Honda CR-Z Hybrid Car Forums banner

How to Ruin a Perfectly Good CBP

35K views 106 replies 21 participants last post by  TNThomas 
#1 · (Edited)
After three years with the car and this forum, I’m starting a build thread.

Actually, this is not my first build thread. Being a very slow “builder” I started with a community build thread. It was primarily tongue-in-cheek, but also a venue for all the other slow builders. Or, as I like to call us, “Disciples of the 10% Rice Method”.

My home has been under construction for what feels like a year. Now that the full renovation is now complete, I have a couch again. I hope to start finding loose change in said couch. That is how I will fund new mods for Selene.

Oh, yeah. Selene is my 2011 CBP 6MT EX non-navi. I named her for the Kate Beckinsale character in the (mostly awful) Underworld films. The car is slinky, dressed all in black, and refuses to play nice with others of its kind. I figure the name fits. Here she is, almost stock.



To date, I have committed the following atrocities in the name of automotive personalization:

Handling
HPD Suspension Kit
Spoon Motor Rib
Progress Rear Sway Bar
Spoon Front Sway Bar
17x8 35et Enkei Racing RPF1 Wheels
215x17x45 Advan Neova Tires (Summer only)

Interior
Clazzio Leather Seat Covers
Gentex Auto-Dimming Rearview Mirror w/ Homelink
Weathertech Floor Mats
White LED Interior Lighting and License Plate Lights
NRG Carbon Fiber-Styled Shifter Knob

Exterior
OEM Rear Diffuser Upgrade (Modulo)
The “Eye-Liner Mod” in Red
El-Cheapo OEM-Style Rear Spoiler
Custom Painted Calipers and Brackets :ionono:
45% Window Tint
A “Nobody Cares About Your Stick Figure Family” Sticker
JDMToy LED Reflector Inserts for the Rear Bumper (Glazed Red)
Rear mud guards

Functional Accessories
T1R Convex Side Mirrors
Skunk2 Short Shifter
6” Lift Kit by J/K Motorsports

Couple of items from the wish list.
Shifter Cable Bushings
Leather door panels (2-tone)
McGard wheel nuts
AJR lip and side skirts
LED DRLs
Platypus plate mount

For all of my Internet buddies, I will get around to posting more recent pics soon. The shot below was taken in July 2014. For anyone local to the MA area, come on over, drop some change in my couch, and you can view Selene in person.



Since I am a very slow builder, and get most of my parts second-hand, I plan to keep this thread going with random thoughts and musings about automotive culture, technology, news, and other tidbits that don’t belong in existing threads. There are times when I can get too serious with the tone of my comments. People get uppity. I am a cantankerous old man, after all. I’ll save those remarks for this thread.
 
See less See more
4
#4 ·
FINALLY. Thought you were just going to say you sold the car so lock up the thread! :lol:

As for the alleged atrocities, :worthless:
:)

I think that you've gone about this build very sensibly (other than not documenting it here, that is), and Amy approves of everything you've done. And that's the last nice, or serious thing I'm going to say on this post.

So, now supercharge the b!tch and get going!

:thumbup:
 
#16 ·
Okay, keeping up with things that I've already done...

A while back, I bought the OEM/Modulo rear diffuser from Scotty. (I like giving unwanted accessories a proper home.) It's a nice faux carbon fiber accent. However, one of the stylistic motifs I've been trying to keep is the color blue. This began with a set of T1R blue-tinted convex mirrors. Any time you view the car from the rear quarter, the mirrors cast a bluish reflection on the side of the car. So, I figured I would work with it.

That led to this.



I took the stock grey "mesh" and coated with a chrome spray paint. I was fairly impressed with the finish. From any more than 18" away, it looked like chrome. Then I used a very light coat of VHT Nite-Shades blue. It's a very incomplete coat. If you look closely you can see the chrome base coat is just speckled with blue. I think I resprayed it chrome then put a lighter coat of blue on after taking this shot. This picture makes it look like a mottled blue.

Here we have it installed back in the diffuser and on the car.



And a closer look. You can see the blue tint is much less blotchy than the photo above.



I already had a set of illuminated reflectors. These tie into the brake lights. Sorry, I don't have a pic with them in the Modulo diffuser. (The blurry selfie is a bonus.) This photo is from when I had them in the stock one.



