#ChelseaTheCivic, Part 2: Upgrading the Stock Honda Ignition System

Honda made some of the best cars from the late 80s to early 00s with double wishbone suspension, light-weight chassis, lots of cargo room, optional VTEC motors, and low price tags.  These aspects and other things contributed to the success of these cars on track and help explain why they are still so commonly seen at track day and road racing events in North America.

Figure 1: 2007 National Auto Sport Association (NASA) Championships

However, when subjecting any car to the stresses of track duty, weak points will be discovered.  

In our last post we discussed how to remedy commonly suffered axle problems in your B-Series Honda with proper maintenance.  In this post, we will discuss another problem common to late 80s through early 00s Hondas in general-- distributors, or in slang terms, "dizzies."

Figure 2: A Distributor on a Toyota (Ref)

If you only have owned newer cars, it's likely you haven't heard of a distributor before.  Maybe you have, but maybe you don't know how it works.  Well, let's go over some background info to ensure you understand the basics.

Simply put, the distributor is a collection of components that uses the rotating energy from the car's engine to time and deliver the spark for each cylinder in an engine.  For the purpose of this blog post, it's important to know the following components in a Honda distributor:

1.) The ignition control module (ICM or Igniter)

2.) The cylinder position (CYP) coil or sensor

3.) The ignition coil

Figure 3: Important Components of a Honda Distributor (Ref)

The cylinder position sensor detects the position of cylinder number 1 as a reference for fuel injection.  This is one of the sensors inside of a Honda distributor used to detect engine speed or cylinder position. (ref. 1, 2).

The ignition control module, or "igniter" shown in the picture above is a solid state device that takes the continuous signals from the aforementioned sensors and converts them into a digital signal (ref. 3).  This is similar to how a power inverter takes DC power from your car's battery and converts it to AC power for a typical 110V outlet.

Figure 4: A Continuous Electric Signal Vs. a Digital Signal (Ref)

While the digital signal from the ICM may be in-sync with each cylinder's stroke, the digital signal cannot make a spark inside of the cylinder since it doesn't have enough energy.  To increase the energy present in this signal, the ignition coil must be used.  The ignition coil takes the low voltage signal and amplifies it (ref 4).  This is similar to how pole-mounted step-down transformers take power from power lines and convert them to a usable voltage and current for your home.

Figure 5: Diagram of a Pole-Mounted Transformer (Ref)

This same high voltage signal reaches each cylinder to create the spark that completes the combustion triangle, which is a graphic representation of what's required to create combustion.  The spark is the heat, the air from your intake manifold supplies the oxygen, and the gasoline from your fuel injectors is the fuel.  The reaction that ensues generates pressure and makes the piston move down, forcing the crankshaft to spin around.

Figure 6: Combustion Triangle (Ref)

Now that we've explained some of the basics, we can delve into the fun part-- modifying the car. 

While at NJMP for my last race of the 2018 season, I experienced my first distributor failure.

I was leading a race when going around "the octopus" at New Jersey Motorsports Park's (NJMP) my car developed a serious misfire.  I turned the car off and on several times and toggled the kill switch, but to no avail.

Figure 7: Video of Second-to-Last Race of the Season Where Distributor Failed

When I got the car back into paddock, I pulled my distributor cap, since I knew that these dizzies are a common problem in these cars, and lo' and behold, I found an obliterated distributor rotor.  The cause?  The screw holding the rotor onto the distributor let loose due to vibrations.

Figure 8: Failed Distributor Caused by Loose Rotor Screw

For that weekend, I was able to compete in my second race by sourcing a spare rotor from a friend.  I was able to finish my season and secure 2nd out of 4 competitors while facing a large number of personal hardships during 2018, including missing my first race weekend.

Figure 9: Getting Ready for a Race at NJMP

Even with my failure occurring at the end of the season, I got lucky.  90s Honda distributors are notorious for failing in track-driven Hondas.  The two common failures are the ignition control modules and the ignition coils.  

Ignition coils and ICMs fail due to heat, vibration, and age.  So, if you can remove some heat and vibration, and replace the OEM component with a better, aftermarket component, you can increase your reliability.  So, I decided to do exactly that-- enter the MSD Blaster Coil SS.

Figure 10: The MSD External Blaster Coil Upgrade Kit (Coil is Red Object at Far Right)

You can order the entire MSD Blaster Coil kit from eBay for a little over $100 bucks or you can source all of the components you need like I did from friends and discounted sources.  The kit consists of:

1.) A modified distributor cap with a connection for the external ignition coil

2.) A new rotor

3.) A gasket for the new cap

4.) A common-place 7 mm spark plug wire used to connect the new cap to the external coil

5.) The external coil itself
6.) Mounting hardware for the external coil

To install the MSD unit, the distributor has to be opened up and some wires have to be cut and re-soldered.  A straightforward installation guide can be found here.

