24 Hours of Lemons Race Car Build

Hey, just thought that I would share my team's build of an 89 LXi coupe that we purchased for $200. This car actually has some 3geez history, as it used to belong to our former moderator Alex (86AccordLXi) maybe 5-6 years ago? He sold it to a friend of mine after driving it for a while. Then my friend gave it back to me. Then I sold it to another friend who had it for a couple of years, he sold it to another friend who found a coolant leak, then kept filling it with straight water, and it froze the head in the winter.

They started taking the car all apart, and that guy got a job in North Dakota and the car got left behind. So it sat for maybe 6 months to year, and the interior got moldy, the head was off of it, and they wanted it gone out of the driveway. So I convinced them to take the $200 for it. Which was nice, because it had an armrest, cupholders, mudflaps, and a pretty clean interior once the mold was cleaned off of it.

Here's the car as we got it:

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7364/...cc6edc96_z.jpg
IMG_3329 by jgturk, on Flickr

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7369/...26357b3a_z.jpg
IMG_3686 by jgturk, on Flickr

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7386/...79c21c2c_z.jpg
IMG_3333 by jgturk, on Flickr

Came with some kind of springs. Not sure on the drop, or the brand, or anything. Hopefully they're better than stock, cuz the rest of the suspension is staying bone stock for the first race at least.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7419/...c389b2e8_z.jpg
IMG_3335 by jgturk, on Flickr

This is the original head off the car. Turns out there was about a 6-8 inch long crack under the camshaft from the water that froze in it. Just a good reminder to always use antifreeze!

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7349/...99f9e659_z.jpg
IMG_3439 by jgturk, on Flickr

Our total budget for the car is $500 (not including safety equipment). We spent $200 on the car, leaving us with $300 to spend to get it running and driving. Luckily this car was equipped with some of the coveted cupholders. We sold them for $40 which put us up to $340.

Since the car needed a new cylinder head. We shopped around. We wound up finding a yard who would sell us a "good core" for $40. It was over an hour drive away, but was far cheaper than anything near by. Turns out the camshaft has spun against the head casting, and made that head also useless. So another 2 hour drive round trip to exchange it, and we finally got our $40 head. Budget back down to $300.

We had a machine shop check the head, and gave it a quick resurfacing for $100. He also found 2 leaky exhaust valves and threw in a quick grind on them to seal them up.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7351/...537cc86c_z.jpg
IMG_3687 by jgturk, on Flickr

We also began the process of stripping out the interior.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7394/...42a50eab_z.jpg
IMG_3690 by jgturk, on Flickr

And everything out of the engine bay, including A/C and power steering, and as much as we thought was non-essential.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7283/...b53ecf43_z.jpg
IMG_3921 by jgturk, on Flickr

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IMG_3922 by jgturk, on Flickr

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IMG_3924 by jgturk, on Flickr

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IMG_3926 by jgturk, on Flickr

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IMG_3928 by jgturk, on Flickr

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IMG_3930 by jgturk, on Flickr

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IMG_3996 by jgturk, on Flickr

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IMG_4079 by jgturk, on Flickr

This last picture is just a bunch of random interior crap. It's probably most of the plastics from the interior, including the main box around the heater core. It wound up weighing 180lbs!!! That's 180lbs of weight reduction from the interior, NOT including any seats or the dashboard. I think this car is going to be super light.

Here's where the interior is now. We have actually taken most of the sound deadening off of the floors as well. By this point.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7285/...7fa321eb_z.jpg
IMG_4080 by jgturk, on Flickr

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7299/...026accf7_z.jpg
IMG_4082 by jgturk, on Flickr

This is beginning of assembly with the new head. Lots of room in the engine bay without all that CRAP.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7321/...7818b632_z.jpg
IMG_4083 by jgturk, on Flickr

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7290/...1fd1d88e_z.jpg
IMG_4084 by jgturk, on Flickr

We're guessing this is where the water leaked out of...

