Plan D, Was to use the Beater Civic Track car we built a couple of years ago on a budget of £350 and a curly wurly. We swapped over the required parts from the Micra to make the car “Legal”, such as the Harness, cool down light, seats etc. Now the Civic lives outside… It sees the elements. The Rain, the sun, the snow, the ice. It has “Patina” and not a single panel is perfectly straight. This car has never wanted ANYTHING since we built it and with 190,000 Miles on it…. That’s good going!

Now I’m a Honda man at heart, specifically EF Civics so I was excited to see how the Civic would compare to the Micra in terms of Lap times.

We had some last minute issues with wheels and tyres, I had a brand new set of 225/45/15 Nankang AR-1’s but none of my sets of 15” wheels would fit them onto the civic. Either the wheels were too wide and the offset was too aggressive to suit the wide arches on the Micra, or the wheels were physically not wide enough. The 14”’s off last year’s setup also didn’t work as the wheels were too wide with a zero offset. I then remember I had a set of 14” boring offset wheels. But they fit and that was the most important thing. The only issue of using last year’s tyres is that they had gone hard. After numerous heat cycles throughout the year and we didn’t have the budget for a second set of tyres mid-season. With a bit of tyre softener the tyres were given a second chance of life

Round 1 (Sunday 1st May 2022)

Session 1 – Warm up.

I was using this session to get a feel for this car again, although I had been using this car for several track days over the years, it had been 12 months since I last drove it with a less grippy tyre (NS2-R). 105mph Terminal speed into Coppice and into Park told me the engine was in good health… I managed a 1:56.xx just getting a feeling and finding a grove. For comparison on a test day last year the Micra did a very low

1:50.xx (Not bad for 120hp) The civic was 140bhp (D16A9 Non-VTEC) albeit weighed a bit more. However towards the end of the session I was hearing an odd noise at high RPM. I couldn’t decipher if it was a loose wheel, exhaust knocking or a misfire.

Session 2 – Practice.

This is where it started to all go downhill. Although an exhaust rubber had deteriorated and snapped causing the exhaust to knock on the rear lower control arm in session one, it wasn’t the root cause of the issue as we would soon find out. There was a bit of a rough spot at low RPM when the engine was revved. We removed the plugs and they looked perfect, but we fitted a new set regardless and went out. The session started off OK but started to deteriorate pretty quickly. Was a slight stumble across the RPM Range but nothing really noticeable? My terminal speed was reaching 100-105mph so I was not massively concerned. Few laps in and I started to notice my terminal speed into Coppice and Park getting lower and lower… and towards the end of the session I was reaching just 85mph into these two corners – something was certainly wrong.

Session 3 – Qualifying.

We removed the plugs that we had just fitted, Cylinders 2-4 had sooted up as you would expect, but indicating a perfect burn. Cylinder 1 however was spotless. Although the electrode had gone the distinctive sandy colour, the rest of the plug remained clean. Having a bit of knowledge of these old Honda engines the symptoms pointed towards a faulty ignitor inside the distributor, but we didn’t have a spare…

Luckily for me an old friend, Aaron, had visited the circuit today and Aaron had a selection of D16A9 Parts at his workshop just 10 minutes down the road. He kindly offered to drive me to his workshop to get some spare parts. We came back with 2 Distributers and a set of Leads and set about swapping everything over however a quick test drive in the paddock quickly concluded that a replacement distributor had not fixed the issue.

I went out into Session 3 regardless just to see how we went. The engine was noticeably worse since session 2 and the misfire was not present throughout the entire RPM range. At 10% throttle the engine seemed fine, but any more throttle input and the misfire got worse. I managed to limp the car around the circuit a couple of times reaching just a mere 70mph terminal speed before I decided it was just too dangerous to stay out at this speed and it wasn’t fair to impede on everyone else’s lap times by staying out in a hurt car.

Session 4 – Final

Back in the pits, scratching heads. We decided to diagnose everything we could. We compression tested the engine with 180psi across all 4 cylinders. We found 2 vacuum hoses with a couple of pinholes and replaced those. We tested the voltage at the TPS and discovered I didn’t have full throttle due to a slack throttle cable showing just 3.8v with WOT being 4.5v – a quick fix, but wasn’t the root cause.

