Performance Autoworks Prelude
- Thread starter Kris!
- Start date
This is fecking awesome!! The amount of work and the quality of work thats gone into that car is almost unreal! They guys definitely know what there doing 
Loving it being a lude aswell, got a wee soft spot for them
Keep the pictures and updates coming, i'm looking forward to seeing it completed
Loving it being a lude aswell, got a wee soft spot for them
Keep the pictures and updates coming, i'm looking forward to seeing it completed
Accessory Zone
New Member
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2007
- Messages
- 626
Thats some build guys. Well impressive.
Kris!
Member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2008
- Messages
- 311
Mainly becasue Richy has had the prelude for 8 years (since imported) and it has been a track car ever since, so as you can imagine he has a soft spot for it. Plus you dont see many, if any full on Race Preludes so its a little different in that respect.
Hopefully will have some more pics up shortly with the latest weight saving measures
Kris!
Member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2008
- Messages
- 311
Heres Novembers - February's installment...........hold on to your hats 
"Ok this is what you wanted right... a massive list of all the progress of the now surely almost complete car !!
Errrrr sorry to disappoint
In fairness the progress has been rather errr slow to say the least.
Lots of the usual excuses such as Nippon race weekends, working all hours and needing to have some occasional down time from the workshop to recharge the batteries have meant slow progress. That coupled with lots of very time consuming tasks that really aren't of enough interest to warrant taking pics of have meant that if you stand back and look at the car now it doesn't look very much different to the last update .
Anyway, onwards and upwards...lets get bang up to date.
So following on from the last update here's a few pics of the car over the Rally Day event weekend.
On the trailer ready for it's first public outing - "Rally Day" at Castle Combe
Coupled up to the tow barge
The Performance Autoworks "Rally Day" stand.
Race Lude in the build process, Kris' race winning Civic and Dave's mint retro Lancer Turbo - all three cars getting good attention and feedback throughout the day.
Safely back at the workshop unharmed. It was a lovely sunny day on the Sunday after the event so decided it would be a nice chance to get the car outside for a few pictures. The sun really brought out the depth of colour not only in the PAW orange but also the metalic grey.
With that done and out of my system I needed to get back on with the build up process. Now as I've said all along I am not going to rush this and simply bolt everything back on and get the thing ready to use, everything that goes back together is being cleaned, modified, lightened or replaced with more suitable items. This attitude to the build and the time taken to prepare these parts doesn't do any favours for the time taken to build it up however as I very rarely get big chunks of time spare to spend solely on the race car build. Hopefully the winter will see more available free time and much faster progress.
First up was to get the side skirts back on...
After much consideration as to how to mount the "Euro kit" side skirts and properly support them it was decided that the best effective solution in terms of ease, neatness and weight would be to re-use the original full length plastic side skirts. I looked at making several mounting brackets to do the job but in the end decided to go with the OEM sill covers but there's some modifications to be done first.
This pic shows how much lower the "Euro Kit" skirts sit compared to OEM sill cover. This may well cause drag along the length of the car so a plan was formed...
OEM sill cover with the return section removed - this normally attaches to the floor at a downward angle. The remainder of the sill cover is drilled along it's length to significantly reduce it's weight. This is the part that the "Euro kit" skirts will attach to
OEM sill cover (or what's left of it) now firmly attached to the car using all OEM mounting clips.
The "Euro Kit" side skirts are then simply placed over the top and secured at the ends in total with 3 screws. The plan is too finish the fitment off with a full flat return to the floor made of very thin aluminum, this will give the underside of the car a much flatter and smoother aero surface. This may also incorporate a verticle "drop lip" to channel airflow along the underside of the car. I've yet to finish this aspect but will update when done.
Simple one this, door and window rubbers and trim thoroughly cleaned and refitted.
Back to finding more stuff to make lighter and tidy up before they go back in the car. Bear in mind that as usual I am constantly looking at re-using as much of the original parts as I can but also to keep the weight as low as possible. This is still (despite what many people think) in no way a big budget open cheque book race car build. If the budget was huge enough I'm sure we'd all like to buy new light alloy parts here, carbon parts ther but hey this is reality...it's time to get creative.
