[EVO Civic Evolution Index]
[Mar 2000][May 2000]

EVO Civic Evolution History
EVO 4 - April 2000
01/04/2000	Installed the gearshift. Bolted in a fire extinguisher. Bolted on the doors, front guards and front bumper.
08/04/2000	Bolted on the alternator and inlet manifold. Connected up all the various hoses. Watered the engine and oiled the gearbox. Made a driver's foot rest.
09/04/2000	Put the accelerator pump rod onto the carbs, roughly balanced them using the drill bit method (slide a 2mm drill bit under each throttle slide and adjust them till they are all the same). Slipped the carbs on and connected them up. Oiled the engine then put a electric drill on the oil pump drive rod and ran it till it filled the filter and generated some pressure. Dropped in a battery and cranked it over. It fired a couple of times then the battery ran out of steam. Put the battery on the charger for a couple of hours and fixed the electrical problems while it was charging (the kill swith didn't seem to do anything). It turned out that I'd connected the wires from the alternator to the output side of the switch and the wires to the ignition to the battery side. Swapped them around and it worked fine. Put the battery back in and gave it a few cranks ... IT RUNS!!!!! It's pretty lumpy but don't those four carbs sound good :). There don't seem to be any major oil or water leaks, just a tiny bit of oil from around the rocker cover but a new gasket or some silicone will fix that. Two weeks till the National Meet to get it tuned, run in and wheel aligned...
15/04/2000	Gave the whole body a bit of a buff and polish. It doesn't look too bad for what ended up being about a 3 day paint job. Fired it up, pushed in the clutch and stuck it into reverse ... stalled it straight away - damn brass clutch! Fired it up again and drove it out the driveway and back in a few times - first, reverse and the brakes seemed ok ... so with the rev limiter set at 4000 rpm I took it for a spin around the block. It drove ok (heaps of torque). It was a little twitchy as the wheel alignment wasn't great, but all up it wasn't too bad. But I do need a new battery. The current one doesn't seem to hold much of a charge and dies pretty quickly after half a dozen cranks. It would fire up first crank but I've installed a relay that cuts power to the ignition when there is no oil pressure. I think I'll put in a bypass relay or just a switch for when starting.
16/04/2000	Did a little bit of tuning of the carbs. I can't get the idle mixture down to a reasonable level. It was ok with the high compression head, but with the lower compression I think the idle jets are a bit big and the idle tends to float somewhere between 1000 and 3000rpm. I'm pretty sure they are just a standard jet, so I'll have to look around and find some smaller ones some time soon. Bolted the bonnet on and drove it to Gary Cook's to have a look at the wheel alignment and corner weights. Driving around with a brass clutch is a real pain, but you get used to it (at least I hope I will). The first thing we did was stick the camber gauge on it to find out what was obvios from looking at it ... the left front has too much negative camber (5.2 degrees to be exact). The left upright is bent, so I'll have to get a new one some time which will straighten it up somewhat. We took a tiny bit out of the front left until the driveshaft started to bind up, added some to the right front to get it to about 3 degrees and took a little out of the right rear so both rear wheels have 2 degrees of negative camber on them. Then it was onto the corner weight scales. I've never had a car corner weighted before ... it's quite interesting to see the weight changes a small amount of height change can make. Here are the results (for those of you who drive on the wrong side of the car/road, don't forget this is a right hand drive): Without driver With driver Before kg % kg % kg % Front Left 236 31.2 211 27.9 Front Right 248 29.4 242 28.6 Diagonal (FL, RR) 401 53.1 448 53.0 Left Side 379 50.2 377 49.8 Right Side 403 47.6 442 52.3 Diagonal (FR, RL) 354 46.9 397 47.0 Rear Left 143 18.9 166 22.0 Rear Right 155 18.3 200 23.7 Total 756 100 845 100 After kg % kg % kg % Front Left 224 29.7 223 29.5 Front Right 235 27.8 255 30.2 Diagonal (FL, RR) 377 49.9 424 50.2 Left Side 379 50.2 377 49.8 Right Side 403 47.6 441 52.3 Diagonal (FR, RL) 378 50.1 420 49.8 Rear Left 155 20.5 154 20.3 Rear Right 169 20.0 186 22.0 Total 756 100 845 100 As you can see, the diagonal weights are a hell of a lot better after balancing, as are the rear corners. The fronts are a little worse with me in it, but that's not so bad considering the amount of camber on the left wheel and the fact that Calder park (its next outing) is a right hand circuit. We got the weight changes by raising the left rear by about 5mm and lowering the right rear about 15mm. It looks a bit droopy at the right rear but apparently that's what it's supposed to look like (corner weights and handling are more important than looks). We then gave it a quick string and tape-measure wheel alignment, putting about 2mm of toe out on all wheels. Driving home it was a totally different car to driving there. It wasn't nearly as twitchy, and that was just at normal road speeds. The rear end feels a little loose even at very low speeds (the lsd exagerates it somewhat) so I might toe the rears in a little to tighten it up. It'll be interesting to see how it goes on the track.
21/04/2000	Went to Melbourne for the National Meet.
22/04/2000	Torqued up the head in the motel carpark. All nuts did up about a quarter of a turn.
23/04/2000	First event - National Meet Motorkhana. Both Jeff and I drove. It survived the day ok with only a few minor teething troubles, such as the linkage to carb No.4 coming loose and running on three cylinders for one or two tests. The handling on dirt isn't too bad (bald front tyres didn't help much), but the huge amount of camber and castor make it a bit of a handfull in reverse.
24/04/2000	National Meet Supersprint, Calder Park. Bolted on the sticky rubber and went out for the familiarisarion session. IT WAS BLOODY TAILY. There is just so much grip at the front end it's not funny. I really need to do something about getting the back to follow it around the corners. The engine was still very fresh so I set the rev limiter at about 5500 and was hitting it in every gear (except fifth - I backed off a bit). The engine felt good with heaps of torque from 3500 up. The big brakes felt fantastic. After the tyres warmed up it got a bit better but was still hard to push in the corners without it swapping ends. After about 10 minutes the session was over and Jeff jumped into the car. He strapped his girlfriend into the passenger seat and went out ... I'm sure I told him it was very very very taily ... He made it to the third corner before spinning (I DEFINITELY told him the back end wanted to be at the front) and hitting a HUGE ripple strip. He drove into the pits with the left rear wheel having about 3 degrees of positive camber on it, rather than the 2 degrees of neg it had when he went out. After pulling the drum off it was obvious the stub axle was bent so it was parked for the day... 1000km to get to the event and I don't even get to post a time ... oh well, that's motorsport. At least we trailered it there so getting it home wasn't an issue.
30/04/2000	Pulled apart the rear suspension. I must be getting good at it as it only took about 10 minutes. Dug out some standard rear stub axles and cleaned them up. I'll take them over to Geoff to get machined later in the week.

[EVO Civic Evolution Index]
[Mar 2000][May 2000]