Seven years ago, I was sitting on a wooden picnic table in the paddock of Lime Rock Park, taking a written licensing test for my first race license. Chief instructor, old friend, and motorsport mentor Charlie Greenhaus had authored the test himself, condensing many years of experience the professional motorsport industry into thirteen questions to determine whether we actually understood what he was teaching us. I distinctly remember that the very last question was both the shortest and the hardest. It was just two words - "Why Race?" It's a great question. As strange as it might sound, the life of a racer isn't glamorous or all that enjoyable outside of the brief moments when you're actually driving. Racing requires a lot of preparation away from the track, so you end up spending most of your weeknights getting greasy and stressed out under your racecar in a garage. You skip nights out with friends and parties with colleagues because there's so much work that needs to be done before the next event. And when you don't have something that needs to get done, you're going to bed early. Like 9 PM early. Because racing, even at this level, is surprisingly physically involved and your mind and body need to be in the best possible condition for the next race. When the big day finally comes around, you set your alarm clock for 2:30 AM so you can wake up in time to tow your car to the track. The tow is long, boring, and dangerous. I've probably come closer to getting killed while going to and from racetracks than while driving on the tracks themselves. When you finally get to the track, you spend your entire early morning unpacking your gear onto a damp paddock in near-total darkness while freezing your bottom off. Daylight breaks and you quickly realize that race events themselves are loud, dirty, and Spartan. Spectators do show up to watch and I am always amazed that they do. The paddock is a generally inhospitable place characterized by scorching sunlight, swarms of mosquitos, terrible concession stand food, and a strict no alcohol policy. You have to bring your own seating and shade. World's worst sports arena as far as I'm concerned. And to top it all off, none of this makes any money. I have been fortunate enough to have the support of some generous sponsors over the years, but a single season worth of racing costs far more than what they could offer over an entire decade. In 2017 I earned a cash prize for my modest results in the Pro-IT Series. Within two hours of getting it, every penny of that prize money was invested back into the race team. Never mind contingencies. For every contingency dollar I've ever earned, I ended up spending an additional $1.50 with the vendor that gave me that money in the first place. So why do it at all? Why race when you could be doing something easier, cleaner, or cheaper? After thinking about it almost constantly since that fateful license test, I finally have an answer. I race because I want to entertain. It's a very simple answer that fits many of life's racing related questions. For example: Q: Why do people watch car racing? A: They find it entertaining. I want to help entertain them. Q: Why do sponsors pay to put their logos on racecars? A: Entertainment makes people happy, and happy people are more willing to spend money. I want to help my sponsors entertain future customers. Q: Why do drivers and crew spend so much of their hard-earned time and money to race, when they aren't even pros? A: Being part of the action gives them entertainment that they can't get anywhere else. Oh, and by "them" I mean "us." More importantly, it gives me a reason to strain every element of my very being to make every race an exciting battle to the finish line. I want to deliver an immensely entertaining experience to anyone and everyone who might be watching. That's why I'll run my race program seriously even if I'm not a pro race shop. I'll fight to put on a thrilling show regardless of whether I'm racing for 1st or 15th. I'll choose the events where my friends and business partners can hang out and enjoy themselves, even if it means I'm missing out on national championships or world famous venues. When the successes do come I'll wear a huge, idiotic grin and celebrate with the crowd like it's the biggest win of my career. And when things go wrong, I'll proudly display my battle scars alongside the trophies. If I'm successful, I'll have put smiles on the faces the people who were at the track that day. Maybe they'll come back to watch another race. Maybe they'll want to get more involved. Maybe they'll join the team. Every time I show up at a racetrack, I get the opportunity to entertain a huge number of people who are just like me. That's why I race. See you at the track.

I love racing simulators. When I moved into my first apartment with two of my closest college friends, we built our own simulator rig to supplement what little track time we could get in DE events. It was a hilariously crude rig, fashioned together from a Sparco Speed tube frame seat, a wooden coffee table, a sturdy 28" CRT TV and the original Logitech Driving Force Pro. The whole setup was a clunky mass of parts but we spent many a night in front of it working out setups and driving different types of cars in Gran Turismo 4 and Enthusia to hone our skills as much as we could. It was good training and it was cheap. An average HPDE weekend came with an end-to-end cost of $500+ while we could run the Playstation 3 as much as we wanted for an extra few pennies on the electric bill. My two roommates and I were convinced that this was the driver training tool of the future and it would be the only way that we could ever get good enough to compete with the fastest racers out there. Fast forward 12 years. As of last year I've built five generations of driver training simulators for my PC using at least ten different racing games. In the commercial realm, full-motion simulators have escaped from their traditional confines of the trade show floor and are now making their way into race shops and even some (rich) people's homes. They say that the current generation of full feedback simulators running iRacing or rFactor Pro are as close as you can get to actually driving a car on track. Having had the opportunity to try some of them myself, I can say that they are very, very good. But despite offering full floating cockpits and 3 degrees of freedom of seat-of-the-pants feedback, I still find myself passing on them in lieu of the latest version of my DIY driver training simulator. Unlike these high-dollar simulators, mine cost only $12 in hardware. The Hardware and Software So here's the hardware: It's a 65cm heavy duty Swiss ball. I sit on it. It has a bit of sand in it to keep it from rolling away while I'm focusing on driving. And here's the software: I wanted to post an actual CT scan of my brain, but I seem to have misplaced the one I took a few years ago*. This stock photo would have to do. Point is, my brain contains the software. Uh... What? You've probably figured out by now that my favorite driver training simulator is actually a dedicated place where I do mental imagery training. Yes, the tech-loving programmer would rather spend time in his own head rather than geeking out on the most advanced simulators money can buy. Ironic, maybe, but in many cases this works a lot better than even the best sim rigs. How does this even work? Mental imagery is an age-old training mechanism popularized by athletes in many sports, from tennis to basketball to cycling to swimming. The idea is that every time you come off the track after a clean set of laps or you set a new personal best lap time, you take some time to soak up the sensations that you felt while you were on track and burn them into your memory. Essentially, you're building a mental model of how your car behaves on a real racetrack. Then, when you're relaxed in a quiet space at home, you play back the sensation of driving on a track using the mental model that you programmed in your head and "drive" the track. By doing this over and over, you build get your body so attuned to the feeling of driving a car that you can trick your brain into thinking that you are actually driving on track even when you aren't. It's like having a portable driving simulator in your head for you to pull out any time you want. Pretty cool, right? Here's how you do it, in broad strokes: Step 1. Programming the Mental Model The hardest part about all of this is building a good mental model of a real car on a real racetrack. And the best way to do this is to actually go out and spend some time putting in quality laps at a regular non-competitive track day. Mount your smartphone to your windshield or bolt your action cam to your roll cage and spend the entire day putting in moderately fast, mistake-free laps. While you're in the car, spend extra care feeling the sensation of everything in the car while it's in motion. Look around and take in the scenery that's coming at you through the front windscreen. Concentrate on what vibrations and forces come through the steering wheel versus the pedals versus the seat. Take in the smell of burning rubber and the thunderous roar blasting out of the tailpipe when you mash the right pedal. When you get back into your space in the paddock, shut the car off and close your eyes. Try to recall the sensation of what you felt through your hands in feet, what you saw through the windows and the sounds you heard. It should be very easy since you just came off track. After the day is done, go to a quiet space in your home and try the same exercise again to see how many of those sights, sounds, smells and tactile feelings you can reproduce while you replay a lap in your mind. If you focused on the right things at the track day, you should be able to produce a vividly visual replay of how you gently guided the car through one or two corners. Maybe you'll recall the smell of the brakes under hard braking or the feel of the accelerator pedal as you feather the throttle through a fast right hander. Keep focusing and try to stay zoned into that mental image for as long as possible. When you feel like you can't keep a good steady image, stop. A day or two later, do the same exercise again - Find a quiet space in your home, close your eyes and try to remember what it's like to drive a clean line through the track you were at the other day. If you're having trouble recalling the feeling of the car, sit in your track car with the engine off and go through the motions with your hands and feet. If you're having trouble remembering how the track looked, go take a look at your in-car video from the track day. Can't seem to get into the zone? Put your helmet and gloves on. I'm not kidding. As gross as it sounds, the smell of weather-beaten helmet padding is often enough to get me into the right mental space for a productive mental simulation. On occasion, I will do my mental programming in the driver's seat of my race car while it's sitting in the garage. It probably looks like a bizarre spectacle to anyone who doesn't know what I'm doing. Fortunately the garage doesn't have too many windows. Make this a regular part of your routine. At first it will all feel a bit silly, but keep at it. Before long, you will have calibrated your mental image of the car to the point where you will be able to play back an entire lap of your local track in your head in real time. How do you know when you have a really accurate model? Take a stop watch and time yourself doing a clean lap of the track in your head. Then compare that time to an actual lap from you on track. If you can consistently get your metal lap to come within a second of your fastest laps on track, you have a pretty accurate mental model programmed into your head. Step 2. Putting your Mental Model to Good Use So now that you have an accurate mental image of how the car behaves, what do you do with it? My answer is: The same thing that you do on any driving simulator - Practice. For example, here's what I will often do during a mental playback session: First I'll visualize myself putting in clean, fast laps on NJMP Lightning or Summit Point Main. And when I say fast, I mean qualifying pace. I'll visualize myself pushing it right to the limit, kissing kerbs and taking the car to the brink of lockup, all without making a single mistake. During this process, I will actually move my hands and feet as if I was sitting in the car and recall the feedback from the steering wheel and the G-forces from the seat supports as I go through the tightest corners. I'll focus on putting in fast lap after fast lap, just like I would if I was actually behind the wheel in my race car. Your mental image may look a little grainy and a bit surreal, like watching film footage on an old projector. This is roughly how things look when I replay laps in my head. Fortunately, you get a lot more than just visual feedback when you do this exercise. Then I'll experiment a little, one corner at a time to see if there's any place where I could potentially find that additional bit of time. Maybe I'll try braking a bit later for turn 1 or take a slightly different line through the carousel. What's interesting is that when I visualize myself taking the turn later than I've ever actually taken it, the mental model in my head will adjust to give me an estimate of what would happen if I tried that in real life. Sometimes this means I get a mental image of me sliding off the track into the grass. When that happens, I immediately open my eyes and start the lap again in my head. After all, there's no point in visualizing a massive car crash. Sometimes I'll get the sensation that the car will grip through the extra-hard braking effort and I'll rocket out of the corner with two tenths shaved off my fast lap. When this happens, I take note of it and actually try it out during my next test day or practice session. I distinctly remember the first time this actually worked. I found a half second of time in the carousel at Summit Point doing nothing but trial and error simulations in my head. Imagine how good it felt to have discovered that much time in one corner without spending a single cent on 93 octane. It was a big confidence booster that put a huge grin on my face. Mental Imagery vs Driving Simulator - Pros and Cons Of course, every approach has its advantages and disadvantages, and mental imagery is no exception. The biggest pro of using mental imagery over a computerized simulation is that you get to simulate miniscule sensations that even the best full motion sim rigs can't produce. You can also practice the sensation of driving your car with its unique handling characteristics and behavioral quirks. It takes a lot of work to get a computerized simulation calibrated to behave anything like your individual car. While you can practice driving a Spec Miata in iRacing, you can't really practice driving your spec Miata in iRacing. That makes a big difference when translating your training to actual on-track improvement. The cons of using mental imagery is that your images won't work without prior programming. Want to practice driving an ARCA stocker around the Pocono Tri-Oval? You'll need some time in an actual ARCA stock car and a fair number of laps around Pocono before you can even start using mental imagery to train for it. Curious about a new setting change you've never attempted before? Unless you have an exceedingly accurate mental model around the mechanical setup of your car, it will be very difficult to accurately experiment with things like car setup changes with mental imagery alone. Conclusion and Recommendations Mental imagery is a powerful and convenient tool to help you train your track driving skills even when you can't get to a racetrack. Even though it doesn't require a lot of equipment, it's far from free - You need to invest a good deal of your time and effort to build up a mental model to do this and this means putting in real work to do it. While it can help simulate some what-if scenarios, it can't simulate a situation you've never been in before. If you're preparing for your first outing in a 800hp stock car, break out that Logitech steering wheel and start up iRacing. It's the better tool for that job. When it comes to finding lap time in my own car, I've found that the organic computer in my skull still does a better job than any computerized racing simulator that's available today. If you've never tried it before, I would recommend doing some research for yourself in a good sports psychology book. My personal favorite is the near-ubiquitous Speed Secrets 3: Inner Speed Secrets by Ross Bentley. He does the best job of covering mental programming in practical terms in a small number of pages. The best thing about doing all this mental imagery training? When I get bored, I'll use my mental model to just do some gentle laps around my favorite track from the comfort of my own home. Regardless of whether it makes me faster or not, the sensation of driving on a track it puts a smile on my face. And sometimes that's all I need to get through a tough day. *And no, I don't have a brain tumor. Thanks for thinking about me though.