The installation isn't hard, but while I was inside of my distributor, I decided to inspect it for damage that may have been caused by the failure at NJMP.  I also wanted to replace the screw that holds the distributor rotor with a hex bolt.

Figure 11: Honda Distributor with Removed Ignition Coil, Rotor, and Cap

One of the first issues I identified when taking apart my distributor was that the wire leading to my CYP sensor was nicked in two places, one of which was too close to repair with the existing CYP unit.  While my distributor did fully function with these knicked wires, I didn't want to risk a subsequent failure by being lazy.  A failed CYP sensor can put the car into limp mode which would cause me to lose another race.

Figure 12: CYP Coil/Sensor with Damaged Wires

Normally when the CYP sensor is bad, the whole distributor housing has to be replaced, as these CYP sensors are not sold individually.  However, my friend Spencer gave me a spare distributor and MSD Blaster Coil Cap when I experienced my failure at NJMP.  Since his distributor was OBD2 and mine is OBD1, I couldn't use his housing outright, but I could take the CYP sensor from his donated unit and use it on mine.

So, with no further delay, I began surgery.

Figure 13: Spencer's CYP Coil Being Installed on my Distributor

Figure 14: One Wire Soldered and Heat-Shrinked with The Second Wire Soldered, Awaiting Heat Shrink

With the CYP coil fixed, I began cutting and soldering wires as described on this website.

Figure 15: Picture from ImportNut.Net Showing Cutting and Soldering of Dizzy Wires (Ref)

After buttoning up the wires to connect the external coil and routing them outside of the distributor, I began reassembling the distributor.  As mentioned above, I wanted to replace the screw that holds the rotor on the distributor shaft with a hex bolt.

I wanted to do this because rotor screws have a habit of backing out on these distributors unless you blue Loctite the threads.  Once you do use blue Loctite, it is very difficult to remove the screw at a later point.  To remove my screw which was secured with Loctite, I had to use an impact flat head screw bit and a drill.

Figure 16: Rotor Screw Carnage Due to Blue Loctite

The hex head of the new bolt fastener will allow for more torque to be applied since it has more "meat" than a Phillips head screw.  In theory this will allow me to avoid using blue loctite to secure the rotor.

The only bolt I had that matched the diameter and pitch of the distributor rotor screw was an interior bolt from an Integra.  This bolt was longer than the rotor screw, which is great for my needs.  However, this is a specialty bolt with a wide diameter washer fixed to it.  So firstly, the washer would need to be cut off.

Secondly, the head of the hex bolt is too high and does not clear the plastic shroud inside of the distributor. 

Under operation, this would wear a hole in the plastic shroud and fill the distributor with debris.  To fix this, I ground the top of the hex bolt down.  Even with the bolt ground down, the socket still had enough bite to tighten the fastener, AND the bolt has a Phillips head if the hex head strips.

With the rotor attached to the distributor shaft, the plastic shroud in place, and the wiring for the external coil complete, I put the aftermarket MSD cap, which I sourced from Spencer's spare distributor, onto MY distributor and mounted it to my engine.

With the distributor installed, the next step is to mount the external coil and connect it to the distributor.  To start, I wanted to keep the wires from the distributor to the coil safe from heat and vibrations.  To do this, I routed the wires upward, away from the coolant hoses, heat shrinked the wires, then added a stress relief loop.

Next I began working on a mount for the external coil.  I knew I wanted to mount the coil in the empty space where my air box used to be.  I plan on building a divider wall to insulate this area from heat and routing my intake there anyway, so I figured this would be nice and cool and far away from engine vibrations.  However, I didn't have anything to mount to the external coil to.

I began scrounging for scrap metal.  Under my work bench I had a steel oil pan from a K24A1 that wouldn't sell on eBay for more than $10, if that.  So, I decided to use the metal from this oil pan to create a mount.

You'll notice the oil pan has an oval-shaped extrusion for where the oil pump pickup goes on the K24A1.  I decided to cut out this section.  My goal was to mount the external coil to this extrusion since I figured it would add rigidity to the mounting location-- again, reducing vibrations.

With that said, I began cutting so I could fit it up against the shock tower.  The goal was to have one side of the bracket mount to an OEM location on the shock tower and then one side of the bracket mount to an OEM location on the frame rail.  However, as you can see below, I came up short with the material I had.

However, with a welder, anything is possible.  So I cut out some more metal, mocked it up in my vice, and welded it together.

To get the bracket to mount to the frame rail, I bent it in my vice, marked where to drill my holes, and then mocked it up with some spare hardware I had laying around (likely from an Integra or Civic).  Below you will see how I installed the bracket and where I wanted my external coil to sit.

With the location set, I then painted the bracket to prevent rust from setting in and, of course, because it looks awesome.

