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1991 Honda Accord - Racing The 24 Hours Of LemonsCan You Really Make A Race Car Out Of A Honda? From the September, 2009 issue of Circle Track By Jeff Huneycutt Photography by Jeff Huneycutt
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The 24 Hours of LeMons rules... The 24 Hours of LeMons rules state that the car must be valued at $500 or less. This severely limits your options when building a race car but also makes things very interesting. A friend offered us this car out of his impound lot. It had been wrecked and after the owner failed to claim it, this 1991 Honda Accord was on its way to the crusher. It doesn't look very racy, but since the price was right (free) we gladly accepted. First In A Two-Part Series
At the time of this writing the economy was practically living in a dumpster behind the corner gas station. And by the time you read this we suspect it won't be much better. Although we prefer to blame the bankers and the housing industry for this big mess, it's still a fact that many racers we've talked to have decided to leave their race cars parked in the garage this season and instead concentrate on simply making the house payment. But at Circle Track we prefer to think of ourselves as a proactive publication with a positive outlook on racing. The fuel jug is half full, so to speak. And with that in mind we've set about trying to help you find ways to keep racing even when the budget is stretched tighter than a drum. Maybe it will be racing the Late Model on used tires. Maybe it will be finding ways to keep running your race motor well past the rebuild date. Or maybe it will be finding classes or series that are simply more affordable to race. And that's exactly what this two-part series is about. Maybe you've already heard of a relatively new phenomenon known as the 24 Hours of LeMons. It's pronounced "lemons," and is a spoof on the world-famous 24 Hours of Le Mans race. The concept is to take a car that is worth no more than $500, throw in the necessary safety equipment (a rollcage and five-point harness are mandatory, other components like a fuel cell are up to you) and go racing. The race is an endurance event held over a weekend. To our way of thinking, it's a great way to get maximum seat time for minimum cash outlay, so we signed ourselves up for the LeMons South event at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, SC. LeMons is a road-racing event, and while that doesn't fit the usual style for Circle Track, we've always been about bringing you the best in all-things racing. We did, however, try to make up for it by composing our race team of a bunch of hard-core dirt-track racers. But there's also a second purpose for this buildup. We wanted to see how hard it would be to build a front-wheel drive car with a fuel-injected four-cylinder engine. This type of car is beginning to gain acceptance at racetracks all over the country as an entry-level class for young drivers or those not wanting to spend much money to get on the track. Traditional race cars with carbureted V-8 engines are becoming a rarity in junkyards, but smaller imports can still easily be found on the cheap and are plentiful in junkyards and used-car lots. We will show you what we encountered along the way while building our Honda Accord. It's definitely quite a bit different than building a traditional Mini-Stock from a Mustang, but it certainly can be done. So follow along as we kick off our two-part series on going racing in the 24 Hours of LeMons series. And yes, it turns out you can build a race car out of a four-door Honda.  The first step is to strip...  The first step is to strip practically everything out of the car. LeMons rules require only flammable materials be removed, but everything not necessary to racing is just dead weight, so it needs to go. Here, you can also see one of the headaches with racing a relatively modern car--lots and lots of wires. We kept the dash gauges and wires necessary to run the engine management computer but cut just about everything else. We did, however, keep power wires for the package tray brake light and a fuel pump. This is an area where you just have to take your time and identify every wire before breaking out the cutters.  It may not look like much,...  It may not look like much, but the anti-vibration matting glued to the floorboards of street cars is nasty, evil stuff. It adds weight and is flammable. Once it catches fire it makes a black, acrid smoke and is difficult to put out. So it needs to be removed from any car being turned into a racer. You can scrape it out with a putty knife like you see here, or a wire wheel in a drill also works well. Either way, plan to spend a little time getting rid of it.  