It turns out that there is actually a Honda-recommended method for removing those Brake Rotors screws that everyone has trouble getting out. And for some odd reason, no one had it up, so I turned it into a how-to video: I figured this out while flipping through the Japanese-language version of the 95 Accord Factory Service Manual at a used book store in Yamaguchi. The brake rotor screws had a "#3" and torque values in N-m, which seemed unusual. Not in the least because the #3 didn't seem to correlate against anything on the page but because they normally don't specify torque values for cross-headed screws. It took me a long time to figure out "#3" meant "use a JIS B-1012 Cross-Head #3 screwdriver" and the torque value is there because they have torque wrenches with bit driver heads over there. Hopefully this helps if you still have these screws in your Honda. ~R PS: For those of you who are having trouble finding this screwdriver, here's a link to it on Amazon: Vessel 125943 908 P3x150 Impacta Screwdriver PPS: No, I don't work for Vessel and they don't sponsor me. In fact I paid $18 of my own money and waited 2 weeks shipping from Japan to get mine. Now you can get them off of Amazon for $14 with free shipping.

Through all of my years of racing and modifying the Prelude, there was one thing that I kept putting on the back burner: The installation of a Limited Slip Differential (LSD). The reasoning was very simple. Despite knowing how they work and reading many reputable articles in big name motoring magazines, I couldn't tell if installing an LSD would actually make my race car faster. So this off season, after finally clearing off everything else on my modification to-do list, I broke down, bought a WaveTrac Helical Limited Slip Differential, and used it to find out whether a LSD will actually make you faster. Why a WaveTrac? Despite all of the heated brand arguments littering the internet, pretty much any of name brand aftermarket LSDs will do what they advertise. Ask around the paddock at an SCCA race weekend and you will find cars equipped with everything from Quaifes to custom-built clutch packs to knockoff OBX diffs. I won't go into the details of different differential types work, since Engineering Explained does such a good job of it. What I will say is that the process of choosing the WaveTrac was nothing more than the simple process of elimination. There was no OEM LSD option for the H23 powered Prelude so junkyard diving for a viscous LSD wasn't an option I don't have the resources to rebuild differentials on a regular basis, so clutch pack LSDs were out Welded differentials have an unfortunate tendency to snap axles in the paddock and produce snap oversteer in the rain, so that came off the list That left helical differentials as the only practical option. Quaife, MFactory, and WaveTrac all manufacture aftermarket helical LSDs for the H-series Hondas. However, WaveTrac happened to have theirs on clearance. So, a few days and $595 later, I had a WaveTrac LSD shipped to my garage. While we're in there… Since changing the diff in a FWD transaxle is a fairly involved process, this is a good opportunity to do some other internal transmission work. When I ordered the WaveTrac diff, I also added the following items to the old virtual shopping cart: OEM-replacement synchro rebuild kit from Synchrotech - $550 OEM-replacement differential bearings from Synchrotech  - $100 Replacement friction dampers from Honda - $25 A big box of brake parts cleaner - $30 4 liters of Genuine Honda MTF - $40 I would also have put a Mfactory/Synchrotech 4.64 Final Drive in too, if my gearing wasn't already spot on for NJMP and Summit Point. Yes, it seems like an expensive list of optional parts, but how often do you get the opportunity to get into the guts of your transmission? I figured I may as well use the opportunity to freshen the worn out bits of the gearbox while it was all apart. The actual rebuilding of the transaxle was entrusted to my go-to powertrain expert, one Robert Oliver. So sorry, no pictures. I will say that Robert did a brilliant job of it and he did it for significantly less than what I thought it would cost. If you are interested in his services and are in the Mid-Atlantic area, drop me a line and I'd be happy to give you his contact info. Is it Faster? As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a million. While I dispute the mathematical accuracy of that assertion, I made a video anyway. This is this is a split-screen video comparison of two in-car shots videos around NJMP Lightning, one from when the car had an open differential and the other after the LSD was installed. I clocked the time it took to get through Turn 5 and let the stopwatch run through the bottom of the bridge. Here's what the GPS data showed: The LSD is worth almost a half second of time through Turn 5 alone. There's clearly an increase in exit speed as well, as I get another tenth of a second by the time the car reaches the entry to Turn 7. That's pretty good considering that's only one corner and we're only looking at time on the ideal racing line. While Turn 5 at NJMP may look unique, you won't have to look hard at your local track to find a turn where a LSD will work just as well. You know that one slow turn where you feel like you spend an eternity waiting to get back on the accelerator pedal? That's the corner where the LSD will give you the biggest time advantage. Does it change how the car drives? Installing a helical LSD doesn't change the behavior of the car very much. There was no less understeer and the car didn't magically pick up extra grip. I could drive the car in the same exact way on the same exact line as when the car had an open diff. The only differences I noticed were that: You don't need to back out of the throttle in the middle of low-speed corners The car tries to accelerate even if one of the drive wheels starts to lose traction The car is slightly more stable under hard braking and slightly more reluctant to turn in while the brakes are on It might feel a little disappointing knowing that a high-dollar modification like this makes so little difference in how the car feels. Of course, helical LSDs are designed to limit wheel slip when they need to and act like an open differential everywhere else. This is just the diff working as advertised. Is it worth it? If you are driving the ideal racing line in good track conditions, a helical limited slip differential won't make a huge difference in your driving. Sure you might be able to apply the throttle a little earlier through the carousel at Summit Point or be more aggressive with the Turn 1 kerbing on NJMP Lightning. But aside from shaving a bit of time off of one corner, adding a LSD won't transform the car the same way that stickier tyres or a good chassis setup will. If you spend most of your time running untimed track days or DE events, adding an aftermarket LSD probably isn't the best use of your hard-earned cash. Under wheel to wheel racing conditions, it's a completely different story. In a race, the expectation is that you will spend more time off of the ideal racing line than on it. Overtaking, defending, and going side-by-side with a competitor are all actions that force you to drive a less than ideal line so you can gain or retain a position. None of the cars in this shot are able to take the ideal racing line. Because of this, every one of these cars would benefit from a Limited Slip Differential. The main side effect of driving off the ideal racing line is that cornering speeds plummet. All of the sudden, high speed corners become medium speed corners and medium speed corners feel like hairpin turns. Sometimes you'll have to put a wheel on the grass to avoid car to car contact or to make sure that you can stay on the road for the next turn. It's times like this when you will want a limited slip differential in your car. Every time you get squeezed off of the ideal racing line, having an LSD gives you the option to apply a that little bit more throttle so you can get ahead of the competition. Conclusion and Recommendations A limited slip differential lets racers make the best of less than ideal conditions. They won't eliminate understeer or magically give you more grip. At some high speed tracks, they may not even help your lap time. But when you find yourself riding halfway up the tall kerb of a 2nd gear corner with your nearest competitor pulling his passenger front fender next to your driver's side window, a LSD is the best tool you have to keep him behind you by the end of the next straight. The downside is that it is costly and installation involves taking the transaxle apart in FWD and AWD cars. Because of this, my recommendation is that you make this one of the first or one of the last modifications that you make to your track car. And while you're in there, replace as many worn-out transmission parts as you can find in there.