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7324/...f60c77b4_z.jpg
IMG_4087 by jgturk, on Flickr

There was also this wonderful fix on the car. Probably worked okay, but I drilled it back out and tapped it for the proper thread so I could put the standard bolt back in.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7299/...17497a4d_z.jpg
IMG_4088 by jgturk, on Flickr

Got the blackbox and everything back on. Which wasn't really that hard. The box is kinda ugly, I guess. But there's only 8 lines that come out of it. And everything's labelled.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7286/...b4014a56_z.jpg
IMG_4092 by jgturk, on Flickr

Bypassed the heater core.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7297/...03c66d97_z.jpg
IMG_4093 by jgturk, on Flickr

We were JUST getting ready to start the car up. And when we turned the key on fuel sprayed EVERYWHERE. There was a broken stud off the fuel rail, we decided it would be a good idea to put new seals in and clean these nasty ass things up:

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7285/...f412e385_z.jpg
IMG_4114 by jgturk, on Flickr

All clean. Just waiting for new seals to come in.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7303/...5d143f9f_z.jpg
IMG_4115 by jgturk, on Flickr

Here's a preview we did of the car earlier on in the build:
Nyan Car Lemons Racer Preview - YouTube

And our latest preview, from where we are basically sitting now:
Nyan Preview Two - YouTube

Awesomeness (Y)

cool project. coupes are lightweight and with the Fuel Injected trans it will run good. Where is the race this year?

Looks like a great start, are you running the July race at The Ridge?

Well once the car is ready, our first race is going to be at The Ridge Motorsports Park The Ridge Motorsports Park, then we might TRY to do Chumpcar at Portland International Raceway. And there's a small beater series they run at Pacific Raceways too. But we also enjoy the adventure of heading down to California and stuff. So we'll just see how things go. Thunderhill was a badass track when we had the Festiva. So that would be fun to hit up again. Oregon Raceway park isn't too far either. Just wanna race ALL THE TRACKS!

looks like a fun project! paint a big 3geez down the sides of the car :D

Nice. Seen it in person

You should turbo it and bring it to the Challenge!

Fantastic, and I think those are either h&r springs or sprint springs.

They look like H&R springs because they came in black. Sprint springs are 2.25 drop and they are blue.


just looked up the race and its going to be in July 20th.

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Originally Posted by A18A

looks like a fun project! paint a big 3geez down the sides of the car :D

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Haha! We have a theme planned. It's not totally secret, but it's gonna look awesome when it's ready. :) Definitely gonna put some 3geez logos on there!

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Originally Posted by Vanilla Sky

You should turbo it and bring it to the Challenge!

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You mean the 2013 Challenge? I'd love to do that one day! Then it would be hard to get past the judges at Lemons. It would probably be a destroyer at Lemons like that. :) Maybe this car will graduate up to that level one day, and we'll build a 1g Civic with an A20 for Lemons. I think that would be a serious Lemons contender! Once I get the tubing bender and welder, building cages will not be such a huge setback! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Legend_master

Fantastic, and I think those are either h&r springs or sprint springs.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by MessyHonda

They look like H&R springs because they came in black. Sprint springs are 2.25 drop and they are blue.

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I think you guys are right, H&R sounds like what I heard mentioned about them some time ago. Know what the drop is for them?

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just looked up the race and its going to be in July 20th.

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Yep, only 2 months to test and install the cage, seat, cutoff switch, fire extinguisher and paint. Gonna be busy!

I had some h&r springs on my first 3G. They are a good daily, not sure on how well they will track race.

Here is specs from the spring thread.

https://www.3geez.com/forum/suspensio...available.html

Quote:

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H&R/Neuspeed 1.5”
F: 1.26, 265 lb/in; R: 1.41, 170 lb/in

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The Challenge is part of the Trifecta of Crap. Lemons/Chump, BABE, Challenge. Bring it to compete in the $1000 or less class. Cages are free in the budget there, too. Here are the rules for the Challenge. We could thrash install a turbo system in the parking lot the night before the event, that always draws a crowd and plenty of free beer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Legend_master

I had some h&r springs on my first 3G. They are a good daily, not sure on how well they will track race.

Here is specs from the spring thread.

https://www.3geez.com/forum/suspensio...available.html

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Damn, thanks for the info. That's not very stiff. I suppose it's better than stock though, and the lower CG will help too. Maybe if we have some money left over, we can buy some e-bay coilovers and toss them on. They worked amazingly well in our last Lemons car on stock shocks.

Oh also we got it running finally! A combination of flipping O-rings to their good side up and some free o-rings (no, I didn't pocket them, they just let me have them) we got at the wrecking yard sealed the fuel rail right up. Fired up on the first try!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0NC8D49gPQ

Even more 3geez history than just me.

Here's the original owner: https://www.3geez.com/forum/newbie-in...nal-owner.html

Hopefully he doesn't see this thread and see what has become of his baby!

^^^^alex!!!!

What's crackin!

Wow, look how little I've updated this thread...

