The "I want to build a track car" Recipe

Having done it every wrong way possible, here is my best advice for building an entry-level track/racing car. It is written around the '88-91 Honda CRX Si but could also be applied with equal success to a Golf II (ITB), '84-87 Civic HB (ITC), a first-generation RX7 (ITA, Spec7, IT7), and a few others.

Kirk Knestis
kirk.knestis@evaluand.com

Brought to you by the IT2 Initiative

If you MUST build your own car (and we all seem to, ONCE) find a really straight, rust free but worn out street car. Don't start with a wreck or anything that needs more than a fender or a minor paint touch up or you will be labor/money behind from the outset. Wait until you find a good one before you begin. (Note: This establishes the theme of this recipe - avoiding false economies, where bad decisions to try to save money results in the spending of more after the fact.)

Order a copy of the SCCA GCR (General Class Rules), learn the Improved Touring (IT) rules, and don't do ANYTHING to it that is contrary to them - this will leave you room to move to wheel-to-wheel racing if you stick with it and help sell your car (or project) if you don't.

Start by making sure that the OEM systems are good - go completely through the brakes, suspension, hubs/bearings, steering, and electrics. Buy good aftermarket brake pads from the outset.

If it doesn't have one, get a sound boneyard motor - the original one, not a damn b17, b25 or some other goofy crap. Make sure that it is healthy but do not put any aftermarket parts on it!

Buy new, reasonably good tires for the stock wheels, assuming they are unbent and in shape for the job - Don't spend the money on aftermarket wheels until later in the game as they gain you little and eat up budget better spent elsewhere.

If the shocks are crap, get reasonable coilovers early on - if they are not junk yet, don't sweat it at this point and leave them be. If you are going to buy suspension, do it right the first time and get IT-legal coilover kits. (Note: Most coilover kits are NOT IT legal!) Be conservative (i.e. soft) with your spring rates, however, even for a dedicated track car. It makes set up easier and is more forgiving when your learning curve is steep.

At this point you can start autocrossing and do HPDEs, as long as you don't time yourself on a real race track. If you do put a watch on your performance at Thunder Hill, Summit Point or someplace, skip immediately to the next step - do not pass GO and get ready to spend WAY more than $200.

Put a basic, SCCA-legal cage in it - if you can't afford one in a dedicated racer, you should rethink your hobby options. I like bass fishing as a second choice. This step pretty much assumes that you have done a legal interior strip, clean, scrap, and paint which is labor (but not money) intensive. This crap is a right of passage and you must do it, or spend your life getting razzed for your nappy car...

Proper harnesses come immediately after the cage - SCCA is instituting a 2-year rule for belt replacement (it looks like) so there will be lots of perfectly safe, illegal-for-racing harnesses for your first couple years of development. You CAN use real harnesses with stock seats but a race seat comes next.

Finish kitting out the safety equipment - window net, extinguisher, and master switch. Put luxury items (steering wheel, shift knob, groovy mirrors) on your holiday shopping list for others to spend money on.

You now have a sound, safe car that you can use for autocrosses (Street Prepared);East Coast Honda Challenge; SCCA Solo I time trials, driver schools and regional races (with the addition of legal belts); NASA High Performance Driving Events (HPDEs) or road races; open track days and time trials; hillclimbs, ice racing, tarmac rallies, or even driving in the snow when you don't want to mess up your nice street car...

Get IT-legal wheels at this point, when your stock-size tires are pooped - 14x7 only (for an ITA Civic or CRX). Resist the temptation to buy bigger ones that will be illegal for the most common place to race this car, recognized by every sanctioning body that I know of. Put more good rubber on them.

This is going to sound funny to anyone except people who have actually raced IT-type cars but build yourself a set of good front brake ducts, to the IT rules. Plan on making a decision about an airdam at this point as well, since they tend to be a system.

Start doing the suspension - shocks/springs (if you didn't earlier), bars, and bushings as budget/interest/time allow. The CRX is basically a kit if you go with the known quantity suppliers, so it is hard to screw up.

When the engine goes to full crap-out mode, it is time to have it freshened. Don't get all crazy about spending money on it. Start making legal modifications like exhaust, emissions removal and all of that stuff, under the guidance of someone who knows what he or she is doing. It is easy to trick your engine into running poorly when you start diddling with things. This may also be the end of your ride's streetability/tagability, depending on where you live.

Have fun! The key here is that you have not done anything that (a) will have to be undone to race in the most common classes out there, (b) compromises the opportunities to move up or move out, or (c) puts good money into some aspect of the car that is out of scale with the rest of the project - the "$500 saddle on a $50 horse" syndrome. You will have a safe, dependable, toy that can grow with you. OEM parts are reasonable, body panels aren't rare or expensive, and aftermarket support is huge. It is also a potential overdog in its class, so you have no built-in excuses if it comes to that.

This originally appeared in a strand at www.honda-tech.com