Boy it's been a while since the last update, about 1 year & 2 months.. What a time 2020/2021 has been with everything around the world.. I bought a house at the start of 2021 with my partner as we need our own space and it was time to move out (cough wanted space to have all my cars in one location!!). The house has plenty of space for my cars, a garage and a big pergola out the back where I work on the cars usually as you'll see in photos from now on. I plan to build a nice big car shed in the future.

My club MWSCC had a Wakefield Park open pit day booked for the 23rd April so it was time to boogy. I hadn't touched the car since the last track day in October last year. I needed some new tyres, I was happy with how the Nankang AR-1s had performed so far so I decided to give them another shot.

I've kept the Civic registered ever since I bought it in 2014, even though the past 5 years it hasn't been my daily and more so a weekend/mainly track car. At the start of this year the rego was up for renewal again, but as I was moving house at the time and the club I was with disappeared randomly, I decided to let it lapse. Since owning the EF9 I much prefer to drive that as it's comfier, although not as powerful, it's nice to just cruise around in and it's an EF9!

I would like to re-register the Civic within the next few years once I find another club but honestly, I'm not too fussed. I've trailered it to the track for the past few years as my dad bought a ute, it's nice to have that piece of mind. And I'm fine not adding '.. and I drove it home from the track' to posts, I'll happily sit in a comfy modern vehicle with cruise control and AC!

The only downside to this along with not being able to fully bed in brakes on the street (can just do on the track) is I can no longer drive the car to my mechanic for a wheel alignment, somewhat the reason I've had it registered the past few years. So I need some way to align the car at home... hmmm

---

I've always wanted to learn how to string align, I like the technical aspect of it and being able to do it at home. And as I have a few Honda's it'll definitely save money in the long run, even more so with the Civic as I usually get an alignment before each track day. A friend who used to track a Honda Accord happened to have a BG Racing string alignment kit from the UK which he was looking to get rid of, and was happy to pass it onto me as it'll go to good use.

The BG Racing string alignment kit is a good piece of kit, idea is once you setup the front and rear piece to suit the car you can mark the different pieces/rod so you can easily setup in the future. Or in my case I'll just leave the 2 piece's assembled, remove the rod and hang them up somewhere in the garage, along with the rods. There's many ways to set it up, I've gone the route of making some mini platforms so I can get under the car to make adjustments, sponsored by Bunnings Warehouse timber!

Mechanic's with wheel alignment machines use a hoist to raise the car for adjustments, with the wheels sitting on a metal plate on the hoist to allow it to move when making the adjustments. My friend I bought the kit from told me he just used some WD40 in ziplock bags to put ontop of the platform between the wood and the tyre to allow it to move when making adjustments, as he saw this at a event at Bathurst. And it works! Although in a later post I'll discuss, that I'll be making some metal plates, 2 per side which will contain WD40 or grease between.

Anyhow, there are many video's on YouTube informing how to setup the string alignment kit and how you measure the cars alignment settings but I'll give a quick run down now.

• Setup the bars on the front and rear with the rod on it, along with the string from front to back.
• Position it so the string goes through the center of the wheel/axle front and back.
• Then you want to measure the distance from center of hub/axle to the string, and have the front right/left be equal, same for the rear, best to use a metal ruler.
• Once both front left/right & rear left/right are the same, in theory you've created a parrallel string box around the car.
• You can now take the ruler and measure the distance from the front and rear lip of each wheel, the difference between that number is your toe reading per side.
  • If the front measurement is greater than the rear on the wheel itself, then that wheel as toe in, vise versa.
• Now make adjustments, keep measuring until at the desired spec!

Took a while the first time, but I feel I'm now decent at it. I always record the before and after to compare between track days and to keep note of what happens to the alignment itself on the track day. I'll make a further post in more detail on this in another post I think, just some things I've come across when doing/thoughts.

** Find photo of first alignment specs **

Apart from that, I did an oil change, spanner check and she was ready to roll!