A few weeks ago, an avid reader of this site sent me a gentle reminder that I never posted detail photos of the header and exhaust in my ITS Honda Prelude racecar. So in the hopes that it really is a case of better late than never, here are those missing photos, from the front to the back: Hytech 4-2-1 Header Here's a closer look at the Hytech 4-2-1 header. As you can see, the runners are nearly twice as large as on the stock exhaust manifold, merging once behind the radiator and travelling a ways around the oil pan to meet the second collector underneath the motor. The collector merges the exhaust into a 2.5" section of stainless steel pipe where the O2 sensor fits (roughly) into the stock location. Because of the size of the runners, Hytech chose not to segment the header with flanges, instead adding slip joints held together by these thin bolts that you see here. Surprisingly, these bolts seem to stay tighter than the flange bolts did on the DC Sports header I previously had. Generally speaking, HyTech really does a good job of making their headers pretty while keeping them durable. This header have been on the car for about 3 seasons and it still looks fantastic. Anti-Reversion / Expansion Chamber This is where things get a little less beautiful and a lot more practical. Instead of a catalytic converter, this car has a 22" long monster of a tube running through the center section of the car. This tube is an expansion chamber that my engine builder custom rolled for this car. This stainless steel monster is about the size of a muffler for an 18 wheeler, at 6" wide in the front and tapering down to a 5" diameter in the rear. The 2.5" diameter exhaust pipe extends into the mammoth expanse of the chamber, which makes it harder for hot exhaust air to be sucked back towards the engine. If you cut the chamber open lengthwise, it would look a bit like this: This chamber has three primary features and purposes: The increase in diameter slows down the airflow and gives the engine a better chance of pushing exhaust air out of the exhaust The section of pipe sticking into the chamber makes it harder for hot air to get sucked back into the engine The size and shape of the chamber gives it the same properties as a giant muffler, so it makes the car a lot quieter than it was The important thing is that it works. Adding this to the exhaust resulted in a big bump in power in the all-important 4000 rpm - 6000 rpm range. The change was so big we had to re-tune the ECU just to make sure that the car was taking advantage of the extra power. Just as importantly, the car became substantially quieter throughout the powerband. A huge plus because no one likes the deafening buzz of a loud Honda 4-cylinder engine. Muffler and Resonator I left the Borla resonator in the cat back pipe just to keep noise down to a minimum. This is your average corrugated core resonator and is frankly not as free-flowing as a better quality resonator . Removing it would probably give me 2-3 hp at the top end. But I like how quiet it is, so until I have the money for a good quality perforated core, that'll stay in place. This is the main exhaust muffler, a 17" Burns Stainless muffler. Burns Stainless mufflers are a model of simplicity. If you open it up, it's a perforated tube surrounded by fiberglass matting. Despite its seemingly basic construction, this muffler is substantially quieter than any other performance muffler I've seen so far. Despite its excellent noise attenuation characteristics, it doesn't sap as much power compared to similar aftermarket mufflers. I'm not entirely sure why this is. What I can say that this is $285 well spent. All Burns mufflers can be disassembled and repacked with fresh fiberglass. Repack mat kits cost around $30 each: A great deal considering that you normally have to replace the entire muffler when the packing material blows out. What's Next? Good question. I'm going to go take a look around the car and see what might be interesting for me to highlight for next time. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking maybe some of the ergonomic tweaks and items I added to the interior to make the car easier to drive. Any and all suggestions are welcome - leave them in the comments below or send them to my via the Contact page.

Every auto enthusiast starts their wrenching career spraying rusty bolts with WD-40. Then they quickly realize that WD-40 is woefully inadequate for breaking stuck fasteners and embark on a quest to find the ultimate rust breaker, spending hundreds of dollars trying out pressurized mystery oil of all sorts in the process. Everyone does this, yet no one seems to ever share what they discovered at the end of their long and arduous quest. So I figured today I'd share my short list of the most effective shop chemicals I've found in the last 15 or so years of experimentation. Here they are, by category: Best All-Round Lubricating Solvent: Sea Foam Deep Creep Made by: Sea Foam Sales Company Cost: $10 - $15 per 12oz. can Sea Foam Deep Creep is my favorite general purpose cleaner, solvent, and light lubricant. It helps loosen lightly stuck fasteners while removing nasty dirt and grime from metallic surfaces. It also works well in cleaning carbon deposits off of engine parts. Deep creep comes out as a very thick white fluid and leaves a very fine layer of lubricant even after it dries. I've found this lubricant does a great job of protecting shiny threaded surfaces, such as coilover threads, from dirt and rust. I also use it to clean off polyurethane suspension bushings since it's one of the few solvents I've tried that won't melt them over time. The Good Above-average cleaner, solvent and lubricant in a single can Relatively inert - Doesn't react with rubber, polyurethane, or plastics as much as other solvents Sprays upside down and sideways for use in tight spaces Relatively low-fume and inoffensive smell The Bad What few fumes come out of it are extremely bad for you Flammable. Keep away from open flames There are better penetrating lubricants for seized bolts Best Penetrating Lubricant: New Holland Iron Gard Penetrating Oil Made by: New Holland Cost: $6 per 12oz. can There are very few products out there that breaks seized bolts better than the classic mechanic's homemade special, a 50/50 mix of acetone and automatic transmission fluid delivered through a metal oiling can. Recently though, one of my closest friends dug this up from the parts of the internet inhabited by bored engineers. And after using it extensively for a few months, I now call New Holland Iron Gard my favorite penetrating lubricant. Obviously, the penetrating power is excellent. Based on some controlled experiments, I'd say it's better than any commercial penetrant I've ever used, and about as good at breaking frozen fasteners as 50/50 acetone/ATF or my old favorite, AeroKroil. Unlike the others, this stuff comes out in a thick, shaving cream like foam and sticks to whatever you spray it on. This means you can spray it from underneath, which is invaluable when working on cars. It also works in the searing heat as well as in sub-zero temperatures, where the others either separate or refuse to spray. The only downside is that, according to the warning labels, it's incredibly dangerous. The rumor from the sa.com forums is that it's a defattening agent, which means that it has the potential to suck all the oil out of your skin and turn you into a living mummy. Use with care. The Good Sprays in a foam, so you can get into tight spaces and on rusty bolts under the car Highly portable, sprays even in harsh environments and extreme hot or cold temperatures Rust breaking capabilities at least on par with Acetone/ATF Agricultural mechanics have nicknamed this stuff "Panther Piss." Anything with a nickname like that has to be good. The Bad Incredibly dangerous to your skin. Wear gloves. And long sleeves. Maybe a hazmat suit. Best Degreaser: SuperClean Foaming Aerosol Cleaner Made by: SuperClean Cost: $15 per 17oz. can SuperClean Foaming Aerosol Cleaner displaced my previous favorite degreaser when the local Advance Auto started stocking it last year. This aerosol cleaner is like a combination of the best qualities of three other very good household degreasers. It has the degreasing strength of Purple Power, an inoffensive odor like Simple Green, and a convenient foaming spray like Scrubbing Bubbles. The fact that I can spray it onto most surfaces without having to worry about diluting it adds to the convenience factor. The Good Excellent cleaning power in a convenient package Very little scrubbing involved Foam gets into crevices and tight spaces The Bad Don't let it dry completely or bad things will happen May react with polycarbonate. Don't use it on plastic lenses or they may cloud Best Metal Protector: Boeshield T-9 Made by: PMS Products Inc Cost: $18 - $20 per 12oz. can At one point I thought Amsoil MP was the metal protector to have. But after doing a fair bit of testing I discovered that Boeshield T-9 is a much better anti-corrosion spray. Apparently it was developed for Boeing back in the days when their planes weren't made out of composites. Compared to Iron Gard or even Sea Foam Deep Creep, it does not do a very good job of breaking stuck nuts or rusty bolts. However, it is an outstanding anti-corrosion spray and dry lubricant. Like the Deep Creep, Boeshield T-9 leaves a waxy film on everything you spray. However, the film that the Boeshield leaves is much thicker and stays on much longer. I've used it on the inside of the hitch on my tow vehicle, bolt heads on the underside of the Prelude, and the chain on my road bike. All three of those things have stayed rust-free for months despite being constantly exposed to moisture and road grime. I've also found that it's at least as good as WD-40 for drying things. I use it to clean the piston shafts on my Coats tyre changer and keep moisture out of my air tools. The Good Superb anti-corrosion properties Safe on plastics, rubber, polyurethane, and glass Very good dry lubricant, can replace lithium grease in some applications The Bad Not a great penetrating solvent VERY FLAMMABLE. Don't spray it on anything remotely hot Surprisingly difficult to find locally. Try the bike shop if you can't find it Best Heavy Duty Metal Cleaner: Easy-Off Heavy Duty Oven Cleaner Made by: Reckitt Benckiser Cost: $5 per 24oz. can No, this is not a joke. The best heavy duty metal cleaner available comes from the supermarket, not the auto parts store. Whenever I have a terribly greasy part or I need to get horrible road grime off of the underside of a car, I give it a nice thick coating of Easy-Off Oven Cleaner and wrap the area in plastic. Give it a few hours and it will dissolve even the nastiest caked-on tar from any metal surface. It works great on ceramic cooktops too, as I've also found. The downside is that it's extremely caustic and will also dissolve many things that aren't metal or ceramic. The fumes are also noxious and are probably as harmful to your respiratory system as any of the shop chemicals on this list. Unless you're trying to get the rubberized undercoating off of the bottom of your race car, don't use this oven cleaner on anything that isn't cold and non-porous. The Good By far the best solvent available for non-porous surfaces Foamy spray makes it easy to get good coverage Makes short work of rubberized undercoating The Bad Noxious fumes that are so bad I won't use it inside the house Reacts with almost everything; Melts plastics, rubber, and most adhesives Don't let it dry. Leaves white crust that's harder to get off than the grease it dissolves. Goes through nitrile gloves and is terrible for your skin Best Brake Parts Cleaner: Any Chlorinated Brake Cleaner Made by: Many reputable chemicals companies Cost: $3 - $5 per 20oz. can Yes, this one's a cop-out. It's hard to go wrong with almost any chlorinated Brake Cleaner. While known for being super toxic, emitting horrible fumes and eating plastics, the Chlorinated kind works wonders on crusty brake dust as well as black road tar. Don't mix chlorinated solvents with any other chemicals or use it in any environment in the presence of heat or pressurized gasses. Chlorinated brake cleaner combines with seemingly inert substances when heated and emits extremely toxic gasses. I'm sure you've all heard of this famous story of a welder inadvertently turning chlorinated brake cleaner into Phosgene gas. Use with care. The Good Removes nasty black tar without scrubbing or even wiping Self-drying. Just spray until you see metal and walk away The Bad Terrible for the environment. Put a catch pan under whatever you're spraying so it doesn't get into the ground Reacts with common shop gasses and chemicals. Wait until it dries before you apply any other chemicals or weld in the area Turns plastic brittle, degrades rubber Clouds polycarbonate lenses Noxious fumes. Use outside Best Non-Chlorinated Brake Parts Cleaner: 3M High Power Brake Cleaner Made by: 3M Corporation Costs: $10 per 14oz. can (significantly cheaper in bulk packs) Although there's little to compare between any decent Chlorinated Brake cleaner, there are huge differences between brands of the non-chlorinated variety. Many of them simply don't do a good job of cleaning anything. 3M High Power Brake Cleaner is on the short list of non-chlorinated brake parts cleaners that work almost as well as its chlorinated cousin. The "High Power" on the label refers to the force with which the solvent comes out of the can. This stuff sprays like it's been pressurized by a power washer. This means you can be further away from your target and still get the crud out of those tight cracks and crevices. I use this stuff to clean oil and road tar off of the Prelude's engine and transmission before each race weekend. Keeping the engine bay sparking clean helps find those odd oil leaks that inevitably spring when racing a production car. I buy it in boxes of 24 because I use so much of it. The Good Powerful spray helps clean spots that you can't reach Works just as well as chlorinated brake parts cleaner Dries reasonably quickly for a non-chlorinated solvent Better for the environment than the chlorinated kind The Bad Still not good for plastics or rubber Fumes are still pretty bad. Ventilate well or use outside. Expensive. Buy in bulk where possible Words of Advice So there's my short list of essential shop chemicals. Hopefully this will save you a bit of time and money when you're working on your 10 year old car for the first time or when you can't get your well-worn lawnmower apart for service. One last piece of advice before we wrap up. While you're waiting to check out at your local auto parts store or on your favorite internet shopping site, throw one of these into your shopping cart: Every one of the shop chemicals listed above is bad for your skin, nose, eyes, lungs, and pretty much every other part of you. Work in a well ventilated area, stay away from the fumes that this stuff emits, and always wear gloves when using shop chemicals. You'll live a lot longer when you do.

