MarkA - 2012 Si Sedan

MarkA

MarkA

Well-Known Member
108
112
upstate New York
Vehicle Model
Honda Civic Si
Body Style
sedan
Greetings, fellow gear heads! I bought my 2012 Si Sedan in the Spring of 2012, replacing my 2007 Si Sedan. My '07 car was never on the track, and had no mods. I recently started visiting the track again, and am now cultivating my interest in modding the car for track use.

Before the '07 Si, I had an E36 BMW M3 for about 10 years. I had that on the track several times, and did a few, simple mods. I'm getting more bold with my current car, so I'll keep a running list of mods/experiences here.

I already have a few messages out about the work I've already done. I'll re-post them in this thread, to keep them all in one place!

Mods so far, as of July 14, 2013:

CT Engineering short throw shift adapter
Aluminum shifter bushings.
Sparco throttle pedal
Progress 22 mm rear sway bar
Energy Suspension greaseable bushings (on the sway bar)
upgraded brake pads swapped in on track days.
Front Ingalls camber bolts, one each side.
Motul RBF600 brake fluid
Plasti Dip blackened front grille emblem
 
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Nice. I'm looking forward to more progress. Are you planning on getting aftermarket suspension? What are your other mod plans?
 
webby said:
coilovers/springs next?
Click to expand...

I definitely want to lower the car about 2". That will probably have to wait until next year. My wife is giving me dirty looks every time UPS delivers *another* package. Also, I have to do some research before I can figure out the level of skill/tools involved to DIY.

I will probably do SS brake lines soon. I will be changing the brake fluid before my next track outing, now that I have (I hope) figured out how to use my brake bleeder without dumping a quart of brake fluid on my garage floor!

I also have a set of front camber bolts waiting to be installed. First, I have to do the set up to measure existing camber and toe-in. I plan to do that as a photo-intensive DIY thread.

BTW, the 2012 Si Sedan Specs listing, in the Spec sheets forum, doesn't have values filled in for curb weight or weight distribution. Anyone know why not?
 
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according to motortrend-
2012 SI sedan:
CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 2863 lb (61/39%)
 
Nice to see a build thread getting started Mark! Hope you keep us updated with track pics and performance reports about how it's doing! Also get us some pics of the car!!

chuck_norris_stamp_of_approval_by_vehemence_41-d31xmba.jpg
 
That is interesting. I just went through the nice glossy 2013 brochure I have and the weight isn't mentioned anywhere.
 
honda.com gives the following for the 2012 Civic Si:

.........................................................Si Coupe................... Si Sedan
Curb weight (lbs, MT/AT): ..............2877/2897 ..................2895/2971 (with Navigation)
.....................................................(with Navigation)
Weight Distribution (%, front/rear) ..61/39.........................61/39


(Sorry about the loss of column spacing. Perhaps using dots instead of spaces will help?)
 
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Nix said:
Nice to see a build thread getting started Mark! Hope you keep us updated with track pics and performance reports about how it's doing! Also get us some pics of the car!!
Click to expand...

Like this one?20130604_WGI_DRT_8385x.jpg

Now that my rear sway bar is 7 mm thicker than it was, I'm hoping there will be no more pictures with this much body roll!
 
Here's a little more background about me, and my plans for the future. I live about 30 minutes drive from Watkins Glen International race track. I have driven that track several times, with several different cars: an Acura Integra GS-R, then a BMW M3, and now, my 2012 Civic Si Sedan. This is the first time I am getting serious about modifying the car for track use. I also drive go-karts on a paved road course just outside Syracuse. The organizations sponsoring the High Performance Driving Experience have been Trackmasters, and the BMWCCA. I am staying with Trackmasters this year, as they have the most track time. WGI is the only track I have driven on, but it's a good one! I hope to try Lime Rock sometime soon.

Earlier this summer was my first outing on the track in several years, but it didn't take long to get back into it. As my confidence and skill have increased, I'm running into the limits of what the unmodified car can do. Hence, the interest in mods. I have some basic tools, but have never really been interested in car mechanics. During one outing with the BMWCCA, I was chatting with a fellow student, as he was swapping his brake pads. It didn't look too difficult, but I didn't have the tools that he did: a big torque wrench, jack stands, etc. I put high performance street/track hybrid brake pads on my BMW, but had a mechanic do the install. With the Honda, I decided to try it myself. One big help was the availability of a big torque wrench for only $30 at Walmart. It makes getting the lug nuts off and on MUCH easier! I watched a few videos on Youtube, and was able to do the job without problems. Cool!