The good news about this Honda...  The good news about this Honda is the entire front suspension comes out in a unit. Since the front end had been damaged, we yanked the entire assembly out and bolted up a good one found in a junkyard for just a few bucks. It was an easy fix.  Once the car has been stripped,...  Once the car has been stripped, Chris Hargett begins the process of fabricating a 'cage. LeMons requires only a four-point 'cage with a single driver-side door bar, but we wanted a more substantial 'cage than that. We followed standard circle track requirements by using 1.75 diameter DOM tubing with 0.095 wall thickness. Here, Hargett is fitting the existing pinch welds on the body/frame to the bar so he can get a good strong weld bead going. This bar replaces the need to weld plates into a unibody car like this one as mounting points for the 'cage and also does a good job of stiffening up the chassis.  Hargett also welds caps on...  Hargett also welds caps on any exposed opening to keep water from rusting the bars from the inside out.  The main hoop is the next...  The main hoop is the next section to go in. It attaches directly to the bars welded to the framerails. Two supports come off the main hoop and extend to the back of the car. Hargett also took advantage of the rear bars to brace the rear shock mounts to eliminate any movement there.  In the back, metal plates...  In the back, metal plates are welded to the structure of the car, and the ends of the tubing are welded to that. If you don't, the 'cage can rip right through the sheetmetal of the car in a wreck. Here, you can also see we've removed the stock fuel tank and cut a hole in the trunk floor to make room for a racing fuel cell.  The halo bar connects to the...  The halo bar connects to the main hoop and follows the roof. Two A-pillar bars connect from the front of the halo bar and extend to the bar welded to the framerail on the floor. This bar needs to be as close to the firewall as possible to protect the driver's feet, so we needed to cut holes in the dash to fit it up. You'll notice that we also decided not to keep the car's B-pillars. The one you can see here has already been cut halfway away and the rest will be gone soon.  Here's how we built the door...  Here's how we built the door bars. We'll use the same setup on the driver side with an additional horizontal bar for protection. Notice how the B-pillar has been completely removed in this photo with a plate welded over it. We did this on the driver side to make it easier to get in to and out of the car quickly and cut the passenger side to match.  Randy Turner fits up the aluminum...  Randy Turner fits up the aluminum racing seat we got from Richardson Racing Products. This is Richardson's Deluxe aluminum seat that features ribbing along the sides to provide some extra bracing in the event of a crash. We're also using one of Richardson's aluminum braces to connect the seatback to a support brace on the main hoop.  This is the seat hoop Hargett...  This is the seat hoop Hargett fabricated to mount the race seat. The idea is to mount the seat to the rollcage so that if you take a shot in the side hard enough to move the 'cage, the seat will move with it instead of allowing the 'cage to smash into you. The seat hoop has no attachment points to the floorpan of the car at all. Three button-head bolts will be used to attach the seat to the hoop and four more will hold the seat to a bar welded to the main hoop.  Once the seat was securely...  Once the seat was securely bolted in and all the welding was done, we fit up the cover and installed our five-point belt system from RaceQuip. We chose RaceQuip for this project because it makes high-quality safety gear that's quite affordable--which fits nicely with our budget racing theme. Also, we ordered up some rollbar padding from JR Motorsports and installed it over all the bars that the driver could come into contact with either his head or arms in the event of a rollover or some other type of crash.  It's a good idea to always...  It's a good idea to always keep an eye out for cheap upgrades. While crawling through the junkyard looking for replacement suspension components, someone found an Accord equipped with a rear sway bar. We cut it off that car (the bolts were rusted solid to the chassis) and welded the mounts up to our Accord. The bar is so small it can't help much, but it should be better than nothing.  LeMons allows a standard fuel...  