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Coldy's DC2 Restoration - Now with High Compression!

Messages
17
Hello All,

I'll start with a bit about me. I'm new here, I've never had a type R before, I currently have a couple of Renault Clio 182s, including a trophy, which I'm in the process of selling, plus two MX5s. One which is mine and one which is a parts car. The reason I'm here is that for a while I've wanted a DC2. After struggling to get one imported, I managed to convince a lad at work to sell me his. The only issue was that the car hadn't been loved for a long a time, just the sort of motor I like.

Before and after of the Blue Clio
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My Clio Trophy at the Welsh Weekender
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My MX5
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Whats been made of the donor MX5
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Anyway, on to the Integra.
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After giving up on importing one from Japan I moved on and bought a Renault Clio Trophy which is a lot of fun. The chance came up to buy this Integra and I just had to. It needs a lot of tidying up and I felt bad for it. Unfortunately I wasn't in a position to start work on it straight away, so its been waiting for over a year for me to start work on it. Now that I've started its been an excellent experience and I like it, its a good honest car. The list of jobs gets longer by the day but that's half the fun. I did make it over to Caffeine and Machine on sunday and got the chance to have a look at a couple of EDM DC2s, but I only saw one and that was as we were leaving.

So currently I need to...

Replace both doors due to scuffs
Replace the rear bumper and spoiler as the paint isn't very good
Service the brakes
Service the engine
Paint the lip on the front
Correct and wax all the paintwork
Retrim the steering wheel
Have the drivers seat repaired
Refit the Stereo
Camblet change
Get a new back box
paint the wiper arms and fit new blades
Paint the caps for the third brake light
Paint the rocker cover
Source Rota slip streams
Stop being tight and buy a spoon mirror
Oh, and get the bloody thing MOT'd....

The car is currently at work so during the evenings I'm going to be doing some of the more straight forward jobs. I'll save the mechanical work for when the car comes back to the workshop. I'm planning on being tight with the budget as I already own all the tools I need and a lot of the materials to bring this car back to scratch. Ive started giving the car a really good clean. I'll be Machine polishing and sealing and then waxing the whole car. There will be some wet sanding and trim restore too. I did a 50/50 of the bonnet to show the difference.
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Coldy
 
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Welcome to TRO, this is exactly the kind of threads I like!

Best of luck with the DC2, I really do miss mine (even if it was a poor UKDM spec)
 
Good luck with it, look forward to what you do with it.

Any more pics/info of the MX-5? It’s lovely.
 
Cheers, I'll be updating this regularly and hopefully making some time lapse videos of the work going on.

I've had the black MX5 for three years, it was my second Mk1. I'd worked on quite a few and my ex had nice mk2 which I miss (the car, not the woman). Everything on the car is done properly. I had to make some modifications due to being 6'4 (like the cage). The car came on awful Bilstein suspension which got swapped for brand new Meisters, I completely rebuilt a set of SVT brakes from a later MK2.5 NBFL model which I've found fantastic. The seats are also from a later NBFL model, black leather with the heating elements for which I made a loom so they work on the OE switches mounted next to the Fog light switch.


The brakes before shotblasting
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After, once painted and fitted with brand new components everywhere.
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The wheels were refinished
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Recently I took the car round Pembrey circuit where it performed brilliantly, with my track wheels sporting AD08 tyres I could go quicker then a turbocharged mk1, it easily pulled away the straights but you can carry so much speed through the turns he just held me up. I actually enjoyed pedalling probably the slowest car there and driving the wheels off the thing to maintain your speed. It was great.
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Recently I've fitted a carbon fibre boot and had the strike plates and door handles coated black.
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Well, we are a long way from home...

So I got the Integra into the workshop for a closer look at it. Its in need of a fair amount of TLC.

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So here is what I have to work with.

I took the front end of the car off
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The bumper its self is ok, but the splitter has seen better days.
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So I rubbed it down and started to get it in better shape. Using high build primer which easily shows where the work is needed.
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The headlights have been sanded back and lacquered, I'm going to machine polish them later and see how they've come out.
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I also finished the engine table I've been working on. I had the glass made specially to be used as furniture and the corners have the same radius as the pistons so it doesn't just look like a random bit of glass has been thrown on. I may look into getting a battery pack rather than having a power lead coming from it. The LEDs fitted give some excellent effects.

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So apologies are in order. Lots of life events have happened in the past (almost) 5 years. So we're well over due an update.

I took the car to my workshop and when i was with lots of time off over the covid lockdowns I got to work. I stripped a lot of parts off, cleaned it all up, painted and put back on. I upgraded everything that seemed tired and it was all nice and presentable.

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I got the car on the road a few months later and celebrated with an evening track day at Donnington Park.

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Since then it was used sporadically for fun drives and the odd trackday.

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Although in the meantime, I bought an EP3 and started building a full on racecar, leaving the DC2 sat in the garage for a year or two. Last year saw an excuse to get the Integra out to complete in the Javelin Sprint series. Using the car competitively showed some areas which could be improved. Over the last little while, the H&R coilovers have been swapped for Yellowspeeds.

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Changed the valve stem seals and painted the cam cover.

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I spent far too long researching air flow and made some changes to the intake. I replaced the air filter with a mahoosive new one, including a built in velocity stack.

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I also found the cause of my long brake pedal at Cadwell Park (this was after thinking it was the hydraulic system and bleeding it about 40,000 times, lesson learnt, diagnose the issue first...)

