity this time around, we are pretty confident that these rotors will have no problems shedding the heat from our 2550 lb Honda. We hope to test this out as soon as our Prelude receives its new engine. Conclusion & Recommendations The FatFour Customs big brake kit is a real diamond in the rough. Most OEM+ big brake kits tend to focus on show rather than go. This is the first kit that we have seen in some time that has the performance to back up its show-stopping looks. If there was anything that we could change about this kit, it would be to replace the 9/16" caliper to bracket bolts with the stud and nut setup from the upgrade kit. Yes, this does mean that you would need a specialty tool to properly torque the studs into the brackets. Even then, we think this is a worthwhile tradeoff for most performance enthusiasts. FatFour Customs' customer service proved to be excellent as well. When we mentioned that our brake calipers didn't seem to be sitting perfectly centered on the rotors on one side of our car (which we later discovered was due to a casting issue with our OEM spindles), they offered to send thin spacers to ensure that everything lined up. When he found out that we wanted to switch to the stud upgrade, he offered to send them to us at a substantial discount. While we ended up declining these discounts and bought the parts at full price, this level of customer service is commendable. Would we recommend this kit? Based on our experience so far, the answer is a resounding yes. The performance and convenience of this kit is just hard to beat at this price point. The only thing we could ask for is applications for more cars. Until that happens, we'll see you at the track. Disclosure section: StudioVRM and Roger Maeda are not affiliated with FatFour Customs, or any of the brands mentioned above. All parts were purchased at full price from each of our own pockets, and installation was performed at the cost of our own time. FatFour Customs was generous enough to offer a discount on the stud conversion kit as an existing customer of their kit. However, we enthusiastically declined this per our policy and paid full price for this as well. Any Amazon links embedded above are affiliate links, which means that we get a (very small) commission from them every time you buy a product through those links. We would appreciate it if you did exactly that. These parts are expensive, and we could really use the money.

A catastrophic engine failure saw Team StudioVRM.Racing bow out from the Pittsburgh International Rounds of the 2022 USTCC East Series before they had even started. The team's H23 powered Honda Prelude Si lost power coming out of the Pittsburgh International North Course's slow turn 10, and Driver-Owner Roger Maeda had to crawl the car back to the paddock with a cockpit full of smoke. Team Mechanic Martin Szwarc, the ever-helpful Coyote Black, and famed pro motorsport crew chief Jim Locke performed some trackside troubleshooting with borrowed tools, only to discover that cylinder 1 had no compression. A borescope inspection revealed that the ring lands on the piston in cylinder 1 had failed and chunks of piston had broken off. The damage was nothing short of catastrophic. With no spare engine and no means to change it before the start of the race, the team had to retire the car before racing had even begun. Roger Maeda - #22 StudioVRM Honda Prelude Si "It feels terrible to have to retire the car before the weekend has even started. We haven't even had the chance to get up to speed before the engine let go. The engine will go straight to Powertrain Wizard Robert Oliver for an inspection and teardown so we can figure out what to do next. The one silver lining was that we were able to give our new FatFour Customs Acura RL brake system a quick test, and confirmed that their stopping power is as strong as their show-stopping looks. That will give us something to look forward to once the Prelude is back up and running under its own power."