- Mon Mar 21, 2016 12:09 pm
#3852903
Hi everyone
I'm copying this thread off another forum. This first post is from late 2015 when I bought the car.
I've always loved my EP3s. The problem is the cost of modifying them beyond basic levels is extortionate. My solution has been to therefore search for one ready modified.
I found one a couple of weeks ago that was a perfect spec for track albeit in need of some tidying and removal of scene mods.
Here she is on her first trackday at Oulton Park today!
Since buying her I've done the following
- Bought a replacement cam cover from Spooner restorations
- Bought a Tegiwa M induction kit
- Bought various engine bay dress up parts
- Removed wind deflectors
- Removed comedy rear tow-hook
- Change stickerbombed centre console for OEM silver one
- Swapped suede steering wheel for MOMO one
- Fitted Cobra carbon fibre bucket seats
- Fit 3x Stack 52mm gauges in a triple DIN slot
- Padded the roll cage
- Added some JDM floor mats
- Added correct Type-R decals to skirts
- Added Nurburgring Type-R decal to boot
- Added a new genuine Honda rear H badge
- Fitted front tow strap (hidden)
- Added tow stickers
ENGINE SPEC
BODY
INTERIOR
More mods to follow soon, I'll be sure to add plenty of pictures and a write up etc.
Added in 8 minutes 24 seconds:
Here's my refurbished cam cover, back from Spooner Restorations. Crackle black finish, probably similar to Robert Mugabes' ballbag I'd imagine.
Next up I bought a trio of 52mm Stack gauges. Oil pressure, oil temperature and a voltmeter. I thought it's worth it considering the useage the car is getting! I also bought a DIN sized triple gauge slot, which I'm hugely impressed with! It tilts the gauges slightly toward the driver and looks really good (in my opinion) compared to pillar pods.
All fitted and illuminating, just need to fit the senders when I come to do the next oil change (will get a sandwich plate for the oil filter)
It's been a busy week on my Civic, sorting out the mismatch of external colours which let it down so badly
First up I took the black wing mirrors and red spoiler and turned my front room into a spray booth
Masked them up, panel wiped, room heated to 25 degrees. The result is not bad (pre lacquer)
going let them harden off for a few days then 2000 grit and cut them back to a shine.
The wheels have been powdercoated to match too. £20 a rim I've tyre painted them too. I was quite impressed with these Michelins but they don't have a lot of life left in 2 of them. going have to make some decisions in the spring.
Centre caps will follow with the red H logo The exterior of the car is now all white, with the exception of the carbon bonnet which I'm holding off getting wrapped for now.
Also, my new daily driver has arrived. Audi A4 avant.
Plans are to lower it, ICE it and see if I can get mega miles out of it!
Added in 2 minutes 16 seconds:
Here's the first pic with the all-white look.
Mainly I'm clearing garage space for her, for a dozen or so mods / jobs I've got lined up for over Xmas/new year.
She also now has a private plate on the way! Stay tuned
The Audi passed the MOT as well, happy days.
Next I got a billet aluminium AEM fuel rail
I set about removing the OEM fuel rail and swapping to some new injector o-rings.
The AEM has the added benefit of housing your injector wiring, which tidies things up nicely. There are also provisions for aeroquip style fittings on the fuel rail ends and also fuel pressure gauge fittings (which you can blank off). Here she is all fitted
I'm going to have the manifold painted in crinkle black eventually
Whilst I was in the area I removed the Idle Air Assist. This unscrews and is replaced with a 3/8 NPT blanking plug. You can then cap off the vacuum feeds to it with some vacuum caps
Here are the bits you need (few quid off ebay)
The car runs a lot better now from cold and the bay is a lot less cluttered
I really need to get rid of those awful oil cooler lines
Added in 1 minute 16 seconds:
On the cosmetics front I painted up my old red centre caps, added the Honda logos and lacquered the lot. The little dots are just rain drops
My numberplate surrounds arrived, this will allow me to remove my plate easily on track days... and add a GB stickered plate for Nurburgring trips
Here's the new plates I have
Just waiting on the DVLA paperwork to come back so I can fit them!
