24 Hours of Lemons Race Car Build

[2ndGenGuy]

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:


IMG_3329 by jgturk, on Flickr


IMG_3686 by jgturk, on Flickr


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.


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!


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.


IMG_3687 by jgturk, on Flickr

We also began the process of stripping out the interior.


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.


IMG_3921 by jgturk, on Flickr


IMG_3922 by jgturk, on Flickr


IMG_3924 by jgturk, on Flickr

[2ndGenGuy]

IMG_3926 by jgturk, on Flickr


IMG_3928 by jgturk, on Flickr


IMG_3930 by jgturk, on Flickr


IMG_3996 by jgturk, on Flickr


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.


IMG_4080 by jgturk, on Flickr


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.


IMG_4083 by jgturk, on Flickr


IMG_4084 by jgturk, on Flickr

[2ndGenGuy]

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


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.


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.


IMG_4092 by jgturk, on Flickr

Bypassed the heater core.


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:


IMG_4114 by jgturk, on Flickr

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


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

[Hazwan]

Awesomeness (Y)

[MessyHonda]

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

[SnoCoAccord]

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

[2ndGenGuy]

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!

[A18A]

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

[Rendon LX-i]

Nice. Seen it in person

[Vanilla Sky]

You should turbo it and bring it to the Challenge!

[Legend_master]

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

[MessyHonda]

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.

[2ndGenGuy]

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

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!

You should turbo it and bring it to the Challenge!

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!

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.

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?

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

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

[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

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

[Vanilla Sky]

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.

[2ndGenGuy]

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

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.

[2ndGenGuy]

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

[86AccordLxi]

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!

[MessyHonda]

^^^^alex!!!!

[86AccordLxi]

What's crackin!

[2ndGenGuy]

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

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



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



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.



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.



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.



And here's a little montage of our work:

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

[2ndGenGuy]

And a gratuitous welding shot:



Our super awesome battery cutoff switch:



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



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



Odyssey Battery mounted in the trunk.



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:



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



Rear tow hook welded in place.



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



How it looks on the car:

[2ndGenGuy]

How the rear tow hook looks on the car:



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



Little more welding on the back stays:



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

[2ndGenGuy]

And some pictures of the finished roll cage.

[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.