With that said.... bring on the extremely time consuming madness :wink:
An unsuspecting innocent OEM handbrake lever assembly
Broken down into it's component parts
Mounting section reduced in weight by cutting back excess material. This would also have been drilled but the material is super hardened and seemingly impervious to any type of drill I have...even super hard spot weld drill barely marked the surface.
Thankfully the lever component was significantly less resistant so got the full on drill attack treatment.
......................................................
"Ok this is what you wanted right... a massive list of all the progress of the now surely almost complete car !!
Errrrr sorry to disappoint
In fairness the progress has been rather errr slow to say the least.
Lots of the usual excuses such as Nippon race weekends, working all hours and needing to have some occasional down time from the workshop to recharge the batteries have meant slow progress. That coupled with lots of very time consuming tasks that really aren't of enough interest to warrant taking pics of have meant that if you stand back and look at the car now it doesn't look very much different to the last update
.Anyway, onwards and upwards...lets get bang up to date.
So following on from the last update here's a few pics of the car over the Rally Day event weekend.
On the trailer ready for it's first public outing - "Rally Day" at Castle Combe
Coupled up to the tow barge
The Performance Autoworks "Rally Day" stand.
Race Lude in the build process, Kris' race winning Civic and Dave's mint retro Lancer Turbo - all three cars getting good attention and feedback throughout the day.
Safely back at the workshop unharmed. It was a lovely sunny day on the Sunday after the event so decided it would be a nice chance to get the car outside for a few pictures. The sun really brought out the depth of colour not only in the PAW orange but also the metalic grey.
With that done and out of my system I needed to get back on with the build up process. Now as I've said all along I am not going to rush this and simply bolt everything back on and get the thing ready to use, everything that goes back together is being cleaned, modified, lightened or replaced with more suitable items. This attitude to the build and the time taken to prepare these parts doesn't do any favours for the time taken to build it up however as I very rarely get big chunks of time spare to spend solely on the race car build. Hopefully the winter will see more available free time and much faster progress.
First up was to get the side skirts back on...
After much consideration as to how to mount the "Euro kit" side skirts and properly support them it was decided that the best effective solution in terms of ease, neatness and weight would be to re-use the original full length plastic side skirts. I looked at making several mounting brackets to do the job but in the end decided to go with the OEM sill covers but there's some modifications to be done first.
This pic shows how much lower the "Euro Kit" skirts sit compared to OEM sill cover. This may well cause drag along the length of the car so a plan was formed...
OEM sill cover with the return section removed - this normally attaches to the floor at a downward angle. The remainder of the sill cover is drilled along it's length to significantly reduce it's weight. This is the part that the "Euro kit" skirts will attach to
OEM sill cover (or what's left of it) now firmly attached to the car using all OEM mounting clips.
The "Euro Kit" side skirts are then simply placed over the top and secured at the ends in total with 3 screws. The plan is too finish the fitment off with a full flat return to the floor made of very thin aluminum, this will give the underside of the car a much flatter and smoother aero surface. This may also incorporate a verticle "drop lip" to channel airflow along the underside of the car. I've yet to finish this aspect but will update when done.
Simple one this, door and window rubbers and trim thoroughly cleaned and refitted.
Back to finding more stuff to make lighter and tidy up before they go back in the car. Bear in mind that as usual I am constantly looking at re-using as much of the original parts as I can but also to keep the weight as low as possible. This is still (despite what many people think) in no way a big budget open cheque book race car build. If the budget was huge enough I'm sure we'd all like to buy new light alloy parts here, carbon parts ther but hey this is reality...it's time to get creative.
With that said.... bring on the extremely time consuming madness :wink:
An unsuspecting innocent OEM handbrake lever assembly
Broken down into it's component parts
Mounting section reduced in weight by cutting back excess material. This would also have been drilled but the material is super hardened and seemingly impervious to any type of drill I have...even super hard spot weld drill barely marked the surface.
