1989 Honda CRX K20 track car.

[JeffC]

I have had this car a couple of years now ,so about time I stuck a few pictures up on here . its a 1989 Honda Crx , it originally set off as a D16 back in 1989 and raced in the original crx challenge in the early 90"s , fast forward 20 years and a few owners and it got a B16 transplanted, raced a couple of years and then upgraded to a B18C6 (DC2 motor) which is when I bought it .

I used it a year but felt the need to upgrade the motor which is where it all went wrong ,huge cams, hi compression and 56mm throttle bodddies , it made great power but engine was fragile at that level of tune and it eventually went bang

so last year I did a Kswap fitting the 2.0 k20 from the later civic EP3 , not a straight forward job on one of these as the engine is the total opposite way round B18 spins anti clockwise so gearbox on the wrong side so everything is to change .

previous build thread and videos on my instagram page; jeff_cooper_49

Spec at the moment.

1989 Crx 16v
shell extensively lightened
full roll cage with additional bracing added
plastic windows
sunroof removed
carbon fibre bonnet

weight 850kg (hopefully another 20kg to come out )

2001 K20A2 engine
TDI North drop in hi lift cams
Custom ported RBC inlet
70MM Skunk TB
custom intake
K&N filter
lightweight flywheel
Ktune TPS
3" exhaust
Mapped on Kpro ecu
260bhp.

6 speed Ep3 gearbox with custom short gear ratios, 134mph @ 8900rpm / 6th
Spoon Plate LSD
Ep3 shafts

Meister R shocks all round
Bespoke double front anti roll bar
Skunk camber adjusters
thicker rear anti roll bar
braced rear

Brembo Tocca spec 4 pot calipers / mintex race pads
standard rear brakes with brembo discs / mintex race pads

[JeffC]

leglessAlex said:

300bhp/ton? I bet that thing shifts. It looks great, I'd love to have one of these on the road.

cheers tbh its awful on the road, just about tries to kill you everytime you floor it with the plated diff and geo settings it runs, great on track though and yeh it does go very well .

[JeffC]

bit more tinkering going on. I have previously tried throttle boddies on this car with gains in power but I never managed to get the running right and the biggest issue was getting them to fit under the bonnet !

this is where I got too last time as can seen they were never going to fit without cutting half the bonnet away!!!





So , I want to get a set of ITBs to fit but I dont want to hack a huge hole in the bonnet and have a filter poking out and with the engine never been designed to fit in a Crx any manifold you but for a k20 engine is on the wrong angle so decided to have a go and make up my own, using an inlet manifold from a standard k20 engine to get the base plate to fit the head and I stumbled across a set of second hand Jenvey itbs on a manifold for a b18 C6 engine so I cut of the base plate and plan was just to weld the two together , the b18 has the same size ports as the k20 so on paper looked to be ideal later discovered that the spacing was wrong so had to modify to fit . had to spend a fair bit of time machining the inlet angle to get the angle that I was after and also had to heavily modify the idler pulley on the engine and then brace it up so it ended up a little more involved than I first thought ! photos prob make a bit more sense of what I was trying to achieve and how I have gone about it .

[JeffC]

motorhole said:

Think I've seen YouTube videos of this going round Croft, including when the old motor went bang? Weapon!!

yeh that will be the one, spends a bit of time there as is my local circuit.

this was in car of last time I was there few weeks ago was on the plemun and putting in some pretty healthy lap times on 1b road tyres ,


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juG8EYMDf9E

[JeffC]

itbs fitted with carbon backplate and filter , bonnet vented for air feed.

Dropped off to be mapped, was hoping to do the next round of Time attack at oulton park but looks like I need to fit headlights, indicators , hazard lights , drivers seat and belts and a dash to comply with regs and suspect will run out of time as not sure when will get car back and its on the 9th .

[JeffC]

dr_rallye said:

I like this, they are a nice shape and I remember thinking that they looked quite futuristic in their day. Not sure I've seen a red one before. Paint colour undoubtedly adds 5mph

Bet it sounds good with that engine in once the VTEC (Yo!) kicks in. Any videos?

yeh It sounds pretty mental when it goes into Vtec on the Itbs.

plenty of race and track vids.

rolling start to flat out testing on the Throttle boddies here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Z1PmyY_Qo

and at Croft before Itbs were fitted here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juG8EYMDf9E

Edited by JeffC on Wednesday 6th July 07:12

[JeffC]

first time on the track with the Itbs at Oulton Park on Saturday , I stuck a late entry in for Time Attack. Weather on morning was shocking so 1st two practices were done in standing water which made it hard work I was on the control Pirelli trofeo tyres which in fairness are far to big for my car and they caught on the arches, it didn't feel great in those conditions and I had a few close moments as I pushed as hard as I dared which paid off resulting in finishing 1st in class and third overall , the grid was made up of 4WD FWD and RWD , second practice was still wet I changed set up and went a fair bit quicker close to 1.5 secs quicker than anyone in my class and was running fastest overall til was pipped by 0.06 of a second by a 4wd Subaru .

