1 (edited by gumert 2015-12-14 08:08 AM)

Topic: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

New, excited team reporting in. Just wanted to share our progress with the world.

Here's our current budget breakdown. We have receipts for everything, but I don't forsee much issue given that our car is basically a stock 91 Prelude with a fart cannon on it. Our goal is an "honest" $500 car, but like most we're stretching the definition of honest a bit (not counting alignment, fluids, sure you can't sell safety items but what if you happen to have two gas tanks, etc). At this point, the only budget item left that we want to buy is an accusump and an oil sandwich plate.

We bought two third gen Preludes for $800. One car was an 88 with a salve title, a banged up body, and a messed up front end but was otherwise running/driving. The other car was a 91, which had a mint body but was missing an engine. Both cars looked like they had been a project car for someone a decade ago, but hadn't really ever been brought back up to par. After much debate, we decided to fix up the 91 because sexy race rice car.

On with the pics! (the first batch have been recycled from the previous thread)

Here we are picking up the two cars. The 88 is in the background (we drove it home) and the 91 is in the foreground.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/1.jpg


Tires on the 91:
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/2.jpg

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/3.jpg


The 88 came with plenty of parts (and some spares) inside the car
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/4.jpg

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/5.jpg


Here they both are in my driveway
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/6.jpg


What a pretty little car
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/7.jpg


At this point we started tearing into the 88. These brake pads were only a small slice of what was to come
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/8.jpg


Pulling the engine/trans out of the 88. We didn't really trust the cherry picker, so the 2x4s were only in place for pictures and while we came up with a better place to put the motor.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/10.jpg


Note the top half of the factory 4, 2, 1 header. Despite the fancy OE header, people still claim that an aftermarket header will net you 10 hp on a car that only originally had 135 horsepower.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/11.jpg


We wanted to pull the plugs to get a feel for how the motor was running. However, when we pulled the wires the bases of each wire was soaking wet. When we pulled the valve cover this is what we saw (note the oil spa in the spar plug well).
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/12.jpg


The first plug we pulled. No, we didn't dip into into a chocolate milkshake.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/13.jpg


Thankfully the rest were just coated in oil
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/14.jpg


We blamed it on someone replacing the valve cover gasket without replacing the plug gaskets. Overall the motor looks to be in pretty good shape. We set valve lash while the valve gasket was off and marveled at the new timing belt. Hopefully it got a new water pump too. We put the valve cover back on (with new gaskets) and forgot about it.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/15.jpg

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/16.jpg


Honda split the four year long third generation Prelude into two sub-halves (because, Honda): 88/89 and 90/91. The 88/89 cars had a speedo cable, but 90/91 didn't. 88/89 also had different axle splines than 90/91. This meant two things: we needed to pull apart the speed senders on both transmissions to make a hybrid unit that would fit the 88 trans, but send a digital signal to the cluster/ECU. We also had to swap uprights between the 88 and the 91 so we could re-use the much better looking axles that were on the 88.

The speed sender went together ok (here they both are in pieces), but wound up being an epic failure in the end.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/17.jpg


An empty garage!
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/18.jpg


"There should be a motor in here, or something"
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/19.jpg


Yes, yes there should be.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/20.jpg


Tada.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/21.jpg


Do we have any regrets? Just one really. We drained the oil out of the trans as we were pulling the motor/trans because it kept leaking out of the axle seals (that will happen when you pull the axles and tilt the transmission). We installed the motor/trans dry. Unfortuantly for us, the fill plug on the trans is in a horrible location where you can't get a socket on it and had been tightened by a gorilla. We wound up having to use a pipe wrench to get the fill plug out.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/23.jpg


A good crush washer is on the left, the one that was on our transmission is on the right. The gas tank was the same way.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/22.jpg


Once we put all the various fluids back where they belonged the car wouldn't start. Some quick poking around reviled this rats nest. After restoring the harnesses to stock condition the car fired right up. It was disappointingly quiet with an open header.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/24.jpg


While tearing down the car we found some actual rats nests in the headliner and glove box.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/26.jpg