Thankfully the lever component was significantly less resistant so got the full on drill attack treatment.
......................................................
Kris!
Member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2008
- Messages
- 311
..................................................
The parts then painted, reassembled and refitted to the car.
You might wonder why it's mounted on raised "bosses", well if you remember this centre tunnel used to be multi skinned which in places was raised and included captive threaded nuts to enable items like the handbrake, gear linkage, centre consol etc all to be mounted. The handbrake bosses may be reduced in height again to reduce a little weight.
Ok so that was the handbrake done. So the next items on the agenda that I wanted to get bolted back in place were the two sections of pedal box - clutch pedal and mount plus brake/throttle pedals and mount. Trouble is they looked far to factory standard and very unfinished as they were. Also the alloy pedal which were attached although comfortable and great to use were not exactly fitted in the best way possible.
You can probably guess what's coming next.
Pedal assemblies were broken down to component parts and after some carefull marking out and consideration taken to how much material to remove and keep enough strength and durability.... some more time consuming madness continued. Ultimately I think these could have been made lighter with more material removed but I have gone on the side of caution and am still happy with the resulting weight loss. The alloy pedal retainers were also modified and welded in place so that they cannot move.
Clutch pedal and mounting after a bit of effort
Brake pedal and mounting after some more effort - You'll notice that less material was removed overall on the brake pedal than the clutch pedal. For obvious reasons I wanted to leave a bigger margin for safety on the brake.
The completed and painted assemblies ready to bolt back into the car.
Now that the pedal box was back in the car I could turn my attention to tidying up, cleaning and installing the brake servo, master cylinder and clutch master cylinder. Although the brake cylinder is only a 15/16th item it always gave me great pedal feel with the Hi-Spec 4 pots so I decided to re-use it even though I have a 1in m/cyl spare. If I feel the need to change later down the line I can but for now I'll stick to what I know worked well.
After a small worry that I couldn't refit the servo and m/cyl assembly due to the strut brace mounts I found the only way to refit it was to break it down and fit the servo first before mounting the m/cyl. In the end this worked but clearance is tight !!
So there you have it, other than what I've just posted there has not been a huge amount of progress. There has been a number of other smaller preparations and modifications to the shell and some of the parts due to be bolted back on but I haven't bothered taking pics of these as they really are even less exciting than this lot I just posted.
Thanks as usual for taking an interest, hopefully the next installment won't be so long in the making and maybe a little more interesting.
Cheers
Rich"
The parts then painted, reassembled and refitted to the car.
You might wonder why it's mounted on raised "bosses", well if you remember this centre tunnel used to be multi skinned which in places was raised and included captive threaded nuts to enable items like the handbrake, gear linkage, centre consol etc all to be mounted. The handbrake bosses may be reduced in height again to reduce a little weight.
Ok so that was the handbrake done. So the next items on the agenda that I wanted to get bolted back in place were the two sections of pedal box - clutch pedal and mount plus brake/throttle pedals and mount. Trouble is they looked far to factory standard and very unfinished as they were. Also the alloy pedal which were attached although comfortable and great to use were not exactly fitted in the best way possible.
You can probably guess what's coming next.
Pedal assemblies were broken down to component parts and after some carefull marking out and consideration taken to how much material to remove and keep enough strength and durability.... some more time consuming madness continued. Ultimately I think these could have been made lighter with more material removed but I have gone on the side of caution and am still happy with the resulting weight loss. The alloy pedal retainers were also modified and welded in place so that they cannot move.
Clutch pedal and mounting after a bit of effort
Brake pedal and mounting after some more effort - You'll notice that less material was removed overall on the brake pedal than the clutch pedal. For obvious reasons I wanted to leave a bigger margin for safety on the brake.
The completed and painted assemblies ready to bolt back into the car.
Now that the pedal box was back in the car I could turn my attention to tidying up, cleaning and installing the brake servo, master cylinder and clutch master cylinder. Although the brake cylinder is only a 15/16th item it always gave me great pedal feel with the Hi-Spec 4 pots so I decided to re-use it even though I have a 1in m/cyl spare. If I feel the need to change later down the line I can but for now I'll stick to what I know worked well.
