THE STEADY MARCH OF PROGRESS

Recently I was redesigning one of our mount kits and it got me to thinking. Over the years Hasport has made numerous changes to the mount kits. Some changes were brought on by warranties, some where aesthetic, and some reduced manufacturing costs. The mount kit that probably went through the most changes is the second mount kit I designed, the B-series mounts for the 88-91 Civic and CRX chassis. 

After some digging in our warranty bin, I came up with an example of each one of the iterations for the right-hand mount. Here they are.

As you can see, they've always been aluminum, but over the years as engines made more and more horsepower, the the mounts got beefier. win spite of more powerful engines, there are still some of the original mount kits installed in people's cars. Every now and again some one sends in a old set to have the urethane replaced. 

Here is an example of our original mount kit. This particular kit is 10 years old, but it's been 11 years since we introduced that design. My how time flies when your having fun. 

Here's what the kit looks like NOW.

Thanks for your support all these years.

brian g

Pushing the Envelope with the V6 Engine Swap

I've had some hair-brained schemes over the years. One friend commented, talking to me was like talking to a 17 year old about what they were going to do to modify their car. The plans were outlandish, but unlike the 17 year old it would eventually happen.

Old Faithful is getting a V6 engine swap. If you want to follow along, I'll be covering it in another blog, just click here – Projectcarpalooza 88 CRX 

Sometimes You've Got to be Flexible

Several weeks ago, Super Street decided that there were going to be no forced induction cars at this years Honda FF Battle. I had planned on bringing our 1988 CRX with the supercharged K24, perhaps you've seen it?

It's been in a few events before, American Touge, Super Lap Battle, Ultimate Street Car Challenge, Redline Time Attack, Modified Tuner Shootout and probably some stuff I'm forgetting. It's been a good car and a crowd favorite. For FF Battle I had planned to debut some new products, an intercooler kit for JR Super Chargers and cog belt drive.

FF Battle is comprised of three events, dyno, drag and time attack. Horsepower is obviously a big plus on the first two events, and because the time attack is at Cal Speedway, it's a big plus there too. The section of the track that is run on the oval can be treated like a big giant straight, and a car with serious boost can get a huge lead on the NA (naturally aspirated) cars in that section. In fact an insurmountable lead if he is a decent driver on the rest of the course. That's kind of a problem. If you wanted to win this event the obvious solution is to make a car with more HP than anyone else and that kind ruins it.


We've settled on a new engine and are getting to work on installing it. This will be a fun event and if you're in Southern California on July 30th, please come by Cal Speedway and check out the event. There will also be a car show along with the FF Battle so there will be lots to see.


Stay tuned, more blog posts coming about the install of the new engine in the 88 CRX.

I Think it'd Be Cool Build a Wind Tunnel.

You know what would be fun to have? A wind tunnel. Something small that I could run tenth scale cars in. I have some projects that need aero development. With my 3D printer, I could make models of the cars  and then test front wings, rear wings, flat bottoms, rake, ride height, splitters, diffusers and ducts.


Last summer while taking some classes at ASU I saw their wind tunnel and I don't think it would be hard to build. I roughed out a sketch based on what I remember, and it looks like this.

After doing some snooping around the Net I found a company called Aerolab that sells wind tunnels. I'd guess ASU has one of their designs.


This type of wind tunnel is called an open circuit wind tunnel. It is less expensive to build than the closed circuit wind tunnels and can be built as large or small as you can afford.  The difference between open circuit and closed circuit should be pretty self explanatory based on the name. With the closed circuit design the same air is recirculated, which has obvious efficiencies, and the open circuit design sucks in air from outside and accelerates it.  One of my favorite open circuit design is A2 at AeroDyn in North Carolina.


Open circuit designs are typically made up of five sections, the settling chamber, contraction section, test chamber, diffuser and fan section.


The settling section usually has some screens and honeycomb to equalize and align the air flow as it comes in from outside.


The contraction chamber which accelerates the air and reduces variations in pressure.


The test section is where the model being tested resides. Here things like smoke nozzles, and test devices are also inserted. 


The diffuser section gradually transitions from the test chamber the the fan section.


The fan section of course has the fan.


Any volunteers to help build this? You can use it when I'm not. 

What to wear to the Super Street Honda FF Battle 3

Well, it almost summer and that means the Super Street Honda FF Battle Numero Tres (Part Trois?) is coming. What will I wear? Something yellow, a la James Chen?

