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So the very first build thread I made on this forum was back in 2012 when I bought a clapped out 1G CL. The 2nd most recent build thread I made on here was in 2017 when I bought a 2G TSX with the 6MT in it. Well, 6 years later and about 4 or 5 Hondas and Subaru's later I find myself with a 2012 Civic Si sedan build that I have been working on for almost 2 years. I purchased this car in February of 2021 after my 2011 Accord V6 was in a really bad accident but also at the same time I had a 2010 Subaru Forester that I had built for off-road activities. I eventually sold the Forester shortly after getting the civic and the immediate plans for this car was to build it for the track while still being able to comfortably daily drive it. Because I am just now getting back to Azine after many years of not posting anything aside from the regional chat I am gonna start off with old photos from the first day of ownership till now. Azine seems to be the one forum left that is still very much alive and I really hope some you guys enjoy the thread moving forward.
Build Breakdown: - Epsilon+ front splitter
- Professional Awesome splitter rods
- Sabelt front tow strap
- Seibon carbon fiber vented hood
- APR Performance GTC-200 carbon wing
- APR Performance 2.5" wing stand risers
- 3M carbon wrapped roof
- Window visors
- Konig Hypergram 17x9 +40 matte black wheels
- Falken Azenis RT660 tires, 255/40/17
- Konig Hypergram 17x8 +35 custom mag blue
- Continental ControlContact Sport+ 245/40/17
- Enkei TSV 17x9 +40 (sold)
- Hankook Ventus V12 Evo2, 255/40/17 (sold)
- Yellow Speed Racing Dynamic Pro Sport coilovers
- Wavespec slotted sportline rotors
- Hawk HP+ front pads
- Hawk HPS rear pads
- ATE Type 200 brake fluid
- K-Tuned 3' catback exhaust
- Hondata Flashpro
- Hybrid Racing short shifter
- Hybrid Racing Maxim shift knob
- Hybrid Racing boot collar
- Progress Tech 24mm RSB
- Progress Tech adjustable end links
- Ichiban 20mm spacers with extended studs
- SPC 2x camber bolts
- 20% window tint
- Sealight 6k LED headlights and fog lights
- Muteki SR48 open ended lug nuts
Sponsors: Yellow Speed Racing
APR Performance
Konig Wheels
Personal Best Track Times: Carolina Motorsports Park - 2:00.156
Virginia International Raceway - 2:38.125
February 25th, 2021
In the short time between my accident in my Accord and the point at which I got my insurance check, I had been actively searching for a Civic Si and originally was looking at an 8th gen. Well prices on those cars were still dumb high and so I looked at the 9th gens. I found two within my budget, a black 2012 with 112k on it that was at one of the dealerships in our network down the street and a white 2015 sedan with 66k down in Charleston, SC. Well the insurance check got delayed and the 2015 car sold so I called up the closer dealer to me and threw a deposit on the car. Got off early and headed to the dealer and bought the car. My biggest complaint about this car is the black color and just how terrible the OEM Honda paint is but aside from that the car was a one owner, stupid clean all around, stupid clean on the inside, and not modified at all. Apparently not very many people like the 2012's when being compared to the 2013-15 facelift cars but in my honest opinion these early 9th gens look like a civic.
The civic posted up next to my off-road Forester build
March 9th, 2021
So Spring was just about in full swing and at my dealership we have cherry blossoms that bloom super early and look great for a nice backdrop. I thought I would officially take my first pro shot of the Civic in all of its stock glory!
March 13th, 2021
Some time between March 9th and now I had some money from selling the Forester and bought some H&R springs to address the horrible wheel gap and change how the car handles. I went over to my buddy's house to try and fit some S2000 spec wheels that he used for his track setup. They were 17x9 +45 RPF1s on 255/40 Hankook RS4's. The good news was that they fit on the stock body, the downside is the high offset did not clear the big ass calipers that these cars come with. Later on in the day the springs showed up and I scheduled an install with my buddy Corey for the next day.