After a small worry that I couldn't refit the servo and m/cyl assembly due to the strut brace mounts I found the only way to refit it was to break it down and fit the servo first before mounting the m/cyl. In the end this worked but clearance is tight !!
So there you have it, other than what I've just posted there has not been a huge amount of progress. There has been a number of other smaller preparations and modifications to the shell and some of the parts due to be bolted back on but I haven't bothered taking pics of these as they really are even less exciting than this lot I just posted.
Thanks as usual for taking an interest, hopefully the next installment won't be so long in the making and maybe a little more interesting.
Cheers
Rich"
Kris!
Member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2008
- Messages
- 311
"Right then peoples, time for a little update me thinks
Yes I know it's been a little while since the last proper update and as usual I have a nice long list of excuses such as workshop/customer commitments, too much partying in December and an unfortunate bout of under enthusiasm after Christmas.
Never fear though...it's all good now and some progress has been made again.
It's pretty much all suspension related for this update and as usual I am only posting a selection of the pics, some of which I have grouped. The bigger versions and others can be found on my gallery here - Photos by Richy
Some of you may find the following pictures disturbing :wink:
And once again, not all items are the definitive end of project final edit - there's a little bit of prototyping going on with much of this build and some parts are actually destroyed to find their limits so I'm starting to run out of my stash of spares :shock:
So, here we go then, first things first.
Heavily lowered Preludes suffer with quite bad bumpsteer....fact!
This is not something that feels dramatic on cars that retain the power steering but once it's gone and you have the car loaded up mid corner trust me you certainly notice it then! Before the car came off the road at the beginning of this project this was definately an area that I wanted to sort out and if I'm honest it was something that had been on my mind for a couple of years but I was just too lazy to get on and sort it out
The pic below shows a big part of the problem. Check out the static angle of the steering arm from the rack. Bear in mind that when the car is loaded up mid corner or riding over bumps then the angle will be increased further which in turn effectively shortens the arm and causes a change in toe for each given wheel. The closer to horizontal you can get the steering arm the less the effects on toe change over bumps will be. There are other parameters which contribute to bump steer but I'm just simplifying things a little here.
You'll notice that the track rod end mounts to the knuckle from above. The simple answer to the problem is to do a little surgery to the knuckle which will allow the track rod end to mount from the underside - remeber the track rod ends use a taper fitment so you cannot simply fit them the wrong way up.
Knuckle removed ready for surgery
OE taper drilled and reverse taper insert machined and pressed into place - note a lip was left of the original taper for the new insert to butt up to.
And voila, the track rod end can now be mounted from under the steering knuckle.
The other thing to consider is that as the track rod ends are handed with the wheel clearance bend in them (for when on lock) when turning the TRE over and mounting it from underneath you also need to swap side ie N/S TRE is flipped over and fitted to O/S.
Pictures showing the improved angle will come up later, in the meantime with all the suspension parts off the car there was work to be done.....
The cast suspension knuckles are obviously pretty weighty but they also take alot of punishment. Having said that they are cast very roughly and also have many areas casted for all model suitability such as abs mounts etc.
Here's a few pics of areas which could be improved on or removed
Plenty of time spent with the power tools left the knuckle a fair bit lighter and considerably better looking
Next I moved onto the hub spindle, again I didn't go too mad but definately able to save a little weight with this also. Studs have obviously been pressed out at this stage.
A couple of coats of paint and then the knuckles and spindles were rebuilt with new bearings and lower swivel joints.
Next up for attention were the heavy cast lower control arms (LCAs) and shock forks.
Actually before I get onto that I'll tell you something interesting about the shock forks while I'm at it. As we all know off the shelf Prelude track/race parts are nowhere near as common place as say ITR or Evo stuff. While looking at suspension options I toyed with the idea of running with ITR front and Evo rear which believe it or not would work pretty much right off with only a little modding to the rear LCA shock mount for the Evo fitment. One of the advantages for this setup is that ITR and Evo shock bodies are shorter to start with so less issues with dampers bottoming out.
