Part 2 of our Acura Integra project has commenced and that included basic suspension modifications for the car and then we took it back to the track to compare lap times. The first installment had us taking a basically stock 2001 Acura Integra to the track and turning laps in it all day long to express how simple it is to actually get onto the track with your car. Very simple things like high temp DOT 4 Brake Fluid and some track specific front brake pads are about all you really need to do before signing up for your first track day.
During the first day we did a tire swap to some 200 treadwear Bridgestone RE71r’s and saw a 6 second a lap gain. Pretty impressive stuff on a set of tires that are just as much at home getting Doritos from the store as they are on the race track. With the extra tire grip we now wanted to try and control the body roll of the car with some suspension modifications. Again, keeping with the simple is better attitude we chose suspension components that a large majority of our customers would us on their cars as their initial set of modifications. This includes a set of Eibach Pro Kit Springs, Koni Orange Shocks, Eibach Front and Rear Sway Bars, Front and Rear Camber Kit and an alignment to do what we can to get the best out of our tires on the track.
The Eibach Pro Kit and Koni Orange Shocks suspension parts are a great all around option as they do a very good job at maintaining close to OEM ride quality while giving you an option that can handle more spirited driving. The matched set of 25mm front and 17mm rear Eibach Sway Bars do their best to control the body roll while still offering neutral handling characteristics. We went with some Revo Technica front and rear camber kits. The rear kit is very nice and didn’t need much attention but the front kit includes washers that are well, less than ideal and it didn’t take much to get them out of sorts upon the first tightening of the bolts so we quickly swapped these to some more durable (thicker) pieces.
We decided to get a bit more aggressive on the alignment. Although these specs would be perfectly at home on the street the extra toe out on the back of the car allows a bit better initial turn in and thus a bit looser feeling we realized. The alignment specs ended up at 2.5 degrees of negative camber front, 1.75 degrees of negative camber rear and we went with 1/8” toe out front and a 1/8” toe out on the rear.
On the track the car still had a noticeable amount of body roll but even still in the first 20 minute session at The FIRM we were able to turn laps just under 2 seconds quicker than the last time out. We still have the 205/50/15 Bridgestone RE71r tires mounted on the 15x7” Enkei PF01 wheels on the car. After lowering the front tire pressure to target our 34psi hot tire pressure number James Innes as able to run a 1:27.5 second lap time – that is 2.7 seconds quicker than the car was able to do on the stock suspension components.
All in that is a great gain. You never know what you are going to get when it comes to modifying your car for results, you can only go off of the best information you can and put the parts on and test them. There is still a bit too much body roll for our liking and the outer edge of our RE71r tire is proof we need to control that more (and/or add some more negative camber) but for a basic 2001 Acura Integra LS it was a blast on the track. It was very easy to rotate on the initial turn in, almost too much honestly to the point where we may set the rear toe back to 0 degrees to calm it down a bit, if we can rid that extra steering correction needed we should see lap times fall more.
We still couldn’t ask for more from this project though. The next round of modifications was going to focus on power by adding an intake, header and exhaust and seeing what a bit more horsepower would do to our lap times but upon taking a quick survey on our Instagram stories we realized the people want to see what a LSD will do for this car as it sits for our lap times. This is actually a great idea because The FIRM where we have been testing at has a couple of tight corners that the Integra has a bit of a tough time getting the power to the ground as efficiently as it could. So the MFactory LSD will be prepared for installation very soon so we can head back to the track for some more data.
Current Lap Time Results (at The FIRM in Starke, FL):
Stock 2001 Acura Integra LS, Dunlop Direzza DZ102 Tires – 1:36.3
Stock 2001 Acura Integra LS, Bridgestone RE71r Tires – 1:30.2
2001 Acura Integra LS, Suspension Mods – 1:27.5 - (Eibach Pro-Kit Plus, Koni Orange Shocks, Camber Kits, Aligned, RE71r Tires)
Special thanks to: The FIRM 4Bangers Productions Eibach Crucial Motorsports [gallery link="file" columns="4"]