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/27.jpg


While mounting the awesome exhaust (only somewhat joking here, I'm generally a magnaflow fan) from the 88 on the 91 I found another amusing surprise. This bracket had been mounted by drilling a hole through the trunk floor. Note the factory exhaust mount about 6" behind this mount.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/25.jpg


The 91 was covered with dry-rotted dust boots on its suspension...
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/29.jpg


... along with dry-rotted rubber pretty much everywhere ...
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/30.jpg


... and blown rear shocks. On the plus side, we did get bonus adjustable height coil-overs.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/31.jpg

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/32.jpg


Starting to look like a race rice car. We are going to run a full(ish) dash to keep heat. The fancy-pants steering wheel came with the 91.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/33.jpg

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/34.jpg


This day was a happy day (getting new tires + the alignment). I saw the tech who was going to pull the car in walk out to it with a seat cover and a floor cover. He opened the door, stopped, looked very confused, stared for 15 or so seconds, and then carefully installed the seat cover and floor cover.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/35.jpg


While driving the car around post alignment I discovered that it's hella loud with the windows up, especially around 75 mph (our highway speed limit is 70). Putting the windows down helps quite a bit. We might look into a helmholtz resonator to knock down that peak after we get it on the track to verify that it doesn't just move up/down frequency wise with speed.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/36.jpg


The 91 outside. In this picture it has the 88 hood on it (the 91 hood had a broken bolt in one of its mounting holes that we hadn't extracted yet). We took this picture in November. It's now December and we're supposed to see 63 degrees today. Last night it only got down to 50.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/37.jpg


We completely stripped the 88 and started the process of cutting it up into manageable pieces to scrap. We did remove the rear side windows so we could sell them, but we cut out the front/rear windshields since they were both in poor shape.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/38.jpg

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/39.jpg

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/40.jpg

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/41.jpg

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/42.jpg


To-do items:
Sunroof delete (we need all the headroom we can get for the 2" clearance between the cage/helmet)
Mount Caribou seat
Roll cage (gotta get the seat mounted first)
Safety items (kill switch, fire extinguisher, better rear view mirror, etc)
Install theme items (I'm pretty sure you have all guessed what direction our theme is going)
Shakedown

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

Looking good. Where is your team located? Which race are you shooting for?

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

SpaceFrank wrote:

Looking good. Where is your team located? Which race are you shooting for?

Thanks!

We're scattered across the Detroit metro (I just updated my profile to reflect that). We're shooting for The Cure for Gingervitis on April 24rd as our first race. We really need to get our seat mounted so we can get the cage built. Due to our location (cold winter, motor city, etc), the cage builders get pretty backed up this time of year.

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

Sweet! Another new metro Det team!

A buddy and I are building a 2001 Focus in hopes of being ready to go to Gingerman in the spring. What city?

We are in the process of getting the cage situation sorted out too.  Are you guys having yours done or doing it yourselves?

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

Wloch248 wrote:

Sweet! Another new metro Det team!

A buddy and I are building a 2001 Focus in hopes of being ready to go to Gingerman in the spring. What city?

We are in the process of getting the cage situation sorted out too.  Are you guys having yours done or doing it yourselves?

East Farmington. Depending how far north you are in Bloomfield we might be pretty close to each other. I know of at least one other Lemons team in the area - some friends based around downriver raced a Ranger in at least two races this season.

Depending on price we're going to farm the cage out. We could fab it, but we don't think we would save enough money to make worth fabing it ourselves worth it, especially when you consider how long it would take us to do. The only shop currently on our list is Skinny Kid Race Cars. A co-worker had them build and install a custom NHRA legal cage in his Regal and was very happy with the price/results. We will shop around some as well. How about you guys?

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

Dude you used Net for your deductions. I think most people use Gross proceeds. Overall good job on the turn around. I seem to have some kind of eBay Curse. I can't sell ANYTHING I put up on it. I'm just going to eat the laps.

Perhaps I'll get lucky and if I ever get any team members they'll be better at it before I throw out all the junk.