Having measured stuff up I discovered that the ITR front shock forks are dimensionally the same apart from they are 10mm shorter - ideal for anybody whos shocks won't allow any further lowering or you just want the front end to drop 10mm more than what you currently have - be warned though...the "lightweight racecar for the road" ITR's shock fork are heavier than the Lude items !!
Here's a couple of comparison pics for future reference :wink:
Imageshack - dsc01197zsw.jpg
Imageshack - dsc01196de.jpg
Imageshack - dsc01195h.jpg
In the end I didn't go down that route but just thought I'd share the info
Right, back to the LCAs and shock forks
Stock, rough, ugly and heavy
Smoothed, lightened and much more attractive
LCAs painted and fitted with new poly bushes - a job made easier by the fact that this set were poly bushed previously anyway.
So that's the knuckle, LCAs and shock forks done, lets compare the look and weight to stock OEM parts, both in fully built up form.
In case it's difficult to see in that pic the weights work out at - Stock=12.75kg vs modified=10.5kg.
Yep that's 2.25kg saved per side and more importantly it's unsprung weight - some is actually partially sprung but I'm not gonna nit pick lol
So time to get the new improved, lighter and prettier suspension back on the car. Compare and contrast with how it was, pay attention to the steering arm angle and track rod end position.
Oh and there's some new coilovers bolted on as well. A set of race spec XYZs that I've tested on my other Lude - A bit too hardcore for the very much under developed other Lude on track and way to over the top for road use (luckily they also do Super Sport kits for fast road/trackday stuff) but these should work well for the race car. I have also kept my previous coilover setup which were custom Dampertech items and are very much more softly sprung and damped. These will be refurbed and spring rates reduced a little for use as a quick swap "wet set up".
So...old vs new
...............................................
Yes I know it's been a little while since the last proper update and as usual I have a nice long list of excuses such as workshop/customer commitments, too much partying in December and an unfortunate bout of under enthusiasm after Christmas.
Never fear though...it's all good now and some progress has been made again.
It's pretty much all suspension related for this update and as usual I am only posting a selection of the pics, some of which I have grouped. The bigger versions and others can be found on my gallery here - Photos by Richy
Some of you may find the following pictures disturbing :wink:
And once again, not all items are the definitive end of project final edit - there's a little bit of prototyping going on with much of this build and some parts are actually destroyed to find their limits so I'm starting to run out of my stash of spares :shock:
So, here we go then, first things first.
Heavily lowered Preludes suffer with quite bad bumpsteer....fact!
This is not something that feels dramatic on cars that retain the power steering but once it's gone and you have the car loaded up mid corner trust me you certainly notice it then! Before the car came off the road at the beginning of this project this was definately an area that I wanted to sort out and if I'm honest it was something that had been on my mind for a couple of years but I was just too lazy to get on and sort it out
The pic below shows a big part of the problem. Check out the static angle of the steering arm from the rack. Bear in mind that when the car is loaded up mid corner or riding over bumps then the angle will be increased further which in turn effectively shortens the arm and causes a change in toe for each given wheel. The closer to horizontal you can get the steering arm the less the effects on toe change over bumps will be. There are other parameters which contribute to bump steer but I'm just simplifying things a little here.
You'll notice that the track rod end mounts to the knuckle from above. The simple answer to the problem is to do a little surgery to the knuckle which will allow the track rod end to mount from the underside - remeber the track rod ends use a taper fitment so you cannot simply fit them the wrong way up.
Knuckle removed ready for surgery
OE taper drilled and reverse taper insert machined and pressed into place - note a lip was left of the original taper for the new insert to butt up to.
And voila, the track rod end can now be mounted from under the steering knuckle.
The other thing to consider is that as the track rod ends are handed with the wheel clearance bend in them (for when on lock) when turning the TRE over and mounting it from underneath you also need to swap side ie N/S TRE is flipped over and fitted to O/S.
Pictures showing the improved angle will come up later, in the meantime with all the suspension parts off the car there was work to be done.....