Or how about red, like last year? I could make some improvements, take a little in, let a little out.

Maybe black this year? Sophisticated, but with an edge.

Maybe an original creation is called for? Whichever, time to get crack-a-lackin.

Projectcarpalooza 88 CRX – How Many Engines Has your car had? Part 2

This is part 2 of the engine saga of Hasport's 1988 CRX, the K-series engines.

Although we were well on the way to building a 1.9 liter B-series engine for the CRX, the car magazines were starting to pay increasing attention to the K-series swaps. Hasport already had three successful K-series swaps kits on the market for EG Civics, EK Civics and DC2 Integras plus there was a lot of talk on the interwebs about doing a K-swapped EF. Earlier in the year when we were prototyping the H22 mounts in the red CRX I quickly tried the K20 in the engine bay, so I knew it could fit.

So the B19 was shelved and a K20 was wheeled in for prototyping the engine mounts. Although I knew it would fit, it wasn't really a good fit. K-series engines are tall. The K20 is taller than an H22 by almost 1.75 inches, and a K24 is even taller by another .75 inches. To keep the oil pan from smacking into the ground we designed the mount kit for the shorter K20. Of course when we did our swap, there was no way I was going to settle for the 2.0, not after driving the supercharged K24 powered EP3 for the last year.

Back in the 70's when I was first getting into cars, an engine sticking out of a hood was a regular thing. If you saw a set of dual quad carbs on a high-rise manifold sticking out of the hood, you knew the car meant business. So as far as I was concerned the added impact of a K-series with supercharger sticking out of the hood of the CRX was the right message. Even to this day, you gotta admit it's pretty damn cool looking.

This was the first K-series engine to find it's way into the CRX. It was a K24A1 with K20A2 head. It pumped out about 280 HP. The first event this car went to was the Super Street Eurotuner Time Attack in November of 2004 where it finished first in the Limited FWD class with Rich Hayes driving.

After that first K24 went in several others followed. Next was an AEBS sleeved monster motor with Pauter Rods, JE Pistons, Eibach valve springs, IPS cams, the JR supercharger, custom SC pulley, DC sports header, MagnaFlow exhaust and two huge bottles of Nitrous courtesy of Nitrous Express. On the Supercharger alone the car made about 350 HP and with nitrous 450 HP. The engine was detuned slightly for the Sport Compact Car's Ultimate Street Car Challenge because on street tires anything over 400 HP was flat out undrivable. 

Later in the year at the third Super Street Time Attack, this engine met an unfortunate and early demise as the bottom end decided it had had enough of racing. The postmortem wasn't conclusive, but one of the rods decided it didn't want to push the piston up and down anymore and mowed through the block. The moment of destruction was caught on tape by Joe Flores of K20 engine swaped Fit fame. The video is below, expletives have been beeped out to protect delicate ears.

The pictures still make me want to cry. *sniff sniff* This all happened a couple of days before the American Touge 3 filming so a quick replacement was needed. This time we opted to go cheap and bought a CRV engine. We took a bit of a hit on horsepower with that swap, from 350 down to 278 HP. That was OK though, the Touge test driver was complaining about too much horsepower. Imagine that, too much horsepower.

That's basically how the car sits now. The only other improvements were some Skunk2 K20A3/K24 Stage 2 cams. That brought the horsepower back up to 300, thank you very much. But now it's time to make some improvements. This time we are going to address the two biggest complaints of the Jackson Racing Superchargers – belt slippage and intake air temps. I got a hold of some super trick parts to test on the supercharger, a cog belt drive kit and adapter for intercooling the supercharger. Heh, heh, heh, stay tuned.

Projectcarpalooza 88 CRX – How many engines has your car had?

With 9 project cars to cover I've decided a little content management was in order. So I am starting a new blog for each individual car. That way I can keep like posts organized. New entries will still appear here and redirect to the associated car's blog. Separating project car posts by individual car should allow me to make threaded entries that are easier to follow. So, without further ado...


Of all the cars Hasport has built over the years my favorite is the Yellow 1988 Honda CRX. And it's not just my favorite it seems, I get more questions about this car than all our other projects combined. Hasport originally bought the car and I used it as a daily driver. It replaced the 1990 CRX I was driving, whch got an H22 transplant and turned into a drag car. (read more)

Hasport's 88 CRX, before the K-swap