It's been almost a decade since we visited the Acura Integra (DC2) chassis as a project car. Last time, the car was available fresh from the lots, the Type R had just been released, Honda tuners were still only interested in drag racing, the K-series engine was still just a myth, and the Integra was as good as it gets for sport compacts.
Times have changed. Cheap Integra chassis are a dime a dozen and VTEC B-series engines are the status quo. In light of current turbo all-wheel and front-wheel-drive platforms, the Integra's sheer brilliance might be eclipsed. It's gone from king to underdog, and that's exactly why we like it. It might be slightly underpowered against the likes of the RSX Type S, Mazdaspeed3, SRT-4, and Cobalt SS Turbo, but the DC2 still has two critical advantages, lighter weight and a double wishbone front suspension, which can almost level the playing field on the track.
With chassis so cheap, engine options bountiful, and a saturated catalog of tuning parts, we've decided to try our hand again and hopefully break even or beat modern competitors (as well as the Type R, which gave us a serious spanking last time.) And we're doing it without the infinite budget or uncompromising race car mentality of many of our other project cars. This will be a no compromise, reliable, daily driver.
Knowing a good thing when you have it
Our project car equation hasn't changed much since last time. Obviously we'll start with the suspension because it will shave seconds off lap times more than the power will. The difference is that we're a lot smarter now and know when to say enough is enough. What people often forget when tuning a car is to look at how the car was from the beginning. Aftermarket isn't always better, especially in the case of a high performance platform like our Integra GSR. The people at Honda know what they are doing, and even 10 years after the fact, completely re-engineering the DC2 chassis is totally unwarranted. We're also going to keep as much of the OEM hardware as possible, since it works and requires less maintenance. Our improvements will be in areas where Honda had to compromise for comfort or cost.
With any car this age, the original bushings and dampers are all most likely well past their prime. These have to be replaced if you want to bring that factory fresh handling tightness into the car, but that doesn't come cheap since it's so labor intensive. We avoided some of the costs of replacing all the bushings, since we knew what aftermarket parts we would be using that already came with new bushings.
After some debate, we decided to just replace the critical control-arm bushings that primarily support a vertical load, namely the main rear trailing-arm bushing, which can contribute to a lot of unwanted rear-wheel toe change when old and tired. We're also using OEM rubber pieces, as they offer the best compromise between NVH, longevity, and compliance instead of filling the stock bushing's voids, adding polyurethane inserts, or using zero compliance spherical race bearings. Rubber is still the best for street cars since they don't make the car shake like some roadside motel vibro-bed and offer several degrees of freedom of motion without binding issues like polyurethane bushings. Mark Di Bella at MD Automotive handled the installation of these bushings in 30 minutes since he's got the process down to the point where he can swap the bushing with the trailing arm still in the car.
By Jay Chen
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