I hope you got a good laugh from my trial of errors in applying Elastiwrap. Don't worry, I don't mind. After a full day of drying time, the Prelude had a brand new look and was ready for the track. ElastiWrap has Weird Properties Before we get to my real-life durability testing, I'd like to talk a little more about some of the odd properties and behaviors of Elastiwrap. Automotive vinyl does not adhere to Elastiwrap (easily) Decals, car numbers, and bumper stickers do not seem to stick to the porous, rubbery surface of sprayed Elastiwrap. Even after aggressively pushing the stickers in place with a plastic squeegee, some of them still peeled off on their own. It seems the trick is to use the wet application method for applying decals: Spray down the surface with a mixture of water and dish soap before applying the stickers. Then squeegee the stickers in place, taking extra care to make sure that the edges and corners stay flat. Wait until it dries, then squeegee the stickers again to ensure that it has adhered correctly to the surface. Engine Oil reacts with ElastiWrap Elastiwrap is not chemically resistant by any means of the imagination. Motor oil, power steering fluid, and brake fluid discolors and permanently  softens Elastiwrap. I accidentally got some PennGrade 10w30 on one of the fenders, and now my hand turns green every time I touch the discolored spots. Though that's not the worst of it. Gasoline will dissolve it completely if left on for more than a few seconds. I've been told that applying automotive clear coat over the Elastiwrap will help prevent this from happening, so that will be a test for another day. It's a bit tough to clean When you clean Elastiwrap, you have to remember that it isn't an automotive finish. That means no power washer, no aggressive foam cleaning agents (they dissolve the finish), and definitely no car wax (it solidifies on the surface). Instead, treat it as if you were cleaning a tool handle or a rubber mat. Mild detergents, a firm spray of water, and use a sponge that won't disintegrate or leave lint. Like rubber mats, dirt does get embedded in Elastiwrap coated surfaces. My advice is to wash off any dirt with dish soap and water as soon as it gets on there. Wet Elastiwrap melts certain types of plastic (!) I discovered this when I was trying to dip tool handles into leftover Elastiwrap. I poured out Elastiwrap into a half dozen plastic 12oz Dixie cups and took a 5 minute bathroom break. When I came back, I found six plastic rims swimming in a huge Elastiwrap puddle. It seems that whatever solvent they use to keep Elastiwrap from solidifying also eats certain plastics. Mineral spirits will do this too, but it usually takes a lot longer than a few minutes for it to completely melt a cup. The lesson here is to avoid storing or mixing Elastiwrap in anything but a metal or paint-safe plastic container and to take extra precautions if you are planning to ElastiWrap any plastic-based items. If any of these behaviors pose a problem for you, my recommendation is that you consider using something other than Elastiwrap. If not, spray away. As it turns out, it's quite the tough finish. Durabilty Testing Our real-life durability testing for the newly wrapped Prelude was very straightforward: Enter the car in a SCCA Regional and see how the finish holds up. So off it went to the Thunderbolt circuit at NJ Motorsports Park for three sessions of hard driving in 100+ degree weather. The only modifications we made to the exterior were a set of new number plates, some updated SCCA decals, and some vinyl tape to temporarily cover up the 1s, as one of our competitors had already registered as #17. The number change would become permanent as we discovered that the airstream had lifted the vinyl tape off of the hood of the Prelude and took the 1 with it. Apparently, vinyl tape sticks to vinyl better than it does to Elastiwrap. Oops. I guess Team StudioVRM will be running as #7 for the rest of this season. The weekend itself was eventful, to say the least. A poor qualifying put Team StudioVRM towards the back of the ITS field for the Saturday Qualifying Race. An assertive outside overtake on Wes Czech in the #29 Czeckered Flag Racing RX-7 and the #89 s30-chassis 240z driven by Jacob King saw the Prelude claw back up the order, only to lose the advantage in a wild off-road excursion, leaving us with it all to do again. Then the entire race field discovered that our biggest opponent that day would be the weather. The oppressive heat started taking its toll on cars and drivers. We made up three positions in the last five laps of the race as drivers began to back off and retire as oil, coolant, tyres and drivers began to overheat. The joy was short lived, however, as a post-race inspection showed that the oil filler cap had gone missing. About 3/4 of a quart of oil had escaped the crankcase and the driver's side fender was now covered in Penn Grade 10w30. By the time we found it, it had already soaked its way into the Elastiwrap and permanently changed the color of the coating. Damn. The Sunday Feature Race would be even crazier. Hopes of a clean start from 5th on the grid were instantly dashed when an ITR S2000 barreled up the inside from last on the grid and split the ITS cars into turn 1. The driver of the S2000 must not have been as familiar with Thunderbolt as many of the rest of us. Instead of charging up the field to meet his fellow ITR competitors, he drove through most of the corners in the middle of the track as the entire midfield formed a huge train behind him. Relief would come with a sudden and dramatic slowdown at the beginning of the main straight when the driver missed a shift into 5th. Unfortunately for us this would happen just as we were getting in position to draft. When the S2000 slowed, our only options were to take to the bumpy grass alongside the main straight or drive into the trunk of the Honda convertible. So off to the grass we went, eventually completing a terrifying 85mph overtake through the dirt. Wes and Jacob took full advantage of this opportunity and I looked on helplessly as two iconic Japanese sports cars flew past. For the next ten minutes, the three of us (later joined by a Green NB Miata) would share a close battle for best-of-the-rest status, constantly swapping positions as each car showed its strengths. The FC RX7 is known as a powerhouse in ITS so Wes inched away from us through every straight. The S30 240Z, meanwhile, made good use of its powerful brakes and low chassis weight to challenge us under braking. The Miata made up for any loss of time through the straights by dominating the low-speed third sector while our 4th gen Prelude breezed through high speed corners with ease. As it so happens, things would come to a dramatic close. In a desperate attempt to fend off the RX7 on overheated tyres we ran high on rough kerning through the last turn before the straight. The resulting vibration knocked both front caliper pistons back into the calipers, so when it came time to slow down, there were no brakes. The third off of the weekend involved a high speed off-road venture through the gravel with the e-brake fully engaged. Although there was no mechanical damage to the car, the resulting spin and off took a huge chunk out of the right front tire. We had no choice but to pull in and retire from the race. It wasn't all bad. Wes, the eventual winner of our four-way fight, came over afterwards and we had a good laugh about the battles of the weekend. He was also kind enough to edit and post his in-car footage from Sunday: As far as durability tests go, I don't think I could have done much more than that. Rock chips, dust, sand, gravel, errant fluids and a light tap from behind through the Octopus made for as harsh an environment as I could throw at the ElastiWrap finish. The Conclusion: Elastiwrap is Tough The good news is that Elastiwrap is like automotive paint's burly hairy-chested big brother. Rocks, rubber bits, and other flying debris don't seem to leave any visible marks in the coating. With normal automotive paint, you would expect the paint to be chipped and pitted after just a few on-track sessions. Take a look at this close-up of the front bumper. This was what it looked like after those massive high-speed offs and bumper to bumper racing from the weekend: It also held up exceedingly well against heat. There's no peeling on or near the hood from engine heat. The tailpipe did come in contact with an Elastiwrap-coated section of the rear bumper and that did melt the Elastiwrap. However, based on the burn marks, it looks like the bumper melted before the Elastiwrap did. This certainly supports Eastwood's claims about Elastiwrap's heat-resistant capabilities. The bad news is that the coating also picked up a fair bit of dirt and it wasn't very easy to wash off. Standard automotive car wash didn't seem to do much of anything and the rubbery surface precluded the use of terry towels for drying. So I took the unusual route of spraying the car down, panel by panel, with 409 and using a garden hose to spray the dirt off. It also doesn't dry very quickly, so to speed up the process I used a leaf blower. Not kidding. It worked great. Any surfaces which contacted automotive fluids were permanently discolored and no amount of degreaser would change that. I also lost any decal that hadn't been applied using the wet application method. I'll know for next time. Verdict and Recommendations Having mixed, sprayed, experimented, and track-tested Elastiwrap, I can wholeheartedly recommend this temporary coating for your racecar. The key word here is temporary. While I love the look and the price, the rubbery finish picks up tons of dirt and is a bear to clean. Its tendency to absorb automotive chemicals also makes it all too easy to destroy. I suspect that I will be re-coating the car again after a year or two of hard running just because I'll have gotten it so dirty. That said, at ~$300 for four gallons of Elastiwrap, I afford to re-coat the car on a yearly basis. It's easy enough for a complete paint novice to do in a home garage. It's so easy to work with that I could make next year's more elaborate than the last at the cost of a few paper stencils. In fact, I think I will.

