Tomorrow we head down to Winton Raceway in Victoria for Honda Nationals. The past 3 weeks I've been scrambling around getting various things fixed and ready on the Civic. Lets go over what has been done. She's a juicy one, so grab a cuppa!

Pesky drive shaft

As mentioned over the past 2 track days, the passenger CV boot was torn and looked to have flicked out all of the grease. With that weird noise we got at the previous Wakefield day I didn't want to take any chances with it, so I'll remove it and take to my mate to have it sent to his CV shop to be serviced and rebuilt.

I've recently bought a new toy, don't think I'll ever have issues with any bolt/nut from now on!

Inspecting the drive shaft out of the car, not that the photos show it but when I looked inside with a torch it was rather dry with bits of dirt and whatnot. Theres some movement between the joints, possibly the usual amount. Regardless, this will be sent off for rebuidling.

I'm getting a little tired of always sending these off whenever the boot is torn. I think investing in the tools and learning how to do them properly will be something to do myself, save the hassle of running around and waiting for it to be done.

Brake pad review

Quick brade pad review after the previous Wakefield day as these were the replacements for the defect ones. Looks like they've held up well with normal wear for what we are doing. Lovely!

Note: Not sure what happened with the prong here, passenger side. Maybe I accidentally did this during install.

EF8/9 Sir Knuckles!

Ok lets get onto the juicy SiR content! I've had DA9 front knuckles on my car for 6-7yrs as they've always been the go to upgrade as they house the 262mm rotor/caliper, the go to big brake upgrade.

Since Honed Developments have come into the scene, done their RnD and make their various suspension upgrade parts, they found that the DA9 knuckle essentially makes the car worse off than the standard ED6 knuckles. At last years Honda Nationals I was speaking with Tom from Honed, who owns a EF8 SiR CRX about this and from their findings, the best knuckle for our chassis is the EF8/9 SiR ones. I mean lets face it, of course it would be! He suggested I buy a pair from Yahoo Auctions, especially for when I move to the Honed Development kit.

I did so and they've been sitting in the shed awaiting the day I install the Honed kit. However, with that noise from the previous track day on the front left, and with Honda Nationals being a double day as we are doing the practice EXE day beforehand, I decided to install the SiR knuckles early. This is in case the issue was the wheel bearing and it was noisey on the DA9 knuckles. I didn't want to replace the DA9 knuckle wheel bearing for 2 track days and then do the same to the SiR knuckles.

As I don't own a press, I gave them to my mate Ram when I handed over the drive shaft. He'd install new wheel bearings, and also do extended wheel studs whilst we're there. I was always planning to do these whenever I did the Honed kit. They are pretty minging, the lower ball joint has seen better days, but as I now plan to do the Honed kit after Honda Nationals which includes an extended lower ball joint, decided to just send these ones for Honda Nationals.

[hub damage, write more here]

And here's the finished product! New wheel bearing + extended studs. Removed the dust shield from 1 of them, the other didn't have any. These will get a fresh coat of paint in the future. New hubs would of been nice, however finding parts is starting to get hard for our cars, and when we're talking EF8/9 SiR specific, yeah goodluck. I believe DA9 hub is the same, always discussion around this, but still hard to find.

Always loved the extended stud look with the caliper & rotor mounted! Just means business!

Shortening the ED6 tie rods to suit the SiR knuckles

With the SiR knuckles mounted it was time to do a wheel alignment and straight away I noticed something, with the steering wheel straight both wheels were toeing in a lot! Even with them wound in all the way, they toed in about 10mm from memory. You can see the toeing in in the photos below, you'll have to trust me the steering wheel was straight and both sides toed in the same amount.

CuttingI knew there was a difference in the tie rods, and a friend with a EF8 said he had the same issue when using ED9 tie rods as he couldn't order EF8 ones. He shorted the tie rod by 10mm and it was fine. For a long time it's been believed the differences is in the inner tie rod end, but it seems to be with the outer tie rod. Time to get cutting!

Wheel alignment

With the tie rods cut and refitted, I carried out the usual wheel alignment. Always love getting the string out!

I currently record the before and afters on paper, but the few I've done so far I never thought to write which event it was for, and then the pile they were in got mixed up. I plan to make an Excel sheet to record the data on, which can be easily exported/screenshotted to upload here, to keep track of the before and after.

Fresh AR-1s, 6UL's and extended studs

You may have noticed above, but I fitted the 6UL's with the fresh AR-1 tyres. The extended studs look great. Luckily I already run the open ended JDMYard wheel nuts.

Service bits

Few various service bits, fresh AR-1s for the 6ULs. Finally get to properly use these wheels on track!

Engine oil + filter, gearbox oil, fresh set of spark plugs, rebuilt drive shaft. Ram went with Hardrace extended wheel studs, I'll do the rear ones when doing the Honed kit in the future.

Now that I own a filler gauge set after the whole valve incident in the previous photo, I thought I should start to check the gap on new spark plugs. Generally these are meant to be pre-set but I've always heard this isn't the case sometimes, but I've always just thrown them in.

I can't remember by how much, but funnily enough when checking the new ones, 2 were out of spec for the B18CR! Another thing added to the to do servicing list!

Prepped and ready!

Weight reduction

I've never really cared about weight reduction to be honest, I've left the passenger seat in the car, all seat belt and buckles etc. However in this newly forming phase of the car coming up, I decided it's time to start caring about weight.

The last time I weighed the car it was 980kg @ half tank. With the 3 things removed from the car below the car should now be 17.54kg lighter,so we can call it 971.5kg @ half tank. Not bad! Although we do have bigger brakes now, different seat.. Will need to go to the weigh bridge again haha

Bag weight: 0.10kg

Driver/passenger seat belt & buckles - 3.14kg

Passenger seat rail - 4.15kg

Passenger CRX seat - 10.55kg

New phone photos - Samsung S22 Ultra

Got a new phone for our UK trip in 3 weeks. It can do the fancy wide angle photos, going to be great for blogging the car activities!