AH: Really? The used bearings?
SP: The engine is really loose like that. People talk about loosening up an engine and opening up the oil clearances and stuff. Well, the engine is already loose, and if the engine has been taken care of-and you can tell that when you take it apart-if there's normal wear on the bearings, then it's fine.
The block is bored for the larger pistons and everything else was reassembled, with new seals. Now that I think about it, it would have been a good idea to assemble it with new Honda rod bolts. But I don't really see those fail on CRXs anyway. And we're not putting much more load on it than stock as far as cylinder pressures and such. It's not like it's being turbocharged. It'll last like that for a long time.
AH: Did you get your one-inch head porting in there?
SP: No, I didn't do anything like that. It has a '92 Civic head gasket. It's a metal gasket, which you're allowed to do. And then, combined with taking about 20 thou off the head, it gave me the legal half-point of compression increase. I did all the math, I think it's 20 off the head and then the thinner gasket and you're right there. Stock cam, everything on the cylinder head is stock, with just a valve job.
AH: What do have going on with the outside of the motor?
SP: DC Sports Tri-Y header, an AEM intake. The AEM intake is perfect, since it's already tuned. And it's a cold air intake. Everything is just bolt-on.
AH: Then bolted onto the header is your famous aluminum exhaust.
SP: The aluminum exhaust seemed like a good idea at the time, but they don't hold up to road racing very well, especially when they're turned out the side of the car.
AH: What did you think of the weekend? What did you go in expecting? What did you come out with?
SP: I wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't expecting 15 cars in the same class. That was really cool. And the format was really fun. In two days we did normal qualifying, racing with rolling starts, an inverted grid start and a standing start. So I was able to experience almost every way you could run a race.A
AH: Standing start-did that bring back any memories?
SP: A bit, but the little CRX with the open diff doesn't do much for launching.
AH: You're one of the few people at our end of the motorsport industry able to make a living from racing. From a driving perspective, it's easy to look down on people who aren't as good at driving and see what they're doing wrong. But it's hard to look up and see what better drivers are doing differently. As a professional, financially, what should people be expecting out of the Honda Challenge? Or what do they need to do differently?
SP: With Honda Challenge, I'm spending my money. I have a couple of hook-ups on some parts, but I spent my hard-earned cash to build the car and pay entry fees. And gas to get out there and all that kind of stuff.
AH: But should people in Honda Challenge be worrying about pimping out their cars with fancy paint jobs and stickers, etc? Do you see Honda Challenge as a viable place to make money racing? If so, what do the other drivers need to do to be more professional?
SP: Honda Challenge is successful because it's grassroots. If everybody spends a bunch of money on their cars, making them look pretty and rebuilding them before every event, then people will get really upset if there's any bumper-rubbing and that kind of stuff. Then it becomes more expensive to run the cars and it loses its grassroots club racing fun. And it becomes more of a professional type of series. That's when you bring in the politics, you bring in more bad feelings when something happens on the track. What's so special about the series right now is that it doesn't have all that.
By Andy Hope
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