106 replies to this topic

[CRXfanatic]

Awesome! I feel a sudden desire to get my wagon block/CDM head done.

[kakabox]

Very nice...I am enjoying the show!

A couple of questions:
Is that an Autopower 4 pt roll bar w/added door diagonal bars or did you bend and weld it up yourself? I'd really like to see more detail of where the door diagonal bars connect to the front floor and where the main hoop connects to the floor.


Does your tach contain other functions? Water temp, oil pressure, etc.? What kind is it?


Thanks!

[1gcvcb18]

What clutch did you use and where did you buy it?

[EPcivic]

I don't have any pictures of the cage tie-in points. Basically in the front it is welded to a plate that is welded to the floor, the sill, and the firewall/inner fender area on the top. The main hoop is similar, just a plate welded to the corner where the sill meets the floor and the raised area under where the rear seat used to be. It's not what I would consider now to be the "correct" way to mount a cage, but this is a solo car, so the cage is more for chassis stiffness than for safety. That is why I choose the mounting points I did. The front points are very near the torsion bar mounts, and the rear are where the panhard bar crossmember attaches to the rest of the body. A main concern I had was welding to areas that were thick enough. These areas are either double layered or significantly thicker than a lot of the rest of the car.

The tach is from Summit racing - it is one of their 'Summit' brand products. It's actually really cool. It is a 10k tach, water temp, oil press, and volt meter, plus an adjustable shift light built into one very light unit. And it's cheap too.

The clutch is one of those cheapie ebay "Stage III" units. I can't remember the brand name, but they are probably all built by children in the same factory in China anyway It had a pretty heavy duty pressure plate and a nice sprung 6 puck disk. It is a lot heavier than I would have liked, but at least it looks like it should be pretty strong. I like to have a pretty soft clutch to keep from breaking stuff anyway. I do a lot of 3-2 downshifting without using the clutch when I race, and for whatever reason, this combination of tranny/flywheel/clutch seems to be a lot easier to clutchless shift than the stock setup was with a Centerforce clutch.

-Chris

[ef91]

wow.. nice build how much did it run you for that beast header you fabed up????

[kakabox]

A main concern I had was welding to areas that were thick enough. These areas are either double layered or significantly thicker than a lot of the rest of the car.

Yes, I know exactly what you speak of!

The tach is from Summit racing - it is one of their 'Summit' brand products. It's actually really cool. It is a 10k tach, water temp, oil press, and volt meter, plus an adjustable shift light built into one very light unit. And it's cheap too.

Cool, I may look into that...if I decide to strip my "dash" even more.

Thanks for the info.

[watzizzname]

What process did you use to strip out the original "dynamat" stuff from the floors? I've heard of people heating it with a heat gun, and using dry ice and a rubber mallet. I need to strip mine out, but I'm curious beacuse yours seems to be NOT beat to hell like some others that I have seen, and what kinds of issues your ran into.


otherwise - FREAKIN' SWEET BUILD!!

[DEIVIONCRX]

I used Dry ice and a rubber mallet and it came out realy eazy.

[EPcivic]

Thought I'd post up a few pictures of my winter projects on the EP car. Now that the racing season is getting close, I've had to get moving on my projects. Nicer weather is helping too.

This project was to add a steering quickener to the car. This is a gearbox that goes inline with the steering column and changes the steering ratio. I chose a 1.5:1 ratio. Coupled with the power steering rack, this now gives me slightly less than 2.5 turns lock to lock. This should allow me to not have to let go of the steering wheel during tight slaloms, which should be a good thing. The way I've designed it, if I hate it all I have to do is put a stock column back it. I built is as a bolt-in.

Now for the pictures. Here is the quickener I'm installing:


The stock steering shaft cut and a splined connector welded on to match the quickener:


The whole new steering column assembly. This includes the fancy bracket that I had to fabricate to hold everything together.


And finally, the assembly installed in the car:



I should be able to try it out in a couple of weeks.

-Chris

[P-Tail]

Very cool, great work! I love how clean the interior is!

[DEIVIONCRX]

Since youve already got the footwork done. What size and spline was the "Splined Coupler" you ended up with to fit the Coleman and the factory shaft.

[kaymo]

sweet build! i love the steering thingy. your fuel cell looks funny tho... bein so narrow and tall...

[jsgprod]

Thought I'd post up a few pictures of my winter projects on the EP car. Now that the racing season is getting close, I've had to get moving on my projects. Nicer weather is helping too.

This project was to add a steering quickener to the car. This is a gearbox that goes inline with the steering column and changes the steering ratio. I chose a 1.5:1 ratio. Coupled with the power steering rack, this now gives me slightly less than 2.5 turns lock to lock. This should allow me to not have to let go of the steering wheel during tight slaloms, which should be a good thing. The way I've designed it, if I hate it all I have to do is put a stock column back it. I built is as a bolt-in.

Now for the pictures. Here is the quickener I'm installing:


I should be able to try it out in a couple of weeks.

-Chris

Chris, I'd like to hear what your impressions are of that after you try it. I'm not really sure if I'd want 2.5 turns on my race car (probably not at Daytona) but there are some places I can think of where it might be handy.

Jay

[EPcivic]

Chris, I'd like to hear what your impressions are of that after you try it. I'm not really sure if I'd want 2.5 turns on my race car (probably not at Daytona) but there are some places I can think of where it might be handy.

Jay

It will probably be a month before I get to try it out. I'm not sure that I'll like it, which is one of the reasons I made it in a way that I could go back to stock if I need to. It might be a little twitchy for a road race application. The reason I'm trying it is because I often find myself needing more than 180 deg inputs during slaloms. The car can pull over 2g in a slalom, so I end up running short on hand speed/accuracy when I have to let go of the steering wheel. My hope is that this will allow me to be able to drive things like slaloms at the car's limits rather than my hand speed limits. The big question is how much precision will I loose and will the power steering be able to keep up.

The couplers are 3/4" - 36 spline, which fit the quickener, but don't fit anything on the Civic. Aligning them on the factory steering shafts was a pain. The upper part of the shaft is a double D style with an OD about .015" smaller than the 3/4 coupler. The coupler has a little slop to the splines, and uses a set screw to hold it tight. The set screw pulls all the slop to one side, so the coupler is about .005" off center. So, all I had to do was weld it up exactly .005" off center with a .015" gap. It took me several iterations of methods and fixtures to finally get it in the right place, but I did get it pretty much dead nuts on. The bottom shaft was much easier, and really doesn't have to be as concentric as the top one anyway, since it connects with two U joints anyway.

-Chris

[poopshovel]

I hated the quickener in the Tinsley car. I took a LOT of getting used to, and made the steering feel really numb. There were a lot of times when the front tires would bite hard on corner exit, and I'd suddenly realize I had the wheels turned waaay more than I wanted them to be.