Yes, it's finally done. It took a few confused calls to Eastwood, several trips to Home Depot and a significant amount of trial and error, but the #7 StudioVRM.net Prelude finally has a new livery! In the process, I learned quite a bit about Elastiwrap how to adapt basic painting techniques to a rubberized coating. Here's what I have to share from my adventures in my experience with Elastiwrap. Buying Materials and Setting up a Booth I started my shopping spree by ordering the 3-gallon Elastiwrap kit from Eastwood, which had everything I needed. Instead of my order, I received a card saying that my order was backordered three weeks due to the product being out of stock. Blast. It turned out that Eastwood was having trouble getting the charcoal respirators that they included with the kit, and that was holding everything else up. Two calls to Eastwood's Customer Service later, they had replaced my original order with individual orders for the following: 2 gallons of Elastiwrap in Fastback Blue 1 gallon of Elastiwrap in Torqued Yellow 1 gallon of Elastiwrap Gloss Clear 1 can of surface prep aerosol 1 Turbine Paint Gun Being an independent racer without access to a professional paint shop, I also needed a place to spray without making a mess of the garage or letting dirt get into the coating while it dried. Fortunately, the overhead rails for the garage door provided the perfect place to build a makeshift paint booth, So it was off to Home Depot for: 5x 10' lengths of 1.5" PVC pipe 6x 12'x24' rolls of plastic sheeting of varying thicknesses (6 mil on the floor, 3 mil for the walls, 1 mil for the ceiling) 50' roll of masking paper Value pack of 3M Blue tape in 1" and 3" width A gallon of mineral spirits based paint thinner 5 paint mixing buckets 2 of these convenient paint pouring spouts A box of contractor-size garbage bags Zip ties 1 paint mixing paddle for a cordless drill A few key items weren't available locally, so the following came from Amazon: A pack of Furniture Grade (!) PVC 3-way elbows A 100 count pack of plastic razor blades I happened to have safety gear already, but if you don't have them, you will also want to get: Disposable coveralls with hood and boot covers A NIOSH P100 rated respirator (get one. they're cheap) Nitrile gloves Safety goggles Painter's rags A cordless drill The total bill came in under $425 in materials, which I thought was a pretty good deal. Setup of the paint booth came without much difficulty, mostly as fellow racer Cessna Eng helped me set up the PVC piping and tape up the vinyl walls of my makeshift paint booth. It isn't pretty, but it does a fine job of protecting the contents of the garage from being rubberized unintentionally. Masking and Surface Prep While I have years of experience doing sloppy masking jobs for half-baked touchups, I decided to do the job properly this time. I started by covering all of the smaller surfaces with a layer of blue tape, which was trimmed around the edges using my trusty plastic razor blades. The larger surfaces were outlined using 3" wide blue tape before being covered with a layer of masking paper and sealed with blue tape. In addition to covering the windows, I also masked the door openings and engine bay to keep the overspray out. I even went through the trouble of back-masking the trunk and using a folded layer of blue tape between the door seams for good measure (and at this point, just for fun). Finally, I covered the wheels using contractor garbage bags and put cardboard shields in front of the radiator to keep out any overspray. As it turns out, doing a good masking job doesn't take much time. And even if I didn't do a perfect job of masking everything, I wasn't too worried. Eastwood says that overspray can be trimmed and peeled easily, as long as you have a nice hard edge to peel from. If I accidentally sprayed over something that I didn't want wrapped, I could cut it with a plastic razor blade and peel it off. More importantly, I needed to make sure that the surface was prepared so the stuff would stick. This is where things start to deviate from the usual procedure for painting a car. According to Eastwood, the best way to prepare a surface for Elastiwrap is to make the surface as smooth as possible. This is because Elastiwrap is extremely sticky and will not peel off of a rough surface. Instead of scuffing the paint on the car like I normally would, I spent the next hour smoothing out big scratches and edges with 1000 grit sandpaper and using the aerosol surface prep to clean off any grease. Sidebar: The surface prep aerosol itself is a curious thing that probably warrants an article of its own. It seems to clean everything from track grime to leftover vinyl adhesive and leaves a waxy finish not unlike automotive wax. Just for kicks, I sprayed some on the hood and quickly buffed it with an electric buffer. If you want to see the results, scroll back up to the second photo of the car in the paint booth and look at the driver's side of the hood. I'm tempted to use it to polish a whole car just to see how it would look. Of course, being a heavily pitted and scratched up track car, I wasn't going to get a perfectly smooth finish everywhere (especially not in the passenger front fender, where all of those dents are). As far as I was concerned, this was just another opportunity to test Elastiwrap's oft-touted self-levelling properties. Coating, Not Painting. Definitely Not Painting. Onwards to the main event, spraying the coating! Safety gear check, ventilation fans on, electric Turbine gun assembled, reservoir loaded with my preferred shade of green (about 3 parts blue to 1 part yellow with a tablespoon of paint thinner) and it was time for a test spray on one of the front fenders. Within the first few moments, I realized just how different this stuff was from regular automotive paint. The coats came out super thick - about 2x what I would expect from regular automotive base coat from a spray can. It also had huge droplets dispersed them, which looked a bit odd. This seemed to be consistent with everything that I'd seen on YouTube, so I kept going until I had two coats on the entire car. Surprisingly, by the time I came back around, the coating on the front fender had already dried. Most of the droplets had levelled into the surface, but some of it had stayed intact, leaving a slightly rough-looking finish to the surface. Apparently I needed to use a lot more paint thinner to produce a smooth finish. Oops. Undeterred, I refilled the paint gun for a third coat (this time with a cup of paint thinner) and started spraying over this finish in the hopes that the additional coats would smooth out the bumpy surface. This time, the gun started spitting huge drops of paint along with its normal spray, leaving big splotches of coating on some of the body panels. Disassembling and cleaning of the tip of the gun didn't seem to make things any better. In fact, it seemed to be getting worse every time I pulled the trigger. At this point I was so confused that frustration wasn't even a factor. As it turned out, some of the Elastiwrap had dried inside the gun where I couldn't see it. Maybe it was another sign that I needed to use more paint thinner. Completely disassembling the gun and bathing the components in paint thinner solved that problem. Unfortunately the revelation came after I had made a huge mess on the car. From Disaster to Dino Skin At this point, I stared at the curiously textured surface and wondered what I should do. Would it make sense to peel it all off and start over, in the hopes that I could achieve a smooth glossy finish? Or should I continue on with thinner coats in the hopes that it would all level out? Though more importantly... Why does this texture make me feel happy? It took me a moment to realize that the sensation of happiness harked back to my days as a kid playing one of my first racing games, Super Mario Kart on the Super NES. At the time, my favorite character was Yoshi, the drift-happy green dinosaur. Yes, the rough, rubbery green surface I had just laid down reminded me of Yoshi! Silly, maybe, but I won a lot of races playing as Yoshi. Maybe, just maybe, some of that good mojo from my childhood would transfer to the adult racecar-driving me? With that serendipity justification in hand, I named my accidental creation "Dino Skin" and pressed onwards. Base and Clear With a clean gun and plenty of mineral spirits, coats three and four went on much more easily. Following the instructions on their site, I made the latter coats wetter and more even. Each coat took much longer to dry, but it was also self-levelling and covering up some of the bigger splotches I created earlier. Happily, the last two base coats also seemed to fill in some of the chips and pock marks in the surface, making the dents in the passenger front fender much less noticeable than before. Eastwood says that you should apply a minimum of four coats to make a peel-able coating, so I stopped to take a break and test that statement. I cut a small sample of dried material off of the masking paper on the windshield and hand-tested it for peel-ability and strength. I don't really have the tools to measure the thickness of my sample, but considering how easily that peeled off of paper and how sturdy it felt I have no problem believing that this would peel easily off of a car. The material feels rubbery and elastic to the touch, not unlike those adhesive-backed rubber mats they sell at the hardware store. If nothing else, this gave me a bit of hope that this would stand up to the rigors of track use. That said, I had plenty of Elastiwrap left, so on went coats five, six, and seven. I was expecting to use up all of the Fastback Blue, but after the eighth coat I couldn't see any reason to apply any more color to the car. So it was onto the clear... and the arduous task of clearing the Turbine gun of its green hue. Cleaning the Turbine gun and preparing it for gloss was a nightmare and a half. No matter how much paint thinner I ran through the it, the gun always pushed out green tinted fluid. Discarding the thin, Elastiwrap-soaked foam gasket between the paint reservoir and the gun seemed to help. After an hour or so of scrubbing and soaking, I loaded the gun with a quart of clear and moved to applying the clear. This might be a good time to remind everyone that Eastwood sells two different types of clear Elastiwrap: A matte and a gloss. The sample photos make the matte look very subdued and mature, like the kind of finish a design-savvy technophile would order for their laptop screen. In contrast, the gloss seemed to give off a garish shine like a bowling ball that's been left in the polisher too long. As you already know, I went with the gloss. The reason is that I needed the car to be distinctive and many club racers finish their cars with a matte finishing coat. Most racers apply a very thin layer of clearcoat, while some of them skip the clear entirely. I don't blame them one bit. Racecars tend to get scratched up from track debris and touch-up paint repair is easier when you don't have to make a shiny gloss coat look perfect from panel to panel. A matte finish tends to hide small flaws better, making it the clear choice. My hypothesis was that by using the gloss, it would help the car stand out and that the rubberized coating would resist scratching and chipping better than normal paint. So on went two wet coats of gloss clear on top of the base coat. The clear went on just as thick as the base coat and quickly developed into a nice shiny surface on the green Dino Skin. While I can't say whether the car stands out, I can definitely say that it looks very unique under a bright light. The combination of clear gloss and Dino Skin texture makes every coated surface sparkle as you pass over the car. This was not what I was expecting at all, and I'm not 100% sure that I could reproduce this if I tried. As I carefully removed the masking tape, I couldn't help but smile about my budget racecar livery. But Does it Work? Of course, I know as well as most that beauty, however fortuitously obtained, is only skin deep. The real test is whether the Elastiwrap coating is durable enough to withstand the day to day rigors of daily racecar use. Look for the details in Part 2 of "Painting" a Racecar with ElastiWrap.