And finally a sunstrip that I'm happy with!
The exterior of the car is almost complete, so I'll be doing a mini photoshoot soon! Then focusing on the engine bay cosmetics and some functional mods.
I've also booked on at Cadwell Park for the spring, and booked a Nurburgring trip shortly after!!
Photoshoot
Added in 3 minutes 57 seconds:
Time for a battery relocation. After much research the Odyssey 680 came up trumps. Lightweight, compact, powerful and reliable. Along with an alloy cage to suit
The plan is to run a fused cable from the engine bay to behind the passenger seat, P-clipping it in place as I go. This will remove 15kg of weight from the nose of the car. Ideal
First I got the front seats out. The previous owner had just left the full rear carpet folded over on itself from where it originally went under the rear bench!
Here it is chopped back, and with the battery mounted in the tray. I opted to leave the sound deadening in place because of how loud the car already is. My main complaint with that tray is the feet are tiny, leaving little room to drill holes for a decent sized bolt. I've used four M6 bolts here, with washers top and bottom to help spread any impact loads. I suspect it'll hold fine in any small or medium sized impact.
Passenger seat re-fitted. Loads of room.
I'll earth it to two points, one being a roll cage mounting post dude bolt. Then think about routing the main power wire to the engine bay via a fuse and an isolator.
I've also been trial fitting my Tegiwa M induction kit. For those of you not familiar with them, they are a large carbon fibre airbox that has a scoop you feed up through the scuttle to catch air from the top of the bonnet. You have to cut and trim the scuttle panel back to suit. This will hopefully give a few horsepower gain (+12bhp on a standard engine) and a better sound. I had one before and absolutely loved it. Fitting is quite involved but it'll be worth it.
Here's the finished scuttle! The mesh is nice and strong and the filler over it is solid. However I got bored of trying to get a flawless finish so just moved onto painting it. Here it is
And with the painted wiper arms. They were so faded before
And re-fitted. Much better!
The Tegiwa-M is now a nice snug fit. I need to make some kind of bracket for it, because I'm not happy with the one that comes from Tegiwa, it's too bulky and heavy.
The last step is to add the carbon scoop to the top of the scuttle, to deflect air into the whole thing. Might add a cheeky sticker too.
Added in 2 minutes 53 seconds:
I've taken some time out over the past couple of weeks to do some garage maintenance! This has consisted of re-stocking things like drill bits, fastenings, consumables etc
Also taken the time to re-finish the top of my workbench. I rescued this a couple of years ago and it was in such a state, the top surface was like an old railway sleeper! Solid, but uneven and caked in years worth of sh-t! So I've screwed a fresh sheet of ply to the top and painted it.
And added some edge trim aluminium and re-fitted the beast of a vice with M12 bolts and spreader plates.
Here you can also see the two of the three oddments drawers I have, which are size organised into nuts, washers, bolts, fuses etc. I've also been tidying the house attic and the garage attic to be much more organised.
It's getting there slowly! I've also put racking up for low value parts (high value stuff kept indoors), additional lighting etc. Next trick is to house my compressor under the workbench and get the upstairs lighting working again!
Anyhoo, the V5 for the Honda came back to me. I can now legally R8PE U
I'm also mid way through the re-wire of the starter, alternator, fuse box etc
After ordering some new -AN fittings I managed to get the oil cooler pipes routed better (through the gearbox mount and over the gearbox, instead of over the cam cover.
Here they are. They aren't too close to the manifold (picture is deceptive)
And through the mount
The sump is off too. It's pretty easy, although you need to drop the subframe to remove the pan itself.
Once off I degreased it with petrol and rags.
The plan is now to TIG weld in the baffle kit, like so...
Sump is all baffled now
Primed
Painted
And refitted. Subframe is back on too with one new bolt (original had rounded)
I've finished plumbing in the oil cooler, so filled up with some fresh oil and added the gauge senders
Here's the two gauge sender wires (black = pressure and red = temperature) alongside the meaty new battery cable for the relocated battery. All just being fed through the bulkhead grommet.