It dried up after dinner and as suspected with a 300bhp deficit from most of the other cars in class it was going to be an uphill struggle. The Trofeo tyres in the dry are pretty good and went the full 15 minutes without dropping off which is an improvement over the 888s that I usually run, I drove as hard as I could for the full 20 minutes but just couldn't find space on track to get in a lap so finished 4th in class.
I prayed for rain for the final but it didnt come, so dry I altered tyre pressures and had a plan , sadly that all went out the window when one of the quicker cars came past me as we left the pits, I thought I would try and tag on the back of him but he had more straight line speed than me I ended up out-braking myself to try and catch him , so I settled down to original plan try and find some clear track to get a lap but everyone else had the same idea , my quickest lap was disallowed for exceeding track limits and I finished 3rd in class which I was happy with.


Video of it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gaGRJ5qEs8

[JeffC]

richtea78 said:

Tuned at TDi by her looks of it?

yep I highly rate their work.

[JeffC]

Andy500SL said:

dr_rallye said:

I remember thinking that they looked quite futuristic in their day. Not sure I've seen a red one before. Paint colour undoubtedly adds 5mph

I had a red one back when they were a current model (1989-91). Mine was an '88 so pre-VTEC. As I recall, there were only 3 colour choices, red, silver & ???.





Sometimes thing about going back in time but . . .

You should, they are still an entertaining drive, downside is It is getting harder to find one thats not rotten as they can suffer from tin worm in the sills and arches , 16v cars are cheap as chips which is what mine set out in life as but a good vtec can command pretty strong money but still affordable and in line with most 90's hot hatches , I recall Back in 1991 my pal bought a brand new celestial Blue V-tec and it was one of the quickest cars around, I could never afford one back then and at the time I had a 86 205 pug that I fitted an Mi16 to and I still couldn't keep up with my pals Vtec he had some superchip fitted to it and the limiter was removed, we had never seen anything rev so high my car is an F reg but even at 27 years old it will still shame most modern machinery, They have all the ingredients for a good handling car ,fairly lightweight , slippy shape and Double wishbone suspension on track they just work and seem to work well, the early Civics Ef/EG/Ek are the same and a quick track tool.

[JeffC]

done a few trackdays and raced at Anglesy but nothing much happened with the car since last updates other than I have had the suspension set up tweeked to help turn in .

Anyway just thought I would post a link to those interested of the race I did on Saturday at croft in the car , my pal has exactly the same car (K20 crx on itbs) and we were pole and 2nd on the grid with less than 3,000ths of a second between us ,so race 1 with me starting 2nd resulted in a 20 minute battle to the line with 1/10th sec difference between us at the chequered flag.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTSZrKjqLzo

[JeffC]

Last race of the season for me at Donington, After qualifying 3rd in the wet on lap 2 of race 1 I outbraked myself resulting in going over the kerb and busting the sump wide open

luckily fellow competitor had a spare sump so managed to swap over before race 2.

So starting from the back of the grid for race 2 managed to get to the front for an outright win.

car seems to have developed a horrendous brake vibration which left me with confidence in the no brakes so thats something to investigate over winter .

In car race footage from race 2 from last to first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gej2dzc3mNY

Edited by JeffC on Tuesday 18th October 22:17

[JeffC]

jmate said:

Seen this various times and even had a few Trackdays with it. Utterly amazing car mate and great driving by you. Flew past me like the atoms and gtrs do !

Have you on YouTube and love watching it so keep it up !

:-)

Cheers what car were you in ?

[JeffC]

HedgeyGedgey said:

Didn't realise you were on PistonHeads, I was the one who asked about your brakes on YouTube lol. Now I know the setup haha. Awesome car, and I don't like Hondas but this is freaking awesome

Aye no secrets with the internet, I have a full build thread on the Crx forum

[JeffC]

I bought this a couple months ago to go with my Race Crx I wanted a really nice road going version, I have done a fair bit to it since I bought it getting cleaned up and replacing the tired interior changing the wheels and tidying up the engine bay .

Edited by JeffC on Monday 31st October 09:23

[JeffC]

This is pretty much where I am at with it athe moment