Si's EP3 - 2016 Updates

[Bushell]

This thing is massively tastey haha. Also thinking of getting an ep3 as a daily now. Would love a premier edition but they all seem to be down in England, damn you haha

Serious build though. Keep it coming

 

[Simple Simon]

This thing is massively tastey haha. Also thinking of getting an ep3 as a daily now. Would love a premier edition but they all seem to be down in England, damn you haha

Serious build though. Keep it coming

Yeh seen your ek9 for sale on Facebook the other day, shame as it looks clean as hell!
What's the reason for selling it and swapping to an EP?

In all honesty mate, I wouldn't bother with a Premier edition. Yeh the seats are a bit better than the regular ones but they aren't that great. I want to swap mine out for some DC2/EK9 seats already as they are comfier! Other than that all you get is a red carpet, tinted rear glass and Type R embossed brake calipers.

Plus people want up to an extra £1000 on top of a regular Facelift. If I hadn't picked mine up for a reasonable price I would have just got a regular facelift.

 

[Bushell]

Saving for a house deposit man. So want something cheaper than the 9 that I can use every day, about 250 mile a week.

Ahhh fair enough. Would probably be cheaper buying the standard spec and just putting better seats in then lol.

Thanks for that

 

[Simple Simon]

Well not an awful lot been happening with the car tbh. Not had much cash lately so just been odd jobs here and there. I'll be out of the country over the next few months leading up to Christmas, so a chance to save a bit of money.

Anyways, went to Mimms for the 1st time, was a really good event. Few random snaps I found of mine:

And a nice shot on the way home from Rockingham.



A few weeks later I had an unfortunate accident with a pheasant which some how went straight through the fog light hole in the bumper! Luckily for me no damage to the car, didn't end too well for the poor little bugger though.



With winter fast approaching as well I thought it best to get the OEM wheels back on to keep the Works in good condition, think it looks proper crap now!





At the same time I finally fitted my Pre-facelift rear lights which I've had for about 4 months now. Think they look so much better than the Lexus style chrome ones on the facelifts!

 

[Elsom-20]

Nice clean Ep3 mate!

 

[Robert182]

great car and awesome looking rocker cover !

 

[halszaj]

I finally fitted my Pre-facelift rear lights which I've had for about 4 months now. Think they look so much better than the Lexus style chrome ones on the facelifts!

Amen brutha!

 

[Simple Simon]

Not much to update on but I've had a set of EK9 recaro's in the car for a while as they were too cheap to pass up on.
I'm not that impressed with the Premier edition recaro's and I loved these seat in my DC2.

Got to be one of the dirtiest sets I've ever seen! Before they were cleaned...




After a lot of woolite and scrubbing...



For a while I just used the Premier edition rails, but the seats just sat way too high for my liking!
Managed to find a set of Bride rails for sale for a fraction of the price of a new set imported would cost so snapped them up! I've been on the lookout for 5 months as well. Ha!



Height on the Prem rails



Height on the Bride rails

 

[Simple Simon]

So I haven't updated this in a while! ha

Been away with work again on and off for a few months, so thats given me a chance to save a bit of dough. Few things on the car have changed, mainly to make the car a little easier to live with.

The J's racing intake was swapped for a Gruppe M. As much as I love the look of the J's box, it is a pain to remove and fit constantly to be able to gain access to anything in the bay due to its size. It took me a while but I managed to find a genuine Gruppe M for sale at an absolute steal! So snapped it up sharpish. I kept hold of the J's all of this time, and have only just put it up for sale. Lol




Next up was the cat back. Whoever advised me to get a 3" catback is obviously already deaf! Couldn't stand the drone at 70-80 mph. Swapped it out for a Tegiwa exhaust, knowing that it was based off of the Fujitsubo RMOA1 and it was quiet in comparison.
Did a test in the car:
3" @ 70mph = 97dB
2.5" @ 70mph = 84dB
Hopefully I'm quiet enough for track as well now.

I had the mapped tweaked as well so the car could adjust to the different mods. I was expecting to loose power with the 2.5" and potential make it back up with the new induction.
Well I made 227.5hp, and a grand total increase of......1.5hp!!!!

Since I've been back I've turned my attention to suspension, picked up an entire running gear and subframe cheap. So went and collected it all in the BreadVan:



Sent off to be shot blasted then powder coated:



Didn't get any picture of swapping everything over, but went with the SuperPro bush kit and added a JDM rear ARB.

Got some new rubber for the works before I put them back on. Really didn't like the stretch last time, so proper sized tyres. 235/40's. They look chunky here!



Didn't really fit too well with my current camber settings.



Ive had to run a bit more camber than I initially wanted but they are under there so I'm happy. In the future I'll look into rolling the arches further and flaring them out slightly more.


