The BME #618 LHD CTR Build


K-Swap Chronicles: ASI Visit #5

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This past weekend I stopped over at ASI after a day of work travel down to Indianapolis. We made some nice progress on a few different outstanding items that needed to get done.

We got all of the bars mocked up for the cage. All are pictured except for the harness bar, we taped them in place temporarily so that the welder could easily move them to finish weld the various bars.


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Cut and mocked up the aluminum intake.

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Installed the coolant overflow tank.

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I was able to get the lines nicely tucked.

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And a couple more for the road.

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Pick Up & The Road Home: 07/03/2015

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Well the CTR is finally back in my possession! Last week, I drove a trailer down to Cincinnati to pick it up from ASI. When I got there, there were still a few outstanding items that needed to be addressed before I could take it out of there. We bolted up the wideband O2 sensor, trimmed the hood for clearance, adjusted a few things, topped off and burped the coolant, etc etc.

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At about 10PM, we finally were able to load her up onto the trailer and I could begin my 6.5 hour drive home… I got home around 4:30AM, passed out in my bed for 3 hours then woke up for work the next day. I’m glad the car is back in my possession now so that I can get the last few items buttoned up to start racing.


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There are a few things still outstanding that I need to address and fix;

– Cage needs better paint coverage

– tap the intake manifold and hook up the Brake Booster

– I either have a vacuum leak, timing is off, voltage/grounding isn’t good, or something along those lines because the car is cutting out at 2500rpm…

– safety harness inside lap belt eye bolts are not installed

– paint the trimmed sections under the hood

– reinstall interior, and trim the rear quarter panels to fit the cage

– change fluids; engine oil, trans fluid, brake fluid

– align the wheels

– Dyno tuning at ProFunction by Mikey

– install new rear brake pads

– fix coolant leak at heater core return hose at the firewall. Looks like the tube is oval-shaped, so must’ve gotten a little crushed and not sealing on the hose properly

– interior fan is not working

More to come on progress with all of these things early next week!




Back Home, Progress on to-do list: 07/04/2015

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Some pictures of the car back in its home.

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I sprayed the second coat of paint on the cage. Majic White Enamel from the farm store. It actually does a pretty nice job with coverage, no primer, easily sandable, sprays evenly.

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There are still a couple of spots that need touching up, but coverage looks pretty good. More updates to come Sunday.




Cage Paint and Harness Install: 07/07/2015

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Cage paint is done and dry.

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Installed the Crow Harnesses.

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Interior is about 85% installed.

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One more for the road.

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Some other updates;

– Coolant Temp Sensor CEL, I found the sensor unplugged. Plugged it in and that one is cleared.

– OEM Primary O2 sensor installed and CEL is gone

– Ordered an IAT sensor to clear that CEL

– Need to straighten out the front wheel alignment

– Bringing it to Mikey at ProFunction for some checking over and dyno tuning Thursday.
 
K-Swap Chronicles: Dyno Tuning!! - 07/10/2015

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After an afternoon at ProFunction, the car was finally ready for the dyno.

Some things that we came across that are kindof peculiar;

– When the MAF sensor is bad, the ECU reads 11lbs of boost

– When the TPS sensor is bad, the ECU was preventing 2 cylinders from firing

Additionally, we re-tapped the intake manifold for power brakes, looped my heater hose to get rid of a pesky leak due to the heater core tubing getting all jacked up and destroyed, and fixed the crank issue. It turns out that the crank pulser wheel was installed backwards which was causing my crank issues.

At around 10PM, we strapped the car onto the dyno and Mikey got to work.


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So the results… We pushed the car for 15 runs, no smoking, no overheating. It ran phenomenally all night and I was not disappointed. It was really a huge relief to see everything finally come together. HUGE THANKS to both Mikey & John over at ProFunction for working overtime to get me on the dyno yesterday!