March 16th, 2021
I had ordered my first ever part from Hybrid Racing which was a weighted shift knob and a new boot collar since my stock boot and shifter were clapped and the boot kept sagging. One of the first mods I ever do to a car is get a new weight shift knob...it just changes the whole experience when driving the car. I gotta say that this knob is A1 and comes in at about 1.5 lbs and is full stainless steel. Overall the install was super easy and accessing the boot on the inside was super simple.
March 24th, 2021
Shortly after the spring install and many hours of research on forums and facebook posts I ordered a set of wheels and tires. I remembered that the 255's that I had test fitted fit the car real nice and I wanted a wheel that was gonna have a nice fitment to it and not stick out super far from the fender with a low offset so I purchased a set of Enkei TSV's in 17x9 +40 and picked up a set of Hankook Ventus V12 Evo2 summer tires in 255/40's from my local Discount Tire. I ordered the wheels rom Fitment Industries and had a decent experience and spent under $1000 shipped. The tires cost about $650 by themselves.
March 26th, 2021
Got the wheels and tires mounted. They had plenty of caliper clearance with the +40 offset BUT they were super close to the strut perches.
Took the kids back home to get them mounted and ready for some pro photos
April 17th, 2021
I got together with my friends Boston and Jake to shoot their Suzuka Blue S2000's, both of which compete in NASA's Time Trials (TT5). I have been going to motorsports events like Gridlife South at Road Atlanta and Jzilla Track Days since 2016 at which they were both participating in HPDE event in the bugeye WRX's and they have pushed me to get into the sport and with the Civic is the perfect candidate to learn on. Shortly after this photo shoot, I signed up for the NASA Southeast event at Carolina Motorsports Park coming up on the 5th of May called Sinko De Mayo.
April 20th, 2021
I had ordered a set of front camber bolts to help dial in some much need negative camber and a set of upgraded brake pads from Hawk Performance. I ended up going with the Hawk HPS pads as a nice starter pad thats not super aggressive and is very streetable. I ended up ordering these parts through Procivic.com because theyre super fast at shipping stuff out. I planned an install with my buddy Jake because he has access to some upgrade brake fluid at his shop so he was gonna put everything on. I also got up with FastSigns and they made me some vinyl numbers for the upcoming track day.
April 30th - May 2nd, 2021
Race weekend has arrived. I love the atmosphere here. Everyone is super nice and helpful, everyone that works for NASA Southeast have been pleasant, Carolina Motorsports Park is a blast to drive. The track has nearly no elevation to it so you can maintain a lot of speed and stay flat. I started in HPDE1 which includes 4 classroom sessions and 4 track sessions each day over the course of two days. You will be with an instructor for the entire weekend. My instructor for the weekend had no experience driving FWD cars but has been driving everything else for nearly a decade. He is also the owner of Innovative Mounts. Camping at NASA events is usually free and spots are generally first come first serve.
May 26 - 29th, 2021
I bought some vinyl wrap off amazon and made this crazy looking design of random geometric shapes. The car was dubbed "The Dorito Car", "Tony the Tiger", etc. It was definitely an experience and I didnt hate it but I didnt love it...it was...different. It was certainly a big hit at work in the employee parking lot LOL.
July 2nd, 2021
Remember when I had the H&R springs installed not even 4 months earlier, yeah well I blew out my stock shocks. I was looking for a set of coilovers because I knew it would be more beneficial moving forward with the track build and I really kinda needed something better than the blown shocks I was currently on. I started looking at a plethora of different companies and I always check to see if companies offer sponsorships. Most unfortunately did not but I came across Yellow Speed Racing. At the time I did not know they made suspension, I only remember their name from watching Krispy videos of him installing their BBK onto his Legacy GT wagon. So I sent them a proposal and within a week I got an answer back and got accepted into their program. I ended up going with their Dynamic Pro Sport coilovers that came with 8k front and 7k rear springs. The quality is top notch and took about 3 weeks to get them.