You need 3 metres to do a battery relocation.
Here you can see I've got a catch tank in and fitted too
It's got some wire wool inside to help condense the oil vapour
I've started the car, it starts fine so the battery wiring is good. I'll see next if I can drop down from a 200a fuse to a 170a fuse.
There's a couple of oil leaks which are the next issue to tackle - then it's tidying the wiring and tracing a couple of oil leaks on the new pipework!
IT'S ALIVE!!!
After a brief problem with an erratic idle (cured by taking it for a spin) it's ALIVE!!!
- No leaks
- Engine pulls cleanly and strong
- Epic sound from carbon airbox!
Niggles
- People giving me abuse over the reg plate!!
- 1x headlight not working
- Bonnet release not working
IM SO HAPPY!!!
Roll on Cadwell Park and Nurburgring!
Added in 2 minutes 45 seconds:
Took her out again today for a bit of a run. Went over to Derby to see a mate and stopped off at the scrapyard on the way, out of curiosity.
Onto the weighbridge (exhaust scraping all the way)
1140kg with a brimmed fuel tank, so 1091kg without fuel.
I reckon I can easily save another 20kg in sound deadening, rear wiper motor, side impact bars and central locking gubbins.
If I do keep it long term I'm looking at Pesch motorsport fibreglass doors and tailgate with perspex windows for a further 40-50kg saving there.
Put another sunstrip on it at my mate's. Just need to decide on what logo or lettering to have on it.
Next up was "pre-track testing". Goals were to evaluate the brakes, tyres and identify any niggles
I started the test just a few miles outside of Manchester. Funny how quickly you go from a built up city like Stockport to this...
And on to Curbar edge in the Peak district
Roads were nice and empty
I've got some good feedback from the car and some ideas of what to work on before Cadwell and the Ring
No major issues to report.
Cheers guys Feeling the love for this one!
Well today I made a spontaneous decision to take it to the Saturday night special at Santa Pod. The track was open till 8pm so I managed to get 5 runs in in 4 hours.
Some shots from trackside
Here's an onboard video of my best run. Whilst the time isn't amazing (14.03 @ 104mph) some things really do stand out
1) I start the run in 2nd gear (because close ratio box)
2) I finish the run almost at the limiter in 5th (because close ratio box)
3) It sounds like a bike going through the gears
Enjoy
[video]
Added in 2 minutes 30 seconds:
I've also finished the wiring for the gauges
They all work, however I'm not convinced the pressure gauge sender are in the best location (oil cooler pipework) as the pressure gauge flickers when warm. Interestingly my oil sat at under 60 degrees on the motorway and barely touched 70 in traffic. I'm tempted to cover the oil cooler until we get warmer weather.
I also finished mounting my GoPro on the cage. I used a clamp off eBay, plus a little gubbin that lets you rotate 360 degrees via a series of notches
The view isn't ideal to be honest, as the visibility out of the front screen is minimal.
That brings us up to date, March 2016.
I'm off to Cadwell Park to try and break my lap record next month, then the 'Ring in May for a proper test of the car.
My goal is to set a Sub-8 time at the 'Ring in 2017
Thanks for reading, all questions and constructive comments welcome
I'm copying this thread off another forum. This first post is from late 2015 when I bought the car.
I've always loved my EP3s. The problem is the cost of modifying them beyond basic levels is extortionate. My solution has been to therefore search for one ready modified.
I found one a couple of weeks ago that was a perfect spec for track albeit in need of some tidying and removal of scene mods.
Here she is on her first trackday at Oulton Park today!
