Boy and Car Article featuring Wessex Racing and their 1990 Honda CRX Si
With 245hp at the wheels, Wessex Racing’s 1990 Honda CRX Si is a seriously quick road-racing machine. Built to compete in the West Coast Sports Car Championship’s Super Production U class, this brightly painted bullet has grabbed class wins and podium finishes at events held at British Columbia’s Mission Raceway.
“The build up of this car has been a collaborative effort among good friends who share a passion for road racing,” explains Joe Clemente. “Our team consists of car owner and driver Malcolm Karl, co-driver and chief builder Lorenzo Costantino, Shaun van Neer, and myself. Without a doubt though, Lorenzo is recognized as the central figure of the development and success of our CRX.”
As with most race team stories, it’s not just the sweat and tears shed during the build-up of the car that contributes to its success. In this case, the car’s direction was led by the teammates’ experience with other forms of road racing, going back as far as the mid 1980s. That’s when Clemente first got behind the wheel in SCCA Production and GT classes.
After an eight-year hiatus away from the sport, Clemente returned to his passion. “I’ve always maintained that racing is an addictive drug and real racers always need their fix,” explains Clemente. “I wasn’t prepared to build or purchase my own car, but my timing was good as Lorenzo and Malcolm needed some help with their cars.” Clemente began crewing on their SCCA Improved Touring cars, and eventually reinstated his own racing license.
Lorenzo and Clemente campaigned a 1989 Honda CRX Si in ITA for a few seasons. “We really welcomed the challenge of trying to make the car as competitive as possible within the prescribed rules. Unfortunately, this proved to be the source of our biggest frustration as well,” describes Clemente. “Racers tend to interpret rules in rather unique ways which creates lots of speculation and innuendo about who’s cheating and who’s not. Some of the things we’ve seen vary from subtle interpretation to downright flagrant transgressions, as if the rules were merely suggestions. We just hated all of that.”
Tired of the continual rules battles, the two men asked themselves “what if we didn’t have to worry about rules?” As it turns out, there was a class of racing that would provide them with an answer. Developed as an unlimited, run what you brung class, the Super Production category is broken into three specific classes, based on displacement. SPU is for cars with less than 2.0 liters displacement, SPM for cars with 2.0 to 3.0 liters displacement, and SPO for cars with over 3.0 liter displacement.
“The more we looked at it, the more we liked the idea of running in SPU. We had to adhere to the stringent safety standards and we had to be under 2.0 liter displacement. That’s it,” exclaims Clemente. “We were allowed to explore the different possibilities with respect to engine, chassis, brakes, and aerodynamics. The only hurdle we had to overcome was how we were going to pay for it.” That’s where Malcolm came into the picture. According to Clemente, “Malcolm had always wanted to have a kick ass car at least once, so after securing the necessary funding, we were off and running.”
The first step was deciding what kind of car to base their Super Production project on. Since the team already had experience racing their ITA CRX, they had learned the benefits of having a huge selection of aftermarket products to choose from. “Honda products are extremely popular in drag racing, but to our knowledge very few people did any crazy stuff with road racers, so this was a good venue for ingenuity,” according to Clemente.
The team picked up a 1990 Honda CRX Si and immediately gutted it completely. “We bead blasted the shell to remove all of the undercoating and sound deadening and the frame was sent to a body shop to check that it was all straight,” explains Clemente. “After we got it back we installed a 10-point roll cage and triangulated the suspension pick-up points, then installed a fuel cell.”
With the pick-up points properly beefed up, the team turned its attention to the working suspension components. Koni double-adjustable coil-over struts were used on all four corners with Hypercoil springs rated at 550 lbs/in in the front and 900 lbs/in in the rear for dry track conditions, and 350 lbs/in in the front and 250 lbs/in in the rear when it’s wet. “We’ve been using the stock control arms – modified with spherical bearings – during the past season,” according to Clemente. “We’ll have a set of custom fabricated control arms on the car for the upcoming season.” Custom anti-roll bars – supplied by Driver’s Edge Autosport – measure 19mm in the front and 22mm in the rear.
In anticipation of elevated horsepower levels, the team upgraded the braking system with mammoth 13-inch diameter 1.25-inch thick vented rotors with custom center hats. Gripping power comes from rigid 4-piston Brembo calipers. “The stock brakes were retained in the rear,” according to Clemente. “This setup was surprisingly effective throughout the first season, but it became clear that we needed to make changes to get a better balance.”
The team has recently upgraded the rears with 10-inch diameter rotors with 4-piston Wilwood calipers. A Tilton overhung pedal assembly was also added that features a 5.5:1 pedal ratio. Besides improving the braking balance, the Tilton setup also allowed the team to move the drivers seat back flush with the B-pillar, and a full four inches toward the centerline of the car, improving the weight distribution.
