Catchup:

I apologize for being so inactive this past week, lots of different things have been stealing my attention away. Thanks for sticking around, all you readers are really awesome!

I took a trip to a friend’s house today to check out a pair of ‘project’ cars his father is selling. Two NA 13b-powered RX7 convertibles. After taking some measurements (width, height from subframe, height from ground, and length), I think this particular engine will fit into the CRX engine bay without any major modification. I’ll probably have room on the sides, in fact.

Driver:

Since he’s selling two, I’ll probably make one my daily driver and make the other the donor car. Here’s the potential daily driver (the convertible top leaks a bit, but that’s fixable):

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Imagine a world where car enthusiasts, people that drive the car they do because they love the freedom it represents, have to drive only on the property they own. What kind of world would it be if someone had to spend all your money on gas to and from work and on the weekends spend more money just to enjoy your hobby on a smooth road?

Discussions about brake rotors are as heated about comparing Nissan to Honda. Wilwood, Brembo, or Fastbrakes, the question always boils down to ‘what performance options are worthwhile?’. Well, this basically breaks down to a few different categories.

Drilled

Drilling metal weakens it, and magnifies inconsistencies in the metal. This means that your rotors are more likely to warp. Also, the holes themselves are now missing from your contact patch, meaning that you have less effective braking power. The second downside is that holes are always the weakest point of the rotor, meaning that cracks are more likely to form, especially under heavy braking.

The exception to this is Porsche rotors, since they are cast with holes, rather than being drilled. It’s a great way to set yourself apart from the competition, but the slots only help to prevent brake fade. Another variant of the drilled rotors is dimpled rotors, which offer the same pros and cons.

Slotted

Slotted rotors were the hottest thing available for hot rods. They’re not so great for street cars. As long as the slots are shallow and close (if there are more than 5 slotted channels on one rotor, they’re close) you’ll get good braking response along with decent heat dissipation. If you simply must have that import-tuner look on your car, slotted rotors are the way to go. Just make sure that the slots don’t extend to the edge of the rotor. The inner and outer edges of the rotor should be solid, with no metal cut out of them.

Blanks

Brembo Blanks are what I suggest for everyone who asks. They’re inexpensive, they’re very effective, and they’ll work well with whatever pads you use. If you’re racing on a track, you’ll want a little more heat dissipation, but in all reality, you should have two separate sets of front rotors: street & track.

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Wobbly Windows

When I picked up the shell for CRX2.0, I noticed that the driver’s side window would not close. I dug around in my manual a bit, but all I could find was a very rough diagram of what the door innards look like. I decided I’d have to just roll up my sleeves and take off the door cards to see for myself what was going on in there.

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I posted this way back in November of ‘07, but it seems to have disappeared. I was showing it to a co-worker and wanted to make sure it was up here SOMEWHERE! If you can’t read it because your screen is too narrow, right-click it and select ‘Save to Desktop’ then open it in any image editor you like.

I spent a part of today cleaning up the page a bit more, refining here and there, and getting rid of the annoying links on the side of the site. I’m looking for more input on which sites really belong on the ‘Crucial Resources‘ page.  Feel free to leave a comment with any suggestions you have that I may not have heard of before.