If you've ever looked at anything that I own, you would know that I value function over form - So much so that my most prized possessions often appear to become the unfortunate victims of blatant neglect. As it turns out, even I have my limits. The 22-year-old factory paint on the Prelude has gotten to the point where even I can't stand its faded paint and its many body panels being a slightly different color from the next. It's time to give the Prelude a fresh new livery. After a bit of research on various budget-friendly paint options, I've decided to do a full-chassis respray using an Eastwood product called Elastiwrap. Elastiwrap is unusual in that it technically isn't a paint. It's a sprayable semi-permanent rubber coating designed with long-term UV exposure and high heat in mind. Eastwood is marketing it as a removable vinyl alternative for people who are looking to quickly change the color of their street cars. While the coating is self-levelling, it has a much rougher matte finish than standard automotive paints. They do make a glossy clear coat to put over a few layers of Elastiwrap base coat, which seems to give painted surfaces the look of a plastic toy. All of these attributes make this the perfect material for a racecar livery. Not only is it cheap, fast and durable, the finished product has a distinctive look that would instantly set it apart from other cars. When it comes to racecars, distinctive is good. Case in point, the old Takata Dome sponsored JGTC NSX, which every Honda fan remembers despite it looking like a gummy frog from an airport candy shoppe. With that, I've just placed an order for three gallons of Elastiwrap base coat, surface prep and Eastwood's electric Turbine spray gun (which I'm also very eager to try out). If all goes well, I'll be up and making a mess in the garage in a week or so. Check back in a bit to read all about it here.

Now that we are done assembling and fiddling with the Tenhulzen 4-Wheel Alignment System, it's time to put it to good use. Our testbed is a '90 Honda CRX Si prepared for endurance racing by the team at ProjectCRX.com. This particular CRX has had a colorful history of racing-related abuse, including being thrashed to a class victory in its first ever race before being rolled onto its roof on the very next day. We are giving this CRX a fresh new alignment to prepare it for another season of rough and tumble racing. Because alignments require mind-numbing precision and frequent double-checking of numbers Martin Szwarc, regular driver of ProjectCRX, is helping me with this task. The Order of Operations Due to the nature of how suspension systems work in production cars, there is a standard order of operations for aligning race cars: Tire Pressures Ride Height Corner Weights Caster Camber Toe The ride height and corner weights had already been set, so we skipped right to the caster and camber. Measuring Caster Traditionally, measuring caster involves a somewhat complex procedure that involves turning plates and a camber gauge. The Tenhulzen gauge shortcuts this a bit with some 20-degree angles built into the sides of the gauge. All you do is attach the gauge to the wheel and turn the steering wheel until the angled cut is parallel to the bodywork of the car. Turn the digital gauge on and hold the zero button down until it reads 0.00. Then turn the wheel until the angled cut on the other side is parallel with the side of the car. Multiply whatever it says on the gauge by 2 to get the caster angle. The procedure is pretty straightforward, and I was relieved to see the caster angles on the left and right front wheels come within 0.1 degrees of each other. This was an indicator that nothing was bent and that I wouldn't have to touch the caster. Adjusting Camber Camber adjustment is very straightforward with the Tenhulzen gauge. Place the magnetic angle finder on the ground to zero it, then place it on the little L-bracket on the gauge. Then stick the gauge on the wheel and read the number that shows up. Surprisingly, Martin and I had a lot of trouble getting the numbers to show up consistently at first. We just couldn't get the fingers to grasp the wheel consistently. It turns out the reason for this is that the slits that make the gauge adjustable are cut slightly too wide, which lets the short arm shift so that it isn't quite perpendicular to the long arm. If the two arms of the camber gauge aren't perpendicular to each other, the fingers can't grasp the wheel properly and the gauge reads incorrectly. Martin also found that he could bend the gauge with relative ease and force the fingers into the tyre to throw the readings off even further. Although this probably has to do something with the fact that Martin weighs 200 lbs and is mostly made of muscle, there is something to be said about the relative flimsiness of the gauge compared to some of the other camber gauges I've used in the past. Nonetheless, through practice and patience we persevered to get the CRX to -2.65 degrees Front and -3.5 degrees Rear that we wanted out of the car. Setting Toe Finally, we set up the strings and rack so that we could get an accurate 4-wheel toe measurement on the car. The procedure is straightforward but requires some care. First, we adjusted the width of the rack so that the inner rivets on the horizontal sections were slightly wider than the car, and made sure that both front and rear frames were the exact same width. Then we pulled the strings out and hooked them onto the frame so they sat slightly higher than the centers of the wheels. Then came the most tedious part - squaring the strings. In order to get an accurate toe measurement on the car, the strings need to be perfectly parallel to the true centerline of the car. With the Tenhulzen system (as with most string-based alignment systems), this is achieved by moving the front and rear frames so that the distance between the center of the hub and the string is the same across the left and right sides of the car. Here's a diagram that helps illustrate what needs to be done: The funny looking box in the center is the car, the black rectangles are the wheels and the blue lines are the strings. If you move the rack side to side so that the two distances marked "A" are exactly the same and the two distances marked "B" are exactly the same, the strings will be perfectly parallel against the true centerline of the car. This took quite a bit of time to achieve, not in the least because I kept snagging the corners of the frames with my pants. But once we got it, measuring the toe was a very straightforward process. All we needed to do was to fold out the rulers on the sides of the gauge and get the difference between the measurements. If the front ruler shows a larger measurement than the rear, the wheel has toe-in. If the rear ruler shows a larger measurement than the front, the wheel has toe-out. One neat feature of the gauge is that if you adjust the two rulers so that they sit all the way on the outside of the gauge, you can measure the toe in degrees. Just read the metric side and remember that 1mm = 0.1 degrees. I usually have to do a bit of trigonometry to get the actual degree measurement, so this is a real time-saver for me. Getting the toe right took quite a bit of time, as I kept having to reposition the frames every time I raised and lowered the car. But because we could measure the toe of each wheel individually, we could adjust all four wheels at once and skip a lot of the guessing and checking. More importantly, the ability to measure against the true centerline of the car meant that, once we were done, the thrust angle of the car would be 0 and the steering wheel would point dead straight. Getting this right without doing dozens of test drives ultimately ended up saving a lot of time and frustration. Is it Accurate? Of course, all of this would be meaningless if the gauge wasn't accurate, so we took the time to check each measurement against my tried and true Joe's Racing bubble camber gauge and Longacre Quickset Toe gauge. Initial comparisons had us worried, as we saw a huge discrepancy in the camber figures between the Tenhulzen gauge and the Joe's Racing gauge. The cause of this discrepancy turned out to be a combination of the gauge sliding about and our inability to get the fingers to grasp the wheel rim consistently. Practice makes perfect, as they say. After a few tries we had both gauges reading within 0.1 degrees of each other. The toe gauge and rack were spot-on. Both the Quickset toe gauge and my Longacre toe plates showed the exact same combined-toe measurements as the Tenhulzen rack. Toe adjustments on individual wheels showed up exactly the same way on the Tenhulzen rack as it did on my other toe gauges as well. Caster was dead-on with my bubble gauge as well. Though the actual measurement process was decidedly easier using the Tenhulzen gauge due to its fingers and re-zeroable digital angle finder. Is it User Friendly? Yes and no. During our alignment session, we found a wealth of time-saving features cleverly engineered into the system. At the same time the flimsy aluminum construction of the gauge and rack led to a litany of do-overs before we had accurate measurements on all four wheels. The rim-grasping fingers, while brilliant, also take some getting used to with certain wheel-tyre combinations. All in all, the Tenhulzen 4-wheel alignment system requires quite a bit more finesse than your usual set of toe plates or bubble-level camber gauge. Final Thoughts and Recommendations The Tenhulzen 4-wheel alignment system is a cleverly engineered tool whose brilliance is tarnished ever so slightly by its flexible aluminum construction. The intricate details that were put into both the frame and the handheld camber/caster/toe gauge take away many of the annoyances of doing alignments. The use of fingers to attach the gauge to the wheel is simply, a stroke of genius. Unfortunately, I can also see a lot of people accidentally bending the gauge as they take their measurements, inadvertently throwing their measurements way off. That said, I believe that the value for money is excellent. I don't know of any other system that comes close to delivering this level of functionality for $500. Sure, you could probably DIY your own string alignment rack and even make your own copy of the very clever camber/caster/toe gauge (little known secret - the fingers are available as off the shelf parts made by SPC). But for that price I would rather buy the whole system than trying to reproduce the meticulous engineering detail designed into the Tenhulzen kit. Overall, I would recommend this system to anyone who has previously owned or used a toe gauge and/or camber/caster gauge. If you have some sort of prior experience with alignment tools, you would probably be able to tell if something looked odd or if you were doing something to accidentally throw your measurements off. If Tenhulzen were to re-engineer this kit using thick aluminum or steel plate like my Longacre alignment tools, I would probably revise this recommendation to include absolute beginners. As for me, I plan to make this system a staple in the garage for use with both our race cars and street cars. See you at the track. Disclosure section: StudioVRM is not affiliated with or sponsored by Tenhulzen. All products were purchased at full price from Roger's own pocket.