This is how our roll cage started. 125 feet of 1.5x0.120 DOM tubing.

http://i.imgur.com/r6fZYRyl.jpg

Here's our well used Corbeau racing seat installed in the car on our "custom" mounts welded to the stock seat rails.

http://i.imgur.com/CGNI3Nal.jpg

I bought this here fancy tool for bending tubing. JD Squared Model 3 bender. Damn thing was heavy, and we had to build our own base and bolt it down to the concrete. Had to drill 3 inch deep, 7/8 inch holes in the concrete to hold this thing.

http://i.imgur.com/T1UtHiHl.jpg

JD Squared has some sweet (if buggy) free software for bending tube. Just make your measurements, and lay out your tube with your dimensions, and it figures out all your bend angles, and marks for where to make your bend. You wind up with something like this:

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

This was our not-so-successful first run at bending our main hoop.

http://i.imgur.com/3WpYm74l.jpg

Turns out that is because our tube was slipping in the die, and there's 0.75 inch variance on where you line the mark up, vs where the bend actually starts. So once we solved the tube slipping issue (RTFM), and plugged in our offset, we had a nice even bar.

We drilled some holes in the floor so that we could lower the cage while it was in the car. You have to be able to weld the top of the cage somehow. It's either that, or cut off the roof. We decided some holes in the floor would be less hassle. Here it is dropped down to access the welds for the forward bars.

http://i.imgur.com/fivdZJXl.jpg

And here's a little montage of our work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn8Zjoohpvc

And a gratuitous welding shot:

http://i.imgur.com/igemJuzl.jpg

Our super awesome battery cutoff switch:

http://i.imgur.com/paB4mM0l.jpg

Our 0-gauge (1/0) wiring for the battery, since we moved it to the trunk.

http://i.imgur.com/LDtriyrl.jpg

Stock wiring all cleaned up, and gauges and critical switches in and mounted to the rollbar.

http://i.imgur.com/ATute3bl.jpg

Odyssey Battery mounted in the trunk.

http://i.imgur.com/hmEgx1bl.jpg

Some turbines we found at the junk yard for $10 each. These were originally painted blue to match our theme. But our theme idea was already done by someone else just a few months before us. Bummer. Yeah, there's 3 left wheels. I guess only one of the drums will get proper cooling:

http://i.imgur.com/VqAsyVAl.jpg

Removed the rear window for weight reduction and safety. Supposed to pull all glass from the car except windshield.

http://i.imgur.com/alHHKJ3l.jpg

Rear tow hook welded in place.

http://i.imgur.com/JpWmF3Ql.jpg

How we built the front tow hook utilizing the stock tow hooks.

http://i.imgur.com/MjNihb1l.jpg

How it looks on the car:

http://i.imgur.com/F3QdJy6l.jpg

How the rear tow hook looks on the car:

http://i.imgur.com/2m53OMul.jpg

Junk Mail: It's not just free packing material. It's also making paper.

http://i.imgur.com/JmlhVoxl.jpg

Little more welding on the back stays:

http://i.imgur.com/TTeMTpxl.jpg

Here's how we did up the wheels, and a little sneak peak of the theme colors.

http://i.imgur.com/csnukx9l.jpg

And some pictures of the finished roll cage.

http://i.imgur.com/s9Zz5hfl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gqlpHSol.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KQJSGKsl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/DSu9Yjol.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KYfaE81l.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YKfGBNAl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ZxWkyCvl.jpg

Oh yeah, and I cut off the stock muffler, and welded on a side pipe that exits at 45 degrees in front of the rear tire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUHh3_W8DUI

Sounds pretty damn good! Stock cat is still there as is the mid-resonator.

I want a cage. make me one?? lol love this man. cant wait to see some action shots of this thing.

Can you tie the cage into the car suspension or seam weld the chassis?

Yeah, we can tie the rear stays into the strut towers, which would have helped stiffen the car, but we were so short on time, and they would have been too far apart anyways... We might still weld in a rear strut brace eventually. Seam welding is basically free, so it wouldn't have added to the budget. But it's a real bitch with all the seam sealer on the car. I mean, they use TONS of it, and it is hard to clean out, and it messes up your welds really bad. There's a lot of chassis stiffening we can do, just welding in metal parts in various locations, and tying them to the cage. We might eventually cut holes through the dash and run bars to the front strut towers from the cage as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 2ndGenGuy

Oh yeah, and I cut off the stock muffler, and welded on a side pipe that exits at 45 degrees in front of the rear tire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUHh3_W8DUI

Sounds pretty damn good! Stock cat is still there as is the mid-resonator.

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Does that exhaust clear the tire? Seems like it might cause a lot of heat on the tire. Sounds great for no muffler.