Braking and cornering forces are dished up by a set of lightweight 17x8-inch Racing Hart CP8R wheels wrapped with super sticky 210/38-17 Dunlop 820 compound racing radials. “We found the radial slicks to be particularly effective,” explains Clemente. “The CRX has a tendency to rotate in corners, especially when carrying a lot of speed. For someone with little FWD drive experience this can be quite disconcerting. If you do have experience, you can use this trait to your advantage, but it is still important to recognize the limits of your tires. Unlike the Hoosiers – lightly treaded DOT race tires – we ran on our ITA car, these slicks, in combination with the big rear wing, allow the driver to carry a lot more speed through corners without worries of losing the rear end.”
Speaking of that big rear wing, its aluminum and carbon fiber construction keeps it light, while its dual element design allows the team to adjust the amount of downforce for the track conditions. “Although it wasn’t our intention, the big wing has tended to attract a lot of attention from the twenty-something import racer crowd,” laughs Clemente.
Taking a lesson from the import drag racing crowd, the team installed a composite one-piece tilting front end on the car. “The front end was adapted from a popular drag racing kit, to which we added air intakes for the oversized aluminum radiator and for cooling the brakes. The flip up feature was cool, but proved impractical for road racing, so we ended up modifying it,” describes Clemente. The doors have also been replaced with composite skins, as has the rear hatch and lower rear valance. The car tips the scales at a feathery 1,700 pounds.
The team then turned their attention to the engine. “The engine was a source of both frustration and amusement for the team,” says Clemente. “We started off with an Integra Type R B18C5 motor, as we felt this was a good base for power and reliability.” The bottom end was kept stock, with addition of a lightly shaved cylinder head and some mild porting and valve work. A set of Crower cams with race springs and titanium retainers were also installed.
“We had contemplated using twin Weber 45 DCOE carburetors for the induction system, but we were unable to find a proper manifold, so we opted instead for a digital fuel injection system fed via two fuel pumps and a surge tank,” describes Clemente. “Since neither Lorenzo or myself had much experience tuning the new fuel management system, we entrusted the initial setup and tuning with well known VW tech guru Shaun van Neer.”
The final element to the power game was fitting a Hitech header with anti-reversion chambers. All of these modifications added up to produce 206hp at the wheels, or about 240hp at the crank when you take into account standard drivetrain losses. All of this power is transmitted through an Active 5-speed transmission fitted with a Quaife limited-slip differential and beefed up axles.
“Once the motor was put together, we took it out for an initial shakedown, and it was immediately fast,” urges Clemente. “It drew a tremendous crowd and put a huge grin on Malcolm’s face.” After sorting out a fuel pickup problem at the first race, the car experienced a huge engine failure at its second outing, which was a support race for the Molson Indy Vancouver event. “Malcolm came around on course trailing a plume of smoke that could only be rivaled by a Formula 1 engine failure.”
“Our initial inspection revealed terminal damage, with thousands of tiny fragments and some twisted up pieces of piston rings in the number two velocity stack.” Clemente adds, “We believe we had piston to valve contact at 9,600rpm, despite the fact the rev limiters were set to 9,000rpm. The damage was so extreme, that the camshaft snapped in four places including right through one of the lobes.”
Not able to locate another Type R motor, the team decided to play junkyard detectives, and found an Integra LS block and a B16A cylinder head. “We slapped it together using the fuel injection system, a new set of cams and some other ancillaries,” explains Clemente. “At this point, with no dyno testing, we had no idea what kind of power it would make. We figured it would be down about 25 horsepower, but we just wanted to run.” To the team’s surprise, the “new” engine performed very well.
Well enough for Lorenzo to win two back-to-back outright victories in only the car’s third outing. Malcolm has also been very competitive with the car, driving it to a fourth place finish on the same weekend in a WCSCC P2 class event. Through the course of the season Malcolm continued to compete in WCSCC events, further attracting attention to his beastly little CRX. Lorenzo continued to bring home the trophies too, clinching the season ending SPU championship after numerous class victories.
Over the course of the winter, the team has continued to improve the car, including building a new engine. It now features new Crower rods, 13:1 Toda Pistons and V-Tec Killer cams, as well as extensive cylinder head work as performed by Dan Paramore of DPR Racing Development. “Dan’s work has provided a huge power gain,” according to Clemente. “Dan welded and cloverleafed the combustion chambers and re-worked the ports and around the valves. The head flows tremendous numbers now and works with the big compression we’ve added.”
All of this work has added up to 245hp at the wheels, which calculates to roughly 280hp at the crank. With those kinds of numbers, and the driving talents of Malcolm and Lorenzo behind the wheel, team Wessex Racing’s Super Production class CRX is sure to retain its giant killer status in 2003. Watch out, here comes the beast!