The Engine This is probably the question that you've all been waiting to have answered. What does the engine bay of a Honda Prelude racecar look like? Well, this is what you see when you open the hood on my car. Those of you who are familiar with Honda engines have probably immediately realized that this isn't a hybrid motor or even a VTEC-equipped H22. It's actually a run-of-the-mill H23A non-VTEC motor from the USDM 4th gen Prelude Si. Yes, the H23 has a lot less power out of the box than the H22. And there's no doubting the power potential of a H22, especially when you are free to tune the ECU as you are in SCCA Improved Touring. Yet there are quite a few reasons to choose the lower output H23 over the h22 for a racecar: 1. Overall Car Performance The main reason is, susrprisingly, performance. Although Improved Touring isn't a power to weight restricted class, the minimum weights and performance allowances are set using a formula which takes into account the stock power of the engine, drivetrain layout (FWD vs RWD) and suspension layout. Since many cars in Improved Touring S are capable of producing upwards of 200hp at the crank, the H23 powered 4th gen Prelude gets a generous minimum weight of just 2555 lbs with driver. While the H22A powered Prelude VTEC is fairly nippy at 2850 lbs, the H23A powered Si is a rocket that stops, turns and goes with the best of them. It also helps that the H23A is actually very responsive to the engine modifications allowed in Improved Touring. 2. Cost Cost is always a factor and of course, the H23A is the cheaper option all around. Not only is the motor plentiful in healthy, low-mileage condition, everything from headwork to internal work is cheaper and easier. Even the transmissions are easy finds. The transmission that's in the car now is a $100 unit from an ordinary salvage yard in Newark. 3. Drivability Unless you have been following all of the drama around the new hybrid motors they introduced in the 2015 Formula 1 season, you probably haven't heard this term before. Drivability is a generic term that racers use to describe the manner in which a car outputs its power. Generally speaking, a car with good drivability characteristics delivers more power as you rev it higher and gives you the feeling that applying a sudden increase of throttle will give you an instant response from the engine. A big displacement V6 or V8, like what you'll find in a new Acura TL or a Chevrolet Corvette will have excellent drivability. Conversely, a car with poor drivability is one that has the driver guessing how much power he'll get when he floors the throttle. Laggy four cylinder turbo motors and the VVTL-I equipped Toyota 2ZZ-GE in the 7th gen Toyota Celica are examples of motors with poor drivability. Drivability is critical in wheel to wheel racing, simply because there's so much that you have to worry about when you are racing alongside other cars at high speed. If I'm fighting for position through a 90-mph sweeper, the last thing I want to worry about is whether I'm going to get a sudden, unexpected kick of power when I open the throttle at the exit. The big displacement and mild cams in the H23A take all those worries away. The motor comes with excellent drivability from the factory and it's very, very difficult to ruin it. So how do you build a race-ready H23A? Let's start backwards, from the outside in. The Bolt-Ons Improved Touring is a very easy class for the budget-minded tuner to work within. You are allowed to change the intake, header, exhaust, catalytic converter and change consumables like spark plugs and the air filter. There's definite value to doing each component separately, but the modifications work best when you do them all together. Cold Air Intake The Improved Touring rules require that the engine air intake pull its air from the stock location. The rules were worded that way to prevent builders from designing odd-looking ram air setups that pull from outside the engine bay. Fortunately, the stock air intake goes to the inside of the front passenger side wheel well. The popular AEM long tube Cold Air Intake is both legal and effective, so that's what I've kept on my car (kept, because the car came with it when I bought it as a street car). In order to give it as much fresh air as possible, I cut away the plastic fender liner on the passenger side wheel well. If you look through the lower foglight hole in the front bumper, you can now see the air filter. It's not quite ram air, but it's as close as I can reasonably get within the ruleset. In order to keep the heat of the engine bay from affecting intake temperatures, I've also taped parts of the header with aluminized fiberglass insulation wrap. Underhood temps in the H23A tend to run extremely high, so this makes a difference over longer races. That being said, there may be even more power to be gained here. Jeff at Evans Tuning once told me that the cheapest way to get power out of 4 cylinder non-VTEC motors from this era is to run as long an intake tube as possible. Robert Oliver, formerly owner and proprietor of North End Performance (now turned my current go-to engine expert), tested that exact theory for me by varying the length of the intake on my car. Take a look at these results: The blue line shows the power vs RPM with the AEM intake. The red line is the same run under the same conditions using a short ram intake with an overall length of about 12" (including the filter). Both runs were done with the hood open to limit the variance from the heat coming from under the hood. If you're having trouble reading the tiny text, click on the dyno graph to see the whole thing in a higher resolution. Under identical conditions with the same air filter, adding 24" of piping to the intake length causes a noticable power difference between 3500 RPM and 4500 RPM. WinPEP 7 (the dyno display software that comes with DynoJet dynos) shows a difference of between 6.5 hp and 7.2 hp between 4100 RPM and 4400 RPM. This might not sound like much, but low RPM torque is vital in a road racing car. This is exactly where the tachometer is when I come out of a slow 3rd gear corner like turn 1 at Summit Point or turn 1 at NJMP lightning. 7 hp at the front wheels is the difference between me having to fight for space alongside RX7s and 240Zs versus being able to get ahead of them coming out of the first corner. My engine experts are both giving me very strong indications that if it were possible to fit an intake tube with another 8 to 12 inches of length over the AEM and fit it into the space available, that I could earn an even bigger boost in the midrange. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out how to stuff 4 feet of piping under the hood of the Prelude without adding some seriously flow-restrictive bends. If anyone has any ideas on how to achieve this, give me a shout. I would love to hear your ideas. Header There's a surprising amount of power to be found in attaching a well-designed, equal-length exhaust header to the H23A. Unfortunately, almost all of the bolt-on header out there barely make a difference in the overall power output of the non-VTEC motor. After trying every option from generic eBay to the ubiquitous DC Sports 4-1, I finally broke down and spent the $1250 to have a header built by Hytech Exhaust in Irvine, California. Boy, was it worth it. even from my terrible photos, you can tell that it's a completely different design from every other header on the market. The huge pipes coming out of the head are almost 2" in diameter and the collector for the 4-2-1 setup sits far back, behind the oil pan. The primaries are almost identical in length, down to the inch. In fact, the Hytech header flows so well that it actually confuses the stock ECU at higher RPMs. This leads to some highly entertaining off-throttle backfires which are both very cool looking and incredibly unhelpful as far as generating power to the front wheels. While there's nothing wrong with using this header with the stock ECU, you really want to invest in a programmable ECU in order to get everything you paid for out of these headers. Believe me, it's worth it. Between this header and a quick tune of my Hondata equipped ECU by Jeff Evans, I saw a 15whp gain at 6000 rpm. In ITS, 15whp is the difference between a front running car and one that can barely keep up with the lower midfield. When I think of it that way, I say that it's worth every penny. Exhaust Part of the reason the Hytech header makes such a huge difference is that the H23A pushes a lot of exhaust out of the back end. Not only does backpressure become a big deal, factors like exhaust reversion (a power-robbing phenomenon which happens when the engine sucks hot exhaust gas back into the combustion chamber from the exhaust side) become a big issue. The guys at Hytech knew right off the bat that this would be a problem and gave me very specific instructions on how to build the exhaust. Through the course of a 20-minute phone conversation with the foremost Honda header experts in the US I was told that the best way to produce power from an H23A is to: Run a 12" straight pipe from the 2.5" ID outlet on the end of the header collector Expand the pipe out to as big an expansion chamber as would fit for the next 18-24". I was half-jokingly told to go look for a 6" straight muffler out of an 18 wheeler and install it here. Build the least restrictive, mandrel bent exhaust aft of the expansion chamber. The pipe diameter has to be a minimum of 2.5" ID. 3" would be better. Being the cheapskate and skeptic that I was at the time, I ignored this advice at first, instead choosing to stay with a 2.5" ID mandrel bent cat back exhaust that I had on hand. Until Robert coerced me into building a custom exhaust to these exact specs (which, by the way, he arrived at independently without any detailed knowledge of my conversations with Hytech), I had no idea what I was missing out on. The exhaust setup that I have on the Prelude today sounds like this: Hytech 4-1 race header from the head to an area behind the oil pan A 12" segment of 2.5" ID stainless going from the header to a stainless steel flex coupling from Summit Racing A 22" long expansion chamber that tapers from 6" to 5" in diameter. The expansion chamber is literally just a huge hollow tube with adapters on both ends to connect to the 2.5" ID pipe on both sides. The 12" segment in part 2 actually extends into the expansion chamber to provide an anti-reversion effect and keep hot exhaust gasses from re-entering the engine. A section of 2.5" mandrel pipe to get the exhaust around the fuel tank and out the back of the car, where the stock exhaust exits A Burns Stainless 17" lightweight muffler A 4.5" ID piece of pipe leading from the muffler out the back of the car so it doesn't set the rear bumper on fire Not only did this setup produce instant power gains on the dyno (something like 8hp just from these modifications), it is significantly quieter than any of the bolt on exhausts I have ever had on the car. The Borla stainless steel exhaust that came with the car would easily exceed 103dBA at 6400 RPM from 50 feet away and it had two resonators before the muffler. This new exhaust barely registers 88dBA at 6400 RPM from 50 feet. If you know anything about the Decibel scale and its non-linear scaling, you'll realize that the noise level coming out of my new exhaust is a tiny fraction of what the old 2.5" straight through exhaust would belt out. Noise is a serious distraction and a cause for major fatigue when you're racing wheel to wheel, so even if this didn't produce significant power gains, I would still recommend this exhaust setup wholeheartedly to anyone working on a Naturally Aspirated setup for their Prelude. *I realize this is hard to visualize without photos and I promise I will get you guys photos. I just need to get the Prelude up in the air and get the lighting in the right spot for clear under-chassis photos. I'll also record an audio clip if things are quiet this weekend, so you can get an idea of what this setup sounds like. Next Up... So what's next? Before I continue onwards towards the ECU and some of smaller items that went into this racecar, I'm planning to get some more details and photos around the header and exhaust. I firmly believe that modifying the header and exhaust is a critical step towards making the usable power that will help you go fast on a real racetrack. Once I have that, I'll move on to some of the other components that make this Prelude Si such a force to be reckoned with on track.

