With the lack of car shows/events due to the worlds current situation I figured it would be a good time to introduce my current build.
My current project is a 1995 Integra LS. I picked up this completely stock, low mileage DC2 for a good price. Now, I've never owned a car, new/used that I've left stock for long, modifying every one of the cars I've owned to some degree.
The day after bringing the car home it was time to start working on its build sheet. For all of my vehicles I develop an thorough build sheet consisting of a multi-tabbed excel doc with everything broken out, with tabs for the Summary, Research, Parts list, Build Order and a Cost tab. This is something I started doing early on, I found that this helps me stay on track with with the build, what parts to order next and maintaining the theme and direction of the project.
For Project Integra it was time to lock down the theme and the direction for this build. Now, with years of track day experience under my belt and the lack of a current track car, it was an easy decision. I knew from the moment that I found the car that I would be building it to be able to hold its own on the track. I determined that I wanted an understated daily driver but something that was a monster on the track, something that could hang with newer and higher horsepower cars. I decided that I wanted to do a budget build to show everyone that even with a tight budget and basic tools that you can build a fun daily driver that could also be competitive on the track.
My build sheets start with breaking out what I consider the parts and tuning JDM bible. This of course is a Hyper Rev book, this is always my first purchase on any new build I'm going to start. Because I knew I would eventually build an Integra I already had one on the shelf (actually 2 different editions). Between the Hyper Rev mag and my Hot Version/Vtec Club DVD's I had a enough ideas and websites to start doing my research to start putting together the build sheet.
After putting the car through its paces and knowing that it would see numerous tracks days, it was clear that this almost 25 year old car was going to need a lot of suspension work. With every creek and knock I knew that I would have to start with the suspension.
To keep the build on track and within budget I split the cost of parts into stages.
So here is how the project is going to start.
Stage 1
Maintenance Items
Exterior
Suspension
Wheels/Tires
Normally I wouldn't be concerned with the exterior until I was near the end of the project but after hearing (from the wife) how bad the car looked I added to Stage 1
On any used car the fluids are always the first thing I do followed by some basic tune up items. I've been a fan of Honda's Semi-Synthetic oil and Honda's Trans fluid. So with a set of Skunk2 magnetic plugs it was time for the Integra to get some fresh oil and a new set of plugs and wires.
For the exterior. Staying with the theme that I would do all the repairs myself I decided to I would try to rattle can the car. But what color. Keeping it in the Honda family I decided that I would paint it Electron Blue Pearl and would clear it with the very popular 2k clear.
Continuing the budget track theme it was time to start looking for some used parts specifically coilovers and wheels. On both I got lucky hunting around on the web and was able to pick up a set of Tein Coilovers and a pair (actually 3) 949 wheels in the size I was looking for 15x8 both were late night Facebook meet ups which thankfully turned out ok.
So with boxes of parts starting to pile up it was time to get to work on painting the exterior, installing the first run of parts and checking on what other maintenance and safety items need to be completed.
Stay tuned for more on Project Integra
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