Since buying her I've done the following
- Bought a replacement cam cover from Spooner restorations
- Bought a Tegiwa M induction kit
- Bought various engine bay dress up parts
- Removed wind deflectors
- Removed comedy rear tow-hook
- Change stickerbombed centre console for OEM silver one
- Swapped suede steering wheel for MOMO one
- Fitted Cobra carbon fibre bucket seats
- Fit 3x Stack 52mm gauges in a triple DIN slot
- Padded the roll cage
- Added some JDM floor mats
- Added correct Type-R decals to skirts
- Added Nurburgring Type-R decal to boot
- Added a new genuine Honda rear H badge
- Fitted front tow strap (hidden)
- Added tow stickers
ENGINE SPEC
- 270.3bhp (dyno'd @ TDI North)
- JDM cams
- Hondata K100 ecu
- RBC inlet with spacer
- AEM induction kit (wanting a Tegiwa carbon scoop one)
- DC sports exhaust manifold
- Solid fabrications full stainless 3" system (maximum motorway speed is 62mph before tinnitus)
- Kaaz plated differential
- M-factory 5.84 final drive
- Lightened and balanced Fidanza flywheel
- Exedy oem clutch
- Polished rocker cover (Spooner crackle black one ordered)
- M- factory catch tank cable tied in place
- Mocal Oil cooler
- Avid solid engine mounts
BODY
- Fully Painted Ford Frozen white
- Seibon Carbon bonnet (to be wrapped white)
- Facelift head lights (HIDs going in)
- Mugen front splitter (will add STUKE splitter in time)
- Rear diffuser
- Wind deflectors removed and binned!
- Standard type R wheels in red (to be painted white)
- Michelin Pilot Sport 2's (upgrading to Federal RS-R)
- Yellow speed adjutable coilovers - New - fully set up
- Front 1.5deg caster, 2deg camber 1.5mm toe
- Skunk 2 rear control arms (will upgrade to buddy club)
- Buddy club rear camber arms (2 deg)
- Progress rear anti roll bar and brace
- Ksport 8 pots running mintex racing 155 pads (upgrading to DS2500)
- Rear drilled grooved RBC discs & pads
- ATE super blue fluid in braided lines
INTERIOR
- OMP 6 point roll cage
- Cobra full carbon fibre bucket seats
- TRS 4 point harnesses
- 3x VDO 52mm gauges (voltmeter, oil temp, oil pressure) in DIN slot
- Momo steering wheel
- Skunk2 gearknob
- Stripped out rear
More mods to follow soon, I'll be sure to add plenty of pictures and a write up etc.
Added in 8 minutes 24 seconds:
Here's my refurbished cam cover, back from Spooner Restorations. Crackle black finish, probably similar to Robert Mugabes' ballbag I'd imagine.
Next up I bought a trio of 52mm Stack gauges. Oil pressure, oil temperature and a voltmeter. I thought it's worth it considering the useage the car is getting! I also bought a DIN sized triple gauge slot, which I'm hugely impressed with! It tilts the gauges slightly toward the driver and looks really good (in my opinion) compared to pillar pods.
All fitted and illuminating, just need to fit the senders when I come to do the next oil change (will get a sandwich plate for the oil filter)
It's been a busy week on my Civic, sorting out the mismatch of external colours which let it down so badly
First up I took the black wing mirrors and red spoiler and turned my front room into a spray booth
Masked them up, panel wiped, room heated to 25 degrees. The result is not bad (pre lacquer)
going let them harden off for a few days then 2000 grit and cut them back to a shine.
The wheels have been powdercoated to match too. £20 a rim
I've tyre painted them too. I was quite impressed with these Michelins but they don't have a lot of life left in 2 of them. going have to make some decisions in the spring.
Centre caps will follow with the red H logo
The exterior of the car is now all white, with the exception of the carbon bonnet which I'm holding off getting wrapped for now.Also, my new daily driver has arrived. Audi A4 avant.
Plans are to lower it, ICE it and see if I can get mega miles out of it!
Added in 2 minutes 16 seconds:
Here's the first pic with the all-white look.
Mainly I'm clearing garage space for her, for a dozen or so mods / jobs I've got lined up for over Xmas/new year.
She also now has a private plate on the way! Stay tuned
The Audi passed the MOT as well, happy days.
Next I got a billet aluminium AEM fuel rail
I set about removing the OEM fuel rail and swapping to some new injector o-rings.
