So I finished pulling the motor. I've been slacking a bit in doing it as I haven't been able to find a block yet. I also had a slight lack in tools that I had to fix. I spent one weekend unplugging everything, and checking on what was needed to finish the job. I realized I needed an engine hoist ;), MUCH better impact gun, and an 8mm punch (why did I have to have every size but that one). A trip to Harbor Freight, and I was ready to yank it the rest of the way. Going to tear down everything off the outside tomorrow, and then hopefully deliver to the engine builder thursday/friday along with a new block. Hopefully he can have everything back by next Wed or so, and then I have next Thur/Fri off of work to get everything back together.

This weekend I'll do some more maintenance stuff around the car while everything is apart. Replace the fuel filter, new Carbotech rotors, new fresh calipers, check to make sure all the bushings are ok, maybe a new engine mount or two depending on wear, and just a thorough cleaning of the engine bay area and everything else.

Here is a *crappy* camera phone pic of the motor out. I didn't have my regular camera here

So I've been trying to hunt down a good, straight, round B16A2 shortblock the past few days. This isn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. Some of them are all busted up, or in CA (don't know the condition and 7 days shipping), or not available for another week or so. Unfortunately with the Roebling Race in 2.5 weeks I don't have a lot of time to scour for parts. Hopefully I'll find one relatively soon. If anyone knows of one, please let me know!

After the Road Atlanta race, I let the car sit for a few days and yesterday it was time to start figuring out what was busted in the motor. The compression check showed at least a bad block/pistons/rings as we measured 90psi across cylinders 1-3 and 150psi on cylinder 4. We are supposed to be around 195psi. After putting some oil in the cylinders to test the rings we went to 150psi in 1-3 and 195psi in 4. Hopefully the block is in just really bad shape and the 4 race old "new" head is in good shape. I've already got a line on a used straight block. Tomorrow we will be doing a leakdown test on the motor to figure exactly whats busted and tearing the motor out of the car to get it ready for the rebuild. The next race is the Double National at Roebling Road and I want to have the car in PERFECT shape as its my favorite track, so I think I can challenge for the win in both races

We had back to back weekends of racing our 99 Civic SI in SSC. Our debut came in a double regional weekend at Carolina Motorsports Park and was a great lesson in driving a FWD "momontum maintenance" Honda. I've gotten used to the beauty of AWD in the Subarus that I've driven and its been quite a change getting used to the Civic.

I was fairly slow right off the bar on Saturday, but had a good clean race and finished 3rd in class. I learned that I was quite a bit off on my tire pressures as well no being nearly as aggressive enough on the gears and keeping the car in VTEC. After making both of those adjustments, I dropped close to 3 seconds a lap and was able to record the fastest SSC laptime for the weekend in Sunday qualifying. During the Sunday race I tried to let the 2nd place car by, save my tires for a bit, and then pass him back. Bad call as I got blocked big time by a jerk in a 240SX from another class and wasn't able to make the pass back. It was an awesome weekend though and I learned a lot about the car.

This past weekend was the Road Atlanta National and my first taste of national racing in the car. We had a pretty well contested SSC class and I was ready for the challenge. I enlisted the help of Scott Giles from The Competitive Edge to help me get up to speed faster at Road A. Again I was off the pace Saturday morning as I it was my first time at the track and was about 4 seconds off the pole. With Scott's coaching I dropped about 2 seconds off my time while everyone else slowed down in the warmer afternoon session, so I felt good about the race. On Sunday during morning practice, I dropped another second or so and was feeling good about the race. I started the race in 4th place and had a not so great start as I ended up behind 2 SSB Focuses with the 3rd place SSC Civic getting a good lead on me. I was able to work him back to within a carlength over the next few laps, but then the motor started going south. I slowed more and more over the next few laps and after getting enough laps in to get a race finish, I pulled it into the pits. I can't begin to describe how much fun Road Atlanta is. The track is an absolute blast with elevation changes, blind corners, and the esses. It was incredible. We've got a bunch of pictures in our gallery.

We had a pretty successful couple of weeks and just have been WAY behind on our blog and webpage updates. Last week we got our balljoint adapters installed and tested. They have performed flawlessly and are almost ready for production. The final step is the FEA analysis and the engineering signoff on these. Here is a pic of them on the car as well as a sneak peak of our future brake ducting.