Mistake By The Lake Racing (MBTL)
88 Thunderbird "THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!", Ex Astris, Rubigo / Semper Fracti
A&D: 2014 Sebrings at Sebring (NSF), 2014 NJMP2 Jurassic Park (SpeedyCop), 2012 Summit Point J30 (PiNuts)
2018 Route Sucky-Suck Rally Miata, 2019 World Tour Of Texas 64 Newport

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

gumert wrote:

East Farmington. Depending how far north you are in Bloomfield we might be pretty close to each other. I know of at least one other Lemons team in the area - some friends based around downriver raced a Ranger in at least two races this season.

Depending on price we're going to farm the cage out. We could fab it, but we don't think we would save enough money to make worth fabing it ourselves worth it, especially when you consider how long it would take us to do. The only shop currently on our list is Skinny Kid Race Cars. A co-worker had them build and install a custom NHRA legal cage in his Regal and was very happy with the price/results. We will shop around some as well. How about you guys?

I am basically at 75 and 59, so prob pretty close. My dad ran across another metro Det team that has been to Gingerman the last few years but I can't recall what they race. They are more in the Rochester Hills/ Auburn Hills area.

We got a prebent cage from rollcagecomponents.com It is a nice setup but in true Lemons fashion our initial team of six is now 2 dedicated members and two that will basically be arrive and drive. We have a few guys that weld and one that builds cages at a shop that may help us out. I am in the final process of prepping the interior for the cage.

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

Guildenstern wrote:

Dude you used Net for your deductions. I think most people use Gross proceeds. Overall good job on the turn around. I seem to have some kind of eBay Curse. I can't sell ANYTHING I put up on it. I'm just going to eat the laps.

Perhaps I'll get lucky and if I ever get any team members they'll be better at it before I throw out all the junk.

Net's the honest way to go, although we're still cooking the books slightly (see non-budget items that we counted because we had multiples of them). This hasn't really hurt the "budget" - we only have $202.58 left to go before we reach the fabled zero dollar car and we are already under the "$500 total". We have quite a bit of stuff still up for sale, along with a few things that aren't listed yet, so hopefully we will get there.

The eBay experience has been mixed. We go a week or two without anything moving and then four things will sell in two days. I think having a somewhat uncommon car has helped things move faster.

Wloch248 wrote:

We got a prebent cage from rollcagecomponents.com It is a nice setup but in true Lemons fashion our initial team of six is now 2 dedicated members and two that will basically be arrive and drive. We have a few guys that weld and one that builds cages at a shop that may help us out. I am in the final process of prepping the interior for the cage.

We have what I would call 2.5 core members, but we have enough other people on the extended team that we usually have 3-4 people at a given work day. We might be running into some trouble on the driver front though - no one has gear and when you combine that with splitting consumables (tires, brakes, fluids, gas, etc) and the entry fees people are getting a little flaky. Two of us legally own the car, so we've been ponying up all the money so far.

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

gumert wrote:

We have what I would call 2.5 core members, but we have enough other people on the extended team that we usually have 3-4 people at a given work day. We might be running into some trouble on the driver front though - no one has gear and when you combine that with splitting consumables (tires, brakes, fluids, gas, etc) and the entry fees people are getting a little flaky. Two of us legally own the car, so we've been ponying up all the money so far.

Lack of drivers can be more easily solved than lack of financially solvent owners independent of the rest of the "team".  My team started as me and another guy who then bailed and left of a better job far south.  By the end of my second race I had an "investor"/driver and another driver locked in.  By the end of the third race, three of us owned that first car and we had four stable drivers.  None this would have been possible if I had not been able to shoulder more than my fair share of cost in the beginning.

If you can come up with three paid drivers even a new team can usually pick up one arrive and drive.  If not, pay for all four and let interested parties pay for a stint in the car or eat it and offer stints to the Judges to garner good will and in some cases tips on making it a better LeMon's car for next time.  Your first race is a shakedown of the car and team anyway...no chance of winning money.