The cast suspension knuckles are obviously pretty weighty but they also take alot of punishment. Having said that they are cast very roughly and also have many areas casted for all model suitability such as abs mounts etc.
Here's a few pics of areas which could be improved on or removed
Plenty of time spent with the power tools left the knuckle a fair bit lighter and considerably better looking
Next I moved onto the hub spindle, again I didn't go too mad but definately able to save a little weight with this also. Studs have obviously been pressed out at this stage.
A couple of coats of paint and then the knuckles and spindles were rebuilt with new bearings and lower swivel joints.
Next up for attention were the heavy cast lower control arms (LCAs) and shock forks.
Actually before I get onto that I'll tell you something interesting about the shock forks while I'm at it. As we all know off the shelf Prelude track/race parts are nowhere near as common place as say ITR or Evo stuff. While looking at suspension options I toyed with the idea of running with ITR front and Evo rear which believe it or not would work pretty much right off with only a little modding to the rear LCA shock mount for the Evo fitment. One of the advantages for this setup is that ITR and Evo shock bodies are shorter to start with so less issues with dampers bottoming out.
Having measured stuff up I discovered that the ITR front shock forks are dimensionally the same apart from they are 10mm shorter - ideal for anybody whos shocks won't allow any further lowering or you just want the front end to drop 10mm more than what you currently have - be warned though...the "lightweight racecar for the road" ITR's shock fork are heavier than the Lude items !!
Here's a couple of comparison pics for future reference :wink:
Imageshack - dsc01197zsw.jpg
Imageshack - dsc01196de.jpg
Imageshack - dsc01195h.jpg
In the end I didn't go down that route but just thought I'd share the info
Right, back to the LCAs and shock forks
Stock, rough, ugly and heavy
Smoothed, lightened and much more attractive
LCAs painted and fitted with new poly bushes - a job made easier by the fact that this set were poly bushed previously anyway.
So that's the knuckle, LCAs and shock forks done, lets compare the look and weight to stock OEM parts, both in fully built up form.
In case it's difficult to see in that pic the weights work out at - Stock=12.75kg vs modified=10.5kg.
Yep that's 2.25kg saved per side and more importantly it's unsprung weight - some is actually partially sprung but I'm not gonna nit pick lol
So time to get the new improved, lighter and prettier suspension back on the car. Compare and contrast with how it was, pay attention to the steering arm angle and track rod end position.
Oh and there's some new coilovers bolted on as well. A set of race spec XYZs that I've tested on my other Lude - A bit too hardcore for the very much under developed other Lude on track and way to over the top for road use (luckily they also do Super Sport kits for fast road/trackday stuff) but these should work well for the race car. I have also kept my previous coilover setup which were custom Dampertech items and are very much more softly sprung and damped. These will be refurbed and spring rates reduced a little for use as a quick swap "wet set up".
So...old vs new
...............................................
Kris!
Member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2008
- Messages
- 311
..........................................
And a closer look
Now you may have noticed I've not done anything with the front upper arm. Well actually I did swap out my modified upper arms and fitted some standard items I had kicking around. The modified arms was something I did several years ago to get me additional camber, I have some plans for them and for something else which you will find out about in due course :wink:
So for now that's the front end sorted. Time to move onto the back end of the car.
Here's how things looked to begin with, standard other than the dampertech coilovers and poly bushes.
I expect you've pretty much already guessed what's coming next and you are probably right but I think I'll just mention that initially I wasn't sure I'd be able to save as much weight at the back but when I started to look at things properly.... oh yeah...this stuff is properly over engineered !
Of course the same applied at the rear as the front end, lots of lumps of castings that were designed to be drilled and tapped for ABS cars plus over the top bracket mounts...get it all gone !
Handbrake cable brackets - 5th gen tin item left vs 4th gen cast item right. Proof indeed that the 4th gen Prelude was massively over engineered
Rear knuckle smoothed, lightened, painted and built back up with new lower swivel joint - Note light alloy fastners, reduced brake hose bracket and tin handbrake cable bracket.
