AEM 2001 Honda Civic LX Land Speed Record

John Romero and AEM endeavor to build a Civic that'll streak across the Bonneville Salt Flats to world-record glory while maintaining many of its creature comforts. first stop on this ambitious project: JD Performance for the setup of rollover protection in the econobox.

They call the Bonneville Salt Flats the fastest place on Earth for good reason. For years the expansive dry lakebed 90 miles outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, has been host to countless racing and testing sessions that have continually pushed the vehicular velocity envelope further and further. World Land Speed records have been set and broken on the 3-mile salt course. For many in the western United States, Bonneville is the Mecca of speed.

For such a hallowed place you'd think more performance-addled Honda heads would show up to try and snatch a little piece of history, but surprisingly few imports of any kind ever show up to race. In fact the Land Speed racing season culminates with the Bonneville Speed Week, an annual orgy of fast cars and excessive desert temperatures, and despite the hundreds of possible class combinations available, typically only a handful of sport compacts bother to shoot the flats. If it wasn't for the Progress Group and its attempts to secure a spot in the Land Speed record books, we're not sure we would even know where Bonneville is.

This was the catalyst for John Romero, head of performance electronics engineering at Advanced Engine Management/DC Sports in Hawthorne, Calif. He saw what Progress did and knew he could build something similar to its Land Speed Civic. However, Romero did not want Progress' record in the 2-liter Blown, Gas-Altered Coupe or Blown, Fuel-Altered Coupe classes.

"They are friends of ours so we didn't want to run against them," he explains. "It seems foolish for us to bunch up and beat each other over the head in the same class."His idea was to take a B16A and drop the displacement down to 1.5 liters to go after those records. According to Romero, "We decided that running in the 1.5 liters class[es] would offer unique challenges and allow for pretty high specific power output (horsepower per liter) while still maintaining some degree of reliability. Plus, we think that the existing records don't reflect the power potential of a current state-of-the-art Honda B-series motor."

The 1.5-liter B16 will drop into the EM2 chassis of a 2001 Civic LX, but Romero didn't want to follow convention and completely sacrifice the interior of the coupe. Instead he decided on preserving as much of the cabin as possible while arranging for a full roll cage. He wanted the car fast but functional.

Handling the cage build, which we follow this month, is Josh Dawson from JD Performance in Huntington Beach. Dawson will be taking his leads on constructing the rollover protection from the Southern California Timing Association/Bonneville Nationals Inc., the body that sanctions and organizes the speed trials. It requires that all roll cages be designed to encapsulate and protect the entire driver's area from impact; the area is considered to extend from above and behind the driver's head to in front of the driver's feet, and includes both side and bottom protection.

Although it will ultimately be a six-point cage, the SCTA mandates a minimum four-point if the front hoop is continuous and directly connected to the lower frame rails. In addition, vehicles in classes where the existing record exceeds 175 mph need to use the larger tube minimum requirements, which means Dawson will be working with 1-5/8-inch outside diameter, 0.120-inch wall thickness, low-carbon (mild) steel tubing and 6x6-inch square, 1/4-inch-thick base plates. For the job he picked up about 60 feet of tube, and the bars will be assembled with a TIG welder. Lastly, the SCTA typically requires all tube junctions to be gusseted, but Dawson was able to forgo the braces after explaining how thorough his welds are and getting the OK from the association.

The long-term plan for the Civic is a pretty daunting one. This year Romero hopes to campaign the unblown car just to sort out the bugs and determine how to go fast. He believes he'll probably run in the 160-175-mph range on nitrous, which would place the coupe in the Fuel Altered Class. "That's fast enough to get a feel for how the car is going to respond to the aero loading and how I need to trim it out," he tells us. "I don't want this thing going airborne!"

Later this year Romero will tear down and put on a turbo and switch to methanol to see what she can really do. But the ultimate goal of the project is to set the official 1.5L Blown, Fuel Altered record above 200 mph. Additionally, he hopes to be able to show off the car at various events in conjunction with AEM's other racer, Steph Papadakis' DriverFX.com Civic.