Took it out for it's first run tonight. And it ran awesome! Got it back in the garage, shut it off using the kill switch. And now the car won't start. Here's a vid of it pulling out of the garage to see just how awesome it ran:

IMG 4351 - YouTube

Now I need help getting it running! Tech is on Friday! :( Here's a thread I made with the problem.

https://www.3geez.com/forum/efi-tech/...art-issue.html

Here she is after I pulled her out of the garage, now that she's running like a top! Looking classy as fuck!

http://i.imgur.com/Kyeww1vh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/x7S1Nufh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/dUDt7QEh.jpg

It's got electrolytes!!!! Fuckin love that movie lol. Bet that thing is gonna be a blast to drive.

It was pretty fun actually! But needs suspension work and moar POWAH. This thing had to be like 10-20 seconds behind our Integra we raced last year. But that also had an extra, what 30hp? And it had springs on it. So I think with a little work, this thing will be a very close contender. And could win Class B that we got placed in, assuming we can keep it running!

So the bad news is that we spun some bearings. The good news is that we drove 4 hours back to my house, picked up a spare block and head that I had bought recently, and installed them in the car. It wasn't just an engine swap, it was a block and head swap. We had to re-use the crusty old oil pan gasket, and re-use the head gasket to get this thing running. Not to mention, the block was from Chris (bobafett here on 3geez) and had been sitting for something like 5 years, and already had 260,000 miles on it, I believe.

We finished the swap over at about 3am Sunday morning. Turned the key and she fired right up and ran great. We ran it all day Sunday around the track, without any issue (other than some oil leaks due to the broken PCV tube, and the shitty gasket in the oil filter base adapter that we had to reuse.

Here's the car all loaded up and ready to go. We didn't have a trailer or truck, so we decided to drive it to and from the track about 80 miles away.

http://i.imgur.com/sV4UI59l.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KTvnKnql.jpg

I was the first team member to make it to the track, so I got everything set up in our pit space. The track was packed with Lemons teams and an HPDE going on at the same time. I think I got the last spot, and it was right next to the Lemons HQ, which was nice since we didn't have to walk 1/4 mile to tech and for our penalties.

http://i.imgur.com/rc8pelCl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Kt5TWaWl.jpg

This was our sticker for passing tech! We flew through the safety inspections, and the BS inspections. They said they knew the Accord could be a class A car, but they'd give us class B with 3 penalty laps, which we gladly took. Judge Phil (AKA Murilee Martin) really knows his shit about cars. The safety inspector actually said it looked like we had read the rules, which we took as a compliment. :)

http://i.imgur.com/XmuV22Zl.jpg

Here's what happened to us about an hour into the race. We suspect the car had been pretty well abused by a couple previous owners, and maybe I shouldn't have run 10-30 oil in it on a hot day under race conditions... oops. Probably my fault!

http://i.imgur.com/l3pkZNKl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/JAptyH2l.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/aXUptUHl.jpg

Here's us tearing down and making a mess and trying to build one good engine out of two. We had to swap over the windage tray, and tighten up a rod bearing on the block we were swapping in.

http://i.imgur.com/7WGc2dsl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/82Ndm64l.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/2I2Ec19l.jpg

It was indeed a spectacle. We had other teams coming by and offering support and help and tools. It is a really awesome community in Lemons racing!

She is back running once again.

http://i.imgur.com/zvneWNpl.jpg

So the next day we were back on the road (race track). When you refuel, you have to be in full safety gear. And cutoff switch off with fire extinguisher ready. No messing around with fuel fires.

http://i.imgur.com/iYDEIBFl.jpg



Here is is out on the track:

http://i.imgur.com/2wBnd1Vl.jpg

And more action shots (credit to Murilee Martin's Lemons Uber Gallery):

http://i.imgur.com/bZNvm2Sl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hWQXLuhl.jpg

We won the prestigious / shameful "Heroic Fix" award for working all night.

http://i.imgur.com/ft15QO7l.jpg

And a gratuitous beauty shot once she was on her way home (yes we still drove it home!):

http://i.imgur.com/LrzIzMVl.jpg

And more photos here:
LeMons - The Ridge

And here:
2013 Pacific Northworst 24 Hours of LeMons, The Ridge Motorsports Park, Washington

Maaan, you guys are quite good in a pinch! Glad you had an extra block! And, I freaking love your design; Idiocracy is an amazing movie!
Plus, the massive amount of pics is always a plus :P

haha good work chaps

i like the JDM duck spoiler

That's a a20 for ya. Great work john

Sounds like you had a blast.

Stilll can't believe that that is what became of that car. My wife daily drove that thing for a while til we sold it.

Oh the lulz.

Heh. Did I mention that the engine block we swapped in was the one that was originally in Chris's hatch?