The AEM has the added benefit of housing your injector wiring, which tidies things up nicely. There are also provisions for aeroquip style fittings on the fuel rail ends and also fuel pressure gauge fittings (which you can blank off). Here she is all fitted
I'm going to have the manifold painted in crinkle black eventually
Whilst I was in the area I removed the Idle Air Assist. This unscrews and is replaced with a 3/8 NPT blanking plug. You can then cap off the vacuum feeds to it with some vacuum caps
Here are the bits you need (few quid off ebay)
The car runs a lot better now from cold and the bay is a lot less cluttered
I really need to get rid of those awful oil cooler lines
Added in 1 minute 16 seconds:
On the cosmetics front I painted up my old red centre caps, added the Honda logos and lacquered the lot. The little dots are just rain drops
My numberplate surrounds arrived, this will allow me to remove my plate easily on track days... and add a GB stickered plate for Nurburgring trips
Here's the new plates I have
Just waiting on the DVLA paperwork to come back so I can fit them!
And finally a sunstrip that I'm happy with!
The exterior of the car is almost complete, so I'll be doing a mini photoshoot soon! Then focusing on the engine bay cosmetics and some functional mods.
I've also booked on at Cadwell Park for the spring, and booked a Nurburgring trip shortly after!!
Photoshoot
Added in 3 minutes 57 seconds:
Time for a battery relocation. After much research the Odyssey 680 came up trumps. Lightweight, compact, powerful and reliable. Along with an alloy cage to suit
The plan is to run a fused cable from the engine bay to behind the passenger seat, P-clipping it in place as I go. This will remove 15kg of weight from the nose of the car. Ideal
First I got the front seats out. The previous owner had just left the full rear carpet folded over on itself from where it originally went under the rear bench!
Here it is chopped back, and with the battery mounted in the tray. I opted to leave the sound deadening in place because of how loud the car already is. My main complaint with that tray is the feet are tiny, leaving little room to drill holes for a decent sized bolt. I've used four M6 bolts here, with washers top and bottom to help spread any impact loads. I suspect it'll hold fine in any small or medium sized impact.
Passenger seat re-fitted. Loads of room.
I'll earth it to two points, one being a roll cage mounting post dude bolt. Then think about routing the main power wire to the engine bay via a fuse and an isolator.
I've also been trial fitting my Tegiwa M induction kit. For those of you not familiar with them, they are a large carbon fibre airbox that has a scoop you feed up through the scuttle to catch air from the top of the bonnet. You have to cut and trim the scuttle panel back to suit. This will hopefully give a few horsepower gain (+12bhp on a standard engine) and a better sound. I had one before and absolutely loved it. Fitting is quite involved but it'll be worth it.
Here's the finished scuttle! The mesh is nice and strong and the filler over it is solid. However I got bored of trying to get a flawless finish so just moved onto painting it. Here it is
And with the painted wiper arms. They were so faded before
And re-fitted. Much better!
The Tegiwa-M is now a nice snug fit. I need to make some kind of bracket for it, because I'm not happy with the one that comes from Tegiwa, it's too bulky and heavy.
The last step is to add the carbon scoop to the top of the scuttle, to deflect air into the whole thing. Might add a cheeky sticker too.
Added in 2 minutes 53 seconds:
I've taken some time out over the past couple of weeks to do some garage maintenance! This has consisted of re-stocking things like drill bits, fastenings, consumables etc
Also taken the time to re-finish the top of my workbench. I rescued this a couple of years ago and it was in such a state, the top surface was like an old railway sleeper! Solid, but uneven and caked in years worth of sh-t! So I've screwed a fresh sheet of ply to the top and painted it.
And added some edge trim aluminium and re-fitted the beast of a vice with M12 bolts and spreader plates.
Here you can also see the two of the three oddments drawers I have, which are size organised into nuts, washers, bolts, fuses etc. I've also been tidying the house attic and the garage attic to be much more organised.
It's getting there slowly! I've also put racking up for low value parts (high value stuff kept indoors), additional lighting etc. Next trick is to house my compressor under the workbench and get the upstairs lighting working again!
Anyhoo, the V5 for the Honda came back to me. I can now legally R8PE U
I'm also mid way through the re-wire of the starter, alternator, fuse box etc
After ordering some new -AN fittings I managed to get the oil cooler pipes routed better (through the gearbox mount and over the gearbox, instead of over the cam cover.
