Madness Shop Manual

I regularly get feedback on this site (though still not enough comments, come on people!) and a lot of the same questions come up all the time.  This article is meant to answer a few of the most common.

 Question #1:  What parts are the best?

Boy, is that a loaded question.  Assuming the question refers to brands, it’s a tough question.  You’ll often hear the terms “quality” and “reliability” and almost always “performance” in part reviews.  The old adage, “Choose two:  reliability, performance, and price” holds true always, but here’s a twist:  all three are relative.  Let’s take pistons as an example.  Sure, there are different types like concave or convex, but high-horsepower pistons are generally lighter than OEM (which is built for reliability).  They may last 50k miles and hand-grenade.  They’re built for racing: short bursts of high output.  Therefore, what’s great for your racecar isn’t designed for your daily driver.  In many cases, you’ll see people bash one manufacturer or another, but nobody bashes OEM.  OEM is the least likely to fail, and in some cases OEM can be an upgrade.  One example would be installing Integra brakes on your CRX.  They’re just as reliable and easy to get parts for, but they’re significantly meatier.   Picking one brand or a set of brands is silly.  Go with what suits your needs, and always do your research.

… yes, this is actually an answer to the question.  It’s just not the answer you wanted.

Question #2:  What do I do first?

Every time a bell rings, a tuner is born.  You buy a new econobox, watch Fast and the Furious, and start getting some ideas as to what you should do to your car.  Sometimes your ideas are good and effective, other times they’re just silly.  Either way, you’ve begun a long road that’s very rewarding in the long run.  My advice is to slow down.  Figure out what you want this car to become, and why.  Decide if you’re doing it for show (and who you’re showing off for), what your budget realistically is, and what you hope to get out of this hobby.

Slow down and just drive your car for a bit.  Many times, the best upgrade you can do is bringing your car up to stock.  Change out all your fluids, do a brake job, tune-up your engine, replace your plugs, get new tires, clean up the rust spots,  etc.  There are so many performance mods you can do that are just normal maintenance, it’s a wonder so many people miss it.   So, instead of that noisy fartcan exhaust, focus on the basics or you’ll just look like another wannabe who didn’t do their homework before starting on a huge project.

If you’re really looking for a modification to do, start with something you’ll be able to easily undo.  I highly recommend a retune of your ECU (in many cases ebay ecu chips are a good idea, the maps have been figured out for a long time now) ; you can gain significant amounts of horsepower, and it’s easy to undo if you’re not happy.

Question #3:  Where do I go for help?

Every active tuner community is willing to help you out in whatever ways they can, provided that you ask the right questions intelligently.  Understand that the most knowledgable people around have heard all the usual questions too many times to count, and they sure as hell aren’t going to answer you if you ask something dumb.  Put down as much information as possible about what you’re asking.  Don’t ask “What suspension stuff is the best?”, instead say something along the lines of, “I’m trying to decide what suspension components to use.  I read an article on suspension here but it went over my head.  How do spring rates work, and what should I be looking for to put on my daily driver?”

Essentially it makes little difference where you go for help, helpful people are everywhere.  I have a few links on the side of this blog to get you started, but the list is by no means conclusive.

Question #4: How fast will this be?

“Almost as fast as another sticker will make you”

Another impossible question to answer, this depends on the engine’s power, the car’s ability to handle that power, and the driver’s ability to handle the car.  Upgrading pieces of your car is unlikely to actually make it faster.  It’s mostly in your head, and as long as you’re ok with that, toss that shiny new stainless exhaust on there!  It’ll sound way faster, and of course you’ll be able to justify having “v8eatr” as your license plate after that.

Seriously, though.  If you really want to know what driving fast is all about, watch some motorcycle races. There’s no magic to going fast, it breaks down to accelerating as quickly as your car allows for as long as you can, braking as late as you can, and turning as little as you can while staying on the track.  Abrupt turns destroy your speed.  If you set your car up with those simple facts in mind, your car will be “faster”.  Please note that another 5hp is not going to make much of a difference at all.  If you do decide to go and race somewhere, please keep it on the track.  At least then if something terrible happens, it doesn’t happen to anybody else and people are prepared to pull you, kicking and screaming and on fire, from your car.

Question #5: What does CRX stand for?

Honestly, nobody seems to know for certain.

Civic Renaissance X, Civic Renaissance eXperimental, and civic racing experiment are all reasonable propositions, but I just don’t know.