July 16 - 17th, 2021
In addition to sending out a sponsorship proposal to Yellow Speed Racing, I also sent one out to APR Performance. Now Im gonna be completely real with ya'll that I did not expect to get accepted for this...like at all. I have always wanted a carbon fiber wing and imo looks proper on the civic sedan. My inspiration was drawn from the 8th gen sedan with the carbon Voltex or J's Racing wings. I knew it would look great but I also wanted it to be functional. I did a ton of research, asked questions and sent emails to companies that make functional aero to see the benefits of adding a wing like this to a FWD car. I wing absolutely helps with stability and handling in FWD cars, as much as the naysayers would like to debate with you. Also if wings didnt work, why are they on touring cars in series like IMSA and PWC? The surprising fact is a lot of those factory built race cars dont have much more power than stock so the you dont need a lot of power to make a wing efficient. The wing I selected is great for low HP cars with no other aero modifiers like a front splitter or air dam. Its a universal fitted GTC-200 carbon wing with 2.5" riser stands and is adjustable...but in a weird way. The stand widths were a custom measurement and drilled by APR.
With the installation of the wing, I had my friend Simon wrap my roof in some 3M carbon vinyl to hide the horrible clearcoat fade that happens on all Hondas. The removal of the OEM spoiler was a bit of a headache and left 9 HOLES in the trunk...theres absolutely no reason for that many holes. I covered them up with some matte black vinyl I bought at autozone. I couldnt at the time find the plugs anywhere and nearly a year later the squares are still on there.
August 12th, 2021
Hey guess what...MORE PARTS! This time around I opted for a bigger RSB. I was told that in order to get the rear of the car to rotate into a corner I needed to run the fastest RSB I could get. I ended up going with the 24mm Progress Tech bar with their adjustable end links. This bar is gerthy and a huge improvement over the stock sway bar. It features 3 levels of adjustment, soft, neutral, and stiff.
I made a mistake and forgot some interesting dates!
May 10th, 2021
I did a touge run up to Little Switzerland and NC-80, also known as the Devils Whip. The road is insanely tight with tons of switchbacks. The first time I drove this road was by accident in my old Forester with no sway bars...talk about a sketchy experience.
August 24th, 2021
Got together with the Subaru family for a ride up NC 181 which took us to the Blue Ridge Parkway. From there we headed down to do a full Little Switzerland run before heading back the way we came. On the way up 181, I wasn't getting enough traction so at the Brown Mountain Overlook we all stopped and I lowered my air pressure down to 28 psi front and 32 psi rear. This allowed me to get a little more grip from these Hankooks. Next time I will start at the front of the pack. The guy in the STi in front of me had never driven that road before and the guy in the WRX behind me made me a little worried at times hearing him overdrive his car. All in all it was a fun drive. To the Dragon next!
September 4th, 2021
First time taking the Civic up to the Tail of the Dragon. I really wish these Hankook Ventus V12 Evo2's were a little bit better (they take a while to get to temperature). The Progress RSB I put on the car made a noticeable difference in how the rear end moved through the corners.
October 1st - 2nd, 2021
I headed up to Virginia International Raceway for Hyperfest to get some media coverage. Ive been doing media for Hyperfest since 2015 and this was the first year (due to Covid) that its been held in October. My buddy Jake who owned the Suzuka Blue AP2 recently had his car wrapped in gloss black and was running TT5 for the weekend. If you have never been to Hyperfest, I would say that it should be on your radar to go. Its a blast and theres soo much going on at one time. I almost didnt make the trip because I was dealing with the flu but I sucked it up and went anyway.
Here's just a few of my favorite shots from that weekend
October 17th, 2021 I got together with a group of people who work within the same dealership network as myself for some Fall touge runs. As in other videos, we drove up NC-80, drove on the Parkway towards Little Switzerland, then headed down 226A to go back home. I never get tired of driving this route, especially now that the car has the bigger RSB from Progress Tech. Next few videos to come will be another Tail of the Dragon run on October 30th, and I'm headed back to Carolina Motorsports Park for the NASA Southeast Brady Memorial Nov 5-7th.