245whp/193ft-lb with the rev limit bumped up to 8000rpm

CTR Dyno Video 1 - YouTube

CTR Dyno Video 2 - YouTube
 
2015 Season: First Autocross Weekend - 07/22/2015

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Two weekends ago, I took the CTR out for it’s first weekend of racing after 6 months of being down in the shop. I was eager to get the car out on course and really put it through hell to see what the new setup is capable of. The prior Thursday, we tuned it and got it ready for racing. Saturday morning I drove down to Rantoul, IL for a race with CCSCC and then drove down to STL following that event for a Sunday race with STL SCCA.

First and foremost, the car is a freaking BEAST. It surpassed all of my expectations of how it would perform, and even after 10 months of not racing I was able to shave ~2.5s from where I had been last year. I only predict for things to get better as I tweak the settings and really learn how to drive the car.

Something that was unexpected, is the fact that the previously INSANE OVERSTEER car that the CTR was last season, has now switched to an extremely neutral/slight understeer car. I am really pleased with this, since I would like a car that I could easily (and safely) drive on the track, and I would much rather dial in more oversteer than have to figure out how to remove it. I imagine that the new half cage has a lot to do with this. Along with being able to transfer more weight to the rear tires (ultimately more heat), I added -.2 camber in the rear, and also have the slightly raked rear spoiler. While the half cage is probably the largest contributor, all the little things must be adding up too. I also began my events running the pressures that I had been using last year, 33/30, since I was trying to reduce the oversteer. Once I got comfortable in the car, I shifted the pressures back to neutral and eventually was running them at 30/32. I think that I will wind up running them closer to 28/33 with a slight tweak to damping (softer front and stiffer rear). This should net me the balance shift that this car deserves and the time should really begin to fall off once I figure out all of the tricks of driving it.

Here are a few pictures from the events.

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Unfortunately, the first weekend of events did not go without issue. Which is to be expected when racing a car that has undergone the sort of transformation that this one has. At the first event, I lost a couple of bolts on the slip fitting on the header which resulted in the exhaust rattling loose during one of my runs. Not the end of the world, I Was able to get it fixed and finish the event!

On the way back from STL, I did have a scare which led me to think that I may need to trailer the car the rest of the 220 miles from Litchfield, IL. Long story short, one of my injector wires had broken at the solder (huge thanks to Mikey @ ProFunction for helping me source the issue) leading to the car running like crap, vibrating, and even dropping a couple of bolts. Luckily I met some awesome local folks who were car guys, and even better, they were Honda fans :D. I spent a couple of hours at the local O’Reilly, where Eldar was more than helpful in helping me get taken care of. He even offered for me to use some of his personal tools to help me reach some bolts. In the end, I wound up purchasing a soldering iron and all of the necessary collateral pieces to solder the wires back together and get the car back on the road! It’s really cool when you get pinned up against a wall so badly, yet you’re able to pull it together and figure everything out. It looks like my years of working on cars (and, of course, a little help from friends) has really paid off. At least on July 12th 2015 it did.

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New Magnaflow Exhaust Pre-Fab

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Well, unfortunately the custom aluminum exhaust that ASI made for me is just not going to work… For the type of racing that I do, it is entirely too loud. The aluminum does a poor job of dampening the sound level, as the pitch was measured at greater than 103dB at one of the events. Not to mention the drone can be quite unbearable for longer drives… By the end of my 6 hour trip back from STL, I pretty much wanted to shoot myself.

Now I am no stranger to louder exhaust and long drives, but this was nuts. The drone was just too much…

I have decided to go ahead and have a new exhaust made from a full pre-bent 3″ stainless steel kit from KTeller. Helping dampen the volume will be two Magnaflow mufflers; a 5″x14″ round in the mid-pipe and a 4″x14″x9″ oval in the rear section. Between the two of these, along with the denser stainless steel tubing, I should have a pretty decent setup. I know that it won’t be silent, but I think that I should have a nice tone and the drone should be cut down significantly compared to the aluminum setup.

I am also on the fence about doing a lobster tail turndown at the rear tip…

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