Finally, I drilled the mounting holes for my external coil and bolted everything into place.

The next step was to connect the wires from the distributor to the coil.

Instead of utilizing the provided crimp-style connectors, I opted to remove the plastic sleeves from the ring terminals, crimp the ring terminals onto the wires, solder the ring terminals to the wires, and heat shrink all of it together.  In the long run, this will provide more reliability as the wires will be sturdier.  The process is simple.

1.) Insert the stripped wire into the ring terminal

2.) Crimp the ring terminal onto the wire

3.) Solder the ring terminal to the wire

4.) Apply heat shrink over the soldered connection

Finally, I routed the wires through a bracket for the engine harness to keep the engine bay clean, and connected the wires to my external coil.

All that remains for my upgraded ignition system is to connect the large terminal from the coil to the large terminal on the aftermarket cap.  Currently I'm waiting on the wire to make that happen.

Thank you all for reading.

#TrashTeg, The Chronicles; Part 2-- Safety Gear

#TrashTeg, The Chronicles; Part 2-- Safety Gear

When EJ2 Track Rat last left off regarding the story of #TrashTeg, we touched on how we got this free car from Delaware to Philadelphia and we touched on how we made it run with a distributor cap, spark plug wires, spark plugs, and some water in the radiator.

In this next part, we'll talk about how we stripped the car down and installed some safety gear.

Figure 1: Alex at New Jersey Motorsports Park Shaking Down the Teg After we Built it

Since my Civic was being converted into a race car, I no longer needed the roll bar that I installed for high performance driving education (HPDE) and street driving.  I was installing a cage, and the car was no longer going to be street-driven as this is required in wheel-to-wheel racing.  However Alex was building a track car and it's never a bad thing to have additional safety.

Figure 2: The Roll Bar Previously in my Civic

The National Auto Sport Association's Northeast Region typically informs new drivers that the most important mods one can make to their car are in the form of safety upgrades.  A useful acronym to keep in mind when doing safety upgrades was originally coined by our HPDE 1 Instructor, Enrique, and goes as follows:

S-H-H 

AKA 

"SHH! STOP BUYING CAR PARTS AND GET ON TRACK!"

Figure 3: Rally Armor Mud Flaps Look Great but Don't Make You Safer

AKA (for real this time)

SEAT.  HARNESS.  HANS.

Figure 4: A Driver Strapped Into a Seat with a Harness, a Hans, and (in This Case) a Roll Cage

Hans is a popular model of "head and neck restraint" which is used in combination with your harnesses and your helmet to prevent whiplash from occurring in a high-velocity frontal accident.

Figure 5: How a Hans Device Works

A roll bar is used to prevent rollover damage to the driver's person, but it is also used as a mounting point for the harness.  Other options out there include harness bars, but these are not recommended as they have been known to buckle inward in the event of a forward collision.

Figure 6: Bent Harness Bar in 8th Gen Civic on Frontal Collision

The safety components mentioned above are meant to work as a system and using harnesses with your stock seat, or a regular Hans with your 3-point factory belt are not recommended.  I've done tech with NASA since 2016 and we always prefer a stock car to roll through over a car with improperly installed harnesses, roll bars without padding, and/or 3-point seat belts over fixed-back, bucket seats.

The simplest rule?

Before heading to a track day, always review the rule book and reach out to the officials for help when you are in doubt.  Ask for help and ye shall receive it!

Figure 7: A Car with 4-Point Harnesses Not Intended for Use with Stock Seats

Once we got the roll bar removed from my Civic, we had to begin prepping the interior of Alex's Integra, the #TrashTeg.  To start, we stripped all of the interior out of the car.  The major interior items that needed to be removed were:

The carpet

The seats

The center console

The seat belts

And the headliner

Figure 8: Interior of the Trash Teg

Next we removed the sound deadening from the car.  Sound deadening is found in most passenger cars in various areas around the chassis-- most notably the floor and transmission tunnel.  It is used to dampen vibrations and suppress road noise transmitted from the tires to the driver, but we don't care about noise and comfort in racing!  We care about going FAST.

Figure 9: Ricky Bobby

Sound deadening removal can be long and tedious or quick and easy depending on the fanciness of your car.  For example, my Civic's sound deadening came up on its own with some snow, a hammer, and a chisel (we did it outside).

However some cars have thicker, better quality sound deadening that requires more convincing to come off.  A common technique is dry ice.  For our project, we used about $20 of dry ice from a beer distributor.  However, a low buck method to remove sound deadening for people who have a winter season is to leave the race car out in freezing, cold weather overnight and knock the sound deadening loose in the morning.

