The Prep

Post Morgan Park I had in mind that was it for the year, time to dig into some "off season" prep towards next years door to door debut, and get the Civic ready for the full weld in cage.

However with some slight persuasion from the lads at BYP Racing when I went to pickup some front spacers they ordered for me and had machined to suit my 6ULs centre bores, I was then booked in for a SMSP Brabham night event in a fortnights time. Brabham is the full circuit at SMSP, people generally do the GP circuit; Brabham does the GP but bolts on the South Circuit back section making it a > 2 minute lap!

So with that, it was a quick 2 week rush to get the car ready. If you recall at Morgan Park we had the issue with the wheel nut getting jammed on the stud and we had no choice but to snap it, to get the nut off. So I ordered some fresh ARP extended studs (previous ones were Hardrace), along with a new clutch slave and fluid in an attempt to fix that sticking clutch pedal from Morgan Park as well.

Extended stud replacement

It was my first time doing front hubs on the press and I was a bit concerned about stuffing up the bearings and/or the hub, in the end we got there. The usual battles with the press is finding the right assortment of blocks to make sure the item is level in the press, whilst catering for having some part then needs to stick through the centre section of the press.

On the first one I managed to separate the race collar thingy, quick google suggesting it's kinda stuffed from here on out but I managed to get it all back together and it spins freely.

Reassembling

Finto!

Brake pad + rotor check

I've had the new Intima RR pads on all year, and I must say their a great pad with the manual brakes! Can always trust their performance will be there, even with stomping on the pedal quite hard, and on hot days too.

I've done 8 track days so far and they still have a lot of meat on them, and even wear too. Just needed to clean up the edges a smidge as you can see them burring

Rotors are looking quite good too, I did replace these mid way through the year. Only up to the first heat zone

Last bit of track prep

I was going to anyways, but especially with the racing adventures to come next year, I really need to startt thinking about bringing ALL spares to the track. My idea is to build up a collection of bits and bobs over time, have them in sorters like the below which I had lying around, and they can easily be stacked in the back of the Pajero, then popped under my wheelie tool cart at the track.

Quick wheel alignment, I was having strange troubles with trying to get this squared today. I'm not sure whats happened to be honest but it really annoyed me. I think what I'll do over the break is pull apart both rigs, clean them down, and do a full reset on the car with proper markings

SMSP Brabham

Tonight was the ARDC SMSP Brabham event, and boy I have never seen so many red flags, I swear I counted atleast 7? Overall the Civic went quite well, the clutch issue was resolved, but one or two of the nuts seemed to be coming loose again after each session.. Balance wise the car felt fairly stable, the YouTube lap vid below shows me being able to hold T1 flat and the car behaving quite well.

As I got my eye in for the new top part of the circuit, the times started to improve. The top section is fun and surprisingly technical I found, incline change with some tight bends, really working the manual steering. One thing which did seem weird and it might sound weird, is when doing the top section, at times it felt it was hard to see things, OR my vision was delayed. Not sure why, just seemed to be the case.. hmm

Unfortunately the night did somewhat end with a "broken" car, although not really.. It was down to the last session, with only 2 groups you only had 20 minutes between outtings, so I did the refuel and decided to throw the silver 6ULs on with the Nankang CR-S for the last outing (sound familar).. Well I did the back ones, no issue, then went to the front and when removing a nut I felt it get tight, just like at Morgan Park..

I was able to remove it with damaging anything, but the passenger side also had 1 or 2 nuts loose.. In the end I missed that last session :/

Once the BYP boys came back in, I had them look at the scenario as we were hoping the wheel spacers would have resolved it. Jimmy pointed out the first nut I had issues with actually had the thread pulled out portion of it, I didn't even know! The usual question was asked, when did I change the nuts last, and yep been on the car for 10yrs now. So thats a new item to replace. Oh well, atleast every single track day this year something has managed to break :P

Packed up, and that was it for the year. I finished on a 2.14.98 which seemed ok? We'll return next year and try improve on it. YouTube vid below. Time to pull some things apart, prep for cage, and fix some other bits!

One thing you'll notice in the video is I finally have this bloody shift light working! And you'll see how it constantly flickers back and forth. Go back to the BYP Racing tune post prior Morgan Park and we spoke about seeing the RPM trace noise on the dyno, well this is the same thing. I'm going to have to try order some new dizzy components to try resolve, otherwise it'll be time for a COP kit.