The BME #618 LHD CTR Build


Ha no bother man , one of the nicest steerin wheels IMO .

That's cool , pics look really nice , iv Ben living in Toronto for the last year goin back to Ireland tonight , really wanna go somewhere in America next :nice:
 
that looks amazing man. how are you liking it so far ;)

I really love it! The chassis feels great with the bracing, and the engine feels strong.

looks spot on :ek9:

Thanks!

nice conversion, are you going to paint the bay?

The plan is to eventually strip it all down, stitch weld, and have it repainted (but like 5 years down the road maybe). At that time I would paint the bay. But until then, at least it's black and not some green or any other obnoxious color.

Ha no bother man , one of the nicest steerin wheels IMO .

That's cool , pics look really nice , iv Ben living in Toronto for the last year goin back to Ireland tonight , really wanna go somewhere in America next :nice:

Yea, I really like it. Has a great feel to it. You should hit up Chicago, Las Vegas, New York, maybe Seattle. But Vegas is for sure unlike anywhere in the world, lol.
 
CTR (look-a-like) is still a huge thing in the US isn't it?

bet you'll turn alot of heads ;)
 
Haha, yea. The CTR parts market is ridiculous here. Problem is that most people working on hondas don't know what they're doing, so you end up with a lot of hack job, incomplete cars.

Needless to say, I'm glad I was able to come across it and pick it up. It still has little things here and there that need to be done, but for the most part car is super clean and was built properly.

My tune is scheduled for this saturday, and then I'll be replacing the HKS and their ridiculous spring rates (1100lb/750lb) to Koni Yellows with Ground Control sleeves (400lb/500lb)
 
Here is how the rear interior panels are currently cut to accommodate the rear strut bar. Is there a rear panel that has a molding to fit the bar? Or what do you guys do?

I was thinking that I could cut the opening to be round, and use some black rubber trim to finish the edge. Then find some 1/8" rubber sheeting with a slit cut in it to cover the gap and surround the brace.

Thoughts?

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Personally I would source another pair of rear interior plastics and cut them neatly yourself.
 
i think those oem bars came with a template for cutting. contact inlinefour, they had a brand new one for sale a few months back, maybe they can send you a copy of their template?

but yeah, i would just cut it out round and use some rubber trim to make it look nice
 
Yea feeesh^^, that's what I am thinking is my best option. Otherwise I'm gonna dump $250 in new trim pieces (US supply and demand...). That money can be better spent elsewhere IMO.

I also would like to drill a hole (with a grommet to clean the edges) directly above the top mount so that I can reach the strut top adjusters with the tool to change the damping on the fly at the track.
 
Ran to the auto parts store during my lunch.

Picked up the piping, some black carpeting for the trunk, and a $3 thin rubber floormat to fill the gap in the panel. I think it should work pretty well for what I need. The floormat has little ridges running across it, but the backside of it is flat.

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And my high-tech doodle of the plans...
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Got around to changing the engine oil last night. I had a whole hour before the fiancee got home and made me help with wedding planning...

Car is so low, it was a major PITA the get off the ground... The Koni's should raise it up about .75" though, which should help a good bit.
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Took some other pictures while I was under the car. This may be a long shot, but can anyone tell me if these are aftermarket cams from this view? Previous owner wasn't sure, but car has spoon cam gears, RC 440 injectors and Spoon 70mm throttle body, which are all nice supporting mods for a car with cams.
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some other areas that I'd like to investigate the splattered grease/oil
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View of the 98-spec ITR header
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I added some velcro to the AFR gauge that was previously just dangling in the glovebox. I figure this will make it easier to read for tuning. Nothing to fancy, just simple and functional
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That is all for now... Excited for Saturday's tune!
 
On another note... Has anyone every modified the stock seat to accommodate a 5-point crotch belt?
 
Is anyone interested in trying to help me source an EK4 VTI LHD black dash? Being located in the US, something like this is going to be really hard to find. I am hoping that maybe some of you guys overseas may have better access?

This is going to soon become an obsession of mine... It really is the only thing in my interior that needs to be done, everything else is pretty good aside from a few minor details...

The car currently has an SI dark grey dash, but it's not the same...
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Received some goodies last night; New K&N Filter, OEM Top Hats, OEM Fuel Rail + Injectors, EK9 CTR OBD2B ECU.