Figure 10: Sound Deadening Removal with Dry Ice, a Mallet, and (Maybe) a Chisel

Given that this car was sitting in such rough conditions for such a long time (outside, not moving, when it did move it was driven and worked on by a sub-par mechanic), the sound deadening wasn't too hard to remove.  Alex and I got it all up within about 1.5 hours.

Figure 11: Our Tools we Used for Removal of Sound Deadening

Figure 12: The Trunk Area without Sound Deadening

While it was great for sound deadening removal, the neglect this car was put through was not good for much else.  When we pulled the carpet, we discovered that a significant amount of rust had eaten through one of the areas of the floor where the roll bar was supposed to mount to.

Figure 13: Passenger Side Rear Passenger Footwell with Rust

Alex and I took an old welder that had stopped working in his garage, we cut it up for scrap metal, pulled the wires for electronics spares, and salvaged whatever else we could before leaving it out on the Northwest Philly streets for scrappers.  With that same metal, we welded up a patch in the floor and removed as much of the rust we could.  Given that we had just started at welding, we didn't consider our work too shabby (though it could use improvement).

Figure 14: Shabby but Functional Welds on Alex's Floor Pan

After getting the roll bar installed, Alex then needed a pair of seats-- one for the driver and one for the instructor.  For HPDE I always recommend having a second seat.  You're not worried about the extra weight an instructor will gain you because you're not trying to win, but you'll also likely learn more from the right-seat advice.

Figure 15: Even Seasoned Racers Benefit from Good Instruction

Originally, Alex was contemplating spending major coin on these racing seats, but I told him that for HPDE we could use some cheap fixed back seats and be compliant with the rules.  Additionally, if he ever decided to go racing, when the cage got installed in the car, we could brace the back of the seats to the roll cage harness bar and still be legal!

Figure 16: Back Brace Used to Reinforce Back of Fiberglass Seat to Roll Cage Harness Bar

After some discussion, Alex and I set out to find some cheap seats on Craigslist, quickly coming up with an ad for some old Corbeaus that used to be in a Mustang.  The seller listed the seats for $200 but Alex ended up scooping them for a smoking deal of about $140.

Figure 17: These Seats were Intact and Ready to be Used

For brackets, we utilized the high quality, OEM seat rails, and $35 worth of steel bar stock with some spare hardware for the materials.  We cut the steel bar stock into four separate 18-inch-long pieces and mounted one at the fore-end and one at the aft-end of the OEM seat rails, securing them with spare hardware.  We then bolted the seats to the bars with the same said hardware.

Figure 18: Two Pieces of Bar Stock for Each Seat

Figure 19: Spare Hardware Used to Mount Seat to Bracket and Bracket to Sliders

Figure 20: Side View of Seat Mounted in Car

After we installed the seats, we had two last items to install-- the harnesses!  One of the harnesses, like many of the parts in Honda Challenge, was handed down to me from one friend, Anthony.

Since I didn't plan on having a passenger seat while racing initially, I gave Alex this spare harness so he could build his #TrashTeg.  Alex then bought a second harness of his own and some hardware to keep the driver and passenger safe.

Figure 21: G-Force Racing Harnesses and Associated Hardware for Install

With all of our gear laid out, we went to work getting alex seated in his ideal position for driving.

Figure 22: That Awkward Moment when You're Too Fast for Anything in Life

Once you have the seating position, the install for the harnesses is pretty much done by the book.  When I install harnesses on vehicles I'm working on, I typically use the Schroth Racing installation guide which can easily be found on their website.  A quick link to the PDF can be found here as well.

Figure 23: Drawing from the Schroth Racing Website's Guide Showing Proper Vs. Improper Harness Mounting Angles

As shown above, there is a given range of angles the installer must adhere to to make the system safe for the driver.  This is why it is imperative for the driver to be in their desired position when installing their harnesses.  It allows them to have control over where the lap belt mounting points need to go and if a cage is being welded in the car, the cage builder has a reference for a good harness bar height.

Lastly, in the picture below, note the metal collars that are on the harness bar.  These collars are on the roll bar to prevent the harnesses from sliding to the left or the right in the event of a frontal collision.  A simple and cheap, alternative solution to using these collars is roll bar padding foam or even generous amounts of duct or electrical tape.

Figure 24: Picture with Collars Circled for Reference

The final product was not beautiful, but it was safe and functional-- a good race car's desired state.  Check out some pictures of the final product below:

Figure 25 and 26: Passenger Seat with Old Harness from My Civic

Figure 27: Driver Seat with New Harness

Figure 28: Stock Steering Wheel with Air Bag Removed for Track-Only Safety (Remember, All Safety Components Act as a System)

Figure 29: View from Rear of Car Showing Newly Installed Safety Gear

In the next installation of #TrashTeg, you can expect to see regular maintenance activities that are good to attend to before hitting the track as well as some other minor changes.

Thank you for reading and keep coming back.

.