We are well know and highly regarded for our drifting exploits here at Japspeed, but more recently we have been taking an interest in circuit racing as another feather in our motorsport cap, primarily in this case, the Civic Cup!
The Civic Cup is an affordable race series that’s aimed at racers who are keen to be involved with a close, packed field of regulated cars. This guarantees close bumper to bumper racing at every event. It puts the focus down to driver skill and not who has the biggest team or the most money to spend, the fastest driver wins; pure and simple racing! The Civic Cup is on a great platform too, it runs alongside the popular Time Attack Series and runs 15 races per year, so it’s an action packed affair with no shortage of seat time. We sent our allocated driver Paul Smith to take his ARDS test, which he naturally passed.
The Civic Cup eligible cars are 1992 to 1999 Honda Civic EG, EJ and EK models. There is also an Invitation/Open class for cars which can run in the GT1 class, these include the later Honda Civic models such as the EP3, this really appealed to us! The Civic Cup offer the option of “turn key”, ready to race cars that are built to Civic Cup and MSA specs in their dedicated workshop. While that is a good offer that many take up and achieve strong results with, it’s not how we do it at Team Japspeed, we like to put our own mark on things and do it for ourselves! So, we have taken on the task of transforming a regular road-going Honda Civic EP3 Type R into a full-on Civic Cup spec racer! We soon found an ideal base for the build project.
We got it into Japspeed HQ and set about it. First up we had to stockpile parts ready for the build, our friends at Fast Car Magazine were very keen to get involved and also cover the build for an in-depth magazine feature. We couldn’t help but grab one of the Japspeed radiators from the shelves and fit that in place, we then plumbed it in with some lovely new SamcoSport hoses.
With the Japspeed alloy radiator neatly fitted, we turned our attention to the rest of the parts needed to tackle the build.
Once all the parts were stockpiled, we started to strip the car down. While we had to check the Civic Cup regulations on weight limits, we didn’t want to be carrying any excess weight around when pushing to the limit on the track and weight loss has untold benefits in racing. Besides the obvious acceleration advantage, it also helps with handling, braking and tyre wear. So, out came the spanners!
The unwanted parts soon began to mount up and once everything was stripped down we drafted in SW Motorsports to weld in the rollcage. SW Motorsports are heavily involved with the Civic Cup and building of the championship cars, so we it was in knowledgeable hands. True to form, the SW staff quickly transformed the empty road car interior into something entiery more racy!
With the cage welded in it was time to start the prep on the interior and the exterior for the paint work, what else could we choose but the Team Japspeed Black and White livery? We’d looked at the lines of the car and they just naturally fitted the style, we were keen to see how this would pan out so started to prep the body and interior.
Once all the necessary prep was done, it was time for the paint guns to come out, things were about to take a dramatic change!
After the Japspeed mechanics and painters had worked their magic, we were seeing things in a whole new light, the coat of white paint just popped and shined, it created an element of space and cleanliness to the interior and just seemed to modernise things. It’s amazing what a coat of paint can do for a car! Clinical! We started to refit the dashboard and rebuild the interior back as a racecar.
With the interior sorted out, we used some Plastics for Performance Lexan windows, this helps shed further weight.
Next on the bodywork front was the trademark Japspeed Black. This involved marking up and then painting in the desired sections.
We couldn’t wait to peel back the protective cover and reveal the reborn Civic, it was a massive leap forward and our initial thoughts were right, it looks the business!
With all the painting ticked off the job list it was time to reassemble everything, starting with the KW 2-way suspension, Super Pro Bushes and of course some Japspeed rear upper camber arms and rear lower control arms. You can see the difference between the stock items and the glorious KW suspension.
Once the new suspension was in place, we turned our attention to fitting the Japspeed handling upgrades.
To finish things off, we fitted a full compliment of Super Pro bushes. Bar a set up session, the handling is now taken care off, it has all the components it needs to be a sharp and positive handling car.
Having all the handling prowess in the world isn’t going to help much if you have to come to a halt, so to scrub off the speed we increased the braking with some Japspeed discs and used some Cosworth Trackmaster pads, these pads are designed to cope with the extreme temperatures that trackwork involves, the calipers have to remain standard; as per Civic Cup rules.
Next area that needed some reinforcement was the transmission, use used and Exedy Stage 2 clutch. This will be more than enough to cope with the full throttle launches and down changes into corners without slipping.
For further information on the Civic cup, go direct to the website- http://www.civic-cup.co.uk/home/
Or Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/TheCivicCup?ref=hl