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I also replaced both front and rear anti roll bars with the thickest ones Whiteline do, my rough alignment and corner weighting left me in a great place to fine tune it to perfection. Off we went off to Blyton Park as a shakedown before the first Sprint of the year, it's a joy to drive on track, nicely balanced, lots of grip and minimal body roll.

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The Sprint series this year has been incredibly competitive. Often a gap of half a second or less has decided the class I compete in, always between myself and the previous champion. The first two events, both at Blyton Park saw us each take a first in class, which left us neck and neck for the third round at Croft in North Yorkshire.

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Unfortunately on my final run I confused 3rd for 5th going down the back straight and massively over revved the engine, finishing half a second behind.


I had suffered with gear selection issues all year, especially 4th and decided to rebuild the gearbox with new M Factory Synchros, whilst I was there I also changed the final drive. Now I had much better acceleration and crisper changes.

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This set up an interesting event at Cadwell Park, which happened to fall on my 40th birthday. We had a nice celebration the evening before, finishing by watching that days qualifying projected onto the side of our camper van.

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Sunday we woke to beautiful, clear, Lincolnshire skies. As the event got under way, despite getting quicker and quicker each run, I could not seem to catch the competition. All the stars aligned on my very final run and I was so pumped to put everything together - as close to a perfect run as I could manage which secured the trophy for First place, quite a present!

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Something I had noticed was the length of shifts and lack of precise engagement. I had replaced the bushings with upgraded ones and decided to try a different ‘quick shift’ gear stick.

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It was worth changing, there is still some fine tuning to make it perfect, but its much better.

I also bought a couple of B18 engines. The first was a B18C4, which was in bits, originally planned to use as a base to build a high compression NA engine over winter. However, a few days after picking it up, quietly scrolling on eBay I saw an advert I couldn’t get out of my head. Listed as spare or repairs it was another B18. A high compression build, by a professional engine builder sometime in the 2000s. It hadn’t been run for 15 years and would need recommissioning. The build sheet was impressive, Darton liners, custom headwork, Custom cams, adjustable pulleys, Forged crank. It was tuned to 230bhp on the standard injectors with a good chunk of low down torque. The catch was - it really was an unknown quantity. I had to trust the seller who couldn’t provide any more information than the advert, which left a lot of unknowns. I took the chance and collected the engine.

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I had to buy a hoist and engine stand, which was a lot of fun. The engine got wheeled into a corner as I had a busy few months and it would have to wait….
 
In the sprint series, it was a tie at the top on points as we headed to Anglesey for a double header.

We made a long weekend of it, a Trackday Friday followed by two events over the weekend, Each day a different layout.

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The competition was as tight as ever, I managed to get ahead Saturday afternoon securing first place there, Sunday was down to the absolute wire and my final run was looking very good until I was hampered by an MX5 having problems. Salvation came in the form of a rerun, and another 1st place trophy was heading home with the Integra. Now I'm flat out trying to get the aforementioned engine fitted and tuned for the final round at Oulton Park.
 
After many busy weekends, late nights and early mornings I had completely inspected the eBay engine. I was buzzing, it looked brand new inside. I'll be putting a little video of it on youtube if anyone is interested.

On went a new cambelt, water pump (see the grimey I removed, below) , oil and filter, rocker cover and sump gaskets. I removed the dents from the sump before it was baffled and painted. The inlet was ported to match a larger 70mm Tegiwa throttle body. 550cc Injectors were fitted along with an AEM FPR and Walbro fuel Pump. Engine management would be handled by a Hondata S300 ECU picked up from eBay.

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A new mahoosive air filter mounted to a Tegiwa ultimate intake and SRS Toda Replica Exhaust manifold got fitted one the engine had been installed.

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The only tuning slot was 2 days before the final sprint of the year. I was working on the engine right until it had to be loaded to get tuned, I even had to go via Tegiwa as they'd sent the wrong throttle position sensor.

Unfortunately, it wasn't too long at the tuners before it became apparent the ECU was locked. Not just the map that was already on the S300 (it was advertised as never been used), but the whole thing. That was that, no tuning could be done. I drove home despondent and tired struggling to see what I was going to do about the upcoming sprint at Oulton Park. Then i remembered. My little MX5. I hatched a plan in my head, suddenly all was well with the world again. Another long day ensued, digging my old car out from the spares which seemed to have accumulated on it over the last year or two and out it came once again. I had some Kent drop in cams which got fitted before the little Mazda was cleaned and loaded ready for a busy weekend.

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I managed a first in class in the Roadster, a great way to round off such an intense year.

It was starting to look like I'd been scammed on the ECU, I contacted a Hondata dealer who weren't much help they just wanted to sell me a new chip for 600 quid. Instead I downloaded the software myself, despite having never used it before, within a few minutes I found a page displaying the registered owners details. So I WhatsApped the number on there, explained my predicament and within a few minutes, the original owner of the S300 helped me reset the details and unlock the ECU. I couldn't believe it. I like to think there is some cool camaraderie in the car community and this seemed to be a great example of it.

Time to go back to the tuners.

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After overcoming some initial teething issues the car ran perfectly. Chris, the tuner at EFI, said it was one of the strongest NA B18s he'd ever seen, serious tail wagging moment for me, it made all the time and effort worth it. I've had a few cars tuned over the years, from various people, all with good reputations. I've found Chris at EFi to be the most approachable and helpful. When I saw this engine, he was the only one I wanted to tune it.

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The final numbers and graph spec for themselves. I'm excited to get the car on track early in the new year and feel what difference its made.
 
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