Grassroots Motorsports

Scott & His Type R Feb 5, 2004

The primary reason we hired our now Club Editor Scott to the staff was that he was part of a package deal that included this 2001 Acura Integra Type R. The car has been tinkered with since day one, always with an eye towards performance, though never to compete specifically in any class or type of event. It has seen regularly duty since purchase as a daily driver, and autocrossed since its first oil change. '01 ITR #910 has also enjoyed the road courses at Nelson Ledges, VIR, Summit Point, BeaveRun, and GRM's own mini-road course test track, and continues to see use as a daily driver, with more than 50,000 miles on the clock.

When it arrived in our parking lot, the list of modifications that had been done to the car was ample, but with the massive aftermarket support for the Integra lineup, further mods are inevitable, and will be henceforth be chronicled on this page.

The car currently autocrosses in Street Mod (mostly as a result of the shorter final drive).

Mods as of 2003:

Engine:

• Comptech Short-Ram / Icebox Cold-Air Intake
  
• DC 4-2-1 SS Header
  

Transmission:

• ATS 4.929 Final Drive Gearset
  

Suspension:

• JDM Rear Strut-Tower Bar
  
• Shadily rebuilt Bilstein/Eibach/Ground Control coilover setup, Bilsteins eventually died

Brakes:

• SpeedBleeders
  
• Porterfield R4S Front pads (street)
  
• Carbotech Panther+ Front pads (track)
  
• Axxis Metalmaster Rear Brake Pads (all)
  
• Cobalt Friction front discs (stock dimensions)

Wheels & Tires

• Stock Wheels with Yokohama A032RS (autocross)
  
• Rays Engineering Volk TE-37 16x7 wheels with 215/45R16 Falken Azenis (street)
  
• Other stuff that hasn't been needed in Florida yet

Safety Equipment

• AutoPower 4-point rollbar
  
• Sabelt 5-point camlock harnesses

Interior & Exterior

• IoPort Camera Mount
  
• Sparco Evo Racing Seat
  
• Clear Corner Lenses (Track item, cheaper to replace than OEM yellows when killed by rocks. Also, l00kz bl1ng.)
  

Electrical

• 9005 high beams in place of low beams
  
• OEM Cruise Control
  
• Various other goodies (antenna switch, relocated power lock switch etc, decent stereo etc.)  

More Time on Our TEINS Aug 3, 2004

With a few thousand miles and several months worth of use on the TEIN Type REs, we're still of the opinion that they rock. A chance to take them to a road course hasn't come up yet, but they're lots of fun on the street and continue to make the car an even more competent autocross competitor.

The Type R has been a bit more pampered this summer, as Scott has been putting most of his miles on a recently aquired beater 1989 Volvo 740 Turbo wagon. The Volvo has received the bulk of attention and money to bring it up to snuff since it was purchased in the early spring. The boost-box is fun, but whenever we need a shot of adrenaline we strap into the Type R, fire it up and feel the love of VTEC.

We've got a slight on-and-off clicking from the right front: probably a CV joint, but it's not bad enough that we're worried yet. It's about time to install the lightweight Toda flywheel that's been sitting around and calls to us at night. Scott won the flywheel at ITR Expo 3 in 2003, but wanted to abuse the stock clutch a bit more before upgrading the whole assembly. We're now shopping for a replacement clutch....once the weather gets a bit less muggy we'll get the car in the air and upgrade the flywheel and clutch, and probably the axles. 55,000 miles of fun and counting... 

The Old Tire and Wheel Switcharoo Dec 10, 2004

After several years of running our R-compound rubber on the stock 15x6 wheels-even thought the car only ran a few events in stock class shortly after purchase-we finally dropped the necessary coin to do a bit of tire and wheel switcharoo and get the sticky rubber on some wider wheels. Our 225/45R15 Yokohama A032RS's served us well up front, but they were pretty well cooked, which was our impetus for the change.

We've got a set of 15x6.5 Rota Slipstreams with Falken Azenis that we've been using for HPDEs (and more recently as street tires as the tires on our Volks are as bald as billiard balls), but with a pair of new 225/45 R15 Kumho V700s for the front, we decided to go ahead and unmount the Azenis from the Rotas and put the Kumhos on two of them, and swap the 205/50R15 Yokohama A032RS's from the stock rims to the Rotas as well for use on the rear. Naturally, running fresh tires all around would be best, but sometimes the budget means you end up running Kumhohamas for a few races.

Thanks to the good folks at Granada Goodyear here in Ormond Beach for taking care of us in double-quick fashion; we made the decision to swap just hours before we had to leave for an event, and they had everything swapped with time to spare. We're more comfortable with the 225s on a wider 6.5-inch wheel, and the Rotas are lighter than stock, an added bonus. Plus, the dark finish on a black car looks pretty wicked, particularly with the bulging tires up front.

We made it to four East Coast CFR SCCA Solo II events this season with the Type R (three official and one fun day), and managed to win Street Modified each time. In fact, our three wins out of 18 events was enough to land us in second place for the year in the East Coast standings, thanks in part to equally sporadic attendance by most participants in SM. Next year, we'll try to get out to a few more races. 

Suspension Swap Mar 18, 2008

To make a good thing even better we've swapped out the somewhat tired stock suspension in favor of a very green TEIN Type RE setup. The new coil-overs allowed us to cornerweight the car to a near 50% crossweight, and the addition of the TEINs shaved a second off the lap times at our test track. The Type R took FTD for cars with fenders at an area autocross shortly after the swap. Details of the install can be found in the May 2004 issue of GRM.