Meanwhile, my son bought a used Subaru from a young man who did quite a bit of work on it: high performance exhaust, short throw shifter, etc. I really liked the shifter. A Google seach landed on Squiggy's most excellent DIY thread on installing the CT Engineering short throw shift adapter and Corsport metal bushings on the Si. So, that was my next project, and it went fairly well. I did manage to break one bolt that holds some of the interior trim, plus one or two clips, but the important stuff held up, and I like the result. I also put a Sparco pedal on the throttle pedal, as the gap between the stock brake and throttle pedals makes heel-toe downshifting a bit difficult. That install was just a drill and two screws. The best part was that it got me over my fear of ripping things off the car and putting different things on. Also, it encouraged me to join this forum!

So, that was the state of the car when I went out on the track earlier this year. The further limitations of the car I discovered were that: a) Hawk HPS pads aren't really heavy-duty enough for the driving I was doing. b) my brake fluid was not heavy-duty enough for the driving I was doing, and c) the Si understeers horribly on turn in, making it hard to maintain your speed through the corner. The brakes in particular were getting "soft" toward the end of each 30 minute session, and a few times they barely worked at all! After a total of 4 hours on the track spread over 2 days, the front pads were completely used up. As soon as I got home, I had to put the OEM street pads back on.

After the driving school, I started doing some research on how to fix these problems before my next outing. It turns out that it is hard to find good brake pads for the front of the 9th gen Si. Most web sites don't have any listing at all for 9th gen. Fortunately, Hawk has an online catalog that has very, VERY complete listings of what pads are required with what cars. Through that, I discovered that the 9th gen Si uses the same pads as the 2005 Accord 4 cylinder, and the only high performance compound available through Hawk was the HPS. Following the advice of jrotax101, I tracked down (<- no pun intended!) some Carbotech XP10 pads that should fit, and have them on order from 949racing.com. I also ordered a backup pair of Hawk HPS, just in case.

The next project was changing the brake fluid. I like doing things myself, so I looked into methods of bleeding brakes/replacing brake fluid that don't involve having a second person pump the brake pedal. Unfortunately, the Si brake fluid reservoir does not have a tight fitting lid, making it hard to get a good seal to use a pressurized system. I got a kit from Motive Products, with a "universal" adapter that fits over the reservoir with clamps. My first attempt to bleed them resulted in a pint of brake fluid leaking all over the garage floor. I then tried a vacuum pump method, but couldn't get a good seal around the bleeding valve. Even with minimal vacuum, it sucks a lot of air. So, I worked with the pressure system a bit more, and I think I have it working. I haven't actually changed the fluid yet, so there is still opportunity to mess things up. I have ordered a few extra bottles of Motul RBF600, just in case the change doesn't go as smoothly as I hope it will.

To address the understeer, I bought a Progress 22 mm rear anti-sway bar from redshiftmotorsports.com. I also bought two sets of front camber adjustment bolts, based on info I read at RedShift, and greaseable bushings on the advice of Nix. Swapping a sway bar was definitely going to be my real initiation into being a race car mechanic! The instructions didn't sound too hard, but it was going to be a bigger job than anything I had previously attempted.

To be continued.....
 
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Very nice. When you change your brake fluid, you can also change your clutch fluid at the same time. Just add the Motul brake fluid as your clutch fluid. Your clutch pedal will have a much better feel to it.
 
Dar-Dar said:
Very nice. When you change your brake fluid, you can also change your clutch fluid at the same time. Just add the Motul brake fluid as your clutch fluid. Your clutch pedal will have a much better feel to it.
Click to expand...

Clutch fluid, eh? Do I drain the old stuff out? Suck it out with a turkey baster? Is there a bleeder valve somewhere?

Inquiring minds want to know!
 
MarkA said:
Clutch fluid, eh? Do I drain the old stuff out? Suck it out with a turkey baster? Is there a bleeder valve somewhere?

Inquiring minds want to know!
Click to expand...

It's the same as doing a brake flush. The clutch pedal just sometimes won't go up by itself so you'll have to manually pull the pedal upwards. The bleed valve is located under the throttle body. You'll find it using a flashlight.
 
Camber measurement: it really works!

