Type R Club of America

Hello,

Well I wish it was an easy fix. When I picked up the car I thought I was having difficulty shifting because I had never driven a RHD, let alone one that was raced. The out of province inspection made no mention of shifting issues. After a few days/weeks of wondering if the shift problem was only me I brought it to a 'specialist'. They said everything was okay and my difficulty shifting was down to lack of experience.
Following this and still having problems with shifting, I contacted a transmission specialist. Within a couple of days the technician informs me that most of the synchro and bearings need to be replaced. To prove his point he opens the transmission and shows me the wear. To be thorough he also recommends that I change the clutch. After some back and forth we decide to go with OEM parts. The main reason for this is that Honda became aware of a design fault in these transmission and to fix it they designed/sold updated parts that are considered to be as good as anything/better than anything on the market for a EK9 that was not making silly horsepower. However, there was another problem once the tech gets the parts back. The synchros and bearings for the original transmission are unique to the race base. Due to this he needs to reorder them.
After a few more weeks I have the car back and everything seems fine. However, after coming back from a short vacation the car's front end emits a harsh noise when turning heavy left or right. Long-long story short, it turns out that the race LSD was toast. After a few more weeks/months discussing it with the owner of the transmission shop and a specialist (synchrotechtrans) we go from the plate style transmission back to helical. We also have some problems because of a different final drive. As it was explained to me that plate style LSD and final drive are indicative of a car that was raced.
As outlined above, the transmission was removed and put back into the car three (3) times!!!

Oh well.

MINTY

I didn't know that the race base CTR had different trans components, I assumed it just had the lighter weight from taking out all the options.

If I was you, I'd just get all Honda oem trans parts.

Hello,

I didn't know either. The tech had to show me that they were different. The catalogue he was using clearly indicated to me that the transmission in the race base had different part numbers. And yes, I did use as many OEM parts as I could. I have already gone through the entire car and replaced any suspension components that needed to be replaced. And in terms of the engine I am not sure if I trust the first specialist assessment given their thoughts about the transmission. They thought that the engine must have been recently serviced/rebuilt because the compression was very good and the TB looked great. However, in terms of the compression, when I asked fellow members on www.ek9.com what they thought about what the specialist said to me most of them indicated to me that a well-maintained B16B will continue to have great compression. I will most likely bring it to a different specialist in the spring.

Well at least the body is in great condition, and I no longer have to worry about the transmission.

MINTY