Romero removed Much of the Civic's interior before delivery to JD Performance, including the seats (save the Sparco driver's chair), carpet and center console. the headliner, dashboard and most panels remain to give us an idea how the cage will fit in a stock setting.	Josh dawson at jd performance plans to extend Two single pieces of tubing forward from the corners of the main hoop to the floor. The tubes, he says, will fit tight to the roof, bend to the contours of the windshield and firewall, and terminate at the floor under the dash. Since the floor starts to slope upward near the firewall, dawson flattens it out with an air hammer to accomodate the base plates (what the SCTA calls "support pads").	With the floor somewhat leveled at the forward mounting points, Dawson removes the nearby seam sealer with a chisel. The rubber-like sealer notoriously contaminates welds and will make any bond weak.
Dawson also removes sealer with a "crud thug," basically a wire wheel used to remove paint, adhesive, rust --just about anything that'll stick to a car's metal surface. Dawson says he likes the "thug" because it doesn't load up with crap like other wheels.	To remove any leftover sealer and adhesive, dawson goes over the area with a couple of different surfacing wheels, then shop-vac's away the loose debris.	with the welding points clean, Dawson turns to kinking some tube using etc's bend calculator pro software. The Windows-based app features built-in configurations for common bends and a function for creating custom twists. It can also estimate the total length of tubing needed for a given bend sequence and save, retrieve and print the numbers for any given job. Pretty cool...
Bend Calculator Pro uses overall dimensions for each hoop to determine angles. Enter a bend radius and desired tube dimensions and the program tells you where to mark the tube for bends.		Before cutting and bending, dawson wipes down the tubing with lacquer thinner to remove any oils used to protect it from rust. after hacking off individual lengths of piping with a metal cutting band, dawson tweaks each piece with a hydraulic bender. The machine's degree ring [9] allows Dawson to see how far he's bent each piece.
Dawson first tackles three sections: the main hoop and the two doorsill bars. The door hoops require offset angles in the tubing, so Dawson places a flat l-square atop the tubing and uses a magnetic angle locater to determine how far to rotate the tube for the required angle.	Once the bars are formed, Dawson notches the ends that butt up against the main hoop and tack welds the door hoops in place. The tack welding is just temporary, and used to mock up the cage. he also wedges the mounting plates in between the tube ends and the floor to get an idea how it'll all fit together.	Dawson leaves the door tubes a little long so he can position the main hoop perfectly and trim off the excess once he determines fitment. He also needed to cut the headliner in place to accommodate the door hoops.
This door bar extending diagonally from about halfway down the main hoop to the base of the doorsill bar serves as additional driver protection. look closely and you'll see where dawson kinked the tubing to accommodate the door panels. he also welded in a floor bar from the base of the main hoop to the base of the door bar, essentially reinforcing all sides of the door opening.		Romero wants to keep the dash, but dawson still needs to cut away some metal behind the dash [14] as well as some of the dash itself. A plasma cutter does the job.
Dawson sits Romero in the pilot's seat with helmet on to gauge the clearance between brain bucket and door sill tubing. It's a close fit, but acceptable enough for racing across the flats.	After test fitting the main hoop and doorsill bars, Dawson works on the rearward supports. He plans to run them through the speaker holes in the rear deck to base plates on the trunk floor. to determine the appropriate bend angle, he busts out a protractor/angle finder.
The rear deck panel will remain, so Dawson carves out openings in the speaker grilles for the tubing to pass through. It's simple enough: first use a holesaw to cut openings large enough for the tubing [18]. then cut the remaining grille plastic with a heavy-duty utility knife.	Here's a view from under the deck. looks like plenty of clearance.
Another trick feature of this cage is this bar that extends across the floor behind the driver. Dawson welded a couple of eye-bolts to the tube as an ideal lower mounting point for the harness [22]. SCTA mandates that bolts be a minimum of 3/8-inch in diameter and at least grade 5.	The SCTA rulebook mandates 1/4-inch-thick mounting plates on the top and bottom of the floor. The area needs to be sufficient enough to support an impact load equal to the weight of the car. Cars weighing less than 2,500 pounds need base plates with a minimum perimeter of at least 18 inches (i.e. 4x5-in.)	The only exceptions are the mounting points for the main hoop. Dawson found these super-thick braces under the flooring (possibly a stiffening measure from the factory) and welded the main hoop base plates on top.
So much for the sunvisors, which Romero planned to keep functional. Mounted any further back and the hoops falls short of STCA regs stating that the front hoop be at least 3 inches in front of the driver's helmet. Any farther forward and the bar would obstruct the driver's view.		Initially the main hoop is braced by the forward and rear bars, as well as this crossbar spanning the middle of the main hoop and serving as an upper mounting point for the harness [26]. Dawson checked with scta, however, and was instructed to also include a diagonal lateral bar running from one upper bend of the main hoop to the lower end of the opposite leg.
Dawson also prepares to weld in this rear seat brace that will attach the seat to the main hoop crossbar.	Beneath the trunk lid are the two rear bars mounted securely to the floor and linked by another crossbar. That bar also acts as a base for another length of tube extending out of the trunk for a parachute mount.