Planning for and minimizing maintenance (Page 1 of 2)

I definitely wouldn't swap out the rear drums, that's for damn sure.

Don't know spit about Hondas other than some of them go through up to 3 head gaskets a day in Lemons.

Number one DNF cause is cooling.  Make it run cool and with the fewest number of needed hoses/connections.  Water and oil.

Spherical bearings in Lemons will get your grief from the judges.  Also, not needed.  You won't be driving 10/10th's and if you do, you'll likely black flag yourself onto the sidelines quickly.  Plus they are hard on all the bits around them.  There's some give in suspension components for durability and sphericals take that out. 

Everything you learned about lines, driving fast, etc goes out the window in Lemons.  It's more driving fast while pretending you are the pretty cheerleader running the gauntlet of drunk football players.  Your goal is to get through there without getting effed.  It's not that Lemons is full of bad drivers, it's just the sheer number of them out there all with the same goals as you but at different speeds is what you have to deal with.  Sometimes you just have to slow for a second to make sure you don't put yourself or someone else in a irreversible situation.

I've had mixed success with shock oil.  Procurement is difficult because fork/non-foaming oil in the weights you want is difficult to come by.  Or at least in the quantity you need.  You'll find tons of it in the 1 or 2 oz size as that's what the off road RC guys use.  I ended up finding it at a specialty oil site but I don't remember which one.  Motorcycle fork oil doesn't come that heavy because heavy oil would make it like riding a jackhammer.  I used a graduated cylinder to make sure the same amount that came out went back in.  One set I quickly blew out but they were very old.  Another set were sealed so I had to drill a hole to get the old oil out and syringe the new oil in.  I had a hell of a time welding up the hole, I'm guessing because of the oil in the vicinity.  My welding skills are rudimentary so that's not really a knock on the process.  When I've gotten through all that, I've been happy with the results.  I suppose with a strut you can unscrew it and avoid all that but you still need to do something in the rear (especially on a FWD car) or you will have a miserable car.

Personally, I'd leave all the hi-po stuff for after you've done a couple races.  In the beginning your pit stops will look like Chinese fire drills and suck up seconds/minutes.  So all the time/energy/money you spend to gain 2/10ths a lap is pitched out the window when you can spend time sorting out your stops for zero money.

I can't say anything about Hondas either, but I can second this 100%. After about 3 races, we finally started paying attention to how the fast teams do pit stops and we quickly saved ourselves a lot of time off track. If you have time at your first couple races to just sit and watch the action, pick a spot near pit lane and keep an eye on the race leaders when they come in for fuel. Look at how their fuel jugs are set up, with big feed hoses and vent lines. Watch the choreography.

Also, major dittos to anybody who tells you to shift at conservative RPM levels or drive at 8/10ths instead of trying to go FLAT OUT all the time. What works for a 30 minute HPDE session might break the car after a few hours of endurance racing, or exhaust the driver to the point of making stupid mistakes, the consequences of which can be even worse in traffic.

This was exactly what i was wanting to hear! Thank you!!  And its funny that you mention the ST43's because that's EXACTLY what i run on my evo 10! And i'm running 3640 lbs with driver, 310 HP, and 295 rubber!

So the DA spindles are a must then.... When you say races, you mean full 24 hour races? Or are we talking weekends of 25/30 min sessions?  As far as RPM limit, i had imagined that with all the oil/cooling mods you mention, revving to 7k shouldn't be a problem? I mean, D16's have a decent rod/stroke ratio so bearing wear shouldn't be too bad.... And you can always balance the crank just in case....  I understand why people shift early with less attention to oil and cooling and i totally agree with that.... i'm just curious if i should challenge that idea as long as the proper supporting mods are done.... including oil pan baffling. I'm also a total noob here so feel free to take me to school.

Also, what do you run for springs out of curiosity?

This!

The teams that make these "bulletproof" on the street and in HDPE's engine last more than 9 hours per head gasket in Lemons are NOT the norm.  They are the ones that figured out the secret sauce but feel free to experiment.  Of 5-7 various Honda 4-cylinder motors at an average Midwest 14 hour race (the norm, true 24 hour races are rare) we probably see 4-6 head gasket replacements.

Keep in mind, the two most reliable engines I know of in 24 years of wrenching, Toyota 20/22R/RE and the Dodge Slant-6 have had huge endurance reliability flaws exposed on the Lemons track. Everything we think we know about reliability gets challenged by the crucible of budget racing for 8-24 hours a stint.

The above is very good information...IF...you listen.  Your suspension won't matter when you're in the pits with a blown HG from overheating, or doing an engine swap because of overrevving.  We also run a big oil cooler and big filter, along with Rotella T6 5W40 oil, which is changed every race.  Our redline on our B20 is 7,000, but we shift at 6,500.  No need to rev it to the limit in a 14 hour race.  A shift light really helps with that BTW.

