Third outing at ICAR is a bust...

 ... in the sense that the car busted. I thought I felt the car pulling to one side as I drove north on the highway, then to the other side when I lifted off the gas. On the track this seemed less pronounced, but for some reason, the handling was not confidence-inspiring, despite the new used Nakang AR1 tires I had installed on the Civic. In my first session, I was less than a second off my best lap (I managed a 1:17.2), which did not seem too bad given that it was 27 degrees and everyone was going slower than their personal best times... I had some fun tring to catch a CRX that I thought would be slower than me and had a nice chat with the owner afterwards. The CRX had a B16 and an LSD, but nothing that should make it faster than my car. The Civic felt worse in my second session and I was even slower (1:17.8). After I pitted, I lifted up the driver side and checked of the wheel was tight, and it was. I called Choo to ask if he had an idea what the problem could be. He told me to check the passenger side, and when I did, I could see there was a lot of play side to side, in that I could "steer" the wheel. I asked someone to hold the steering wheel to make sure it was not moving when I moved the passenger-side wheel, and the person, who was probably more mechanically inclined than me (or an actual mechanic...), leaned under the car and immediately noticed that the bolt holding the front of the lower control arm was loose. Great, easy fix, right? It turns out it was not that easy, as the nut on the end of the bolt was not tacked to the subframe as it should be, so there was no way to tighten the bolt. Strangely, there is no access to that nut anywhere. Anyway, I ended my evening early and drove the car slowly to Choo's house in Pierrefonds. After leaving the car, I took a comically long bus ride to the closest metro station, remembering clearly why I moved away from the West Island 27 years ago. Hopefully he will be able to fix the car relatively quickly so I can hit the track at least one more time before the family trip in three weeks. 

GT4's are common at race tracks, it seems

Memories of my first Civic

The Spyder looks and sounds great

Civic between sessions

Another way to get your Civic to the track

A very rare GT4RS

And at least as rare, a Manthey Racing equipped GT3

That Elantra has lapped in 1:15 at ICAR, quicker than me (so far!)

Another GR Corolla, looks good in white

Opposite ends of the budget spectrum

A couple of nice Japanese cars

Almost twins, M4 and M3