We take Inside Line's long-term Civic Si to the track and learn the best (and worst) part about lapping Honda's hot rod.
You don't hear too many glory stories about the Civic Si trouncing BMW's E46 M3 in any constest of speed. That's because it doesn't happen very often, but it did yesterday in California's San Joaquin valley at Buttonwillow Raceway.
Dan Edmunds, director of vehicle testing and I attended an open track day with Inside Line's long-term Civic Si. Dan borrowed a set of sticky Kumho Victoracer tires, I grabbed my air tank and away we went. Turns out, we should have thought more about the Civic's brakes since they turned out to be the real deal breaker of the day.
Halfway through its fifth session, after blasting through a pack of indignant M3s, the Civic's stock brakes finally threw in the towel. Smoking, screeching and crackling, they would barely stop the car. Inadequate heat capacity had hampered their performance for most of the day anyway , but since they sounded like a cheese grater on a chalkboard we figured we better have a look. After a quick disassembly we found the pad material completely missing, the rotors galled and the whole system hot enough to fry satan's spit.
There's a lesson here: If you plan to take your Si to a track day be sure you've got pads and rotors in your budget. Then grab some Kumho rubber and get ready to embarrass Germany's best road car.
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It's been my experience with Hondas (I've owned a bunch) that warped rotors are a given at some point and time. I'm not saying other cars don't get them, but I've never experienced a "brand" that's been so prone to this issue.
I never heard about warped rotors complaints about Honda.
I thought that was a Nissan specialty.
How far from the norm is it to burn through a brake pad this fast, going around the track?
Impressive that it shamed the M3s, but poor little Si. Dang, you guys. (:
I would not make the assumption that the brakes on the Si have a problem - for street use. We were hammering on them pretty hard, and the pads were not new when we started.
Anyone who uses any car on a track regularly would benefit from a pad or caliper upgrade - if the competition rules allow it. Street car brakes are usually not designed to deal with so much heat for an extended period of time. Indeed most of the BMWs, Porsches, and Nissan 350Zs we shared the track with that day had Stop-Tech brake upgrades. And we still outran many of them!
Perhaps your failure to brake (proper response to your fear of crashing) gave you that extra speed to move ahead of the competition LOL!
Okay, no more late braking for you two! LOL. Great to hear about this excursion Dan and Josh! :) Which event did you guys go to? SpeedTrial? Time for a BB upgrade or get new pads and rotors. Brembo, Rotora or StopTech are my main choices... :) Project Mu and Endless are a little on the expensive side... Not really sure if Endless has a kit for it anyways right now... I'm sure the first three will have something...