LeMons allows a standard fuel tank, but we just weren't comfortable racing with it. Plus, we hope to take the little Honda to some oval track events when we're done, so we installed an ATL fuel cell. This 12-gallon cell has a Kevlar liner inside the metal shell for great protection. But look closely and you'll notice some differences between this cell and your standard model for carbureted race cars. ATL makes this model easy to work with for fuel-injected engines thanks to a return feed inlet. Also, notice how the fuel cell is mounted in the car. Hargett built a 'cage around the cell with 1-inch square tubing and then mounted that to the rollcage with tubing clamps that we got from Bradley Auto Parts at all four corners. This allows us to move the cell to the left or right to adjust weight distribution if necessary. This will be helpful later on oval tracks.  Here's a look at the cell...  Here's a look at the cell from the bottom. The square tubing forms a secure box around the cell so that it can't be ripped free from the car. The fuel cell is also mounted higher than the center crossmember so even if a wheel does get knocked off, there's no way it will drag the ground.  The doors of the Honda were...  The doors of the Honda were gutted, and the skins welded in place, so a removable steering wheel setup was needed to get in to and out of the seat quickly. We're using Allstar Performance's steering wheel quick disconnect. It was a bit of a challenge with the stock steering column, but worth it. The solution was to completely strip the steering column and then weld a steel sleeve to it. The sleeve fit the i.d. of the splined disconnect. Instead of welding that as well, we drilled a hole through both and attached the splined disconnect to the steering column with a grade-8 bolt. This way we can remove it and reuse it on a different car later if we want. And if we take a hit hard enough to break that bolt, the front end is going to be so mangled a steering wheel will be useless, anyway.  Here's a look at the quick...  Here's a look at the quick disconnect hub (complete with steering wheel) mounted up. We prefer the collar-style quick disconnect--rather than a single button to release the hub--because it's much easier to get off in a hurry. Also, we're using a 2-inch spacer from Allstar Performance because the stock steering column is too short and we wanted to move the wheel a little closer to the driver.  We don't want to give away...  We don't want to give away too much because we'll be continuing this story at the racetrack in next month's Circle Track, but here's a shot of the car after it rolled off the trailer before inspection at the racetrack.  We worried a little bit over...  We worried a little bit over plumbing up the fuel system to a fuel-injected motor, but it turned out not to be too tough. Fuel injection systems are different from carbureted motors because they require a lot of fuel pressure at the fuel rails, and most require a return line to circulate unused fuel back to the tank. The key to getting things to work for us was this In-Line Universal Electric Fuel Pump from Holley (just behind the fuel cell). This pump can handle more than 600 horsepower and provides plenty of pressure, plus it was a snap to hook up. All it requires is a power wire (that cuts off when the ignition is off so the pump won't drain your battery) and a ground. Make sure to plumb everything with high-pressure fuel line--we learned the hard way that standard line will split in a hurry and spray fuel everywhere. The blue stuff and the steel braided line is high pressure. The black line you see in this photo is just a vent for the cell. To get the fuel to the motor we simply connected the line from the pump into the stock fuel lines that connected to the original fuel tank. The entire fuel system turned out to be hassle-free all through the race weekend.  Although Honda wheels use...  Although Honda wheels use a 4x114 mm bolt pattern, a 4x4.5-inch bolt pattern will work. This allowed us to use Aero's 13x7-inch roll-formed wheels, which are popular in Mini Stock racing. The 7-inch width allowed us to mount up a set of used Legends tires. Because they were used, we were able to get them from a Legends shop for free, and they had also been camber cut, which will help improve handling through the turns. We also found that a set of wheels with 3 inches of backspacing fits just about perfectly around the disc calipers on the front. It makes the wheels stick out of the fenders a little bit, but 4 inches of backspacing just won't work.  It wasn't until we popped...  It wasn't until we popped the hood that we realized we had a sleeper on our hands. The previous owner had replaced whatever engine originally sat in this car with a higher-horsepower VTEC, complete with a cold-air kit and stainless headers. The value of a running VTEC alone is worth more than $500, putting us outside the cost limit (LeMons judges consider the real-world value of the car, not how much you paid for it), but we decided to worry about that later.
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