Here they are. They aren't too close to the manifold (picture is deceptive)
And through the mount
The sump is off too. It's pretty easy, although you need to drop the subframe to remove the pan itself.
Once off I degreased it with petrol and rags.
The plan is now to TIG weld in the baffle kit, like so...
Sump is all baffled now
Primed
Painted
And refitted. Subframe is back on too with one new bolt (original had rounded)
I've finished plumbing in the oil cooler, so filled up with some fresh oil and added the gauge senders
Here's the two gauge sender wires (black = pressure and red = temperature) alongside the meaty new battery cable for the relocated battery. All just being fed through the bulkhead grommet.
You need 3 metres to do a battery relocation.
Here you can see I've got a catch tank in and fitted too
It's got some wire wool inside to help condense the oil vapour
I've started the car, it starts fine so the battery wiring is good. I'll see next if I can drop down from a 200a fuse to a 170a fuse.
There's a couple of oil leaks which are the next issue to tackle - then it's tidying the wiring and tracing a couple of oil leaks on the new pipework!
IT'S ALIVE!!!
After a brief problem with an erratic idle (cured by taking it for a spin) it's ALIVE!!!
- No leaks
- Engine pulls cleanly and strong
- Epic sound from carbon airbox!
Niggles
- People giving me abuse over the reg plate!!
- 1x headlight not working
- Bonnet release not working
IM SO HAPPY!!!
Roll on Cadwell Park and Nurburgring!
Added in 2 minutes 45 seconds:
Took her out again today for a bit of a run. Went over to Derby to see a mate and stopped off at the scrapyard on the way, out of curiosity.
Onto the weighbridge (exhaust scraping all the way)
1140kg with a brimmed fuel tank, so 1091kg without fuel.
I reckon I can easily save another 20kg in sound deadening, rear wiper motor, side impact bars and central locking gubbins.
If I do keep it long term I'm looking at Pesch motorsport fibreglass doors and tailgate with perspex windows for a further 40-50kg saving there.
Put another sunstrip on it at my mate's. Just need to decide on what logo or lettering to have on it.
Next up was "pre-track testing". Goals were to evaluate the brakes, tyres and identify any niggles
I started the test just a few miles outside of Manchester. Funny how quickly you go from a built up city like Stockport to this...
And on to Curbar edge in the Peak district
Roads were nice and empty
I've got some good feedback from the car and some ideas of what to work on before Cadwell and the Ring
No major issues to report.
Cheers guys
Feeling the love for this one!Well today I made a spontaneous decision to take it to the Saturday night special at Santa Pod. The track was open till 8pm so I managed to get 5 runs in in 4 hours.
Some shots from trackside
Here's an onboard video of my best run. Whilst the time isn't amazing (14.03 @ 104mph) some things really do stand out
1) I start the run in 2nd gear (because close ratio box)
2) I finish the run almost at the limiter in 5th (because close ratio box)
3) It sounds like a bike going through the gears
Enjoy
[video]
[/video]
Added in 2 minutes 30 seconds:
I've also finished the wiring for the gauges
They all work, however I'm not convinced the pressure gauge sender are in the best location (oil cooler pipework) as the pressure gauge flickers when warm. Interestingly my oil sat at under 60 degrees on the motorway and barely touched 70 in traffic. I'm tempted to cover the oil cooler until we get warmer weather.
I also finished mounting my GoPro on the cage. I used a clamp off eBay, plus a little gubbin that lets you rotate 360 degrees via a series of notches
The view isn't ideal to be honest, as the visibility out of the front screen is minimal.
That brings us up to date, March 2016.
I'm off to Cadwell Park to try and break my lap record next month, then the 'Ring in May for a proper test of the car.
My goal is to set a Sub-8 time at the 'Ring in 2017
Thanks for reading, all questions and constructive comments welcome
On track however it's perfect, it transforms the car! There is an option to use an Accord 6th gear (longer) which might ease the issue somewhat.