Compare old OEM vs modified item
Stock rear upper wishbone or UCA as it's sometimes known. Although generally considered to be strong enough for road use I have had my doubts for some time over it's ability to resist twisting during hard use - you can in fact twist them relatively easily in your hands. Honda must have had the same doubts too as the later 5th gen received a hefty plate addition to beef up their arms.
So without wanting to resort to buying new 5th gen UCAs which are actually too far the other way...over engineered and much too heavy, I decided to make use of the 4th gen items I had and a little bit of structural work. The pic below goes from OEM arm, through the modifying process right through to painted, cleaned up inner joints and new poly bushes. Job done.
Rear trailing arms simply freshened up and fitted with new poly bushes.
I toyed with the idea of beefing these up a little with some bracing running down the "open" side but decided for the work they do there really would be no need to.
Rear LCAs next then. These things are heavy!! Much weightier and physically more beefy than the front LCAs. Properly over engineered and properly about to get some surgery !!
LCAs modified, painted and new poly bushes installed. Unfortunately I didn't have any black trailing arm mount bushes left so red it is.
So what was the weight saving? Unfortunately, unlike the front end whereby I had a 100% stock set of arms and knuckles to compare with I only had the one set of rear LCAs left after destroying a set through testing. So basically just had to compare bare unbushed arms.
Stock knuckle and LCA vs modified items - Stock= just under 10.5kg, modifed = a shade under 8kg - another 2.5kg gone per rear corner 8)
Rear subframe - unfortunately, Honda in their infinite wisdom decided that camber adjustability on 2ws models wasn't necessary (yet the 4ws models have it as standard). Aftermarket camber bolts are not really an option for several reasons such as they have a slimmer size to allow for an offset cam section and are therefore weaker, they also would not give anywhere near enough camber adjustment that I required and also there is a captive nut on the subframe which would need to be removed to allow the use of these.
Only one thing to do then...modify it and make it adjustable with plenty of range using original sized bolts and eccentric camber plates similar to the OEM style on 4ws models...only more adjustment.
This is very much prototype 1 as whilest modifying this 2ws subframe I came up with an idea that I'd like to try with a 4ws subframe which will help overcome another issue that the suspension geometry suffers from at the rear. More of that at a later date.
Standard 2ws non adjustable
Subframe camber modification part 1 - cut slots, remove outer subframe lips, fabricate inner camber eccentric plates
Subframe camber modifcation part 2 - weld in reinforcement/extension plates to inner LCA mounting points, add camber eccentric outer plates, smooth of inner faces for bush housing and prep for paint.
Subframe camber modification part 3 - painting, fitting and testing - note increased size of camber eccentric over a standard round item. This gives far greater camber adjustment range - Perfect
Modified, painted and lighter rear suspension all bolted back up into place
A quick example of the amount of camber adjustment now available to me...much more scope than the factory 4ws camber adjusters and should be enough for full dry to full wet setup changes in very quick time.
And that's your lot for this update I'm afraid.
As mentioned earlier, the rear subframe I am still looking at another setup which I need to work on and investigate further. Plus There is more suspension arm related stuff going on behind the scenes so to speak. It may well even be that the arms that I've just finsihed modifying don't even make it to the end of the project but for now it was an excercise in finding how much could be saved vs making new arms vs costs. Nothing has been totally settled on yet but again many race series will not allow non OEM manufacturer suspension arms to be fitted etc so I always have to be aware of that.
As usual, thanks for showing an interest, feel free to post your comments or ask your questions 8)"
And a closer look
Now you may have noticed I've not done anything with the front upper arm. Well actually I did swap out my modified upper arms and fitted some standard items I had kicking around. The modified arms was something I did several years ago to get me additional camber, I have some plans for them and for something else which you will find out about in due course :wink:
So for now that's the front end sorted. Time to move onto the back end of the car.
Here's how things looked to begin with, standard other than the dampertech coilovers and poly bushes.
I expect you've pretty much already guessed what's coming next and you are probably right but I think I'll just mention that initially I wasn't sure I'd be able to save as much weight at the back but when I started to look at things properly.... oh yeah...this stuff is properly over engineered !
