Welcome back to the car content, it's been a while. The car was parked up after Honda Nationals '22 as I went overseas and hasn't been touched until now. I've now owned the car for 8.5yrs, originally buying it with the intention to take it to the race track.

The two "Phases" the Civic has been through:

• Phase 1 - Make it look cool w/suspension, wheel & EF9 front end.
• Phase 2 - B18CR EFI swap with some other supporting bits

Phase 1 happened very quickly, about 1 or 2 months into owning the car, followed by Phase 2 being done 1.5-2years after ownership. Since then, it's stayed the same with minor changes along the way, the biggest probably being buying the new BC ER coilovers. Few seats of wheels & bucket seats as well. But overall it stayed the same for 6yrs as I kept it road registered so I could drive to the track and also test it before going to the track.

Four or so years ago my dad bought a new Nissan Navara ute, which opened up the option to also use it to tow the Civic. This was great, I didn't get to do the whole 'drove to the track, raced, drove home' on the Civic's behalf, but it saved me having to worry about breaking it and not being about to get home as easily. It's also great sitting in comfort with AC and cruise control after a long day at the track! Personally I enjoy towing too, whenever I get to drive the ute myself. So in 2021 when the car club the Civic was recently registered with on the conditional rego scheme disappeared and won't reply to me, I decided to let the rego lapse. I also had just moved the Civic to my new house that week, so I atleast had one final drive in it. I could look into registering it again one day, but I'm honestly not too bothered, and the EF9 is a lot more comfier for the street.

I've done some reassessing/reflection on the car since Honda Nationals, mainly whilst in the UK, and decided it's time to get proper and pull my finger out and stop being lazy with the car (mainly since the COVID19 lockdowns I got way too comfortable sitting at the PC all night, especially after being sat at it all day for work). I've decided it's time to focus the car purely on motorsport, not keeping certain things on the car for a street trim, and not just only attending club track days. I'd like to start modifying the car towards motorsport competition, which will include time attack styled events but also wheel to wheel racing eventually. It seems pretty fun, I've gone and watched a few MRA events which include 1hr or 3hr enduro's and it's completely different from anything I've done so far.

Theres many modifications & enhancements to make on the car. I've had the Honed Development suspension kit sitting around for a few years, which a few more bits to purchase. Reassurance things like oil cooler, various safety upgrades like HANS, proper battery isolation points, etc. A lot of small quality of life things I've put off over the years, to make things run smoother and be easier to operator. Tidy up the the overall car. And also start to do some level of data analysis with the Hondata and my race dash I'm currently building (software & hardware) so I'm not aimlessly going around the track and winging it by feel.

Some things will happen now, others will wait based on priority. I'll look to do more posts around the things I do, and I've building a website blog to move my forum build threads to.

Time to stop folkin' bout ya wee lad, and start doing things the 'propa' way. Anyways, heres a few pics of how she currently sits.

Honed Development kit

I purchased half of the Honed Development kit back in late 2019 or 2020, but wasn't planning on installing until I had achieved a 1.09 at Wakefield. Then once achieving that, I wanted to push for the 1.08 first. Since then it's been sat in the cupboard, but now with Wakefield closed for the foreseeable future I thought maybe it's time.

I've also purchased the rest of the kit since, as new parts have been released. They have some great write ups with technical explanations/diagrams on their website https://honeddevelopments.com, but the overall idea is to correct the negative affect of lowering these cars, and enhance it's capabilities further. With this installed, we won't be doing bandaid type patching mods to fix issues, and will allow the car's setup to be fine tuned. The following parts are:

Suspension Geometry Tuning:

• Front roll center correction extended ball joints
• Rear roll centre correction kit

Steering Upgrades:

• Adjustable tie rod kit
• Aluminimum steering rack bushes
• Lock reducing rack spacer

Adjustable Control Arms:

• Rear camber arms
• Toe arm kit with eccentric adjustment kit + camber shims

Suspension Reinforcement:

• Trailing arm gusset plate

Brake Control:

• Brake booster delete kit
• Master cylinder brace pieces (they don't make for my chassis, but have provided the main parts for me to make one)

Misc:

• New OEM Honda rear trailing arm bushing, I purchased myself to replace whilst I'm here

Current state of the Civic

Since going to the UK in the previous post back in October 2022, the Civic has been benched on the sideline whilst I continued on with the EFI conversion on my blue wagon. I need to get this done so it's out the way and I can then focus on the Civic for it's new phase.

It's still covered in mud all underneath and in the engine bay from Winton, and cobwebs everywhere thanks to a few resident spiders. I seem to take these dusty photo's more often these days, but hey lets get it washed before we go any further.

Washed, looking half presentable again. As it's time to pull out all the suspension, it would be a good time to take some current state photos of the car, minus it with the track wheels on. She still scrubs up alright!

Interior has felt somewhat scruffy to me for a while, torn carpet on the sides and under drivers foot, rear paint exposed floor still contains specs of the black sound deadening. I'd like to freshen it up in the near future, I always imagined keeping the carpet in the front so the driving view would contains dark surroundings from the corner of their eyes, whilst looking out the windscreen, but it's hard to find a carpet in good condition which doesn't have the side door dill plastic trim's snapped where they meet.

Relocating the battery from the boot to behind the passenger seat, along with replacing it with the smaller race type batteries is on the todo list.

I painted the engine bay when doing the motorswap back in 2016. Using mixed paint cans from Autobarn was a big mistake, the colour was off from the start and has yellowed over the years. Focusing on pure motorsport now, I'd like to declutter the engine bay as much as possible so maintenance is as seamless as it can be. The upcoming Honed brake booster delete kit & the EF/ED Conversion's hydro clutch conversion will assist with that.

Some of Winton off field..

Jacked up & ready

Cleaned up the workspace, put the Civic on stands off to the side so I'd have access on all sides of the car & can still get my other cars through. Time to get cracking!

Mud situation post Winton

The mud from Winton went absolutely everywhere, absolutely minging.. As I'm installing all the new Honed Development suspension kit, I might freshen up the arches with some new black paint, so I thought it would be good to note the current state of how bad it can look! Chunks of grass dangling everywhere...

Front right:

Front left:

Rear right:

Rear left: