Honda Mugen Civic Si Track Test - Barber Motorsports Park
Abrin Schmucker
Each January, the guys from RS Motors and ASM travel south to Barber Motorsports Park for a testing weekend in their track cars. In 2020, I traveled with them to record some episodes of the SlipAngle Podcast, but took plenty of heat for not bringing a car to track. For 2021, I figured the Civic could probably be track worthy with just a little bit of effort. Because I haven’t been seriously tracking a car in several years. the point of this writeup is to talk about prepping my Civic for a TrackDay and getting my head back into the game of driving hard on track. Data analysis from the laps recorded is pretty interesting, and will be covered here soon.
The Car
My 2008 Mugen Civic Si has 130k miles. No service record were available when I bought it from the previous owner. Shocks were original, and I had to assume the clutch was original. It’s been some time since I tracked my daily driver, and even drove my car to the track for an HPDE. Given that the track is more than 500 miles away, I thought that it was a good time to do a clutch change as a just-in-case, to help us make sure that we weren’t stranded at the event with a broken car.
I’m ok-ish at working on cars, but it’s not the thing I do best. It takes me forever, and I don’t enjoy it. Over the holidays, I found a day that I could take the car to Andy at ASM in Plover Wisconsin to get things knocked out. He works fast, and he’s always a bargain. First priority was getting the car into the shop to thaw out before he got to work. No surprise that Andy was able to do a complete clutch swap in 2 hours total. We used an OEM replacement, because the car is near OEM power, and primarily driven on the street. Should be sufficient for what I’m going to do.
With that knocked out, we then focused on the fitting the new tires/wheels. The internet told me that the new Falken RT660 was a solid performer and was priced well for me. I purchased some 245/40/17s, and had them mounted on 17x9+40mm Konig Hypergrams. Given that everything had been purchased ahead of time, I told Andy we had to make them fit but was pretty concerned about how wide the 245s were after being mounted. Clearance up front wasn’t an issue. He added some camber bolt to change the alignment a bit, but we were maxxed out around -1deg total. Some proper coilovers, or even camber plates to give more adjustability up top was the only way to get more in the future. Given that the Mugen shocks were original, they need to be replaced soon anyway. Last on the list before I headed home was a valve lash adjustment. Everything was tight, so Andy adjusted everything and I was headed back home.
The Track
Because I’d been off track for so long, and I like to keep my costs down, I wanted to have a co-driver for the weekend. Ryan “Brad” Finch is a fast driver, and a heavy user of the Apex Pro, so it was a great opportunity for us to shake down the car, and work on picking up my pace again. We loaded up the car and made a trouble-free drive down to Birmingham Alabama. Even in January, the grounds and facilities at Barber are amazing. Goals for the weekend were to get my head back into the game, and to be as close to Finch’s time as possible.
On Saturday morning, we changed pads to a set of Hawk DTC-60s and listened to the drivers meeting on the loudspeaker. In some ways, event flow has improved as a result of COVID-19. Definitely appreciated being able to multi-task to get the car ready to go on track. We finished in time, and I got ready to go out on track. Despite having plenty of on track experience, I felt like I had nerves like a beginner. I was really nervous about my pace, being rusty, and being the slowest car running in an Advanced group with a bunch of Porsche GT3s. Finch was in the passenger seat, and we made it 1.5 laps before I was meatballed to come in off track. What a disaster. We knew while we were on our warmup laps that the tires were rubbing, but we didnt know how bad things were until we came into the pits.
We’d shaved quite a bit of the shoulder of the tire by rubbing badly on the rear of the car. Fronts seemed to be doing ok though. Now maybe because I’m cheap, but I wasn’t about to just waste all my time and money on a track weekend, and pack it up early. We were going to need a lot more clearance in order to salvage this setup for the rest of the weekend. One of the perks of going to the track with your buddies, is that they’re willing to lend a hand to make sure you solve the problem. Choices were to try to find a fender roller, and hope that it could do enough to solve the problem, or to make the problem go away. Ronnie grabbed his cordless angle grinder and went to work. A few people looked at me like I was crazy to cut apart a “rare” car like this. The reality is that I just wanted to drive again, and this seemed like the best fix in our current situation. No regrets.
Finch took the car out for the 2nd and 3rd session, taking a little more material each time. By the end of the 3rd, we’d gotten enough self clearancing to start running some laps. Known for being pretty quick driving other people’s cars, Finch wasted no time feeling out the performance of the clapped-out Civic. With 130k miles on the odometer, the engine was ok, but the shocks were pretty badly worn. Nothing to do about it at this event though. Drive through it, and see where things are when all the dust settles. In session 4, I got back into the car with even more nerves. Now the car was pretty dialed in, and I had to focus and learn how to drive again. Nearly all of my on-track experience was in an Evo with 500whp. I’ve said before that my path on track is not the one that I recommend. I spent all my time being fast by driving a fast car. I’d never learned how to be a fast driver in a slow car.
We spent the next half dozen sessions working on getting things right on track, and finding ways to reduce the laptimes. A bit of coaching from Finch helped me stop making some unconscious steering inputs, and helped me know when to open the wheel up sooner, or to carry more speed. Turn 1 is deceptive here, because it looks like the track is falling away from you, but once the car loads up after your initial turn in, it feels like you have all the grip in the world. Late into Sunday afternoon, we both had one more chance to do our best. Finch was able to best me by 2.7s, mostly by just driving faster everywhere. Plenty to work on before next year’s event.
Takeaways
8th Gen Civics are great. I think that everyone should have one. Despite being a clapped-out commuter car with worn shocks and 130k miles, this car is a riot to drive. As configured, it’s predictable under braking and on power. 245w tires help with grip, but the car remained pretty neutral. It’s so rewarding tracking a car that can just do laps. No fuss, no frills, no horsepower. Focus was on figuring out how to maximize the performance of this car, knowing that corners speeds were critical. Feedback for the Falken RT660 has been posted elsewhere, but our thoughts were that it is a big jump forward in the 200TW tire wars over the previous RT615/615K+. They come up to temperature pretty quickly, but also seem to hold the grip without getting too greasy during a track session. They also seem to be more forgiving to slip angle/scrub vs similar tread design competitor the Re71R. Adding a rear swaybar would probably make the rear more lively, but it’s not the most important thing on my mind right now. For now, I’ll save some pennies to try to pick up some road/track duty coilovers that can help me with more front camber lift the saggy rear of the car.
We’d also like to thank Apex Pro for their continued partnership with Tracktuned and the SlipAngle Podcast. Our weekend was more productive, with data review at our fingertips. Look for an upcoming data analysis between Finch and Abe in the Mugen Civic here soon.