I love all the Honda blown head gasket posts.  We ran our old Prelude for 10 races (2 were actual 24s) and it never exceeded 200 degrees.  When it finally bit the dust, we broke a connecting rod, but the OE head gasket was just fine.  Don't let it overheat, and use only a OE MLS gasket and you'll be fine.

To keep all the temps in check, get a set of real gauges to keep an eye on the water temp, oil temp, and oil pressure.  I'm not sure on the D16, but on a B20 if you have less than 70PSI of oil pressure at WOT, it's likely headed south.  Our has 78PSI even with oil temps as high as 292F...that was before we added the oil cooler BTW.

Just curious- do you have VTEC enabled or disabled?

Sonic has all the tricks worked out.  I'll throw in my "me too" statements only because we ran a 91 CRX Si for 4 years.  I finally gave up on it when the rear toe adjusters rusted out for the 2nd time.

I chip all our Honda ECUs.  Not for performance, but to bring the rev limiter down.  When we were running D series motors, I'd pull the redline cutoff down to 6400 rpm.  With the B series we run today (EG Hatch and DelSol), I've got the redline set at 6200 rpm.  I don't trust my drivers to shift when I tell them to.

I'll echo Sonic's cooling advice.  Big radiator, big oil cooler, port the pump if you can.  Get real gauges and use them.  The Honda motors sit on the verge of overheating in stock form.  That is part of how Honda passes emissions tests.  You have to dial in a huge amount of additional cooling, or you will overheat, float the head or toss a rod.  The added cooling and oil volume is NOT a reason to abuse the motor more.  It is just getting you back to status quo under race conditions.

We ran stock Si knuckles and bearing for years before I switched to DA stuff.  Bearings are a maintenance item for us.  I replaced every 3 races no matter how they seem to be working.
Never had a problem with axles.
Even on the smaller Si brake setup, we used stock/cheap rotors and Hawk Blue 9012 pads.  Normally I'd have to replace pads at the same time as wheel bearings - every three races.  We did a rear disk conversion on our CRX using parts from a Civic EX.  The rear drums are usless in a race after a couple laps from drum expansion.  I never could replace the proportioning valve, so I suspect the rear disks wern't doing much more either.

Suspension is a harder nut to crack since you have budget concerns with Lemons.  We ran for a couple years on cut springs and stock shocks.  I eventually got enough residual for some bilstiens and proper springs.  I don't recall the spring rates, but the real cornering work on our suspension was done on the bump stops.  Invested in some nice bump stops and did the math to make sure they were helping rather than hurting.

I've never had a problem with wheels that wasn't self induced.  Turns out, if you don't hit stuff, your wheels never get damaged.  We run Rota Slipstream knock offs (Speedy Race Mode).  Light and cheap.

We always use the stock multilayer metal gaskets for which ever block/head combo we have.  The notorious Honda head gasket problem isn't due to the head gasket, it is due to heat stress.  We stopped popping head gaskets when we cooled the engines properly.

I know the internet is full of thinner gasket options for pretty much every D series engine combination.  Thinner gaskets are supposed to give higher compression.  They might, but higher compression without compensating engine management is asking for trouble in an endurance race.  Yeah, the compression gains should be really small, so it shouldn't hurt anything, but if the gains are so small, why use something other than stock?

Hmmm.  Saying the head gasket problem is only due to heat stress is a bit of an oversimplification, I'll grant you that.  More likely the problem is a combination of factors:  heat stress, open deck and over square engine.  Fixing one of those tends to make the failure less likely.  Cooling is relatively cheap and the connecting rods appreciate it as well.

Back when we were losing two head gaskets a race, the RPMs really didn't matter.  I could over rev the stock limiter by 1000 RPM, or drop the limit to 1000 below stock with no real change in the failure rate.  After adding a large radiator and oil cooler the head gaskets will outlast the piston rings...

Oversquare?? I was under the impression that the R/S ratio was relatively favorable in the D series engines.

What's to stop someone from pressing rings into the block to change it to a semi closed deck design?? Engine building isn't my strong suit, so correct me if i'm wrong.

Fyi, though y8 gaskets are almost half the thickness of other d16 gaskets, they're usually 10-15 dollars cheaper.  So, THATS why you should consider it :)

It seems overall there are two goals with the D series, expelling the heat and maintaining proper lubrication. It is easy to see that the rev limit imposes little  bearing on the heat issue. So assuming you're expelling heat fast enough, all that's left is making sure your bearings stay lubricated, which means making sure your pickup always has oil and making sure the oil temp stays within a proper range. I think the point i made earlier is that if you're doing everything you can for the oil, i don't see why you couldn't increase the rev limit. Of course you wouldn't know this until you're able to monitor both temp and pressure with a good enough resolution. I know there are plenty of data points that would say the opposite, but what isn't clear is how many of those datapoints properly addressed the problems.

BTW, i' live in texas, so no east coast trips  for me yet :(