I have a set of camber adjustment bolts waiting to be installed. I bought my anti-sway bar from RedShift Motorsports, which has quite a bit of info about Civic suspensions. While browsing the site, I saw the camber bolts listed, for not much money, with the description that they will help improve handling over the stock setup. So, I bought them. As I make preparations to install them, I wanted to know what the current camber settings were. I *thought* I didn't have the tools to measure camber reliably, but it turns out that it is fairly easy to do, with simple tools. Sure, you can spend $1,000 for a set of Hubstands, but I'm saving up for my coilovers.

I stumbled across this information on bimmerworld.com, which gives a link to the Youtube video called "DIY Alignment, Part 1". There's also a part 2 and 3. Look them up if you like, but I'll describe the procedure here:

First step: prepare a level spot for your car. Most people will be using their garage, and the floor *seems* pretty level. However, it isn't. But it's easy to fix.

Park your car where you want to have it when you work on it. Use a Sharpie marker to put a spot on the floor next to the spot where each tire contacts the floor. Back your car out of the garage. Measure the width of your tires. For an Si with 215/45R17 tires, they will be about 9" wide. You are now going to draw a 12" square for each tire, centered at the contact patch. Subtract tire width from 12, and divide by 2. Go that many inches out from the spot you marked, to find the outside edge of the box. Measure 6" fore and aft to get the front and rear edge. Do that for each contact patch.

Head down to your local home improvement store with about $30 in your pocket, and buy about 12-16 cheap, vinyl flooring tiles (they are 12" square). You'll also need about 10 feet of 1/4" vinyl tubing, a level and a yardstick, if you don't already have them. You will also want to buy a aluminum square "rod". It's a 3 foot long piece of aluminum with a square cross section. When you get it home, cut it so that it is just long enough to span your wheel rims. I was somewhat surprised to find that my 17" rims are actually 18 1/2" across.

Use the tiles to draw a square for each tire patch. Then put one tile on each square. Pour some table salt on the square, and lay another square on top. That way, if you need to turn the wheels for adjusting toe, the salt acts like tiny ball bearings, that let the upper tile turn over the lower one. With our salt-and-tile sandwich at each corner, it's time to do some leveling!

If you have a really long, really accurate level, you could just use that. Or, you can fill a bucket with water, set it on a low stool in the center of the work area, and stick one end of the vinyl tube in. The other end of the tube, you will tape to a straight edge, so the tube sits next to the graduations. Suck on the end of the tube to draw the water out of the bucket, into the tube, until it gets to the straight edge. Now, put the straight edge on each tile in turn, and look where the water level is. Find which square is the highest point. It is the one where the water is *lowest* in the tube. Then, go to each of the other squares, measure how far off it is from the reference square, and add tiles until it measures the same. Each tile is about 1/8 inch thick. Write down, on the floor next to each square, how many tiles are needed to make it level. That way, you won't have to do the water manometer thing every time. Now, drive your car onto the tiles, and you have a level car to work with.

Measuring camber

Now that we know the car is level, all you need is a carpenter's level and a ruler to measure the camber for each wheel. You can just use the tire sidewall, or, use your aluminium square straight edge to use the wheel rims as reference. Unfortunately, the wheels on the Si have spokes that stick up a little above the plane of the rim, so you may have to work around that. The *right* way to do it would be to jack up the car, turn the wheel so the spokes are out of the way, and set it back down again.

If the wheel has negative camber (the top leans in), you will have to lean the level outward to get the bubble to center. Measure how far the straight edge is from the top of the rim. Now, it's time for some trigonometry. As I said earlier, my wheel is 18.5 inches, but I find it easier to work in millimeters. There's 25.4 mm/in, so 18.5 " is 470 mm. However many mm you had to rock the level out, divide that number by 470, and take the "atan" of the result. My front wheels had 0 camber, and my back wheels needed 12 mm to get the bubble centered. atan(12/470) = 1.5 degrees. Both right and left were the same. As the top of the wheel is leaning in, it is -1.5 degrees.

So, results in hand, I went back to redshiftmotorsports.com, and looked up the factory spec for camber on the 8th gen Si (they didn't have numbers for the 9th gen, but no reason to think they will be different). Lo and behold, the factory settings are zero in the front, and -1.5 deg in the rear! Amazing.

My next task will be to measure the "toe" for each wheel, and to install the camber bolts to put a little negative camber on the front. Stay tuned!
 
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