Hey there Club RSX! Its been a while, and with the new project Im gearing up for I figured it was time to dust off the cobwebs and try to remember that old password...
Anyway, I've always been fascinated with production based unibody touring cars. Anything from World Challenge to BTCC Super Touring, TOCA, etc. I love the Adaptation and creativity of working around a production car full of compromises and making it a true performer. There are tons of design cues and components that I have been dying to materialize since I was just a kid looking at one image in particular in a see-through car picture book I had. It was of the British Touring Car Super Touring Honda Accord, probably 1995-ish.
Since then my tastes have broadened, the scope of my builds for a while moved more toward the attainable "jdm street" flavor, but the itch was always there to build a real deal tourer one day. Fast forward to late 2011, and having been working for a race team for a few years at this point my girlfriend and I decided to build a club racer DC5 that we could campaign together (some of you probably remember that build, which I'll also be updating) - Her the driver and myself the engineer. It took a long time to complete as time and resources were thin, but we finally finished the car in late 2014. It was a rough start but of the 6 races we've done we landed two P2s and two wins! The DC5 build was a great experience but I was still held back in my creativity and engineering ability at the time between my skills and the class rules.
This brings us to my EP3. I've owned the car since 08, and it steadily progressed in to a quite capable track car over the years. There's a build thread kicking around here somewhere. I had used my experience with building and tracking the EP3 as our proof of concept for the DC5 build and helped speed along the development curve considerably, albeit still having a stock K20A3 and 5speed gearbox. I was planning to do a moderate refresh on the car in winter 2014, finally put a swap in, take care of some other points of the car as well and get it back up and running for 2015. That's when everything changed.....
I was introduced to, who I consider a friend now, John Whitaker. He had just bought the last existing Realtime DC5 along with a massive spares package that he was looking to.... thin out lol.
I ended up driving down to PA to meet him and check out the car which was one of the most surreal experiences... Sitting in, poking around, and documenting this mythical World Challenge relic with its massive strut towers and custom rear trailing arm wizardry. I left that day with a pick up truck full of Realtime spares including a top to bottom suspension setup including all the custom bits, Motons, etc. as well as a pile of OEM extras. At this point I knew the next tear down of the car would be a lot more involved than I had originally planned. Not to mention we had recently bought a new house and I was in the middle of renovating the garage. I went back to the drawing board with the car and started thinking back on that old book with the Super Touring Accord...
The current completely-snowballed-out-of-control plan for the Civic is a streetable Super Tourer of sorts. I want to take pages from the ST days like big 18" center lock wheels, body drop, and mostly factory body work, and mix it up with some TOCA era BTCC EP3 bits like the stock location wet sump engine, front bumper and whatever other era-specific parts I can get my hands on. That being said I still want to keep her a lady in the streets to an extent, and be able to take it out to cars and coffee or the annual club meets and be able to reasonably have a passenger, go through the drive through etc. Maybe Im fooling myself here haha. But I do plan on having only a half cage with headliner factory door panels and carpet. I see it almost like if the EP3 was to race at LeMans(LOL), This would be the homologation car.
Anyway, I've always been fascinated with production based unibody touring cars. Anything from World Challenge to BTCC Super Touring, TOCA, etc. I love the Adaptation and creativity of working around a production car full of compromises and making it a true performer. There are tons of design cues and components that I have been dying to materialize since I was just a kid looking at one image in particular in a see-through car picture book I had. It was of the British Touring Car Super Touring Honda Accord, probably 1995-ish.
Since then my tastes have broadened, the scope of my builds for a while moved more toward the attainable "jdm street" flavor, but the itch was always there to build a real deal tourer one day. Fast forward to late 2011, and having been working for a race team for a few years at this point my girlfriend and I decided to build a club racer DC5 that we could campaign together (some of you probably remember that build, which I'll also be updating) - Her the driver and myself the engineer. It took a long time to complete as time and resources were thin, but we finally finished the car in late 2014. It was a rough start but of the 6 races we've done we landed two P2s and two wins! The DC5 build was a great experience but I was still held back in my creativity and engineering ability at the time between my skills and the class rules.
This brings us to my EP3. I've owned the car since 08, and it steadily progressed in to a quite capable track car over the years. There's a build thread kicking around here somewhere. I had used my experience with building and tracking the EP3 as our proof of concept for the DC5 build and helped speed along the development curve considerably, albeit still having a stock K20A3 and 5speed gearbox. I was planning to do a moderate refresh on the car in winter 2014, finally put a swap in, take care of some other points of the car as well and get it back up and running for 2015. That's when everything changed.....
I was introduced to, who I consider a friend now, John Whitaker. He had just bought the last existing Realtime DC5 along with a massive spares package that he was looking to.... thin out lol.
I ended up driving down to PA to meet him and check out the car which was one of the most surreal experiences... Sitting in, poking around, and documenting this mythical World Challenge relic with its massive strut towers and custom rear trailing arm wizardry. I left that day with a pick up truck full of Realtime spares including a top to bottom suspension setup including all the custom bits, Motons, etc. as well as a pile of OEM extras. At this point I knew the next tear down of the car would be a lot more involved than I had originally planned. Not to mention we had recently bought a new house and I was in the middle of renovating the garage. I went back to the drawing board with the car and started thinking back on that old book with the Super Touring Accord...
The current completely-snowballed-out-of-control plan for the Civic is a streetable Super Tourer of sorts. I want to take pages from the ST days like big 18" center lock wheels, body drop, and mostly factory body work, and mix it up with some TOCA era BTCC EP3 bits like the stock location wet sump engine, front bumper and whatever other era-specific parts I can get my hands on. That being said I still want to keep her a lady in the streets to an extent, and be able to take it out to cars and coffee or the annual club meets and be able to reasonably have a passenger, go through the drive through etc. Maybe Im fooling myself here haha. But I do plan on having only a half cage with headliner factory door panels and carpet. I see it almost like if the EP3 was to race at LeMans(LOL), This would be the homologation car.
SHG Motorworks EP3 Touring Car Build
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