Since yours is almost identical to the Car and Driver car...many folks would be interested in seeing if they can pass the "red prelude of momentum and misery" in a like car to find out how much of their bluster is car journalist BS (all of it) and how much has anything to do with the car (maybe a tiny bit).

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

OnkelUdo wrote:

red prelude of momentum and misery"

Sounds like we have the makings of a theme here, along with a potential fake sponsor (Boat and Rider anyone?).


Some progress has been made on the car.

Both cars started their lives as sunroof equipped cars. Headroom, especially with the stock seat, was lacking so the sunroof had to go. This is after removing the sunroof assembly along with most of the metal lip that ran around the sunroof opening for strength.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/43.jpg


To close the hole we welded on tabs, to which we welded the actual piece of sheet metal that closed the hole. I don't have pictures before filler, but it wasn't pretty. Thankfully, the roof only warped in the four corners around the hole.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/44.jpg


Grinding down the welds.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/45.jpg

We painted the roof/welds with self etching primer and I drove the car to work in the rain the following day. Of course the sunroof leaked, so I made sure to coat the welds in a few nice thick coats of epoxy primer once everything was dry, thinking that the primer would seal any pinholes we had. The car sat parked outside for a few weeks while it rained on and off until one day I noticed about 2" of water in the back of the floor pan. At least we knew the car held water.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/46.jpg

Thankfully Honda was wise enough to include a drain for such scenarios.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/47.jpg

To (hopefully) cure the leaks (again), the roof was treated to a generous coating of filler and a few more generous coats of paint (rustoleum this time around). Time will tell if our efforts were actually successful. Sanding may, or may not, occur at a future date.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/48.jpg

In other news, we got our race seat mounted. We welded a 4" x 20" 11 gauge (~0.125") plate to the floor pan under the front of the seat and a 1"  tall x 2" wide x 23" long 11 gauge c-channel in back to make up for the floor pan's slope. We bolted the seat's sliders down through the plates (after making access holes under the c-channel) with grade 8 bolts and locknuts.

The new seat and mounting position give us 5-6" between the tops of our heads and the roof of the car.
http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/49.jpg

The seat itself is an old Caribou. There's literally nothing under the butt 'foam' - you can feel the irregularities of the floor through it. Once we get the harness in, I'm sure you will feel the mount for the anti-submarine belt too.

Getting the seat in is a big deal for us because now we can start seriously taking to shops about getting a cage built.

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

Is that an H22A?

Takata R&D :: 1993 Accord - team captain - rear drum brakes lol
GoPro 360 Heros :: BMW E28  - co-captain

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

aventari wrote:

Is that an H22A?

No, it's a B22A5, which is good for a mighty 135 hp / 127 ft-lbs of torque. The good news is that it is a closed deck, aluminum block with steel liners. We're hoping that the combination of low output, closed deck, and added cooling will make it somewhat reliable.

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

As someone who raced a 3G prelude ('89 model) for 4 seasons, I know a little about them.  We tossed a ton of parts you could have used when we finally scrapped ours too.  If you have any questions, shoot me a PM and I'll be glad to help anyway I can.

Captain
Team Super Westerfield Bros.
'93 Acura Integra - No VTEC Yo!

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

VKZ24 wrote:

As someone who raced a 3G prelude ('89 model) for 4 seasons, I know a little about them.  We tossed a ton of parts you could have used when we finally scrapped ours too.  If you have any questions, shoot me a PM and I'll be glad to help anyway I can.

VKZ24 and I have traded a few e-mails since his offer. He's been helpful to us noobs.


On top of ordering tons of stuff that hasn't made it onto the car yet (harness, ST-45 front pads, cheaper Raybestos ceramic rear pads kill switch, fuses for the battery relocation, HANS, etc), we've made some unexciting progress:
- Flushed all the crud out of the brake lines with fresh Motul RBF600
- Bent three main hoops (gotta learn somehow - thankfully we ordered plenty of extra tube. #1 was way too big, #2 needed plinths, #3 does not need plinths, but is narrower than #2 so we're going to go with #2)
- Bent a single halo, it fits great (we learned good smile)

In the process of making the 90's for the halo (wound up doing 80 + 10 due to only having a 90 degree die) we over extended the bottle jack in the bender. The ram won't go back into the jack, so no more bends for us until we get a new one.

http://epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/51.jpg

We're also trying to figure out what to do about the main hoop to halo junction. Once this is settled we will start notching tubes and tacking together the cage.