At this stage we concluded it must be a fuelling issue. Maybe the 190,000 mile old fuel pump finally decided it had had enough? Now changing a fuel filter on an EF civic is now an easy job. It requires dropping the tank from under the car and taking the fuel pump out the top of the tank. Not an easy job on axle stands and the thought of trying to undo 190,000 miles old fuel lines, nuts and bolts was not appealing. I took a 500ml fuel sample Pre Fuel filter and it was clean and nothing of concern.

They called for me down in the Paddock for session 4, but it was not worth going back out.

I sourced a Walbro 255 from Mikey #300 from Tegiwa (Legend) and set about the daunting task of removing the fuel tank. Surprising everything came undone pretty easily and me and dad managed to fit the pump in a couple of hours using our phones as torches as the daylight had vanished. We got it all back together around 9pm; I took it for a quick test drive down the paddock…

It didn’t fix it. Although the engine seemed to run a “bit” better it was still un-drivable with a heavy misfire present through the RPM Range.

Round 2 (Monday 2nd May 2022)

Session 1 – Warm-up

At this point I’m still thinking its ignition related. A quick post on the CRX and 4GUK Pages on Face book was answered by Josh McClelland who was close to the circuit and had recently removed his D16A9 Engine for a B Swap. So he knew he had a known working distributer (Worth noting at this point the ones we collected from Aarons came off vehicles which had been stood for quite a whilst)

Josh offered to go his shop, remove the distributer and deliver to me at the circuit; I had a spare ticket that I emailed to Josh so he could sail through the gate and into the circuit. Unfortunately as this was the day of the Modified Life show, getting into the circuit was a long and slow process with traffic backed up for miles in all directions.

We missed session one was a result.

We fitted Josh’s Distributer and took a quick test drive in the paddock which revealed it had not fixed the issue.

At this point… It MUST be fuel related! The only things left to change are the injectors and fuel pressure regulator…

Rewind to the night before just after we tested the civic after fitting the new fuel pump. A call to warms was requested by one of Simon Norris’s customers Evo’s (I didn’t get the name, so I do apologise) who had managed to damage a crank sensor trigger wheel by tearing it in half. I had offered my services on the Whatsapp group if anyone needed any TIG welding repairs the week prior.

With no car to get to the workshop (As I drove the Civic to the circuit). They offered to drive me there if I could fix it. We got to the shop; I welded and repaired the sensor pickup ring. Whilst I was there I decided to grab a set of injectors out of a B16A Engine I had in the workshop. Being an OBD0 Engine from an EF9 SIR-2, the injectors were the same as the D16A9. Anyway…

I removed the rail and fuel injectors to find a cracked injector on Cylinder 1 and a bit of debris in the pre-filter on cylinder 1. I cleaned and installed the B16a injectors, took it for a quick spin in the paddock and the Mis-fire was gone!

Just in the nick of time too, as we were called down to the holding area for session 2.

Session 2 – Practise

First couple of laps were amazing, Not a misfire in sight and I started to make laps. It’s important at this point to say I set myself a goal, which was a 1:50.xxx. Which is the time we set in the Micra at a track day last year on a hot day on the Nankang AR-1s.

Couple of laps in 1:48! Yeah boy!

Next lap, 1:47!! YEAAH BOII!!

Next lap 1:46.841!!

I was chuffed! Not only had I beat my target time but had improved 3 laps in a row!

The session ended and I came in a VERY happy boy!

Session 3 – Qualifying

We gave the car a quick once over but we found nothing worrying.

Out for session 3 A couple of laps in back up there with a low 1:47.xxx, 3 tenths off my PB of 1:46.841 and unfortunately I was unable to improve, however I noticed that my terminal speed was slightly lower at 100mph. I shrugged this off, as the car was getting hot. The session ended.

Session 4 – Final

A quick check on the car and we found zero issues.

When starting the car up to set off to the holding area, I noticed a slightly grumble at lower RPM’s, but she ran great at the end of the last session, so off we went. Start of the opening lap and power felt great… But by the 3rd corner the mis-fire had started to rear its head again and quickly got progressively worse. I decided to see if I could drive through it but the car became completely un-drivable again. I managed to limp the car back to the pits and unfortunately, called it a day. In the session that counted… I was let down again.

I managed to limp the car home (20-25 minute drive)

So there we go… Not the result we wanted. But we would have been on course for at least 5th place which would have made a change for being dead last again! But hey ho…

I forgot to mention we DID take the Micra to Cadwell. Good friend Adam tailored the car to the circuit so we could put it on display.

We now have 6 weeks to get the Micra ready for a double header at Brands Hatch. Some late nights ahead for sure!