October 30th, 2021 This past weekend I drove up to the Dragon to help out an old roommate of mine fix his car. Instead of making the 3.5 hour drive back home, he offered me a place to stay inside the cabin that him and the others were in and stayed for Saturday and Sunday. These guys love doing night runs on the Dragon, something I have only done as a passenger back in 2016. It was something I didnt want to pass up on this time around so I went for it. Let me say that its a completely different road at night and the great part was NO TRAFFIC!
November 5th - 7th, 2021
I signed up for my second attempt at Carolina Motorsports Park, only this time with all the upgrades. Everything I changed since the first time I went back in May made a huge improvement. The weak point atm is the tires...Im needing something that can get some heat into them. I graduated from HPDE 1 to HPDE 2 which is solo driving but you're still using point by's in certain passing zones. I was trying to make a sub 2:00 lap time and I came really close.
Enjoyed a second weekend here at Carolina Motorsports Park for the November Brady Memorial NASA Southeast event. I eventually moved from HPDE 1 to DE 2 after my 4th session which is solo driving. I managed to shave 3 seconds off my personal best back in May of this year. There is still plenty of time to be found with the current setup and just need to drive harder. I've been chasing after a sub 2:00.000 on this track and I know I can do it!
January 12, 2022
I ordered a set of new tires that'll be used exclusively for the track or touge events. I went with the Falken Azenis RT660 which is one of the top tier 200tw tires atm. These are the same specs as the tires on the Enkei's at 255/40 and I got them from Discount Tire at $180 ea.
January 13, 2022
After purchasing these tires, I found a stupid good deal on a K-Tuner 3" catback local to me and scooped it up for $250. I was kinda looking for something from Invidia like an N1 or Q300 and even looked at the GReddy catback but when a deal like this turns up you gotta go after it.
I had recently picked up this K-Tuned 3" catback exhaust from a friend on Facebook. I had plans on getting an exhaust at some point this year like a GReddy Supreme or Invidia N1 but this was too good of a deal to pass up. I'll link my buddy's install video down below from the other night.
This isnt really build related but back in December I got to drive the Hyundai N Performance cars at Road Atlanta.
I was invited by a friend of mine to sign up for an event with Hyundai. It was a chance to drive the Hyundai Veloster N down at Road Atlanta. The event sign up was extremely vague in details so I wasn't too sure what to expect....it was free so I jumped on the opportunity. The weather wasn't the greatest but it was still a blast. Not shown in this video was an Auto-X event, and the top 3 driver times would get a chance to get a ride along in the Elantra N with an IMSA TCA driver. Following the auto-x, everyone moved to the full course of RDATL, and did 4-5 lead/follow laps. I would've loved to push the car a little more but the rain made the track a little sketchy. I can't wait to drive this track with NASA Southeast in the civic! Big thanks to Hyundai and Road Atlanta for hosting this event.
January 17, 2022
So we got our first big snow of the year and with the summer tires on the car I was stuck at home in a car that was completely useless. Soo, my co-worker came and picked me up in his Focus RS and we went out and hooned around town snow drifting all over the place. Any time it snows here I immediately regret selling my Subaru's.
January 27, 2022 Good News: I partnered up with Konig Wheels through their NASA Sponsorship Program. You essentially get up to 2 sets of wheels per year at a huge price discount and all you need to do is send them 3 photos after every event, a 50-100 word recap after every event, and run their logo/sticker on 4 corners of the car. It doesnt say in the contract that I cant run other wheels for daily driving duty which would be what the Enkei's would be for, but I have also thought about selling them and just running another set of Konig's to kinda just keep the whole build uniform.
As for the wheels themselves, like I said above, I went with the Hypergrams. I tried to get the bronze but they are on backorder until March which would be cutting it a little too close to the first track weekend of the season, so I went with the matte black ones in 17x9 +40mm. To break up all of the black on the car, Im gonna do a "vinyl mod" on the wheels to mark where the valve stem is located. Everything should be here Monday and all I would be waiting on is new or used tpms sensors.