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

It's been a while. For those of you following along at home, we made it to our three target races. I figured I would update the thread for anyone who, like me, trolls the Lemons forum while planning out their own car.

Here's the car in April 2016 at The Cure for Gingervitis:
http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/gingerman1.jpg

... in July at Doing Time in Juliet (we pulled the trunk lid to get more air for the driver cooling. spoiler: we're buying cool shirts for next year)
http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/juliet.jpg

... and a few weeks ago at the 10th anniversary race
http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/decade3.JPG




I updated our budget and it's now current after our three races. All said, we have $3,800 into the car itself including safety items, but excluding driver gear. If you knock off a few things we wouldn't have needed if we had planned better or were being super thrifty (extra cage tube, a smaller battery + battery box vs the $166 glass mat we're running, theme items, the super amazing looking NACA window vent, etc) we would have comfortably come in under $3,500.



While getting our battery mounted and wired, we discovered that the previous owner did a fantastic job of joining his 1 gauge battery cable to the factory cable. Yes, that was garden hose.
http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/batteryCable.jpg



I'll have to take some pictures of the completed cage, but it was good enough to warrant a good amount of positive feedback from John (Evil Genius) during tech at Gingerman in April.

Main hoop, harness bar, diagonal, and halo:
http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/cage1.jpg

Some (crappy) weld pictures:
http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/cage2.jpg

http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/cage3.jpg



If you're considering building a car, go into your first race or two with low expectations. Here's a brief breakdown of our races:

The Cure: 99 laps total
- car ran great for half of day 1 then promptly died. Had compression, spark, and fuel but would not fire. It took us the rest of the day to figure out 1) that the set screw for the distributor rotor had worked its way out, allowing the rotor to freewheel and make spark very late and 2) no, the set screw does not attach to the flat on the distributor shaft that has witness marks on it. instead, use the threaded hole that's another 90 around the shaft
- on day 2, the car started loosing power and began surging pretty hard. The fuel pump was whining in phase with the surging, so we decided to call it quits for fear of damaging the motor under a lean condition

Post race we replaced the fuel pump, fuel pressure regulator (why not?), and fuel filter. Odds are the pump was original to the car:

http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/fuelPump.jpg

On a related note, should you lose the spring under the graphite tip in your distributor cap, a pen spring will apply too much force, which will cause too much friction. This will cause melty-melt to occur:

http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/distributor.jpg



Doing Time: 193 laps total
The car ran well for a while, but slowly lost power as it got good and hot. It wasn't surging though. Since we bought two cars for $800, we had spares of almost everything. We swapped almost everything during the race to no avail. We chalked it up to something getting heat soaked. The car ran better at the start of day two, but wound up loosing power much sooner than day 1. Since we weren't worried about running lean, we stayed on the course turning very slow laps (2:20 - 2:30). I took checkered on day two unable to go past 40 mph while turning 3:00 laps and hugging the outside of the course.

Post race we did the following things:
- Checked timing. It turns out the distributor was in the 'full retard' position. This will cause you to run hot
- Checked every sensor on the motor (there are only a few of them due to the age of the motor). Everything looked good
- Added cooling (plywood splitter + air dam to get more air through the radiator, hood vents to get air out from behind the radiator
- Paint our wheels yellow and added more spoilers for increased aerodynamic drag
- Stitched a "there's a race going on and you're not in it" flag for our next camp site

http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/decade2.jpg

(the next picture is from October's race)
http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/decade.jpg



A Decade of Disappointment: 272 laps total
The car ran a lot better at this race. The cooling fans are still fully controlled by the vehicle, but did not turn on at any point during the race thanks to the aero mods and/or low ambient temperatures. We were actually able to pass people and work on improving ourselves as drivers. The car was still loosing some power, but it wasn't nearly as bad as before and didn't prevent us from improving our lap times. We are still not competitive from a lap time perspective, but we're 10 seconds a lap faster than we were in April.