Overall, I'm very happy with the diffuser. I'm not into murdering a black car. So adding a touch of color in little places works for me. Spraying the VHT blue over the mesh took away a little of the luster that the chrome had. I'm tempted to take it off and respray with a thick coat of clear gloss over it.

The carbon fiber is a nice upgrade. While you can't see the weave unless you're eye level with the thing, it is a darker color than the stock grey that came with the 2011 models.
 
#18 ·
Thanks Bryan. With luck, I’ll have a little more to show off next time we meet up.

The couch hath produced wealth! I found a fairly large sum to be used for updating Selene. I have a new budget ~$1,000. All of it in the form of quarters, pennies, and nickels. ($1,000 and not a single dime. Weird, huh?)

I can use this money in one of three ways. Help me figure out which is my best option. The first is to (finally) buy some suspension. The second is go for looks with a body kit. The third option is getting 5 or 6 random upgrades, rather than a single big purchase.

Help Varmint waste his money!

I’ll take any others suggestions. I'm just starting with these. Whatcha think, people?
 
#20 ·
So the couch produced wealth, or is providing a place to sleep when you spend money you're not supposed to on Selene?

My vote goes to suspension, but I will say that I am generally not a fan of body kits. The other, smaller things, seem like they're easier to find a couple bucks and pick up separately later on down the road. Do the bigger mod while you have the cash. Just my 2 cents.
 
#21 ·
Suspension.
You've invested wisely in performance mods, up until now.
The HPD kit should be a top notch addition to your already excellent choices.
And, if you pump up the horsepower in future, you will enjoy those even more!

As for appearance, you can always do small things such as those you have already added, on the cheap. Bits and pieces come up in the classified's, and wrap or dip detailing might also be an option in that regard, if the mood strikes you.

In the end, the "right" answer is the one that pleases you the most.
I think that will be the HPD coilovers, but what do I know???
 
#23 ·
I found 2 cents in my couch...

I would say suspension. Unless you spend more time ogling the car than actually driving it, you'll probably get a more noticable benefit out of tweaking the suspension.
 
#24 ·
I feel kinda silly having installed two sway bars, upgraded the wheels, installed a spoon motor rib, and shod her with advan neova ad08s... yet I'm still riding around on stock suspension. :blink:

On the other hand, the car already performs better than I can drive it. The number of times I truly push the car is diminishing. There's construction one good driving road, new houses have been built on my other favorite corner, and sane judgement prevents me from exploring the limits of the car more and more often.

Getting the body kit should make me fall in love with the exterior all over again. I expect it will improve my wash & wax schedule. New parts make me more diligent about maintenance work and upkeep.

At the same time, I fear that adding a body kit with no drop will look a bit silly. So, I'd end up buying springs and wishing I had coils.
 
#25 ·
Problem is, most good body "kits" will cost you more than your couch has provided for.
And buying it piece-meal (skirts now, bumpers later) will not look right, as they all tend to line up differently from the stock belly of the car.
Then, you have to install them, and don't forget a professional paint job, or you'll see the difference every time you go out to the car. If it weren't done right, that would bug me.

The answer is simple - time to get a new couch! :giggle:

Unless your "kit" is a very simple one, I'm still leaning toward the supercharger, um, I mean the coils. :)
 
#26 ·
New couch!?! The one I just got cost nearly $11K!!!!! My wife does not mess around when it comes to home renovation.

The kit I'm looking at is the Rando design. I'd be buying the front lip and side "steps". Total cost is actually less than the suspension. Though, I haven't factored in shipping for either.



It comes unpainted, which I believe is the way it is pictured above. And I like the look of it in grey. Later on, I could get it painted to match the body color.
 
#28 ·
I would be shocked if they came looking like that. Those look painted to me. A matte black finish that is easily scratched/marked up is more likely.

Also, the HPD suspension kit aren't really coilovers. They're more like matching springs and dampers - like what Spoon does, except only half as low as Spoon. So barely lowered ~1/2". Although, I think I remember you saying that you didn't really want to lower it at all anyway.
 
#29 ·
Yeah, the kit will probably require some finishing. I honestly don't know how much. These are questions I'm trying to get answered through Evasive. But there is enough room in the budget for a full paint if that ends up being necessary.