I also noticed yesterday that my rotors were looking extremely gross, corroded, rusty, etc. I have been meaning to replace them with some Stoptech slotted rotors but they always seem to be on backorder. Sooo, I bought some scalloped, slotted rotors from Wave Spec. These rotors are used by a lot of people that I know in the Subaru community for off-road, race/rally cars so they would have to be a pretty decent product. They were about $300 cheaper than Stoptech's and from testimonies of people running them, they last pretty long, dont eat through pads, dissipate heat really well, and are overall pretty good. Im taking a chance on these and I dont think anyone with a 9th or 8th gen civic runs them. Do I think that the scalloped design is a little gimmicky, maybe, but oddly enough, Audi uses a similar rotor design on their RS5 and RS7 cars, not to mention a lot of motorcycles have the same brake design. If its good enough for Audi, then its good enough for me.
Background "Drawing from successful brake technology in highly competitive motorcycle racing and combining the need for compact brakes for rally racing, the WaveSpec rotor was developed to increase braking performance while simultaneously decreasing rotating mass."
Rotating Mass "Our rotors reduce unsprung mass as well as moment of inertia. Commonly known as rotating mass, moment of inertia is the rotational equivalent of mass in Newton’s second law of motion. Most people are familiar with the linear version of Newton’s second law: F=ma, where Force equals Mass times Acceleration. In a rotating system, the formula is τ=Iα, where Torque equals Moment of Inertia times Angular Acceleration. Therefore, reducing the Moment of Inertia (MOI) is the angular equivalent of reducing mass.
The key to understanding MOI is that the farther away mass is distributed from the axis of rotation, the higher the moment of inertia is. MOI is calculated by multiplying the mass by the distance to the axis of rotation squared and is expressed by pound mass times inches squared (lbm*in^2). Since the distance component is squared, reducing mass at the outer edge of a rotating object such as a brake rotor has a much more significant impact on angular acceleration than reducing mass at the center of rotation.
On something like a brake rotor, calculating the MOI by hand is tedious since the mass distribution is not uniform. However, with modern Computer Aided Drafting and 3D modeling, the MOI can be calculated in tenths of a second. While any reduction of unsprung mass is highly desirable, the Wavespec design has an even more significant impact on MOI which directly translates to shorter stopping distances and improved acceleration."
Surface Area "The Wavespec design increases the surface area to volume ratio which means that for the thermal mass, there is more surface area to transfer heat to the surrounding air. Surface area to volume ratio is calculated by dividing the surface area by the volume. In a sample physical analysis, we compared the surface area to volume ratio on an OEM design of 5.985/in with the Wavespec design, and the Wavespec design has a ration of 6.179/in which is a 3.2% increase."
Biting Edges "An additional advantage of the Wavespec design is the number of leading edges the brake pad encounters as the rotor is spinning, which increases initial bite and keeps debris from accumulating between the pad and the rotor. The outer scallops create additional leading edges that also introduce cooling air contact to the outer pad surface. Since the outer edge of the pad encounters more material than the inner edge of the pad per revolution, the outer edge would normally heat up faster and the scallops negate that effect to ensure a more uniform temperature distribution across the pad surface. This effectively reduces the average pad temperature that ultimately results in extending the maximum operating temperature envelope of the pad."
February 13, 2022 Threw the new wheels on. The 3mm spacers I got did nothing so my buddy gave me his 5mm and it left about a finger gap of space between the wheel and coilover. They still rub slightly, especially on hard dips so Im probably gonna raise the front .5" and add a second camber bolt on both sides to get more camber adjustment. Im at around negative 2.3 and need to be around negative 3.5. I also need to order extended studs for the front only.
There were a few events going on yesterday and then afterwards I got up with my friend Alex to get some pics of his EG Hatch.
11-30-2022 | 10:56 AM
