Track season starts early

It's been snowing for 2 days... hard to believe after the 20+ degree weather we have seen on certain days.

Photo from yesterday, unexpected snow

As planned, I pulled the Civic out of storage on April 1st. I had to wait a few additional days before I was able to get the BMW out of the barn at the country house, since the barn doors were still frozen in ice. When it was possible to take out the BMW, I parked the Saab at the country house, where it is now sitting. The plan is to sell the Saab in the next few weeks to make way for a new winter car for next season.

The BMW was put away in good working condition and all seems well now that I have swapped on the summer wheels. There is still an intermittent check engine for a throttle position sensor, but the car is working fine and is not leaking oil anywhere.

As for the Civic, I had put it away in working condition. On my last track day in November, there had been no vtec engagement issue on my last session and I had hoped that the issue was solved when I properly secured a wire to the vtec solenoid.

Amazingly, there are two local tracks (Riverside and ICAR) which have began hosting track events as of a couple of weeks ago, so I was eager to head out with the Civic. I was able to head to ICAR this past Tuesday for a couple of sessions. ICAR decided to start the Tuesday lapping at 1:00 pm instead of 5:00, so people could get in some track time despite the 8:00 pm curfew. 

I managed to get to the track at about 2:00 pm and was chatting with the owner of a nice Mazda RX8 R3 while I emptied the car.

There were not many people on track at that hour, but at least that meant I could gather some useful data without my lap times being affected by other drivers. My plan was to take it easy for a few laps to make sure everything was in order. The car felt good. The front end was not gripping that well in the slower corners, but the car felt stable where it counted in the faster corners. After a few laps, the vtec issue appeared again. The engine would drop out of vtec then it would return. This got worse as the session went on. I managed a 1:48.06, about 1.5 seconds off my best laps of last season. On that lap, I clearly had full power, as I hit 168 km/h on the back straight. I was on a mid-1:47 when I lost power on the start-finish straight. I just decided to focus on running clean laps and see how much speed I could maintain in the corners. I never managed to hit the rev limiter in 4th gear, which shows that the engins was not pulling as strongly as it did in November. 

I went out for 2 more sessions, but the problem persisted, so I was losing about 15 km/h at the end of each straight. Still, I managed laps in the 1:48's in each session, despite the power loss, so I was feeling good about the overall performance of the car (and the driver). With less power, I was getting on the gas earlier at the start of the super long right-hander, and this generated some of my best speeds ever in that corner. I have to remember to get on the gas more aggressively after the hairpin at the end of the back straight. 

There were no other issues, so I was pretty satisfied with my afternoon. The issue is likely an electronic or voltage issue, and Pat says we will run a couple of new wires to the vtec components. I hope we find the solution quickly. You can't see if the problem is solved with street driving, as the problem doesn't manifest on the street. I assume there is a heat component to the issue. I will drop the car off at Pat's tomorrow so he can take a look at it.

The Civic at ICAR

Not many other cars, but some interesting stuff nonetheless

This NSX belongs to ICAR, as does the F430 on the lift

As spring is really here, there are more and more interesting cars on the road.

Clean E28 5-series

In the past 2 weeks, Oscar has learned to ride a bike with full confidence

Zoom photo of a woodpecker at the country house

What are the odds? C63 sedan and 507 edition Coupe on the road together

Ur-S4

M3 fresh out of the barn, ready for action

Nice S5 sedan

RS5 coupe

I love the new RS6 wagon

The Civic on its first day out of storage

MGB-GT on 80's MSW wheels

The Saab, dealing with a resurgence of winter weather

A loud EP3 Civic

Ford GT and GT40

Nice phoenix yellow M3

Very clean Mustang

A rare CR-Z on our street

A clean E46 sedan in the neighbourhood

The Civic in storage

Another cool RS6

Spring is in the air...

 The temperature has been mostly above zero for a few days now. There are people riding motorcycles on the street. It really feels like spring is here to stay. My plan was to wait until April 1st to put the BMW and Civic back on the road, but I may run out of patience and pull at least one of them out early... We'll see. Here are some end of winter/beginning of spring photos from the past few weeks:

Cool and clean small Ford pickup

First top-down convertible of the year

Rare colour for the FRS

Super clean 90's Accord

It's rare to see a Si Coupe without the OEM wing. I prefer it this way.

First time I've seen a Taycan Tubo S

The rear of the 992 is a bit too big

Super clean looking early WRX

Surprising choice of winter car

Every winter I see a few RX8's though

Mid-winter update... no car projects for now.

As happens every winter, there comes a point when there is pretty much nothing going on from an automotive perspective. The Civic and BMW are still parked for winter. I went to "visit" the Civic to try to fix the driver side window situation... I completely disassembled the system, tried a different front rail from my old door, regreased the rubber part and after all that, there is very little difference. The window still needs a lot of "help" to go all the way up, but hopefully it will not pop out of the rail every time I wind it all the way down. 

The Saab continues to be reliable. The last touch ups I did to the rear fenders are rusting a bit, but that is not a surprise. There is a small clunk coming from the rear when I start and stop, maybe a bushing or something like that. If the car continues to work all winter, I will have to decide once again whether to keep it for another year or find something in better condition. I still give the car an A+ for winter performance and how pleasant it is to drive. 

I have made a small bit of progress on the "project house". There was a job I was sort of dreading, which was replacing some rotten floor boards. I managed to find the right size of tongue and groove board and after that, the job was not so bad. It was quite a challenge to get the length and spacing of the boards right, and get the new sections as level as possible with the old sections. I found a tutorial online on how to make the new planks look old, and I am pretty satisfied with how it turned out. 

Step 1: cut out rotten sections, using a jigsaw

Step 2: cut new planks to proper length

Steps 3 and 4, slid in all planks, then remove them, add shims to level everything, then slide them back in and nail them in place.

Step 5: "age" the wood with iron vinegar

There are still a few interesting cars on the road, but nowhere near as many as in summer. 

I didn't even know this car existed: W12 Audi A8

Not a beautiful car, but it must be a fun car to drive in winter

HotWheels has re-released the Civic EK coupe... I bought 3 of them

Another winter-driven Civic Type R

Saab in front of the little barn

Cool view of the sun and the city through the fog

A couple of G-Wagens on de la Montagne

Lowered EK Coupe in winter mode

Dirty Saab in the garage... still in one piece

People still drive enthusiasts' cars in winter

Another lousy photo of the 1st gen TT with the awesome turbofan wheels

Even dirtier Saab at Mount Royal