The specs on the HPD suspension say a 10mm drop in front and maybe a 15mm drop in the back. (bump stops are different.) Thats the most reasonable drop i've found. Given the poke on my silly sized wheels/tires, there is legit reason for concern. It should fit. If not, I can move to a tire that isn't so wide. (the tires will need replacing sooner or later, anyway.) I'm just not a fan of the stretched look. So, new wheels could be in the works, as well.

We shall see.
 
#30 ·
Evasive Motorsports hasn't answered my e-mail. Guess they're being ... evasive. So, moving right along...

More stuff that I already done did.

A few years back, I was looking at wheels and tires. Specifically, I was investigating a set of Enkei Racing RPF1 rims and some Yokohama Advan Neova AD08s. At the time, the tires were going for $200 each. The wheels would have run me about $1,000. With TPMS and mounting costs, everything was going to cost roughly $2K. I have a hard time justifying that kind of expense when there are so many worthy expenses in my life… like my daughter’s college fund.

Working from memory, I think my target setup was supposed to be this:

RPF1’s 17x7.5 42 ET
AD08’s 205/45 R17

Anyway, fellow forum member Nasa came to the rescue. Or so, I hoped. He posted a set of his old RPF1s. These were 17x8. That much width with a 35 offset made me wary. They would be close to flush in the rear and would poke a bit up front. Hmmm… Tires were also part of the deal. A bit stretched (not my thing) and he added that while one of the tires was brand new, two of them were at the end of their tread life. I figured that was good enough. I could spread the costs of the whole project over a few months as both tires and wheels were being sold for the price of new wheels alone.

Done!

Rather than deal with shipping, we met up at a halfway point. (Nasa is a hella nice guy.) It was a painless deal and I was on my way.

Both the wheels and rims were “as advertised”. In fact, the wheels were in better shape than I expected. However, the wear pattern on the two oldest tires made them unsuitable by my standards. I guess when Nasa was running these (on his Civic, I believe) he had aggressive camber settings. The inside edge of the tire was bald and the outer edge looked like new. I had pictured something different in my minds eye. In the end, I trashed all four tires and bought the AD08’s that I wanted in the first place. So much for spreading out the costs.

My actual setup ended up being this:

RPF1’s 17x8.0 35 ET
AD08’s 215/45 R17

Okay, time for the review and some pictures.


I bought some Muteki lugs. They were inexpensive and kept up the blue color scheme.


Chunkay!


The full monty.


The camera is slightly crooked, but here you can see the poke, and the fact that Selene needed an alignment. This tire/rim combo is square. There has been exactly one instance of rubbing. I was taking a fast corner and hit a bump.

I’m not a huge fan of the skinny spoke design, but it doesn’t offend me. I prefer a little more visual mass on my wheels. From the front or the rear this combination of tire and wheel looks aggressive. The profile needs a little help with those gaps.

The tires make a ruckus. I expected a generous helping of tire roar. There’s something about the frequencies for these tires that make the noise oscillate. (Wuh, wuh, wuh…) For weeks, I thought something was out of balance. Taking them off and putting them back on several times to troubleshoot the noise ruined the finish on my lugs. The noise levels and oscillation began to fade as the tires broke in.

More than anything, these suckers are sticky. I’m running completely stock suspension at this point. Yet, it took me weeks of abusing off ramps before I was able to get the tires to break traction. All I had was the Spoon motor rib under the hood. So, getting the car going this fast in a corner was a scary experience. Using Dynolicious (a cell phone accelerometer-based app) I have worked up to 0.94g. Pretty sure I’ve driven it harder in a corner, but that’s the fastest I have on record. Don’t try this at home, kids.


These are summer-only tires and are not for the meek. For me, they have been worth it. Just this once, I got to play with some ferocious rubber. Still, I’m not going to recommend them to other daily drivers. My next set of tires will be a bit less extreme.

Now, will these still fit under the car once I drop it 10mm? We shall see. If not, I hope to find another good home for them. Then maybe, just maybe… these.
 
#34 ·
And made for Honda by "XAC CO."

Oh sure - today, the photo appears right-side-up.
It wasn't, last night, and I was sober.
HONEST!

Nice house, BTW - how do you keep it so clean?
Don't own a farm, if you wish to keep it looking so nice!
 
#36 ·
Wow, it's that simple, eh?
On my iPad, the pictures are inverted. My iMac, at work, has them up-side right.
:shrug: Gonna go have a drink.

So, when you gonna install them anti-gravity coils?
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top