Of course the same applied at the rear as the front end, lots of lumps of castings that were designed to be drilled and tapped for ABS cars plus over the top bracket mounts...get it all gone !
Handbrake cable brackets - 5th gen tin item left vs 4th gen cast item right. Proof indeed that the 4th gen Prelude was massively over engineered
Rear knuckle smoothed, lightened, painted and built back up with new lower swivel joint - Note light alloy fastners, reduced brake hose bracket and tin handbrake cable bracket.
Compare old OEM vs modified item
Stock rear upper wishbone or UCA as it's sometimes known. Although generally considered to be strong enough for road use I have had my doubts for some time over it's ability to resist twisting during hard use - you can in fact twist them relatively easily in your hands. Honda must have had the same doubts too as the later 5th gen received a hefty plate addition to beef up their arms.
So without wanting to resort to buying new 5th gen UCAs which are actually too far the other way...over engineered and much too heavy, I decided to make use of the 4th gen items I had and a little bit of structural work. The pic below goes from OEM arm, through the modifying process right through to painted, cleaned up inner joints and new poly bushes. Job done.
Rear trailing arms simply freshened up and fitted with new poly bushes.
I toyed with the idea of beefing these up a little with some bracing running down the "open" side but decided for the work they do there really would be no need to.
Rear LCAs next then. These things are heavy!! Much weightier and physically more beefy than the front LCAs. Properly over engineered and properly about to get some surgery !!
LCAs modified, painted and new poly bushes installed. Unfortunately I didn't have any black trailing arm mount bushes left so red it is.
So what was the weight saving? Unfortunately, unlike the front end whereby I had a 100% stock set of arms and knuckles to compare with I only had the one set of rear LCAs left after destroying a set through testing. So basically just had to compare bare unbushed arms.
Stock knuckle and LCA vs modified items - Stock= just under 10.5kg, modifed = a shade under 8kg - another 2.5kg gone per rear corner 8)
Rear subframe - unfortunately, Honda in their infinite wisdom decided that camber adjustability on 2ws models wasn't necessary (yet the 4ws models have it as standard). Aftermarket camber bolts are not really an option for several reasons such as they have a slimmer size to allow for an offset cam section and are therefore weaker, they also would not give anywhere near enough camber adjustment that I required and also there is a captive nut on the subframe which would need to be removed to allow the use of these.
Only one thing to do then...modify it and make it adjustable with plenty of range using original sized bolts and eccentric camber plates similar to the OEM style on 4ws models...only more adjustment.
This is very much prototype 1 as whilest modifying this 2ws subframe I came up with an idea that I'd like to try with a 4ws subframe which will help overcome another issue that the suspension geometry suffers from at the rear. More of that at a later date.
Standard 2ws non adjustable
Subframe camber modification part 1 - cut slots, remove outer subframe lips, fabricate inner camber eccentric plates
Subframe camber modifcation part 2 - weld in reinforcement/extension plates to inner LCA mounting points, add camber eccentric outer plates, smooth of inner faces for bush housing and prep for paint.
Subframe camber modification part 3 - painting, fitting and testing - note increased size of camber eccentric over a standard round item. This gives far greater camber adjustment range - Perfect
Modified, painted and lighter rear suspension all bolted back up into place
A quick example of the amount of camber adjustment now available to me...much more scope than the factory 4ws camber adjusters and should be enough for full dry to full wet setup changes in very quick time.
And that's your lot for this update I'm afraid.
As mentioned earlier, the rear subframe I am still looking at another setup which I need to work on and investigate further. Plus There is more suspension arm related stuff going on behind the scenes so to speak. It may well even be that the arms that I've just finsihed modifying don't even make it to the end of the project but for now it was an excercise in finding how much could be saved vs making new arms vs costs. Nothing has been totally settled on yet but again many race series will not allow non OEM manufacturer suspension arms to be fitted etc so I always have to be aware of that.
As usual, thanks for showing an interest, feel free to post your comments or ask your questions 8)"