Thats it really for the time being. I've got a trackday booked for the 24th May at Brands which I'm proper looking forward to. Hopefully get some footage/pictures of it.

Then it's out of the country come mid June for 6 months again great opportunity to save money but just sucks leaving home for so long.

Also in a dilemma of what to do with the car when I get back. Options I like the sound of include:

1) K24 Frank swap on ITB's
2) TTS Rotrex supercharged
3) Sell up and get another DC2

I have a real hankering for another DC2 again (All above mods are dependant on insurance)

Out of those 3 options let me know what your personally choice would be to go...I'm really undecided. Cheers.

 

[si8pny]

Nice updates here! Having been out in Jamies K24 Frank setup with the R motion ITB's it pulls like nothing else! Its fitted in a DC2 shell which helps. Plus I like that it stays true to the Honda way of N/A. (I know the new type R is turbo )

If it was mine that would be the way I would be looking to go.

 

[Jamie_EK9]

K24 Frank swap on ITB's for me mate

 

[Simple Simon]

Nice updates here! Having been out in Jamies K24 Frank setup with the R motion ITB's it pulls like nothing else! Its fitted in a DC2 shell which helps. Plus I like that it stays true to the Honda way of N/A. (I know the new type R is turbo )

If it was mine that would be the way I would be looking to go.

Oh is that a red jdm dc2? (can't be many frank swapped DC2's out there with ITB's lol) If so I seen it at Japday the other week and was drooling over it for a good 1o minutes!! haha
Thats 5 votes for K24 Frank swap across all the forums so far. As for the DC2 and dropping a K into it. I don't think my budget would stretch that far tbh.

So yesterday I did my 1st ever track day!

Car was absolutely amazing! Used a bit of oil, used a lot of fuel and used all of my brake pads but was totally worth it!
Took some tuition at the beginning of the day which I'm glad I did (I'm not the most confident of drivers after the accident in my Integra).
A mate of mine came along as well and had a drive of the EP. He's had a Jordan in the past and now has an S15 and was pretty surprised at the handling of the civic.

There were a lot of serious cars out there from a Mk1 Escort to a couple of Ginneta's, so I found myself pulling over to the right quite a lot to let them past (was probably quite annoying having a newb out there! lol) For me it was more about trying to learn the lines, braking points and gearing rather than all out speed. With the car being my daily still I didn't want to push it to the extreme, I know I wasn't fast, but I still had an awesome time.

Brake pedal got really spongy right at the end of the day (5 minutes left) so I decided to come off and call it a day. Drove over to Bluewater for some food and it was a very sketchy drive! Had a look at the pads and I found out the problem pretty fast!!!



Drivers side had a bit left on it...another track day left in these right??



Luckily I took my spare OEM pads along with me, so after an emergency brake change in bluewater I was back on the road

Some footage of me in the car, not quick and not very good lines, but I was learning and improving. 3rd gear was a bit of pain on this session (weird as it was fine on the next one) and I changed to 4th instead of 2nd at one point lol (The rear windscreen was the only place we could find to mount the Go Pro as my mate couldn't find any of the other mounts, sorry about the glare on the windscreen! )

My mate in the car, is a lot quicker than me, but said he didn't want to push the car too far as it isn't his obviously. About 12 minutes in he is overtaken by a GTR on the straight but he's managing to keep up with him in the corners haha

All in all was a brilliant day, and I'm considering doing another evening session on the 2nd June with a mate in his EP3 before I deploy. Only real thing that was noticeable was the lack of an LSD, found a few times on accelerating out of the corners getting a bit of wheel spin. Easily overcome though by just not applying so much power too early.

Thanks to everyone for their advise on my post asking for advise on my 1st track day, look forward to more in the future.

 

[xxxencorexxx]

Well done mate, you drove really well for first time on track! Glad you had fun thats the main thing and everything went well, dont worry about lsd just makes you work that little bit harder.
Roll on next track day!

 

[R555 DUN]

EP3 goals! love how this thing looks! absolutely stunning type r! the work wheels look great on the car... make me want to get a set myself lol. How is the gruppe m compared to the J's intake? it's a stunning piece of kit!

 

[Simple Simon]

Well done mate, you drove really well for first time on track! Glad you had fun thats the main thing and everything went well, dont worry about lsd just makes you work that little bit harder.
Roll on next track day!

Thank you, was awesome to get out on track! Unfortunately though, I'm off in 2 weeks time on deployment for 6 months so won't be in the country until christmas time No more track days this year, have to wait till the new year.

EP3 goals! love how this thing looks! absolutely stunning type r! the work wheels look great on the car... make me want to get a set myself lol. How is the gruppe m compared to the J's intake? it's a stunning piece of kit!

