Vince's Stuff: A mostly successful evening at ICAR

OK, the RSX left ICAR on the back of a tow truck again, but only after I managed to get a whole bunch of laps in. Here is the story of my up and down day last Tuesday.

I headed up north much earlier than last time and avoided traffic. As I was parking at the library where I planned to work in the afternoon, I suddenly lost all power steering assist. I popped the hood and saw that the rubber hose going down from the reservoir had popped off the hard metal line it was slid onto. There was no hose clamp on the rubber hose, so this might have been the reason. There was power steering fluid everywhere. I drove to Canadian Tire and bought a 2$ hose clamp and another 35$ bottle of power steering fluid. I clamped the hose on and filled up the reservoir and all seemed ok at first, but I realized that the serpentine belt was not fully seated on the (now wet) pully. I went back in the store and bought another serpentine belt tool (mine was at home!) and tried to reposition it. When I started the car, after a few seconds, it would slide over until the edge of the belt was over the edge of the pulley on the power steering pump. I decided to just drive it like this and I just bought a spare belt in case I lost this one on track. By the time I got to the track and checked, the belt was properly seated. OK then! I was ready for my first session!

I set up my GPS and camera and waited for the first green group session. It was pretty warm, about 27 degrees. The car felt decent. I guess I thought the brand new Nankang CRS tires would feel grippier than they did. Also, I guess I thought I would also put down better lap times. My best with the EK Civic was a 1:14 and with the yellow Civic, a 1:20. I figured the RSX on good tires would hit 1:17's. It took me most of the session just to get down to 1:20. I thought the car would be significantly faster than the yellow car, and so far, it wasn't. Even with the new radiator, the temperature would slowly increase throughout the session. I am pretty sure the radiator fans are not working and I will have to address that soon. The green group was full of GT3's and other Porsche's, and a couple of race cars, so I was pretty much driving alone and getting passed a lot.

JS and his buddy Robin showed up with their Civic sedans. I was a bit jealous of them for running in the yellow group, where most cars seemed to be in the 1:16-1:20 range. I went out again in the next green session and got down into the 1:19's. At the end, I was caught by a Nissan Sentra Cup car and managed to almost keep up with it, which was more fun. I was driving OK, braking deep into the corners, maybe with occasional help from the ABS. The "cheap" track pads I installed were OK. They did not have a lot of initial bite, the the pedal remained hard. When I got to the pits, the power steering hose popped off again! I had not placed the clamp properly and the stupid tube slid off again. Again, there was fluid everywhere. I burnt my knuckle as I took the time to really place it perfectly. I refilled the system with the generic bottle of fluid I had. I was not happy about this mess.

I decided to switch to the yellow group so I could run with JS. By this point, Robin's Civic was out of commission with a soft brake pedal. I headed out behind JS but I could not really keep up. He was driving well. I would catch him when he got stuck in traffic. We were mixing it up with a couple of NB Miatas and a surprisingly quick Mazda 2. Performance-wise, this was the right group for my car. I managed several laps in the 1:18's as the weather was starting to cool and the sun was setting. It was a fun session.

I was more relaxed by this point. The car had done 3 sessions, the water temperature was under control and the car was performing consistently. I planned to do the 4th session with JS and we headed out together in near darkness. I was a bit slower in the dark, but I was able to keep up with JS this time. This felt like old times, "battling" with friends on the track, swapping positions with them, burning through a whole tank of gas in one evening. At one point late in the session, I came out of a corner, got on the gas, and there was no drive. I pulled over and turned on the hazards lights. The ICAR truck towed me in. I figured it was an axle or a clutch.

Here is a video of the last laps of the evening. The image is shaky because I used a not very stiff extension on the GoPro mount:

My evening was over a few minutes early. JS and Robin came over to see if they could help, but there was nothing to do but call roadside assistance. I waited alone at the track until almost 11 p.m. and rode in the tow truck to Auto B.G. in Côte-des-Neiges, then walked the 5km home from there (I had missed the last metro of the night). The end of the night was not great, but I had had a fun evening, despite the setbacks. I have to understand that this almost unmodified RSX is just not that fast, but it's fast enough. There are other cars setting the same lap times (and some of them are a lot more modified than mine). Even though the brakes were not 100% to my liking, I did find myself leaning on the car with confidence, until the tires let go, so I don't feel I am holding anything back. In other words, the RSX is close to being a useful track tool to run a lot of laps (after having driven to the track in comfort!).

B.G. called me the next day and I told him what to look at. He will take a look when he car. He thinks it's the clutch, I still think it's an axle. I wasn't planning to go to ICAR this coming Tuesday, so there is no urgency. To be continued...