Ice Racing Toy

[~Groll69~]

As many of you know, I picked up a 1995 Honda Civic DX to use specifically for Ice Racing.  I will be using this car for the MIRA Ice Racing that will take place at Chipewa Lake.  I will post pictures of it as it gets prepped for the race season.

[~Groll69~]

Tuesday night I began prepping the Honda Civic for ice racing this weekend.  As i had the spoiler off and mounted the light to it, I had the rear indow hatch propped open.  I walked to the front of the car and as i looked for a tool on my work bench, i heard the window Pop (Shatter) followed by the sound of millions of peices of glass hitting the car and the floor of my garage.  Needless to say it forced me to stay home the next day and search out a new rear window, including visiting a junkyard.  With the help of my friend Neal, we were able to find one in detroit.  We went and picked that up and installed it the same day.  We also managed to install everything else required for Ice Racing to.  Now I am ready to hit the Ice and Race.  I am glad the long day of work we put in on the car was very successful.  On a side note, that night I finally removed my useless garage door, so my garage now feels mildly larger.

[~Groll69~]

Update on the Ice Racer (Elsa)  I had the four studs break off of the front passenger side wheel while i was in livonia.  I had it towed home by Rush Towing.  They did a great job and even helped me push it into my garage.  While i await for the new/used rim, i chose to give it a complete brake job.  This includes new master cylinder, cross slotted,drilled front rotors and pads.  New drums with complete hardware and pads. 

While removing the rear drum hardware, the short hard line connecting to it broke off.  So instead of buying the short metal line, i chose to exted the rubber line all the way to the drum.  I spent a week finding the right adapter and metric line to do so and have them on order now.  Hopefully i will see them arrive soon.  I have already completed the replacement of the studs and front rotors and pads.  I still have to rebuild the rear brakes and i am not looking forward to that effort.   Once done, i should have some really great braking power.

[~Groll69~]

I have the drum brakes assembled minus the drum while i still await parts for the rear brake line.

I received the rubber line i ordered and now i need to order a couple more adapters to get it to connect properly to the existing hard line.  The good thing is I was able to re-order 2 matching adapters that i already had purchase, which was difficult enough to find, becuase the conected with the hose properly.  I am hoping to have them in by the end of this week so i can get the project wrapped up.  I finally broke down and bought a non matching steel rim of the same size, since i could not find a match anywhere i looked.

Right now i am trying to get the rear guard bent back out all around so that the drum can rotate freely when tightend into place.  For some reason the rear guard/mount on both sides decided to curve out interfering with the Drum.  (Did I say i hate drum brakes)

[toplessFC3Sman]

Oh, drum brakes are such a pain in the ass.  Helen's Celica has them, and my mom's Vibe has them for parking brakes, which I replaced a week & a half ago. It took 3 tries to get them all assembled & adjusted correctly, and that's after the hour and a half pounding on the brake drum/disk (regular brakes are disks, parking brakes are drums inside the hat of the disk) to get it off the car.  Not my favorite job, but far better than body work.

[~Groll69~]

Pictures as promised

[~Groll69~]

On sunday, I went up to Itswills house and we were going to work on his kitchen, but first up was a quick swap of the rear shocks.  Should be simple, only two nuts and one bolt each to reundo and replace per shock.  Well the bottom bolt decided to snap so it turned into cutting the shock off and removing the control arm.  Then we went over to his neighbors house to borrow his drill press.  Drill out what was left of the single bolt in each control arm.  Then back to his house only to find that he had one bolt that would work.  Next stop late sunday was tractor supply and they only had one bolt available too.  Was hoping to use the same style bolt for both sides.  Then re assembled.  The new rear shocks are great, but an hour job turned into and all day affair.  At least Itswill was able to take monaday off, since I was off then too and we finished up the tear out of his kitchen.

[~Groll69~]

Elsa decided that she didn't want her fuel tank anymore.  So It is time to replace it since it started leaking at the clam shell front edge.  Plus I hated smelling fuel as I drove down the road.  I was able to purchase a new tank from Rockauto and I am now in the process of replacing the old tank with the new tank.  I will take a couple of photos.  The new tank looks great fresh out of the box.  Just not looking forward to the effort.

[~Groll69~]

At the beginning of February, I was driving Elsa to Swartz creek and it started to snow on the way there..  At the 75 to 69 interchange, I had slowed down to about 35-40 mph going through the curve.  Just after the last bridge, she started to fishtail on me badly.  While trying to keep her under control and lots of correction and over correction, I finally hit the guard rail on the rear passenger side corner which took out the rear hatch window and passenger rear light.  Then the car shot across the road and into the open ditch.  There was no damage that I could see to the wheel assembly, so I started her back up and drove her out of the ditch.  Dropped the daughter off to the wife and then proceeded to drive back home.  Blizzaks don't work as well when you wear them down quite a bit.

Now to find a new rear hatch glass for the car has been a challenge.  The nearest place that I could find was about 40 minutes north of Columbus OH.  So a friend joined me and we took the vert on a run down there and back to pick up the glass.  The yard was closed so the guy had arranged to leave it available for me to access it and pick it up.  On the way back, we hit some heavy rain and the vert started to fishtail again.  I managed to not dump the vert into a ditch or the cement wall, but it forced us to slow way down to keep the car straight on the highway.  So another 8 hour drive adventure in the books. 

Elsa now has the rear hatch installed and is out of the garage.  I can now begin to park the vert back in it.  Still have to get the rear light assembly attached and some more redneck body work done to her.  I should also get a piece of lexan made for the rear window.  Then I wont have to worry about breaking another rear hatch glass. 

Anyone interested in helping me form lexan to fit?