Cadwell Park | 23.06.16
So earlier this month, I turned 24. Yeah, old right? As a surprise gift Beth (the mrs) booked me on at Cadwell for the day after my birthday. Awesome gift am I right? I hadn’t done a trackday for a couple of months so the itch to get back out on track was strong by the time the 23rd came around. Beth had told me a couple of weeks earlier about the trackday, incase I needed to do any prep work on the car (Which I did, of course).
As I really didn’t fancy doing another trackday on my own I decided to ask a good friend of mine called Ethan if he wanted to join me on the day. Happily he said yes as he’d been planning to do a trackday for a while but couldn’t due to been at uni. He decided to borrow his girlfriend’s CRX for a rematch of a race we’d had back when I first got the DC2.
The CRX only has a D16 under the bonnet, but bloody hell, it’s quick. It really surprised me at how well it kept up with the DC2 way back when and even on track it still kept up surprisingly well. It even sounded VTECY.
As prep for the trackday Ethan had bought some new SSR’s (Which I’m extremely jealous of as I’ve always wanted a set of these for the EG - he got them for a right steal as well! :/). For tyres he elected to go for some NS2Rs which looked insanely beefy on the the SSR’s. Cant beat a good bit of tyre wall.
The CRX also benefited from a carbon bonnet which Ethan plucked from his grey EF hatch. (Its worth noting here about actually who Ethan is). Well, Ethan is largely a member of the 4th generation scene. He’s owned countless EFs, CRX’s and shuttles over the years and has collected a large stock of spare parts that he can call upon whenever he needs.
As Ethan is also a mechanic he’s also always keen to lend a helping hand. I’ve said to many of my friends before, it’s like he collects all these parts for old Honda’s just so that he can give them to his friends. I can think of more than one occasion where he has properly pulled me out the shit, given me the parts that I needed and has never asked me for any money. (You’re starting to see why I invited him right? ;)).
Nah but seriously, whatever the problem, he’s always willing to get stuck in and bring everything he has to the table. He’s also an extremely relaxed guy. No problem is ever to big and amongst our friend group he is known as Ethan “Be Reet” Walsh.
Back to the car though. The CRX has been completely stripped in the rear but still contains the front door cards and dash. All the sound deadening has been removed and all that is left in the interior are a couple of strut braces and a harness bar.
Unfortunately on the day, the weather wasn’t really playing ball for us. When OPL first opened, it was spitting slightly so we thought we’d wait in, get the cars ready and wait for it to all blow over. Eventually it did and we headed out on to a slowly drying, slightly greasy Cadwell.
Well the CRX looked sweet. Very well composed and a dream to drive. Unfortunately I didn’t get to go in the CRX during the day but you could tell just from watching that it responded very well to Cadwell’s tight and technical course.
After the first session we came in and let the cars cool down. Due to my little bump in the DC2 recently, Ethan, as mentioned before, literally, dragged me out the shit and gave me a virtually new half rad from an EG to replace the DC2′s standard full rad. Unfortunately due to having a half rad, my registration plate was blocking too much air and the car started to get hot in the first session. After I removed the front reg, all was well again.
After the cars had cooled down a bit and we’d made a few tweaks we headed out again for a second session on a much drier and faster session. Now, for me, the Teg really didn’t feel as poised and as predictable as it usually does. The back end felt very “roley”. The back end usually feels very controllable through Charlie’s 1 & 2 but today it just didn’t feel the same. That could’ve been down to having a passenger but I think not having the ultra light SSRs on the back didn’t really help the matter. It didn’t matter anyway because on my 3rd lap, we ran in to problems and my caliper seized on coming up The Mountain. :(.
We got the DC2 in and had a quick look. It was clear the the drivers side front caliper had seized due to me not keeping on top of the greasing properly. All the grease had burnt away and yeah, it just seized. We free’d that off and I checked the others to make sure they where all good.
When the caliper first seized on, the car felt really strange. Well, it didn’t feel like a caliper seizing on, lets put it that way. The back end felt really shakey (as if a rear wheel had come loose or something). Anyway after checking the brakes I took the car for a test drive and it was still knocking like mad. Ethan had a quick look at the front assembly for any play in any of the suspension arms. He noticed that the wheel bearing had play which was what we put it down to in the end (I later found out it was something else completely, but we wont go into that here). Either way, this meant the end of the day for me.
The rest of the day for me was spent relaxing and watch the CRX getting smashed round Cadwell. Obviously Ethan was having a better time than I was, but I still had fun. It was a quiet day again with only about 20 cars on track. Cant really complain at that.
By this point our other friend MK had turned up in his gorgeous black EF hatch, looking proper Kanjo and making me want a 4th gen.
After chilling out and having some dinner we went and had a wonder round to have a look at what other cars had turned up throughout the day. Two old school Astra’s had turned up for the day. The rally spec one was the one that was on track. The other one (I’m not sure of exact models, but I’m going to punt at GSi?) was just their to spectate.
Sticking with the old school theme Ashley Moulds had brought along his awesome looking retro Peugeot 106. Again I’m unsure of exact models but I know its definitely an S1 and might be a GTi. Or a Rallye. Or something completely different. Either way it looked sick.
By far though, my favorite cars of the day where these two Porsche Carrera 4s. God lord. Talk about winning at life, and they where on track! Driving balls out with the rest of us. LADS!
Closely following these two as my favorite cars of the day was this amazing looking Evo 8. I’m a huge fan of mismatching bumpers as many of my friends will tell you. This Evo sounded like absolute hell as well. Properly savage car. I got talking to the owner who was from up Newcastle way. He said he’d imported it and had upgraded quite a few bits on it. He was using the day as a test day before the end of the season and was planning on doing a lot of big work over the winter months.
Right towards the end of the day session, the evening session cars started to arrive. Including this extremely rare black R32 GTR. I cant put into words how much I’d love one of these cars.
After that the rest of the day was spent watching Ethan rack up the laps. He managed a decent enough time in the little D! (Track footage to follow).
I felt kind of bad towards the end especially considering I had to drive the broken DC2 all the way home but just as we where packing up to leave a thunder storm started meaning a lot of the evening session drivers where unable to go out on track :(
To finish off a day full of emotional ups and downs we where treated to another beautiful Porsche. I’ve never really been big into them until that day. Again, I’d love to own an old school Porsche if I ever get the chance,
Anyway a little bit of work to be done on the DC2 now (Including a wheel bearing) and then I’ll be thinking about booking another day at Cadwell. The weather for us recently had been truly shocking so I might wait until that gets a bit more reliable, nevermind the car. After that it’ll be save save save for the winter period and a lot of big changes that I have planned for it.
Ill post up some track footage of Ethan soon but if you look at the previous posts, you’ll see a vlog of the day, if you’re interested. :)
Bye for now...
