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February 2, 2016
Eight years later
It's early 2016 now, and the RSX is still with me. And with me means I had the car shipped from California to our new home in Tennessee, where we've been living since June 2015.
So now the RSX, which still only has 25,000 miles on it, gets to sip 93 octane fuel instead of the miserable 91 octane California brew. No more ugly front license plate either, and no more having to deal with sadistic smog Nazis. Unfortunately, also no local 1/4 mile track. The closest of those, I am told, is near Nashville. Around her, with all the available land, all there is is a 1/8 mile track. I hate those. By the time the car gets traction, the race is already over.
Only 25,000 miles, but that doesn't mean the car's just been sitting. I haven't been racing either. That's mostly because back in 2008 the car got stranded at Sacramento Raceway when the alternator, which shares the blower serpentine belt, got ripped right off its base when the tensioner base shattered during a burn-out. That was embarrassing, as was getting towed back home. So that was that for drag racing at the track.
The tensioner was replaced with the latest version and I throttled power back a bit by switching to the less aggressive 3.2-inch (I think) 8-psi pulley. For the next several years I just took the car out for fun, enjoying the thrilling supercharger whine.
In 2010 the car had to get smogged for the first time. That's what you need to do at the 7th anniversary of initial registration. The car passed smog with flying color, producing only a small fraction of allowable emissions, but the smog place wouldn't pass the car because they didn't like a hose that came with my CARB-approved cold air intake, and they claimed my street header sticker was only good for model years 2002 and 2003, but not for 2004, which my car is. Never mind that 2002-2004 cars are identical and that the header was good and approved for all of those cars. No, I had to get a sticker that specifically said 2004 as well. All in all, I had to go back to the smog place three extra times.
Obviously I didn't go back to that smog station that seemed to get sadistic pleasure about not passing modified cars. The place I went to in 2012 was more reasonable, but they objected to the cold air intake sticker only being for 2002/2003, but not 2004... So I had to contact AEM, submit an extremely detailed form with all sorts of information to get a sticker that said, oh, yes, it's the same exact intake for 2004.
No smog issues in 2014.
Around that time I noticed the car thumping over pot holes much more than before. I spent hours checking for something loose, as that's what it sounded like. Didn't find anything, and so brought the car back to Shad at Driving Ambition. Turns out one of the Mugen SS rear shocks was totally shot. That was rather a disappointment, as I didn't expect a Mugen shock to go bad after no more than a very few thousand miles. So I had Shad ditch the entire Mugen setup and instead install a set of lowered stock coils that had once been in Howard's RSX test car (Howard had worked at Comptech with Shad). And while Shad had the car, I had him put the 3.0-inch 9-psi pulley back in. Oh, and I also had him take out the rock-hard Enjo motor mounts and put the stock mounts back in.
The result was mixed. The lowered coils make the car much harder, and somehow they rattle in the front. Not happy about that. And so far I haven't even updatd the tune for the more aggressive pulley (or the 93 octane Tennessee gas).
Another thing I did was get a set of new Goodyear G-Force Rival tires. I did that not because the existing rubber was all gone, but in the rear I still have the original slippery stock Kumhos, and the Falken Azeni 615s in the front were a bit worn and definitely getting hard. So after a good deal of research I got the Riva;s, which are very sticky but have a very low wear rating to go with that. No problem, I don't drive the car much. The Rivals definitely have MUCH better grip. Hey, no more wheel spin in 3rd gear.
So today I had the oil changed. The existing Mobile One fill probably had no more than 2,000 miles on it, but it was several years old, and I won't take any chances with oil. The oil change at the Honest One Auto Care place off Kingston Pike was quite expensive, but they folks there were terrific. And they loved the RSX. Talked to Joe at length who has a heavily modified Accord (not many heavily modified Accords out there, I think). And another one of the guys actually thanked me for letting him work on my car. That was very nice.
So who knows. Perhaps my supercharged RSX hasn't seen its last modification yet, nor perhaps reached its peak power...
Posted by conradb212 at February 2, 2016 10:36 PM