For now, I only have pictures of the filter. But I'll snap a few more once I assemble the Konis and whatnot. Tune tomorrow!

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I've had a few updates, so I will post in rapid fire mode.

As far as the tune... The car ran pretty good on the dyno, although the numbers weren't exactly as I was expecting. The intake is horrible (leaks etc) so we were losing about 6-8whp from the poor design. We know this, because we fabbed up a rudimentary intake for a single run and gained 7whp without any tuning, lol.

On the car's best run, it was 156 whp, I dont have the graph on hand to give tq at the moment. I was really hoping for more in the range of 170ish, but the intake is a hindrance and the exhaust is still restrictive with the cat. While it is disappointing that it was lower than I'd like, I wanted a car like this for drivetrain reliability etc. I am okay with these numbers for the car's function.

When I was about to leave the shop after my 3.5 hour visit, the key stopped turning in the cylinder... So we had to mess around with that for an hour to cut out the steering lock so that I could get the car home. So that is something that I now need to fix... Really annoying, but I guess it is what it is. So now my car is sitting in the garage like it was just hotwired by a thug in South Central with no steering column lock or keyed ignition. It's a mess...

In addition, the car doesn't seem to be changing over to high-cam when it hits the VTEC band, so I have to go back to the shop this coming weekend and have him take a look. There's a possibility that the ECU flash got corrupted when it was translating over.

I was really hoping to have the car in a far different condition at this point.

Anyway, here are some pics.

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Here you can see the runs for with current intake and with the fabbed up intake tube.
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Since the car wasn't making the power we expected, we checked the spark plugs and the cams to make sure that they were CTR cams. No problems there, but we did install better spark plugs
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Here is the current state of the car, I was planning to swap the suspension but wedding stuff took precedent last night... So now she sits waiting, incomplete, in distress.
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I assembled the Koni Yellows the other day. Here are some pictures.

It was a PITA because I had to drill out the top mount bushings, as they were too small of a diameter to fit over the damper.
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08-06-2013

Installed the Koni Yellows tonight. Overall took about 3 hours. I was taking my time, and I had never disassembled a Honda suspension before. Everything was pretty straight forward, and NONE of the bolts were seized! Gotta love California cars!

I ended up going with 400lb F/500lb R, figured it was the best setup for autocross.

The old HKS Hipermax
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Here you can see the difference in the length of the damper. The Konis have a good bit more droop, at least 1.5" more.
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Rear mounted up
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Anti-seize!
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Getting the lower mount attached to the control arm.
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Out with the old!
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Removing the unnecessary "bling"
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Other side done!
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The front
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Aaaaand apparently I was starting to get tired because I didn't take any more pics of the front.

Here are how the heights were after the first time dropping the car back down.

RL
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FL
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FR
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RR
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Right now, I think that it's probably pretty close to stock CTR height. The springs still need to settle a little bit too, and I haven't driven the car. I'm not 100% done, I still need to clean up the rear plastic panels and the chopped up hole cutouts for the strut bar.

I'm excited to get testing them! No time tonight, but maybe tomorrow!
 
Some of you may remember me complaining about how choppy the trunk plastic was cut to accommodate the strut bar. I had some time after work today, so I dremeled it out a little bit to clean it up. It still needs some finishing touches, but I think it looks A LOT better already.

Before
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After
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The plan is still to use some thin rubber from an Autozone floor mat to fill the gap. My only hesitation is that I maybe should dremel out the hole a little larger so that I can fit my hand in there to adjust the rear dampers.
 
really nice bro.
 
Looking good!

Nice that you removed the 'unnecessary bling', it really is useless.

I can have a look for a dash for you, but you will also need the airbag.
 
Thanks guys! I still need to put the rubber matting in there to fill the gap, but that should be done tonight!

Looking good!

Nice that you removed the 'unnecessary bling', it really is useless.

I can have a look for a dash for you, but you will also need the airbag.

Yea, I didn't like the big "Beaks" advertisement being on my car. I'm not getting paid to display their logo :p .

Let me know if you find a dash, but from what I hear they are pretty rare. I know that there is a charcoal gray version that has the center vent, too. That would be my backup plan, and then either dye it black or plasti-dip it.

More updates to come later!
 
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