http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/lapTimesDecade.jpg

Our current thought on the power loss thing is that we're loosing spark. We're still getting oil in our plug wells, despite replacing the valve cover gasket. We suspect that oil wicks down the spark plug threads while the car sits between races and accumulates while driving it. Once the oil reaches a certain level, it will cause misfiring. This would explain why it's worse on day 2 than day 1. We are going to verify our claim in a few weeks by adding some extra oil to whatever plug wells already contain some oil and going for a spin.



It took three races, and a total of 565 laps (over 1,100 miles), to start to outgrow our $65/ea (including mounting/balancing!), 340 tear wear all seasons tires (Hankook Ventus HR II).

If there are two things racier teams comment on when we talk about our car it's our 340 tread wear tires and street alignment. Our argument has always been that our drivers weren't "good enough" to really be able to use fancier tires. We're getting to the point where we will be able to justify moving to better rubber, but I think we all have a few more seconds we can shave off on these.

That having been said, we're finally starting to chunk. Since the chunking is localized, we could probably solve this by a combination of shaving the tires pre-race, altering (decreasing slightly) tire pressure, and/or changing alignment. The good news is that we can put our fronts on the back of the car and use our four other "good" tires for most of next season.

We've run these tires all season, but this was their first race on the front of the car.

http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/tire.jpg

Are you a team of new drivers? I recommend these tires. Do you not scrub your way through every corner? These tires are good bang for the buck. Do you want maximum speed? You need to think seriously about spending some more money.


The other change we might make at looking for next year as addressing some of our body roll. It's not nearly as bad as some other teams, but it's nothing stiffer springs and/or bars couldn't fix.


http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/roll1.jpg

http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/roll2.jpg

http://www.epsilongraphics.com/img/prelude/roll3.jpg

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

Nice write up!

Seems like you guys are on the right track one thing to be aware as you go faster with better tires the body roll will become more of an issue as will brakes.
What pads are you running and how are they holding up?

Apocalyptic Racing - Occupy Pit Lane racing
Racing the "Toylet" Toyota Celica powered by Chevrolet Ecotec.
24x Loser with the Celica. 16x loser in other fine machines
Overall winner Gingerman 2019

Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

Nice to read about a new team.  Sounds like you guys had a pretty good first year.

Oil in the plug wells can cause issues.  On the SHO motor, oil here will cause misfire because the spark plug wires arc into the oil/head.  The hot oil degrades the wires as well.

Mike @ Charnal House Inc.
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Re: 1991 Honda Prelude Si "R1CECAR" Build

Brett85p wrote:

Nice write up!

Seems like you guys are on the right track one thing to be aware as you go faster with better tires the body roll will become more of an issue as will brakes.
What pads are you running and how are they holding up?

Thanks much! Our goal isn't to be super competitive, we just want to go fast while having fun and not break the bank.

We're running cheapo discs ($76 for all four corners), cheap rear pads (over the counter $38 "ceramic" pads), Motul Dot 4 brake fluid, and Raybestos ST45 front pads ($230).

After the second the race front the pads had worn about 1mm, but we hadn't had the opportunity to really ride them hard like we did at a Decade of Disappointment. We haven't measured again yet, but will be doing so in the coming weeks. None of us have any complaints about the ability of the car to brake.

shamwow wrote:

Nice to read about a new team.  Sounds like you guys had a pretty good first year.

Oil in the plug wells can cause issues.  On the SHO motor, oil here will cause misfire because the spark plug wires arc into the oil/head.  The hot oil degrades the wires as well.

All in, we had a blast and talk Lemons up at almost every opportunity we get. We've wanted to run in the series for a while and decided to finally pull the trigger.

Good to hear that oil in the plug wells might actually be the cause of our problem. We're awaiting a new alternator (the hood vents allowed the hot b+ wire to short inside the alternator when we left the car in the rain), but will test the theory soon. If we can replicate the problem off track that will be a major step for us.