Brembo's Gran Turismo brake kit comes complete with everything you need-except for fluid-a
While the improvement in braking performance over stock is tremendous, it still fell just short of the M3, stopping slightly longer from 60, 70 and 80 mph. That said, we've experienced brake fade in an M3, and the Earth will fall off its axis before that happens in the TSX. Before our next visit to the track, Skunk2 will replace the stock rear pads with pucks featuring a higher coefficient of friction to see if that will place us just over the line.
Now that nearly all Honda products lack the dynamic DNA that make them Hondas-by that we're referring to the recent collaboration between Mr. MacPherson and Mr. Honda-the Acura TSX sports old-school Honda double-wishbone goodness in both the front and rear. Still, Acura tuned the TSX for the target buyer probably in her 30s who doesn't want any nail polish to slosh onto her cuticles as she negotiates railroad tracks. This means it's tuned for comfort, not performance, and can use more spring rate and more damping.
Eight-way adjustable and using a mono-tube design, Skunk2 coil-overs replace the grandma-t
To fix this, Skunk2 cooked up a coil-over setup for the TSX, which will shortly be in production. The Skunk2 coil-overs have threaded steel bodies, and a twist of the knob at the top of the shocks adjusts compression and rebound simultaneously at eight adjustment points. Both the shaft and the body are shorter than stock. The spring rates as installed on this car are 600 lb/in. front, 500 lb/in. rear, although these rates will be decreased on production models. At full height, the Skunk2 coil-overs would place the car an inch lower than stock. Skunk2 will also produce a cheaper basic version with nonadjustable damping, valved for the supplied springs.
Stock, the TSX is a skidpad embarrassment, howling its way to .80 g. Thanks to a superb chassis, however, it turned in a respectable 66.1 mph in the slalom. With the damping adjustment knobs set in the middle, Project TSX stomped its stock brother and beat out the M3's skidpad performance of .91 by .01 g, but fell .8 mph short of the M3's 69-mph slalom speed. As it sits, the car demands too much of the front tires, suffering from habitual understeer unless you provoke massive imbalance with aggressive brake use.
A rear bar will likely do much to up the skidpad score by making the chassis more neutral and promote a more pleasurable driving experience. We expect the Project TSX's slalom figures to grow with the planned additions of a limited-slip differential and more power because its lack of cajones hampers its ability to accelerate through the last set of gates in the slalom.