Cheers, well you won't be the only other person to run these specific works if you do buy them, but even then I've only seen 1 or 2 EP's with the D9R's so they aren't all that common just yet
The J's intake has literally no intake noise when compared to the Gruppe M (one of the main reasons I changed it). The J's wins on looks and rarity but the noise the Gruppe M makes is a give away as to why so many people have them! haha Performance wise though, there is very little in it.


In other news Brands took a bit of a toll on the car Ive had a nasty knocking noise coming from the front of the car when going over bumpy roads. With the car in the air I checked every bolt underneath to see if anything was loose...nothing. Wiggled the wheel off the ground, top to bottom there was no play at all which indicates the ball joints are still fine.
Side to side though there is massive amounts of play! When looking from underneath you can see the whole coilover has play in it. We think the piston in the damper has bent causing it to move more than it should.

Also where Brands has mostly right hander corners, its managed to move my coilovers camber settings on the camber plates now I'm running massive amounts of negative camber on the passenger side where it's moved to the right and almost positive camber on the drivers side!
Anybody had this before? All the screw which set your camber on the top plate were tight as well, any tips on how to stop this happening? Otherwise I will need an alignment after every track day.

So by the looks of it I would need 2 new dampers in order to rectify the problem. I've had enough of these Yellow Speeds, which have caused me nothing but problems. I'm leaving them on for the time being and once I'm back I'll be getting new coilovers. Either Meister R's or BC's which ever has the better deal on at the time. Alternatively my mate may be selling his EP next year so I may get his BC's even cheaper than new.

The engine did take a battering for quite some time on track, but I made sure my oil and fuel were always topped up. Even so the car has sounded a little rough at times recently. A mate noted that it smoked like hell the over day in Vtec and it does have quite a strong smell of oil inside the car (never used to). Oil consumption has increased slightly as well.
I'm guessing something to do with the head maybe? Valve stem seals? Maybe something even worse? Especially if it was starved of oil very briefly...
Will give it a service next week, check the valve clearances and hopefully do a compression test and a leak down test.

May be time for a new engine....K24 swap is looking the likely choice haha

 

[xxxencorexxx]

Hope everything is ok pal and its nothing more than a routine service wear/tear. A suggestion would be drop your oil put new oil and filter see how that goes, im assuming you are running 5w40 fully syn?
I also noticed my rear camber change after my first track session, ive been getting my alignment done after/before every track session just to keep on top of things but im also experimenting too see what works best.
All the best mate.

 

[si8pny]

If your banging over kerbs at a track day then you will need to get the alignment checked after. Always after a trip to the rin mine is slightly out somewhere.

 

[Simple Simon]

Well folks, that's me done for 2016 .
Done the last bit of work on the car the other day, going to go to Players at Goodwood on Saturday for my last show of the year and then next week I'll be locking the car away and leaving the country until December

Going to do a tonne of saving whilst I'm away, and try and make my mind up as to what I want to do with the EP. Currently as it stands the car needs a fair bit of money spending on it to get it back up to scratch. Currently needs:

1. New coilovers (Yellowspeeds are shot and not happy with the spring rates)
2. Front brake discs & pads
3. Major service (valve clearance + fuel filter)
4. Alignment again as tracking is massively out after Brands
5. Rear arches rolling flatter and re painting after the paint cracked

So yeh, well over another £1.5K there to be spent. But most of it is wear and tear items along with general maintenance. If I do keep the EP and do a service on it I'll be doing a bit of a health check on the engine as well.
I've been burning quite a bit of oil recently, and a mate noted that it's smoking a fair amount in Vtec. The car is running quite rough compared to when I 1st had it.
So for peace of mind I'm going to do a compression test when I do the valve clearance's and see if anything is fairly obvious. I'll also do a leak down test whilst I'm there as well. Hopefully It's nothing more than the valve stem seals needing replaced.....but I'll have to wait and see....fingers crossed

Also check out this sound coming from the car going over a bumpy road!! I think its the coilovers as there is loads of movement in them when the wheels are in the air. Sounds like the car is about to fall apart!!!



Although I have a major want for an older Honda again (mainly a DC2) It'll mainly be down to Insurance prices tbh, and wether I can part with the EP after spending so much money & time on it. Will have to wait and see come 2017.


Anyway whilst I spend the next 6 months racking my brains over what I want to do with the car I'll leave you with a couple of picture of the car that my mate took at Brands.





My mate just gone past an E36



I never did play around with the damping, but check out that body roll!





The rest of the pictures can be found here if you fancy having a look:

http://s1092.photobucket.com/user/s...EP3/Trackday at Brands 24-05-16?sort=3&page=1


I'll probably log in every now and again to check everyone else's builds, but there won't be any updates on mine until 2017

 

[Banana]

love this ep3 hope when you return there is more updates

 

[jdmsweden]

One cool EP3 i must say!

What modell of Personal wheel is that by the way?