theCARhack

A few weeks back we announced that VRPerformance is going racing in SPEED World Challenge Touring Car. It is a daunting exercise that we are nonetheless excited to start. The first step was picking the car.

The car we chose is a new generation Honda Civic Si.

Our decision to go with the Si comes down to three main points, weight, power and handling. The stock Civic is a relatively lightweight car, coming in at well below 3000 lbs. The engine fits the Touring Car size parameters and is well known for its basic robustness. The high revving characteristics of the engine are also well suited for race car duty. And finally, the Civic's suspension geometry is solid and is a great starting point for conversion to heavy duty track use.

Next step: the weigh in.

Posted by horst at 03:28 PM | Permalink

We have installed plenty of Super Sprint exhaust components on cars over the years. They make a superbly engineered product with plenty of research and development to back up their performance claims (and price). The biggest down side to Super Sprint is the sometimes sketchy build quality and comparatively high price. There are some good alternatives out there, including the Agency Power units we installed on an E46 M3 recently.

The quality of manufacture of the American made Agency Power headers for the E46 M3 install was excellent. The tubes were flawlessly formed and polished and the welds looked strong. The headers included all the bungs necessary for the pre-cat O2 sensors (post-cat sensors and temperature probe were removed) so no modifications needed to be made. As always we used new OEM gaskets and copper crush nuts at the block end of the headers.

Here is a picture of the headers installed, viewed from the engine compartment:

Here are the two collector pipes attached to the Bora mid-section.

Agency Power is a great, less expensive alternative to Super Sprint if you do not absolutely need every last horsepower.

Posted by horst at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)