The chassis and suspension package of the 4th gen Prelude is amongst its most redeeming features. The 92-96 car uses a very mod-friendly evolution of the late 80's to early 90's Accord and Prelude suspension system, which have been long praised for their natural camber curve, bumpsteer-resilient geometry, and shock travel that allows for some very aggressive lowering. In addition, the longer overall length means that this generation of Prelude exhibits very stable cornering behaviors. In the handling department, it's like an anti-CRX that can corner just as well. For those of you who aren't familiar with the suspension configuration on the 4th gen Preludes, take a look at these diagrams, courtesy of Honda: 4th Gen Prelude Front Suspension 4th Gen Prelude Rear Suspension The Approach Since there wasn't too much data out there on Prelude suspension systems, the best way for me to study the suspension behavior of the car was to disassemble one corner of the car, take the spring off of the damper, reassemble it, and watch how everything moved while I moved the lower control arm up and down using a floor jack. I quickly realized the following: The front and rear suspension have crazy high motion ratios for a production car. This means I will have to install some very stiff springs in order to get the suspension system stiff enough to work well with R compound tyres. Stiff springs mean high forces, which equates to a need to use the stiffest possible bushings in every pivot point in order to make sure that I don't get any funny behaviors from bushing squish. Unfortunately, almost every pivot point in the suspension system works on at least two axes. This means that I won't be able to use Delrin, one of my favorite inexpensive bushing materials, in the suspension system. The front radius rod pivot (where the radius rods stick into the front suspension subframe behind the radiator) is a particularly odd joint. It needs to be rigid front to rear so that it can keep the suspension in place, but it also needs to be free to pivot to accommodate the lower control arm moving up and down. This one will have to be turned into a spherical bearing. The front dampers are small and short due to the fact that it needs to be mounted on a Honda shock fork. I'll need to find either twin tube dampers with a huge outside diameter or use a monotube with a big external canister to ensure that the front dampers can keep the stiff front springs in control. While the rear end of the car has fantastic adjustability (especially in the 4WS model), front camber is really hard to come by. I'll need to install some aftermarket bushings or shims to get enough camber up front. Some of the bolts holding the lower control arms to the subframe were completely seized on both ends. Break out the grinder, hacksaw, and sawzall. All in all, not too bad. Most of the hard work would be in the bushings and the joints. First Step - Replace all of the Broken Stuff A lot of people hate doing this, and I don't blame them. When I first got my Prelude, I went through every tie rod, joint, and bolt in the suspension and replaced every part that looked even remotely worn out. Fortunately Honda parts are cheap and plentiful (Rockauto.com and Honda Parts Unlimited makes acquiring the components easy too). The really tough part was that the bolts that attach the lower control arms to the chassis had seized to the metal inserts in the stock rubber bushings. The rears were easy - My Harbor Freight grinder fit readily into the space between the control arm bushing and the frame, and I was able to slice right through the stuck bolt. There was so little room in the front, however, that I couldn't get any of my powered cutting tools in there. We finally freed the stuck control arm by manually cutting the bolts using metal hacksaw blades. Hours of not-fun for two. It's unavoidable though - a racecar with seized bolts and torn bushings just isn't going to handle very well. Second - Suspension Bushings As much as I love all-spherical bearing suspension setups, they are a pain to maintain. Since my next favorite option, Delrin inserts, aren't an option, I ordered a full set of polyurethane bushings from Energy Suspension for the Prelude. The only bushings that I didn't use were the front radius rod bushings. I adapted a metal spherical bearing kit for a CRX to fit the car. You could do the same thing I did, or you could just buy this kit from Kingpin Machine and save yourself some fitment issues. Some drilling is required but it's surprisingly worthwhile. $260 to replace one pair of bushings? You bet. And it's worth every penny. Having a solid metal bearing here keeps the front wheels from moving around under hard braking and hard acceleration. If you have the money, I would recommend replacing the inner pivot point of the front control arms with spherical bearings too. It makes such a big difference that the car feels more stable under braking and points better during turn-in. Next Up - Front and Rear Camber Adjustability Like most Hondas, the Prelude gains a ton of camber in the rear when lowered, while not gaining anywhere near enough in the front. The IT rules allow for offset bushings and camber adjustability using shims, so I installed shimmable ball joints in the upper control arm in the front suspension, and offset inner pivots in the rear. This gives me the 4 degrees of camber that I need in the front while keeping the rear at a sensible 2 degrees or so. These shimmable ball joints are made by SPC, and the rear camber adjusting control arm mounts are from Ingalls.Both are available as stock-replacement parts from both online retailers and brick and mortar stores. The nice thing about the Honda multi-link suspension setup is that everything else is fully adjustable. You can even adjust caster from the factory, by shimming the front radius rod pivot point. It's one of the many advantages of being a Honda owner. The Main Course - Springs and Dampers Finally, something that the average street car tuner can relate to: Coilovers! If you are cheap like me, you'll love my choice of damper. The Prelude rides on none other than TEIN Super Street coilovers, purchased used for the paltry sum of $200. They're big, they're green, and they have surprisingly good internals. Chuck the springs though. The springs are rubbish for racecar use. I chose these dampers for a slew of reasons, many of which I've described in nauseating detail in a previous post. Basically, it's the best equipment for the job that fits within the limits of the rules of the class I'm building to (Improved Touring prohibits external canister dampers unless the car came with them from the factory). I couldn't just slap them on the car and go, however. The dampers came well worn, and the springs that TEIN included with this kit were way too soft to work on the track. I would need to buy springs in the right rate, and the dampers would need to go in for a rebuild and re-valve. The extra-girthy damper bodies of the Tein Super Street Kit necessitates the use of extra-large springs. The damper perches for these coilovers are designed to use 70mm or 2.75" diameter springs. Only two racing spring manufacturers mass produce springs in this size: HyperCo and Swift Springs. Both manufacturers are known to make springs which are very consistent throughout their range of travel. Swift springs are made of a unique metal that makes them lighter than normal springs, but it also means that the springs cannot be allowed to block. Blocking is the industry term for what happens when you compress a spring until the coils touch each other (effectively turning into a solid metal block). In order to figure out if I could use the lighter Swift springs, I took the dampers and compressed them by hand to measure how much stroke they had and compared it to the maximum stroke figures listed on their application chart. Fortunately, they had springs which had enough stroke to ensure that they would never block, even if the damper was compressed past the bump stops. In order to compensate for the high motion ratios, I chose 8" long 14kg-f/mm springs for the front and 18kg-f/mm springs for the rear. I also added some 70mm helper springs (also from Swift) in order to keep the main springs from rattling around when the wheels unload. The front springs are part # Z70-203-140, and the rears are part # Z70-203-180. The helpers are H70-070-008. Those metal shims are slider bearings that go between the springs and the adapter perches that come with the kit. They're not as cool looking as the Torrington bearings that come with some coilover kits, but they work just as well as long as they're not filled with dirt. As soon as the order was in for the springs, my used dampers were off to Tein's California facility for re-valving. The re-valving process involves a phone conversation about the spring rates, specific uses of the car, the car's weight, type of tyres, anticipated ambient temperature during races, and even the type of surface that the car will be driven on. Tein also had me fill out an email questionnaire which asked about the behavior of the car, and if there were any bad behaviors that I wanted to fix with damper tuning (e.g. corner-exit oversteer, porpoising under braking, repeated bouncing after coming off of a kerb). A few weeks later, a huge box containing my freshly revalved dampers arrived with a few copies of the shock dynos for future reference. Here they are, by the way, for the front and for the rear in PDF form. Important Addition - Anti-Roll Bars Thanks to the crazy high motion ratio in the rear end of the Prelude, I had to find the biggest stock-shaped anti-roll bar I could find to ensure that the car would respond quickly enough when turning into corners. I settled on this 1" hollow bar made by Tanabe, since I had no desire to spend the money fabricating custom mounts for a straight bar. For some bizarre reason, Honda decided that the Prelude Si should have a moster 1-1/4" diameter front swaybar. When the rear bar went on, the front bar came off and went on craigslist. With such benign suspension behavior and stiff springs, the Prelude doesn't need a front bar. The All-Important Corner Weighting and Alignment A good race shop will charge upwards of $150 for a race alignment and have an hourly rate for a corner weighting session. It may also cost a few hours of your time too, since the alignment techs need to weigh down the driver's seat with something that simulates the driver's weight. Nothing simulates the driver's weight as well as the driver! It's an expensive service yes, but it's the necessary final piece of the puzzle. Here are my current alignment specs, so you don't have to make too many extra trips to the alignment shop: Front Camber: -3.75 degrees Toe: 1/8" out (yep, that's toe-out in the front) Caster: 2.2 deg positive Rear Camber: -2 degrees Toe: 0 These settings are for Toyo RRs in 225/45R15 on all four corners. Depending on what tyres you choose to run, you may want to tweak the camber settings. Consult the tyre manufacturer for their recommended guidelines and rely on the pyrometer and stopwatch to determine what works for you. So How Well Does the Car Handle? It's difficult to describe how well a car handles in words or in numbers, so we took our car to the VRG Turkey Bowl to see how it compares to other cars of similar weight and power. Once there we found a great match - a 2005 Mini Cooper S with the older supercharged 1.6L engine. We were both on similar tyres, and the two cars were similar in weight. The Mini has aftermarket dampers and some mild suspension modifications done to it, while my green-blue Prelude is set up exactly as described above. While the Mini's late 2000's suspension geometry should give it a fundamental advantage, the Prelude's dialed-in suspension helped me gain a little bit of a gap through each corner. All I had to do was to drive carefully enough to now mess up any of the corners or braking zones, and I could inch away from the Mini without much trouble. Is all of the time and money spent on suspension work worth it? Yes, I'd say so.